Hour of the Hunter (3 page)

More than once, Diana Ladd had offered to replace the truck or fix it, but Rita always declined. She had bought it new and kept it all those years. She didn't drive it much anymore, only a few times a year when she went out to gather the raw materials for her baskets-devil's claw from the reservation or bear grass and yucca from Benson. Then there were the anniversary tips, like this one, but because Diana Ladd didn't want to talk about that, Rita usually disguised her real intentions by saying she was going to a feast or taking her newest crop of baskets up to the top of Ioligarn, the mountain Anglos called Kitt Peak, to be sold in the observatory gift shop there.

Rita was determined to drive the old truck until one or the other of them stopped dead. If the truck happened to go first, she would leave it wherever it died, parked on the side of the road if necessary.

Three Points Trading Post at Robles Junction was thirty miles west of Tucson on Highway 86, the main road leading out to the reservation.

The trading post's primary claim to fame was its undisputed reputation for selling more beer on a weekly basis than all of Davis Air Force Base combined.

Charley Raymond, the most recent Anglo owner, hurried to the pumps as Rita stopped the truck. "What do you want?" he asked.

Deliberately, Rita eased her heavy frame out of the driver's seat.

"Five dollars' worth of regular," she said and went inside, with Davy trailing happily along behind.

Once inside the store, Davy made a dash for the refrigerator and grabbed his favorite treat-a carton of chocolate milk. Rita went to the cooler and withdrew a single can of Coors. She didn't drink much, but the day's real task promised to be hard, thirsty work, and she would need a beer when she finished. A single beer would be welcome.

It would also be enough.

Leaving the cooler, Rita steered Davy firmly past a beckoning display of Twinkies and led him to a shelf laden with plastic memorial wreaths and votive candies.

He watched curiously while she selected a wreath of bright pink roses.

"This one?" she asked, holding it up for his inspection.

"It's pretty," he said with a puzzled frown, "but, Nana, why are we getting flowers?"

Shaking her head, Rita didn't answer. Instead, she took the wreath, one tall, glass-enclosed candle with a picture of the Virgin Mary on the outside, and the can of Coors, then she threaded her way through the narrow aisles up to the cash register. From behind the counter, Daisy Raymond, a narrow-faced Anglo woman, eyed Rita suspiciously.

Buying the trading post had been Charley's idea, not Daisy's. She hadn't wanted to have anything to do with it, but Charley had convinced her that running the store for a few years was a good way to finish bankrolling their retirement. Now, months later, she reluctantly agreed he was right. In beer sales alone, the place was a gold mine.

The problem was, Daisy Raymond didn't like Indians.

Never had. She stood trapped behind the cash register day after day taking Indian money and trying, unsuccessfully, to conceal her dislike behind a barrage of inane chatter.

Being around Daisy Raymond made Rita draw back inside herself.

"Nice day out there, isn't it," Daisy said. "Real hot for so early in the year."

"Five dollars' of gas," Rita replied, refusing to be drawn into a conversation about the weather. She placed her other selections on the checkout counter. When all the purchases were rung up and totaled on the old-fashioned cash register, Rita painstakingly counted out the exact change from her purse. People running trading posts no longer routinely cheated Indians, but Rita was careful about it all the same, especially with people like Daisy Raymond.

"Need any matches for the candle?" Daisy asked.

Rita nodded.

"How come you people use so many wreaths and candles?" Daisy asked.

Rita shrugged. When the Indian woman made no reply, Daisy continued on her own. She was accustomed to carrying on these one-sided conversations.

"I told Charley just yesterday that we'd better order more-wreaths and candles, that is. He worries about running out of beer, and I have to keep track of everything else."

Daisy paused and looked down. Peering over the counter, she noticed Davy Ladd for the first time. He stood gazing up at her in an almost accusatory blue-eyed stare. She found the child's silence disturbing.

The Anglo woman expected that kind of behavior from the Indian kids who came through the trading post. That was bad enough, but since they came from the reservation, you could understand about their being shy and backward.

With this white kid, though, it was downright impolite.

Where were his parents? she asked herself. And who was going to pay for the carton of milk?

Glancing around the room, Daisy wondered if someone else had slipped into the store unnoticed, but there was no one with the boy except an ancient, withered crone of an Indian woman. It wasn't right. It just wasn't.

Daisy leaned down until her face and Davy's were or almost the same level. He looked dirty, with a ring of chocolate milk circling his mouth. The sharp odor of wood smoke emanated from his hair and clothing. Was there such a thing as a blond Indian?

"Hello there, young man. Where'd you come from?"

The woman wore bright red lipstick that made her mouth look like an angry red gash across a pale, skinny face.

Her darting green eyes reminded Davy of a lizard he'd seen once.

Without answering, Davy shrank away under the woman's nosy gaze and groped behind him for the comforting reassurance of Rita's callused hand.

"He's with me," Rita said.

"Oh?" Daisy replied. "What's the matter with him? Can't he talk? By the way, you still owe for his milk."

Once more Rita counted out exact change. Without a thank you, Daisy Raymond shoved the money into the register drawer.

"Oi g hihm," Rita said softly to Davy.

Literally translated, the words mean "Walk," but Davy understood the accepted current usage as "Let's get in the pickup and go."

Needing no second urging, he hurried to the door, relieved to escape the close confines of the trading post and the Anglo woman's prying eyes. He clambered up into the Pickup and settled back contentedly on the frayed plastic seat. Rita opened the door. With a grunt of effort, she heaved herself into the truck.

"Are we going to the feast now?" Davy asked.

Nana Dahd shook her head. "Not yet. A few stops first, then the feast."

Had Pima County homicide detective Brandon Walker been a drinking man, he would have left his morning vehicular homicide investigation, stopped off at the nearest bar on his way back to town, and got himself shit-faced drunk. He hadn't, but now, back in his cubicle at the Pima County Sheriff's Department and looking at the fanfold of messages in his hand, he wished he had. Just this once.

A day earlier, Aaron Monford, a seventy-five-year-old shade-tree mechanic, had been changing a tire in his front yard when he was struck from behind by a tipsy neighbor lady on her way home from a weekly luncheon bridge game.

Monford's head had been crushed nearly flat between the chrome-plated bumpers of his own jacked-up Dodge Dart and that of the neighbor's speeding Buick. He had died instantly, without ever being transported to a hospital. The driver, drunk and suffering from chest pains, had been taken to St. Mary's Hospital.

Early that morning, Brandon had spent two hours with the now-sober driver and her solicitous and well-paid attorney.

Then, from nine o'clock on, he had been in the Monfords' posh Tucson Estates mobile home listening to Aaron's devastated widow, Goldie, bewail the end of what she had expected to be their "golden years."

Low-key and polite, Brandon had worked patiently, diligently gathering the necessary information despite Goldie's periodic outbursts: How could Ari do this to her? Why had she let him go out to change the tire right then? Why hadn't he waited until evening when it was cooler like she had told him? Why had he left without giving her a chance to say good-bye?

Every time Goldie Monford opened her mouth, Brandon wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her head. He wanted to tell her that she should fall down on her knees and thank God that she was one of the lucky ones and so was Aaron. There was more than one way to be robbed of your golden years. In Walker's opinion, a quick death was far preferable to a slow one.

Slow deaths were the real heartbreakers.

But Brandon Walker didn't berate Goldie Monford, and he didn't stop off to get drunk, either. He left the widow wallowing in her grief and drove straight back to the office.

Now, standing in his dingy cubicle, he thumbed through his messages.

Those ominous yellow slips of paper weighed down his soul, telling him once more that he was right and Goldie Monford was wrong.

There were six messages in all. The clerk had nodded sympathetically as she handed them to him. "Your mother," she said.

There was no written message, only a check-mark beside "Please call," but Brandon clearly read between the lines to what hadn't been said.

One way or another, they were all about his father-about what Toby Walker either had or hadn't done. Brandon had learned to dread his mother's calls-hourly ones, it seemed at times-giving him constant updates on Brandon's father's latest transgressions; checks that had bounced or how Toby had once again lost his way driving home from the store-the same store they'd been going to for ten years, for God's sake!

What was the matter with him? What was he thinking or Brandon felt sorry for both his parents. His father's erratic behavior seemed to bother his mother far more than it did Toby himself. Louella Walker was someone who prided herself on keeping things "under control." In this case, it wasn't working. She vacillated between rage and despair.

Sometimes she made excuses, saying that there' was nothing at all wrong with Toby, that he just needed a little extra help. If Brandon were any kind of a decent son, he wouldn't begrudge his father that much.

At other times, she raged and railed that Toby was deliberately trying to drive her crazy.

If there was a middle ground in all this, Brandon wasn't able to find it. The role of parental peacemaker and crisis manager at home was a painful one. He didn't want to call home and hear either his mother's panicked tattling or her self-pitying whine. It was no surprise that Detective Walker hid out in his work. He wanted to be left alone, to go about living his life in a reasonable semblance of peace and quiet, to do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

The cubicle was far homier than home was. He would stay late at the office again tonight, doing whatever mundane tasks he could dredge up to do, coming home long after dinner and hopefully long after his parents had gone to bed as well. That way he wouldn't have to listen either to his mother, who talked more and more, or watch his father, who spoke less and less.

With a sigh, Brandon dropped the six messages into his trash can.

Telling the clerk to hold all his calls, he pulled out the half-completed form he had started filling out earlier that morning, the one that recounted the unexpected death of Aaron Monford. Once, not so long ago, these very same reporting forms would have been anathema to him, something to be avoided entirely or put Off as long as possible.

Now, they were a refuge.

There were blanks on the paper-finite, measurable, boxed blanks on sturdy white paper-where clear-cut answers to simple questions were all that was required. He took more care with his penmanship these days, as though neatness and legibility were somehow next to godliness, as though his third-grade teacher might rise up from her grave and look over his shoulder again, checking the slant of each individual letter and measuring the crosses on each t.

Even as he was doing it, Brandon Walker was smart enough to step back and know why.

In a world where fathers become children again, writing a report is sometimes the only thing that makes sense.

Chapter Two

WITH A JOLT, the pickup lumbered over the rough cattle guard that marked the reservation boundary. Davy sat up straight, eager to see one of his favorite landmarks-a faded billboard advertising the tribal rodeo.

Rita had taken him twice.

"Can we go again this year, Nana DahP" he asked, pointing at the sign.

"It's fun."

"We'll see," she answered, shifting down while the pickup lurched drunkenly to one side.

"How come my mom stopped liking rodeos?" Davy asked. "She used to like them, didn't she?"

Nana Dahd looked at him shrewdly. "Why do you ask that?"

The boy shrugged and bit his lip, thinking about the picture that hung in the hallway. Smiling and surprisingly beautiful, his much younger mother was dressed up like a cowgirl with a jeweled tiara overlaying the feathered hatband of her Stetson. Looking at the picture, it was easy for Davy to imagine that long ago his mother had been a princess-a rich, happy princess. Of course, they weren't rich now, and his mother didn't seem to be very happy, either. He wondered sometimes if her unhappiness was all his fault.

"I saw her boots once," he added after a pause. "Pretty ones with diamonds on them. Bone and I found them in the back of her closet.

They're gone now."

The last was said matter-of-factly, but Rita heard the hurt beneath the words. Rhinestones, she thought to herself, not diamonds, but rhinestones. And yes, the boots were gone now, put away in one of the stacked boxes in the root cellar off the kitchen where Davy wouldn't see them again and be tempted to ask more questions. Only Olhoni's impassioned pleading had spared the picture of his mother as a seventeen year-old rodeo queen from disappearing into the same box.

Davy lapsed into uncharacteristic silence, his endless stream of questions quieted for the moment. Rita understood that many of the boy's questions were still too painful for his mother to face or answer, but it was time they were asked.

"You'll have to talk to your mother about that," Rita said.

Davy sighed. If Nana Dahd wouldn't tell him, he might never know. "I did ask her," he said. "She was too busy."