Queen of the Night. J. A. Jance
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every aspect of her unwelcome visitor, Diana might have been viewing a close-up shot of someone on Brandon’s new high-defflat-screen TV set. Every detail was astonishingly vivid—from the sparse strands of white hair that sprinkled his sunken chest to the grizzled unshaved beard that dotted his gaunt cheeks and the scarred and rippled skin of his forehead and nose.
I did that, Diana thought, gasping involuntarily at the sight of those horrifying scars. I’m responsible for doing that to a living, breathing human being, back when he was alive.
Which Andrew Carlisle was not. The man sitting across the table from Diana was most definitely not alive. She knew that for certain. He had been alive when he had come to her house years earlier, intent on rape and murder. Before it was over, he had left Diana with his own special trademark—a fierce bite mark that even now still scarred her breast. But Carlisle had underestimated her back then. He hadn’t expected Diana to fight back or to leave him permanently disfigured in the process. All of that had happened long ago—before he had gone to prison for the second time and before he died there. Back in those days there had been no swimming pool or fountain or gazebo in Diana’s walled backyard, and she most certainly hadn’t been working on a laptop.
“We are not having this conversation,” she said to him now.
“Come on, Diana,” he urged. “For old times’ sake. Let bygones be bygones. Tell me, how’s the writing going? What are you working on now?”
She was dealing with some backed-up business correspondence, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
“What I’m working on is none of your business,” she responded.
“Of course it’s my business,” Carlisle insisted. “I’m always interested when one of my students goes on to achieve remarkable success in the publishing world.”
“I was not your student,” Diana told him flatly. “My first husband was your student, remember? I never was. Go away and leave me alone.”
“Give me a break, Diana. I’m still annoyed that Shadow of Death won a Pulitzer. You never would have won that award without me. I was the guy who came up with the idea, and the whole book was all about me. You should have given me more credit.”
“You didn’t deserve more credit,” she said. “You didn’t write it. I did.”
“Oh, well. No matter,” he said with a sigh. “After all, fame is fleeting. I thought you’d be glad to see me. Mitch may drop by a little later, too. And Gary. You’d like to see him again, too, wouldn’t you? Although, come to think of it, maybe not. That self-inflicted bullet left a hell of a hole in his head. Not so much in the front as in the back. Exit-wound damage and all that. I’m sure you know how those work.”
Living or dead, Diana had no desire to see her dead first husband, Garrison Walther Ladd III, nor did she want to see Mitch Johnson, the surrogate killer Carlisle had sent to attack her family in his stead when Carlisle himself could no longer pose a direct threat.
“Shut up,” she said.
Tires crunched on the gravel driveway. Damsel, Diana’s aging nine-year-old mutt, pricked her ears and raised her head at the sound. She had come to Diana and Brandon as a rollicking pound puppy some eight years earlier when her antics had earned her the title of Damn Dog. Now she was a well-behaved grizzled old dog with a nearly white muzzle and a game hip. She stood up and steadied herself for a moment. Then, with an arthritic limp, she hurried over to the side gate, barking in welcome.
“My daughter’s coming,” Diana said. “Go away.”
“Lani is coming here?” Carlisle sounded delighted. “The lovely Lani? Do tell. Wonderful. Maybe she’ll show me her scar.”
“What scar?”
“Oh, I forgot. You don’t know about that.”
“What scar?” Diana insisted.
“Ask her about it if you don’t believe me. I understand Mitch left her a little something to remember him by. Let’s just say it’s a token of my esteem.”
Lani had been sixteen when Mitch Johnson, Andrew Carlisle’s minion, had kidnapped Diana’s daughter.
“What?” Diana asked. “What did he do to her?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Determinedly, Diana turned her attention back to her laptop. She thought Carlisle would disappear when she did that, but he didn’t. He stayed right there with his face turned in her direction. Since he was blind now, he could no longer stare at her, but the same expression was on his face—the same disparaging smirk he had aimed at her once before, long ago in a courthouse hallway.
“You’re not welcome here,” she told him. “Go away.”
Highway 86, West of Tucson, Arizona
Saturday, June 6, 2009, 12:00 P.M.
93º Fahrenheit
Eight-year-old Gabriel Ortiz sat up straight in Dr. Lani Walker’s car and seemed to be studying the scenery as it whizzed by outside the windows of the speeding Passat. This was the first time Lani could remember his being tall enough to ride in the front seat. He evidently liked it.
“Where are we going again, Lani Dahd?” he asked.
Dahd was Tohono O’odham for godmother, and that was Lani Walker’s role in Gabe’s young life. She had been there to deliver him in the back of her adoptive mother’s prized Invicta convertible eight years earlier, and she had been there for him ever since, spending as much time with him as possible whenever she was home on breaks—first from medical school and later from her hospital residency in Denver.
She was doing her best to be Gabe’s mentor and to give him the benefit of everything she had learned from the mentors in her life, her own godparents, namely Gabe’s great-aunt, Rita Antone, and his grandfather, Fat Crack Ortiz. Of course, those people in turn had learned what they knew from the old people in their own lives, from a blind medicine man called Looks at Nothing, and from Rita’s grand-mother, Oks Amachuda, Understanding Woman.
“We’re going to stop by the house to pick up my mother,” Lani answered. “Then we’re going to a place called Tohono Chul.”
Gabe frowned. “Desert corner?” he asked.
Lani smiled at his correct translation. She was glad he was learning some of his native language, and not just from her, either.
“Not a corner, really,” she corrected. “It’s a botanical garden, devoted to preserving the desert’s native plants.”
“You mean like a zoo but for plants?” Gabe asked.
Lani nodded. “Exactly. There’s a party there tonight. My mother and I are invited, and I thought you should go, too. After all, you’re eight—that’s old enough.”
“What kind of party?” Gabriel asked. “You mean like a birthday party with candles?”
“More like a feast than a birthday party, but with no dancing,” Lani explained.
Gabe shook his head. A feast with no dancing clearly made no sense to him.
“There may be candles,” Lani added, “but they won’t be on a cake. People will be carrying candles around with them so they’ll be able to see in the dark.”
“Why not use flashlights?” he asked.
Lani smiled to herself. Gabe was nothing if not practical. From his perspective, flashlights made more sense than candles. Gabe wanted light, not atmosphere.
“Candles make for a better mood,” she said. Lani waited while Gabe internalized her response. After eight years, Lani was accustomed to answering the boy’s questions, and she did so patiently enough. That was a godmother’s job. As for Gabe’s parents? His father, Leo, was too busy running the family auto repair business,