by J. A. Jance
They lay on their bunks in silence for a while, Mitch Johnson in the upper bunk and Carlisle in the lower so he could get to the toilet more easily during the night.
Mitch didn’t want to seem stupid, but he couldn’t see where Andy was going on this one. “So what’s the point?” he finally asked.
“Did you enjoy shooting those guys in the back?” Andy asked.
A peculiar intimacy existed between the two men that Mitch Johnson was hard-pressed to understand. If somebody else had asked that question, Mitch would have decked the guy, but because it was Andy asking, Mitch simply answered. “Yes,” he said.
“But wouldn’t it have been better,” Andrew Carlisle asked, “if they’d had the chance to ask you—to beg you—not to do it and you did it anyway? Wouldn’t that have been more fun? Have you ever done it that way?”
“What do you mean?” Mitch said. “I did it the way I did it. I shot them and that’s it.”
“But it doesn’t have to be,” Andrew Carlisle told him. “You have a mind, an imagination. All you have to do is rewrite the scenario. Change your mind and change your reality. Close your eyes and see them walking again. Only this time, instead of pulling the trigger, you call out to them. You order them on their hands and knees. It was hot, wasn’t it? The middle of summer?”
“Yes, almost the end of June.”
“So imagine them on their hands and knees in the sand, with the hot earth blistering their skin. They’re going to beg you not to shoot them. Plead with you to let them stand up again so they’ll have the protection of their shoe leather between their skin and the sand. But if you wait, if you don’t let them up off their hands and knees, eventually, they’ll belong to you in the same way the mouse belongs to the cat, you see. In exactly the same way.”
In the upper bunk, Mitch Johnson closed his eyes and let Andrew Carlisle’s almost hypnotic voice flow over him. Mitch was right there again, standing on the bank of Brawley Wash, calling down to the wetbacks marching ahead of him.
“Stop,” he shouted at them, and they did.
“Down!” he ordered. “Get down on your hands and knees.” And they did that, too, all three of them groveling in the burning sand before him, all of them scraping their faces in the dirt. This must be what it feels like to be a king, Mitch thought. Or maybe even a god.
“Please,” the older one said, speaking to Mitch in English rather than in Spanish. “Please, let my grandsons be. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let my daughter’s boys go free. Let them go.”
“What would you do, old man?” Mitch asked him.
“Anything. Whatever you say.”
“Put the barrel in your mouth.”
For Mitch, that was such a sexually charged image that it almost broke the spell, but Andy’s voice, washing over the whole scene, kept the images in play. Reaching up tentatively, the old man took the barrel of the gun and lovingly, almost reverentially, put it into his own mouth. And with the grandsons cowering there on the ground, and with the old man’s eyes full on his face, Mitch Johnson pulled the trigger.
“And this time,” Andrew Carlisle finished, “you can be sure the bastard is dead. What do you think?”
Mitch opened his eyes, unsure of what had happened but with the tracks of a wet dream still hot on his belly and between his legs.
“It beats jacking off, doesn’t it?” Andrew Carlisle asked.
Yes, it does, Mitch meant to say, but, for some strange reason, he was already asleep.
Diana Ladd Walker was at work in her study. On that Friday morning she was supposed to be writing, working on the outline for her next book, Den of Iniquity. What she was doing instead was fielding phone calls. The month before her previous book, Shadow of Death, had won a Pulitzer. Even though the book had been out for nine months, the whirl of publicity surrounding the prize had pushed the book into numerous reprints. Not only that, it was back on the New York Times Best Sellers list as well, sitting at number eight, for the third week in a row.
Which is why, at a time when Diana should have been writing, she had been sucked instead back into book-promotion mode. She had left her desk and was on her way to shower when the phone rang again.
“It’s me,” Megan Wright announced. Megan was a publicist working for Diana’s New York publisher, Sterling, Moffit, and Dodd. She was young—not more than twenty-five—but she was businesslike on the phone and brimmed with a kind of boundless energy and enthusiasm that suited her for the job.
“I’m calling with your weekend’s marching orders,” Megan continued. “I just wanted to double-check the schedule.”
Obligingly, Diana hauled out her calendar and opened it to the proper page.
“First there’s the University of Arizona Faculty Wives Tea this afternoon at two o’clock.”
“I know,” Diana observed dryly. “As a matter of fact, I was on my way into the bathroom to shower and dress when the phone rang.”
“I’ll hurry,” Megan said. “And then there are the two appointments for tomorrow. I’m sorry about filling up your Saturday, but I didn’t have any choice. Tomorrow’s the only time I could schedule the Monty Lazarus interview. Don’t forget, he’s the West Coast stringer for several different magazines, so it’s an important interview. My guess is he’ll be pitching the story to all of them.”
“Where’s that interview?” Diana asked. “I wrote down his name but not where I’m supposed to meet him.”
“In the lobby of the La Paloma Hotel at noon. I don’t have either an address or a map. Can you find it, or will you need a driver?”
Tucson may have been totally foreign territory to Megan, but Diana had lived in the Tucson area for more than thirty years. “Noon, La Paloma,” Diana repeated as she jotted the words into the correct slot on the calendar under the name, “Monty Lazarus.”
“And don’t worry about a driver,” Diana continued. “Believe me, I can find La Paloma on my own.”
“Mr. Lazarus likes to take his own pictures, so you’ll need to go prepared for a photo shoot. I warned him that he’ll have to finish up no later than four, though, so you’ll have time enough to get back home, change, and be at the El Dorado Country Club for the Friends of the Library banquet at six. Mrs. Durgan, your hostess for that event, called just a few minutes ago to make sure your husband will be attending. She wanted to know if she should reserve a place at the head table. Brandon is going, isn’t he?”
“He’ll be there,” Diana said grimly. “If he isn’t, I’ll know the reason why.”
“Good,” Megan said, sounding relieved. “I told her I was pretty sure he was planning to attend.”
When the phone call finally ended, Diana headed for the shower once more. On her way through the bedroom, she found Brandon sound asleep on the bed. She tiptoed by without waking him. No doubt he needed it. He barely slept at night these days, passing the nighttime hours prowling the house or pacing out on the patio. The midday naps he took between woodcutting shifts were pretty much the only decent rest he seemed to get.
Closing the door between the bathroom and bedroom, she undressed and then stood in front of the mirror, observing her reflection. She wasn’t that bad looking for being a couple of years over the half-century mark. The face and body reflected back at her bore an amazing resemblance to what her mother, Iona Dade Cooper, had looked like just before she got so sick.
In the past few years Diana had put on some weight, especially around the hips. Her softly curling auburn hair had two distinct streaks of white flowing away from either temple. But her skin was still good, and with the help of a little makeup she’d look all right, not only for today’s afternoon tea, but also for the photo shoot and banquet tomorrow.
Stepping into the shower, though, she was still chewing on what was going on between Brandon and her. It was too bad that if she was going to win some big prize that it had to be for Shadow of Death, a book Brandon had never wanted her to write in the first place. Not only that, it was unfortunate that what shoul
d have been her finest hour, the pinnacle of a writing career that spanned more than twenty years, should come at a time when Brandon, after being tossed out of office, was at his very lowest ebb.
The last month and a half, in fact, had been pure hell. She and Brandon had been at one another’s throats ever since the engraved invitation had arrived, summoning them both to the awards festivities in New York.
Brandon had backed away from the gold-embossed envelope with both their names on it as though that rectangular piece of paper were a coiled rattlesnake.
“No way!” he had declared. “No way in hell! I’m not going to New York for that, not in a million years!”
“Why not? It’ll be fun.”
“For you, maybe. People are interested in you; they want to meet you. And while you’re busy talking, someone will turn to me and say, ‘What is it you do, Mr. Walker? Are you a writer, too?’ And when I tell them I used to be sheriff but I don’t do anything anymore, their eyes will glaze over and pretty soon they’ll wander away. It’s a ball doing that. I love it.”
Diana had winced at the sarcasm in his voice, but she also knew the perils of playing second banana. She had felt the same way about attending political gatherings—the rubber-chicken luncheons and living room campaign coffee hours—back when Brandon had been a candidate for public office. But she had gone. She had kept her mouth shut, she had put on her good clothes and company manners, and she had gone. She had served as the proper political wife and had behaved the way political wives the world over are expected to behave.
Part of what had made that easy to do was the fact that she had believed so strongly in what Brandon Walker stood for. She had backed his plans for cleaning up the sheriff’s department, for getting rid of the crooks and putting an end to the graft and corruption.
To be fair, back when she was first published, he had been there for her, as well. Those first few book tours when he had sometimes been able to join her for a few days at a time had been a ball. Back then, his going to functions with her had been easier for him because he had been more sure of his own place in the scheme of things. The ego damage associated with losing the election—from being booted out of a job he loved—seemed to have knocked the emotional pins out from under him. It was almost as though there had been a death in the family, and the grieving process had left him lost and directionless.
But to Diana’s way of thinking, the main problem with the Pulitzer and everything associated with it was that the accolades were all coming to Diana over Shadow of Death, a book Brandon Walker had opposed from the very beginning.
“Don’t bring all that stuff up again,” he had warned her on the day Andrew Carlisle’s letter had arrived from the Arizona State Prison. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
But she hadn’t followed his advice. She had gone ahead and written the book anyway. And now, based on that, Diana Ladd Walker’s stock had shot way up in the world of publishing. Sandy Hawkins, Diana’s editor at Sterling, Moffit, and Dodd, was downright ecstatic. Requests for interviews and public appearances were flowing in. Meanwhile, Diana’s marriage was in the toilet.
She and Brandon had argued bitterly over the trip to New York, with him citing any number of plausible but nonetheless phony excuses for not going. He didn’t have a tux. With only one of them working, he couldn’t see squandering all that money on his airfare. He hated being locked up in an airplane seat without enough room for his long legs. Most of all, in his opinion, Lani shouldn’t be left home on her own, not with the end-of-school party season heating up.
“Why don’t you say what you mean?” an exasperated Diana had demanded finally when she tired of arguing. “Why don’t you just admit it? You don’t want to go.”
Brandon complied at once. “You’re right,” he had said. “I don’t want to go.”
“Fine!” Diana had stormed. “Suit yourself, but one of these days you’re going to have to get over it, Brandon. One of these days you’re going to have to realize that losing that election was not the end of the world.”
She regretted her outburst almost immediately, but she had retreated to her office without an apology while Brandon had made tracks for his damned woodpile. And two weeks later, when Diana Ladd Walker flew off to New York, she had done so alone, with the quarrel between them still unresolved. A month and a half later, his role as “author consort” was still a bone of contention.
When the invitation came for her to speak at the annual Friends of the Library banquet, there had been yet another firefight. This time, though, Diana had dug in her heels.
“Look,” she had told him. “I can see your not going to the faculty tea. If I could get out of that one myself, I would. But the library banquet is something for the whole community, the community that elected you to office for sixteen years. People expect you to be there. I expect you to be there. We’re married, Brandon. I don’t want to spend my life out in public as one of those married singles.”
“But I hate all that crap,” he argued. “I hate standing around with a drink in my hand, looking like a sap, and listening to some little old lady talk about something I’ve never heard of.”
“Get over it,” Diana had snapped back at him. “If you were tough enough to face down armed crooks in your day, you ought to be able to stand up to any little old lady in the land.”
Stepping out of the shower, Diana stood toweling her hair dry. Suddenly, out of nowhere, something her mother had told her once came back to her as clearly as if she had heard the words yesterday instead of thirty years earlier.
Iona Dade Cooper had been at home in Joseph, Oregon, dying of cancer. Diana, away at school at the University of Oregon in Eugene, had finally been forced to drop out temporarily to care for her. Diana had been sitting in the chair next to her mother’s bed telling of her secret ambition not only to marry Garrison Ladd but also to become a writer.
“You can’t have it all, you know,” Iona had said quietly. “If you try to do too much, something is bound to suffer.”
Standing in the bathroom thirty years later, Diana had to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. She remembered arguing the point with her mother back then, telling Iona passionately exactly how wrong she was.
“These are the sixties,” Diana had said with the absolute conviction of a know-it-all twenty-one-year-old. “Women are moving into their own now, Mother. Everything is possible, you’ll see.”
Iona Dade Cooper had died a few months later without seeing anything of the kind. And Diana, now several years older than her mother had lived to be, was forced to acknowledge that Iona’s assessment was one hundred percent accurate.
Mom, you were right, after all, Diana Cooper Ladd Walker admitted to herself. You really can’t have it all.
2
Now in that long ago time the earth—jeweth—was not yet firm and still as it is today. It was shaking and quivering all the time. That made it hard for the four to travel. So Earth Medicine Man—Jeweth Mahkai—threw himself down and stopped the shaking of the earth. And that was the first land.
But the land was floating around in separate pieces. So Earth Medicine Man called to the Spider Men. Totkihhud O’othham came out of the floating ground and went all over the world spinning their webs and tying the pieces of earth together. And that is how we have it today—land and water.
Then I’itoi wanted to find the center of the earth. So he sent Coyote toward the south and Big Black Beetle to the north. He said they must go as fast and as far as they could and then return to him.
Bitokoi—Big Black Beetle—was back quite a while before Ban—Coyote—returned. In this way I’itoi knew that he had not yet found the center of the earth.
Then Spirit of Goodness took Bitokoi and Ban a little farther south and sent them off once more. Again Big Black Beetle came back before Coyote, so I’itoi moved still farther toward the south.
On the fourth try Bitokoi and Coyote came back to I’itoi at exactly the same time. In that way Elder Brother knew he was ex
actly in the center of the world. Because the Spirit of Goodness should be the center of all things, this was where I’itoi wished to be.
And this center of all things where Elder Brother lives is called Tohono O’othham Jeweth, which means Land of the Desert People.
Mitch Johnson waited on the hill, watching and sketching, until Brandon Walker went inside around ten-thirty. By then he had several interesting thumbnail drawings—color studies—that he’d be able to produce if anyone ever questioned his reason for being there.
“You see, Mitch,” Andy had told him years ago, “you always have to have some logical and defensible reason for being where you are and for doing whatever it is that you’re supposedly doing. It’s a kind of protective coloration, and it works the same way that the patterns on a rattlesnake’s back allow it to blend into the rocks and shadows of the land it inhabits.
“The mask that allowed me to do that was writing. Writing takes research, you see. Calling something research gave me a ticket into places most people never have an opportunity to go. Drawing can do the same for you. You’re lucky in that you have some innate ability, although, if I were you, I’d use some of the excess time we both seem to have at the moment to improve on those skills. You’ll be surprised how doing so will stand you in good stead.”
That was advice Mitch Johnson had been happy to follow, and he had carried it far beyond the scope of Andy’s somewhat limited vision. Claiming to be an artist had made it possible to park his RV—a cumbersome and nearly new Bounder—on a patch of desert just off Coleman Road within miles of where Andrew Carlisle had estimated it would most likely be needed. The rancher he had made arrangements with had been more than happy to have six months’ rent in advance and in cash, with the only stipulation being that Mitch keep the gate closed and locked.