Hour of the Hunter (33 page)

"What did he tell you?" she asked curiously, after the professor drove away.

"Mat all creative people go through black periods like this," Gary told her. "He says it's nothing unusual. It'll pass."

On Saturday morning, Diana went to the Store for groceries. The trading post on top of the hill was abuzz with talk about the murder and the now identified victim, Gina Antone. Diana bought a newspaper and read the ugly story for herself She was shocked to discover the victim was the granddaughter of someone she knew.

Diana worked at the school and so did Rita Antone-Diana as a classroom teacher and Rita as a cook in the cafeteria, although the two women were only slightly acquainted. Rita was known for striking terror in the hearts of children who came to the garbage cans to dump their lunch trays without first having tried at least one bite of everything on their plate.

Rita, standing guard over the garbage cans like a pugnacious bulldog and waving a huge rubber spatula for emphasis, would order them, "Eat your vegetables." Usually, the frightened Indian kids complied without a murmur. So did a few cowed Anglo teachers.

By the time Diana got back to Topawa with both the groceries and the newspaper, it was almost noon. She was in the kitchen fixing lunch when Gary turned away from the television cartoons and picked up the paper.

She saw his face go ashen. The knuckles on his hands turned white.

He let the paper fall to the floor and began sobbing into his hands.

She went to him. Kneeling on the floor in front of him, she begged him to tell her what was wrong.

For a long time, he sat weeping with his face buried on her shoulder.

The paper lay faceup on the floor with the headlines screaming at her.

Without his saying a word, she knew. Terror and revulsion took over.

She drew away from him, grabbed up the paper, crumpled it into a wad, and shook it in his face.

"Is it this?" she demanded, not caring that her voice had risen to a shriek. "Is this what the hell's the matter?"

And he gave her the only answer she ever got from him, an agonized three-word reply that offered no comfort even while she pinned her every hope for both the past and present on it.

"I don't remember."

Not, "Of course not!" Not, "How could you say such a thing?" Not, "That's crazy!" But, "I don't remember-a murderous kings X, as though he'd kept his fingers crossed while Gina Antone died.

The room reeled around her. Overwhelmed by nausea, she dashed for the bathroom and vomited, while her chicken-noodle soup cooked to blackened charcoal splinters on the kitchen stove.

When Diana came back out to the living room, Gary was gone. She ran to the door in time to see his pickup turning out of the Teachers' Compound onto the highway, headed for Sells. She could have driven like a demon and caught up with him on the highway, but what would she have done then, forced him off the road?

Behind her, an unearthly howl from the telephone receiver told her that the phone hadn't been hung up properly. At first, staring after the receding pickup, Diana was unable to respond. Soon a disembodied voice echoed through the house telling her to please hang up and try again.

Shaken and too spent to do anything else, she put the phone back on the hook.

Gary left the house, and she never saw him again, not alive anyway, and that last phone call, placed to Andrew Carlisle's home just before Garrison Ladd fled the house to go to his death, was one of the key pieces of evidence that linked the two men together.

Yes, Diana thought almost seven years later, going into the house in Gates Pass, closing and locking the door behind her, Andrew Carlisle was the invader here, the enemy. He had not yet set foot inside her home, but when he did, he would meet with implacable resistance, to-the-death resistance.

Rita Antone had said so, and so had Diana Ladd.

Detective Geet Farrell of the Pinal County Sheriff's Department was a cop's cop, someone who had been in the business a long time, someone who knew his way around people. Everyone in the Arizona law-enforcement community was familiar with the problems in the Pima County Sheriff's Department. At first Farrell was worried that Brandon Walker might be one of Sheriff DuShane's bad guys.

"You dragged me all the way down here with some cockamamy story, so tell me, who is this character?" Farrell asked, leaning back in the booth, eyeing Brandon Walker speculatively.

"His name is Andrew Carlisle," Walker answered.

"Formerly Professor Andrew Carlisle of the University of Arizona."

Years earlier, the professor's case had been notorious, statewide.

Farrell remembered it well. "If it's the same case I'm thinking about, he got himself a pretty slick plea-bargain."

"That's the one," Walker nodded. "The other guy, his student and co-conspirator, committed suicide rather than go to jail."

"Tell me about the bite."

"Like I said on the phone. One nipple was completely severed, and the key piece of evidence that could have been matched to a bite impression, the thing that would have determined once and for all who was responsible, disappeared off the face of the earth."

Farrell nodded. "You boys have a man-sized hole in your evidence room down there. Somebody ought to plug that son of a bitch." Both men knew Farrell was referring to DuShane himself and not some mythical hole.

"They ought to," Walker agreed, "but that's easier said than done."

"What makes you think Carlisle's my man?" Farrell asked.

"He was released from Florence at noon on Friday, put on the bus for Tucson. My guess is that he never made it that far."

"How'd you know about Margie Danielson's nipple?"

Farrell asked. The Pinal County detective didn't play games. He had already made a favorable judgment call about the quality of his Pima County colleague.

"From two Indians," Walker answered, "an old one, a medicine man, and a younger one, too. At least I think the younger one is a medicine man.

They'd heard you'd arrested an Indian."

"Arrested but not charged," Farrell agreed, "but how'd they know about that?"

"They didn't say, and I didn't ask. They were also the ones who came up with a possible connection between this case and the old one. They came to town this morning and asked me to find out whether or not Andrew Carlisle was out of prison."

"And he was," Farrell finished.

Walker nodded. "At exactly the right time. Florence released him Friday at noon."

Farrell blinked at that, as though he hadn't made the connection the first time. Noon Friday. From Florence to Picacho Peak a few hours later was indeed the right time and place. "So where is he now?"

"That I don't know. I talked to a guy named Ron Mallory who's assistant superintendent at Florence. He played real coy, acted like he had no idea where Carlisle might have gone, but the person in Records let something slip when I was talking to her. She mentioned that most of the time Carlisle was locked up, he worked as Mallory's inmate clerk, so chances are, Carlisle's got something on Mallory.

He's not going to lift a finger to help us."

"Unless somebody holds his feet to the fire," Farrell said.

"Now tell me, Walker, what's the real reason you're here?

What's your beep I can see how your ego might be hurt because this guy slipped off the hook once, but it seems like there's more at stake here than just the usual problem with the crook that got away."

"The other man's wife," Walker said. "The widow of the guy who committed suicide. At the time, I convinced her that we'd take care of Carlisle. All she had to do was trust the system."

"And the system screwed her over?"

"Without a kiss."

"So it is ego damage. That's something this old man understands," Farrell said with a sly grin. "I've been there, too. Finish your coffee, Detective Walker. We'll go have a look up the mountain."

Rita lay in the hospital bed and thought about her plan.

It was a daring trickster plan, one both I'itoi and Coyote would have liked. She was surprised Diana had agreed so readily. After all, Diana would run the greatest risk, for she was the bait, the one Carlisle would come looking for. They would lure Carlisle to the deserted cave by Rattlesnake Skull .Village and dispose of him.

Would he fall for it? Rita couldn't be sure, but she knew that people saw what they wanted to see, heard what they wanted to hear. She had already tried that once, and back home, in Tucson, she had Understanding Woman's original medicine basket stored safely away among her treasures as proof that it worked.

Mrs. Charles Clark wasn't particularly nice as she conducted the initial interview with her new employee. The Clarks were not accustomed to dealing with girls of dubious virtue, but Father Mark had begged them to make an exception in this case. Rita would be allowed to remain and work providing her behavior was absolutely above reproach. She must attend church regularly, do no drinking or smoking, and have no male visitors.

There was another young Tohono O'othham working in the household, a slender, shy girl named Louisa Antone.

Rita and Louisa shared the same last name, but they were not related.

Rita was from Ban Thak, while Louisa came from Hikiwoni, or Jagged Edge.

Although Louisa was two whole years younger than Rita, she was much more well versed in the ways of the Clark household. Louisa explained Adele Clark's complex housekeeping system that allowed every room in the house to be dusted at least twice a week. It wasn't until the third day that Dancing Quail opened the door to what was known as the basket room.

She remembered Father Mark saying that the Clarks were interested in baskets, but until she entered the sweet smelling room, she had seen no evidence of it. When she stepped inside, the clean, dry smell of yucca and bear grass overpowered her. Smelling them made her want to weep for her home, for her grandmother, and for all that was both familiar and lost to her. Tempted to cry, she forced herself to work.

Dancing Quail came from a society where baskets and livestock were signs of wealth. At home she had never seen so many baskets in one place.

Many were crammed together, stacked against walls or piled haphazardly in corners, as though they'd been gathered in a hurry and no one had yet taken the time to sort them. The girl recognized some of the designs and patterns as ones from the Tohono O'othham, but there were baskets of many other tribes as well-Hopi, Navajo, Yaqui, even some of the hated Apache.

Slowly, savoring the smell and touch of familiar objects, Dancing Quail worked her way around the room, coming at last to a glass-enclosed case where someone had bothered to arrange the fine baskets displayed there.

Cautiously, she opened one door, propped it up on its hinge, and began moving the baskets around on the shelf, gingerly dusting each basket as well as the shelf beneath it.

She had finished the first shelf and was ready to start on the next when she saw it sitting there, waiting-Understanding Woman's basket, not the crude one from the leather case upstairs, but the original one with its fine, straight seams and smooth, silky weave, the basket that had been taken from Dancing Quail's bedroll years before.

With trembling fingers, she took it in her hands and pried open the tight-fitting lid. Not only was the basket there, so were all of the things that had been inside, the sacred gifts her grandmother had given her, except for the missing geode. One at a time, Dancing Quail touched each precious item--the jagged piece of pottery with its etched turtle still clearly visible, the seashell her grandfather had brought back from the ocean, and the eagle feather Dancing Quail's father had brought to his own mother when he was still a boy.

They were all there and all perfectly safe, as though they had been waiting for Dancing Quail to find them. As she put each item back inside and carefully closed the lid, she felt Understanding Woman's spirit close beside her, guiding her.

Brandon swung by Tucson Medical Center on his way back through town.

Nothing had changed with Toby Walker. Louella refused her son's offer of a ride home.

"I've got to be going then, Mom," he said.

"Going?" Louella asked vaguely. "Where?"

"I'm working," he lied. "I'm on a case.,@ "Oh," she said distractedly.

"You go on then. I'll be fine."

"What did the doctor say?" he asked gently.

Louella's, eyes filled with sudden tears. "That it's up to me," she said, "and I don't want it to be. I want somebody else to make the decision, God or someone, just not me."

She fell sobbing into Brandon's arms. He held her for several long minutes. Louella didn't ask her son to make the decision for her, and he didn't offer. It wasn't his place. "We'll just have to wait and see then, won't we?" he said.

Louella gulped and nodded. "Yes," she said. "Wait and see."

Brandon left the hospital and drove to Gate's Pass. He had waited to contact Diana, hoping to have some definite news about Carlisle's whereabouts before he told her anything.

Once he talked to Mallory, there wasn't time to reach her before leaving for Picacho Peak to meet Detective Farrell.

Driving to Diana's house now, he worried about what he would say. He didn't want to alarm her unduly, but he was worried. If Andrew Carlisle was responsible for Margie Danielson's savage murder, and by now both detectives were fairly certain he was, that meant the man had somehow slipped over some critical edge. There was no telling who would be next.

A snippet of radio intruded into his thoughts, giving the first sketchy reports of a stabbing victim found dead that morning in a downtown Tucson hotel room. At least he wouldn't be called out on that case, Walker thought. The Santa Rita was well inside the city limits, so the county would have nothing to do with it. He switched off the radio and kept on driving.

Brandon heard the dog bark from inside the house as soon as he turned off the blacktop. Oh'o, as Diana called him, was a monster of an animal, a rangy, ugly specimen whose teeth could inflict real damage.

Right that moment, however, Brandon Walker smiled at the dog's menacing presence. If Andrew Carlisle decided to try coming after Diana Ladd, he'd have to get past the dog first. In a fair fight, Brandon would have put money on the dog any day.