Hour of the Hunter (50 page)

Carlisle scrounged through the refrigerator and came i away with a pound of bacon and half a dozen eggs, which he handed over to Diana.

"Bacon, crisp. Eggs, over easy.

Toast. Orange juice and coffee. Think you can handle that, honey?

You know, if you're a good-enough cook, maybe I'll keep you around awhile. We'll play house, just the two of us---cooking and fucking-and not necessarily in that order. What do you think of that?"

Diana said nothing. Carlisle, enamored with the sound of his own voice, didn't notice. While he continued with his rambling monologue, Diana gathered what she needed for cooking-frying pan, salt and pepper shakers, the spatula.

What would happen if she turned on the gas in the oven and didn't light it? Would enough propane accumulate to cause an explosion, or would the oven just come on eventually when the gas seeped out far enough to reach the pilot lights on top of the stove? Anything was worth a try.

Diana turned on the control.

She worked mechanically, trying not to think about Rita and Davy. That would divert her, take her mind away from the problem. She put a few pieces of bacon into the frying pan, started the fire under it, and loaded coffee and water into the percolator.

Still talking, Carlisle had meandered into a long selfpitying dissertation about prison life. "Do you know what they do to people like me in places like that?" he was saying. "Do you have any idea?

Answer me when I speak to YOU."

"No," she said, "I have no idea."

A spatter of hot fat leaped out of the frying pan as she turned the bacon, stinging Diana's wrist. She jumped back, but the pain on her bare wrist gave her the beginning glimmer of an idea. Quickly, she dumped the rest of the pound of bacon into the frying pan and turned up the heat.

"How do you like your eggs?" she asked, "I already told you. Over easy, same as I like my women.

Get it?" He laughed. "Pay attention, girl. You pay attention to everything I say, and maybe I'll let you hang around a little longer."

She nodded. knowing it was a lie, and stirred the sizzling bacon, willing the fat to render out of it, welcoming the painful spatters that found their way to the bare skin of her arm and wrist.

"That was Gary's problem, you know," he continued off handedly. "He didn't pay attention. That's why I had to get rid of him."

Trying to shut him out, Diana almost missed Carlisle's throw-away admission. Then, when she did understand, the what of it if not the how, she fought off the temptation to react. It was still too soon.

Ducking down on the seat to make himself less of a target, Brandon waited for the bark from Bone that would signal the dog's attack or at least alert those in the house to their danger. The expected bark never came.

"Damn," Walker muttered. The dog was probably inside the house, sleeping on the job. The detective lay there and tried to strategize.

He had to assume that both his opponents were armed and dangerous.

Two-to-one odds aren't very good, especially for a cop dealing with crooks who may not care that much if they live or die.

He considered honking the horn to alert the people in the house of the impending danger, but that might do more harm than good. If Diana came outside to see what was going on, she might possibly fall into the wrong hands.

What if the crooks took off with her before help arrived?

Finally, Walker hit on the only strategy that seemed feasible. He would attempt to make his way to the house undetected. Once inside, he and Diana could probably hold the bad guys off long enough for help to arrive and catch them in a cross fire. Once the decision was made, Walker moved to put it into action.

Closing his eyes so the overhead light wouldn't rob him of night vision, he eased open the passenger door and quickly dropped to the ground. The door closed behind him with a dull thud, and he scuttled silently off into the desert. swinging wide and hoping to make it to the side of the house before Carlisle and his pal realized what he was up to.

The bacon turned to hard, brittle curls in the pan, but an oblivious Andrew Carlisle continued talking. "There are tools for rape, you see, things you wouldn't normally think about, but in prison you have to use whatever's handy.

You'd be surprised what people get off on. This gun, for instance.

What would you think if I crammed that all the way up inside you?

Would it make you come? The metal gun sight might bother you a little.

don't you think?"

Diana's stomach lurched with dread, and the hand holding the wooden spatula trembled uncontrollably.

His voice rose in pitch. "Look at me when I speak to you. I asked you a simple question. What would you think of it?"

She looked. He was grinning at her, holding the .45, fondling it, sensually stroking the long barrel with his fingertips. I wouldn't like it," she said.

"Wouldn't you?" he asked, eyeing her speculatively. "I think you would. Maybe after I eat, we could have a lesson.

I'll show you how it works right here on the kitchen table.

Mr. Colt has a permanent hard-on for you. I think he'd enjoy it."

He paused, as if waiting for Diana to comment. When she didn't, he bent over and pulled something out of the top of his boot. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and trembled to think that he had retrieved his knife, which he would use on her as well, but when he straightened up, he wasn't holding the knife at all. Between his fingers was a key-a familiar, old-fashioned skeleton key.

"Or maybe, little Mama," he added with a malicious grin "since you don't think you'd like it, maybe I should get that kid of yours out here and cram it down his throat or maybe up his ass a couple of inches. How much could he take? How much could you? What would you do then.

Diana? Would you ask me to stop? Would you beg me to do it to you instead of him? Would you crawl on your hands and knees on the floor and kiss my feet and beg?"

A shock of recognition sent needles and pins through her hands and feet.

Davy wasn't dead after all. He was alive and in the root cellar.

There was still hope, still a chance.

Suddenly, frowning, Carlisle stood up. "Hey, wait a minute, aren't you burning the bacon?"

Putting the key down on the table and retrieving the gun, he started toward the stove. When he was three steps away, Diana grabbed the overheated handle of the frying pan and heaved it full in his face.

Pieces of blackened bacon clung to his skin wherever they landed. He screamed as fiery-hot fat burned through his clothing, sealing it to his skin. Diana dodged to one side as the gun roared to life, shattering the window behind her.

Walker, riveted by both the ungodly scream and the gunfire, knew his worst nightmare had come true. Somehow his opponents had made their way inside and were firing guns. Someone was hit and dying.

Forgetting about cover, Walker charged toward the house himself, circling around the thicket of gigantic prickly pear and coming up on the front porch from the opposite direction. He tried the door handle and found it locked. He tried kicking it, but the stout old door didn't give way.

The windows all had screens. From inside the house, Walker heard the sounds of an ongoing battle, but off to the side of the porch, the detective caught sight of movement.

"Stop," he shouted, but two shadowy figures simply disappeared into the darkness beyond the porch. Two of them, he thought. Some inside and at least two still out here.

How the hell many of them are there? Walker wondered grimly.

In silent pursuit, he moved sideways off the porch. At the side of the house, he encountered only a massive wall with a tall wooden gate. He tried the gate, but it appeared to be latched from the inside.

Through a nightmare of searing pain, Andrew Carli tried to wipe the clinging grease from his face and He could see nothing. I'm blind! he thought furiously.

bitch blinded me!

He slipped on the greasy floor and crashed into the table, banging it into the wall before managing to right himself With superhuman effort, he pulled himself above the terrible pain.

"I'll kill you," he whispered hoarsely. "So help me God, bitch, I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!

Diana watched in horror as Carlisle attempted to wipe the blistering grease from his skin and eyes. Pieces of his face seemed to melt away with his hand, dissolving like the water-soaked Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.

"I'll kill you," Carlisle muttered over and over. It was a chant and incantation. "I'll kill you."

Somehow he still held Diana's .45. Frozen with fear, Diana stared at the weapon, waiting for the death-dealing explosion that would end her life, but for some strange reason Carlisle didn't seem to be pointing it at her. He turned around and around, like a child playing blindman's bluff.

"Where are you, bitch?" he demanded. Only then did Diana realize that he couldn't see. The bacon grease had blinded him.

Holding her breath for fear the sound might betray her whereabouts, Diana glanced around the room, looking for an escape hatch or place to bide. On the floor beside the up-ended table. she spied the fallen key to the root cellar.

As soon as she saw it, she dived for it, even though Carlisle was between her and the key.

Hearing movement, Carlisle lunged in her direction.

They collided in midair and crashed to the floor together.

The force of the blow knocked the .45 from Carlisle's hand.

It spun across the floor, coming to rest at the base of the sink. Of the two, he was far stronger, but being able to see gave Diana a slight advantage. Twisting away, she eluded his grasp and retrieved the key.

She scrambled toward the root-cellar door and was almost there when his powerful fingers clamped shut around her ankles.

She kicked at his fingers, but her bare feet had no effect on the hands inexorably dragging her away from the door.

She fought him desperately but despairingly, realizing she was no match for him, that it was only a matter of time.

Dimly, Diana became aware of Bone's frantic scratching on the sliding glass door. If only she could let him into the house. Maybe, with the dog's help ...

Suddenly, for the barest moment, Carlisle let go of her.

She scrambled away from him, and this time managed to shove the key into the lock before he grabbed hold of her again. She tried to push him away only to have a smarting pain shoot across her hand and up her arm.

Shocked, Diana looked at her arm and hand as blood spurted out Carlisle had his knife again. This time she knew he would kill her with it.

There would be no escape.

Stymied by the latched gate, Brandon Walker dropped back and then vaulted over the barrier, which seemed to be covered by a layer of wet blankets. Inside the yard, he landed on something soft and yielding, something human.

His added weight brought the other man down. They fell to the ground as one and grappled there briefly until he glimpsed Fat Crack's face in the pale starlight.

"Fat Crack!" Walker exclaimed. "What the..."

"It's the detective," Fat Crack said simultaneously.

From deeper in the yard came Looks At Nothing's commanding voice. "We must hurry! Come," he ordered.

Fat Crack let go at once, and they both struggled to their feet. In the melee, Walker had dropped his .38 Special.

They wasted precious seconds searching for it. At last Fat Crack found it and gave it back.

"If you're out here," Brandon whispered, "who's in there?"

"The ahb," Fat Crack answered. "It's the ohb."

Faced with her bloodied arm and inarguable evidence of her own mortality, Diana resolved that even if she died, somehow her son would live. Once more Carlisle's fingers locked onto her ankle. Once more he dragged her toward him and toward the raised knife heeld above his head, waiting to plunge it into her.

She searched desperately for something to hold onto, something to give her purchase on the slippery floor. Suddenly, her flailing hands encountered heat-the still fiery hot frying pan. Ignoring the blistering handle, she picked it up and drove it with all her strength toward Andrew Carlisle's forehead.

He couldn't see it, but Carlisle felt the superheated frying pan whizzing toward him. He drew back in panic, holding up his. arms in an attempt to ward off the blow. The frying pan missed his skull but struck his hand, knocking the knife away from him. While he groped blindly for it, he heard her scrabbling away from him again.

Weaponless except for his bare hands, he crawled after her.

Partway across the room, something rushed past him, making for the outside door. He turned to it as if to follow.

The momentary respite gave Diana one more chance.

This time she made it all the way to the root-cellar door.

Still on her knees, she reached up and turned the key in the lock.

Before she could move out of the way, the door banged open, knocking her backward into the wall.

At the sound of the second gunshot, Davy almost burst into tears. Once more Rita shushed him. "Ready now," she whispered. "When the key turns, open the door and run."

"I'll kill you," the man was saying over and over outside the door.

"I'll kill you."

Davy's heart leaped to his throat. His mother was still alive. Would she be when the door opened? He crossed his fingers and tried to remember how to pray.

The key filled the lock. The tiny keyhole-shaped patch of light disappeared, but the key didn't turn. The door didn't open.

Again they waited. Davy heard another sound. Bone, scratching frantically at the back door, wanting to be let in. Oh'o was home, but he couldn't get inside to help them.

And then, miraculously, the key did turn. Davy shoved the door with all his might, flung it open, and dashed outside. In the middle of the room, he encountered a man-at least it looked like a man---crawling toward him on his hands and knees. This terrible apparition, its face a misshapen mass of bloodied blisters, must be the ohb.

Pausing long enough for only one look at that terrifying visage, Davy turned and raced for the sliding glass door.