Hour of the Hunter

Chapter 20

Dr. Johnston, the vet, was guardedly optimistic about the dog’s chances for survival as he sifted a pinch of yellow powder into Bone’s eyes. “This is apomorphine,” he explained, “an emetic. It gets into the bloodstream through the conjunctival sacs. It’ll make him barf his guts out within minutes. He’s certainly exhibiting all the classic symptoms of slug-bait poisoning. Where’d he pick it up?”

“I don’t know,” Diana said. “He was fine just twenty minutes or so earlier when we put him outside. He came back in acting drunk. He could barely walk.”

The vet shook his head. “You’ve got a neighbor who hates dogs.”

“I don’t have any neighbors,” Diana started to say, and then stopped. A chill ran down her spine. Perhaps this was it, she thought, the beginning of what Rita called the wind coming to the windmill, the reason she was wearing a gun.

“You’d better go on out now, Diana,” Dr. Johnston warned. “Bone is going to be one miserable dog here for a while, but if we caught it as soon as you say, he should pull through. I’d like to keep him overnight, though, if you don’t mind.”

But Diana did mind. She dreaded the idea of going home without the dog. Bone was her first line of defense. She glanced at her watch. It wasn’t dark yet and wouldn’t be for some time, but once it was, she wanted the dog with her.

“I’d rather wait, if it’s not going to be too long.”

“Suit yourself,” Dr. Johnston said. “It won’t take long, but it isn’t going to be pretty.”

Half an hour earlier and 120 miles away, Pinal County homicide detective Geet Farrell had considered his options and hadn’t liked any of them. He tried calling Brandon Walker directly, but there was no answer, either at his office or at home. Farrell refused to waste any more time in stationary phoning, but he didn’t want to abandon his questioning of Myrna Louise Spaulding, either. There might be more she could tell him, details he had so far neglected to ask.

Farrell flung the phone back on the hook. “You do know what he’s up to, don’t you?”

Myrna Louise nodded. “I do now.”

“I’m going to try to stop him,” the detective continued grimly. “Will you help? I’ll need you to come with me.”

“Yes,” Myrna Louise answered, rising unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll do whatever I can. Just let me get my purse.”

They left Weber Drive in a spray of gravel and headed for I-10. Once across the Pinal County line, Detective Farrell switched on lights and sirens and drove like a bat out of hell. They sped south on the Interstate through the hot desert evening, while Farrell’s mind grappled with the problem on three different levels.

First, he dealt with the car, navigating with fierce concentration. Second, he played radio tag, trying to get a good enough connection to be patched through to someone in Tucson who could actually help him. Third, he listened to Myma Louise Spaulding’s seemingly endless story.

It wasn’t until a Pinal County dispatcher hooked him up with the counterpart dispatcher in Pima, a guy named Hank Maddern, that Farrell finally felt as though he was talking to somebody real, someone with a sense of urgency.

“What can I do for you, Detective Farrell?” Maddern asked. “Brandon Walker told me to expect your call.”

“Where is he?”

“At the hospital. His father’s dying.”

“I’m sorry as hell to hear it, but this can’t wait. You’ve got to get him on the phone for me.”

“Why?”

“Tell him we’ve got trouble. Tell him it’s bad. I just don’t know how bad.”

“It could take some time,” Maddern cautioned. “They’re in the ICU at Tucson Medical Center. Can anyone else help?”

Considering what Myrna had told him about Carlisle’s illegal purchase of police records and what Farrell himself knew about the graft and corruption in the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, the detective was leery about bringing in any more players whose loyalty might be questionable. Maddern sounded like the genuine article, but Farrell remained skeptical. Someone high in DuShane’s administration had helped Andrew Carlisle at least once before. It might very well happen again.

“I don’t want to have to brief someone else if it isn’t necessary,” Farrell hedged. “Try getting through to Walker. I’m just now passing Picacho Peak. If you can’t reach him within a matter of minutes, then we’ll have to do something else.”

By six-thirty Wanda Ortiz, Fat Crack’s wife, was finishing the last batch of tortillas. She had started out early that morning by making six dozen tamales, a big vat of pinto beans, and another of chili. With a dozen preparations left to do before the singers arrived, she was hot, sweaty, and tired. She was also annoyed.

She was annoyed because her mother-in-law, Juanita, had refused to lift a finger to help her. Real Presbyterians didn’t participate in pagan baptisms, Juanita had archly informed Fat Crack when he had gone to his mother’s house asking for help. She wouldn’t lend her support to Looks At Nothing’s crazy idea, not even as a favor for her own sister.

So Wanda had done all the cooking herself, not complaining, but with a layer of very un-Christianlike anger seething just beneath her seemingly placid surface. This was Wanda’s second church-related battle with her mother-in-law in less than a month. The first had been over whether or not Juanita’s grandchildren would attend Presbyterian Daily Vacation Bible school. Juanita had won the skirmish hands down since the Presbyterian church also happened to own the reservation’s only swimming pool.

There were times, Wanda thought, slapping the last tortilla on the griddle and picking it off with nimble fingers, that she wished all the Anglo missionaries would go back where they came from. Even Fat Crack’s Christian-Science studies sometimes provoked her.

Wanda was still nursing her grudge when Looks At Nothing pounded on the door with his walking stick. She wasn’t especially happy to see him, either. At that particular moment, the Indian medicine man was more trouble than all the others put together.

“What is it?” she asked curtly, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Where is your husband?”

“Taking a nap. He has to stay up all night with the singers. He wanted to sleep before going to get Rita.”

“We must go now,” Looks At Nothing said urgently. “It’s started.”

Wanda shook her head. Gabe had given her strict orders not to wake him up until seven. He had spent the whole afternoon dragging a stalled BIA road grader out of a sandy wash, and he had wanted to sleep as long as possible. Looking at the agitated old man, Wanda wondered if perhaps he was crazy in addition to being blind.

“No,” Wanda replied. “Nothing has started yet. It’s too early. The singers don’t come until nine.”

“Not the singers,” he snapped. “The ohb. We must go quickly, or it will be too late.”

In Dr. Johnston’s waiting room, Diana Ladd alternately sat and paced while Father John thumbed through a worn pet-food catalog. She berated herself for leaving Rita and Davy home alone, for being stupid about waiting for the dog, for not accepting Brandon Walker’s offer of help. When Dr. Johnston’s receptionist got up to leave, Diana asked to use the phone.

The phone at home rang nine or ten times without anyone answering. That in itself wasn’t alarming. When Rita was out in her room, she and Davy sometimes didn’t hear the phone ringing.

Just as Diana started to hang up, Rita answered. “Hello.”

“Rita, it’s me. Diana. Is everything okay there?”

“Okay?” Rita’s voice seemed distant, hollow. “Yes. Everything here is okay.”

“Bone’s still with Dr. Johnston,” Diana rushed on. “We’re waiting for him. We’ll be home as soon as we can. Did Davy tell you he can go with you if you have to leave before I get home?”

“No,” Rita replied. “He didn’t tell me, but that’s good.”

Diana hung up, too preoccupied to think it odd that Rita had answered the phone instead of Davy. Without leaving the desk, Diana decided to swallow her pride and call Brandon Walker. The least she could do was let him know what had happened and ask for his advice, but he wasn’t in. With a frustrated sigh, Diana sat back down. It was probably just as well. What she and Rita planned for Andrew Carlisle should be kept totally secret. If she talked to Brandon Walker, she might accidentally let something slip.

Father John glanced at her. “The dog’s going to be fine,” the priest said reassuringly, misreading her agitation as concern for Bone. “We got him here so soon after it happened that I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

Diana nodded but said nothing. According to Rita, things were still all right at home, but with Andrew Carlisle on the loose, the dog was really the least of her worries. She sat there wishing she’d left the.45 at home with Rita.

“It’s taking so long,” she said, glancing at her watch for the second time in less than a minute.

“Some things can’t be rushed,” Father John replied.

Diana started to argue and then thought better of it. What Father John didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. If he thought she was only worried about the dog, so be it.

Now that he was actually inside Diana Ladd’s house, Carlisle felt downright invincible. His plans were working perfectly. Still holding the boy, Carlisle ordered the old woman to sit down on the couch. She did so at once. Her immediate compliance gratified him. Carlisle was sure that holding the boy hostage would work exactly the same magic on Diana Ladd. With Davy in jeopardy, she would have to submit to his every demand, give him whatever he wanted when and how he wanted it.

The phone blared, startling him so that he almost dropped the child. He held the knife to Davy’s throat. “Answer it,” he growled at the old woman. “Try anything funny and the boy dies.”

Clumsily, Rita heaved herself off the couch and hobbled over to the phone. Carlisle nodded with satisfaction at her curt answers. As far as he could tell, she made no attempt to pass along any secret messages.

“Who was it?” he asked when she put the phone back in the cradle. “Diana Ladd?” The old woman nodded. “What did she say?”

“She’ll be back soon.”

“Good,” he said. “We’ll be waiting, won’t we? Pull the cord out of the wall.”

The old woman hesitated as though she didn’t understand him. He brandished the knife over the now fully awake boy. Seeing the knife, the boy regarded him through terrified eyes, but he made no effort to fight.

“I said pull it out,” Carlisle repeated. “No more phone calls.” Rita yanked the phone cord from its receptacle, and Carlisle smiled. “Good. Now, back on the couch.” He almost laughed aloud at the way the old woman jumped to do his bidding. He was enjoying having them all by the short hairs.

Carlisle knew firsthand how abject submission works. If he had learned nothing else, his tormentors in Florence had taught him that lesson well. He had seen how, in order to avoid pain, victims can become so eager to please that they transform themselves into willing participants in their own destruction. The old woman’s reaction was a textbook case. Diana Ladd’s would be as well.

With the younger woman, though, he would have to be careful. Pacing would be everything. He would have to restrain himself in the beginning and not go too far. The kind of dehumanizing submission he wanted from her would take time and effort and a certain amount of finesse.

There were those in the prison community who took the position that raping a rapist qualified as poetic justice and maybe even as a kind of aversion therapy. Well, Andrew Carlisle was here to tell those jokers that it hadn’t worked out that way for him. Physical violation hadn’t “cured” him at all. Instead, it had only added fuel to his Diana Ladd bloodlust, given him something else to blame her for. He’d spent years planning every move of his campaign against her. He wouldn’t settle for anything less than total capitulation. He looked forward to having Diana Ladd crawling naked on the floor before him. He wanted to see her on her hands and knees, subject to his every whim. He wanted the pleasure of hearing the bitch beg.

Carlisle sat the boy down on one end of the couch and ordered him to stay still while he tied up the old woman. Busy with the twine, Carlisle found he was having difficulty concentrating. His whole body pulsed with eagerness for the coming confrontation. What would happen in those first crucial minutes? he wondered. Would she fight or give in at once? Would the very sight of him strike terror in her heart? Would she guess what was in store for her? He didn’t think so. The others hadn’t, why should she?

For the first time, Carlisle considered whether or not she’d bring the priest back with her. He hoped not. Carlisle was not a religious man, nor was he terribly superstitious, but the idea of killing a priest lacked appeal. Not only that, he was reluctant to expend his energies on any side issue that might dull his appetite for the main course.

“What are you going to do?” the old woman asked, intruding rudely into his thoughts. He didn’t answer immediately. Finished tying her one good hand to the cumbersome cast, he went to work binding her swollen ankles together, hobbling her like a horse with the short lengths of twine he had cut up and brought along for that express purpose. Advance planning was everything.

“Whatever I want,” he replied nonchalantly. “I’m going to do whatever I want.”

Diana was about to call home again when Dr. Johnston returned to the waiting room. It was almost seven, a whole hour after the veterinarian’s office had been scheduled to close.

“I think we’re over the hump now,” Dr. Johnston said. “He’s been one sick puppy, but I believe he’s going to be okay. Plenty of rest, plenty of liquids. Tell Davy not to overtax him for the next few days. He’s probably through the worst of it, but we’d better cover your car seat with some old blankets, just in case.”

Dr. Johnston’s assistant, a burly teenager named Scott, carried the ailing dog back out to Father John’s car and laid him gently on a layer of hastily assembled blankets. With a huge sigh, the dog put his chin on his front paws and closed his eyes.

“Call me in the morning,” Dr. Johnston said, “and let me know how he’s doing.”

Diana replied with a grateful nod. “I’ll call first thing.”

“That was weird,” Scott said as Father John’s Buick pulled out of the office parking lot.

“What’s weird?” Dr. Johnston asked.

“How come that lady was wearing a gun?”

“A gun? Was she really?” Dr. Johnston sounded startled. “I was so concerned about the dog that I never even noticed.”

The old woman sat silently at one end of the couch. Carlisle ordered Davy to the opposite end, where he began tying the boy up as well. He wanted his prisoners relatively immobile but easily transportable when necessary, because Carlisle had no intention of playing out his whole game in Diana Ladd’s house.

It was fine for the first major skirmish to take place here. Invading Diana’s private territory and bloodying her there was an essential part of his psychological warfare against her. But after that, after he’d humiliated her and established a pattern of absolute control, then he would take his prisoners to the cave, to Gary Ladd’s own special cave, for dessert.

Carlisle theorized that the isolated cave by what had once been Rattlesnake Skull Village was eminently suited to his purposes. No one, not even that wise-ass young detective, had ever figured out that the cave, not the charco, had been the actual scene of Gina Antone’s last moments on this earth.

During the pretrial proceedings, Carlisle had made absolutely sure that no one knew of the existence of Gary Ladd’s manuscript with its whining references to the cave. Once he left three more bodies there to rot, he would have all the more reason to see that Gary Ladd’s crude manuscript disappeared off the face of the earth. Too bad Myrna Louise hadn’t thrown that in the burning barrel instead of Savage. She would have been doing something useful for a change.

He thought longingly about the cool, dark cave, about how the timeless limestone walls would swallow up whatever agonized sounds his particular brand of pleasure might wring from his captives. In that dusky cave, with the added luxury of total isolation, no one would interrupt him or interfere with the process. There, once and for all. .

Carlisle had tried explaining that same thing to Gary Ladd years before, the morning after their little debacle, but the man had been hysterical when he learned the girl was dead, astounded that things had got so far out of hand while he slept.

Even then, things would have been fine if Ladd hadn’t lost his nerve and gone back later to move the body so she could have a proper burial. The fool dumped her in a water hole, for God’s sake, thinking people would be stupid enough to believe she had drowned. With the rope burns around her neck and her nipple bitten off? What the hell kind of dumb-ass idea was that? And then, a week later, if Carlisle hadn’t stopped him, Ladd would have gone to town and confessed for both of them, taking his tell-tale manuscript with him. Thanks a lot, buddy, but no thanks.

Carlisle shivered at the tantalizing memory, letting his imagination travel back to the cave, remembering that long-ago desert night and the girl. Despite her objections, he had coaxed her into that huge and immensely silent place. He had started a small fire-for light he had told her-but light wasn’t all the fire was for, not at all. He had other plans for those burning twigs and coals.

To begin with, she had liked being tied up, giggling drunkenly as he bound her, thinking it nothing but some kind of kinky game. Gradually, as she learned the terrible truth, her tipsy laughter changed, first to fear and then to terror and dread as the tenor of the night changed around her. Carlisle hadn’t much liked her screaming when it finally came to that. Screaming showed a certain lack of delicacy and finesse on his part. He much preferred the small, animal-like whimpers of pain and the begging. God, how her begging had excited him! Even though it was in a language he didn’t speak, he had understood her well enough. He hadn’t stopped when she asked him to, of course, but he had understood.

And all the while that jackass of a Gary Ladd was dead drunk in the pickup. When he did wake up finally, after the fun and games were all over, Carlisle managed to convince Gary that he, too, had been an active participant in all that had gone before, that being too drunk to remember was no excuse.

“But she’s dead,” Ladd had protested, as though he couldn’t quite believe it. Of course she was dead. Carlisle had always intended that she would be, that was the whole idea, wasn’t it? But Gary Ladd was far too cowardly to value or take advantage of what he was learning, and he hadn’t been smart enough to keep his mouth shut, either.

Carlisle shook himself out of what was almost a stupor and found he was sitting on the floor in front of Diana Ladd’s couch. Both the boy and the old woman were tied up, although he didn’t remember finishing the job. They were both watching him with strange expressions on their faces. Had he blacked out for a moment or what?

These episodes were beginning to bother him. It had happened several times of late, and it scared the shit out of him. Was he losing his mind? He’d come back to himself feeling as though he’d been asleep when he knew he hadn’t been. Sometimes only seconds would have passed, sometimes whole minutes.

He inspected the knots. They were properly tied, but he had no recollection of doing it. Somehow it seemed as though his body and his mind functioned independently. He’d have to watch that. It could be dangerous, especially in enemy territory.

“Who are you?” the boy demanded.

Carlisle looked hard at the child, recognizing some of Gary Ladd’s features, but the boy had a certain toughness that had been totally lacking in his father.

“Well, son,” Carlisle said in a kind tone that belied his words, “you can just think of me as retribution personified, a walking, talking Eye-for-an-Eye.”

Davy Ladd frowned at the unfamiliar words, but he didn’t back off. “What does that mean?”

Andrew Carlisle laughed, giving the boy credit for raw nerve. “It means that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, just like the Good Book says. It also means that if you don’t do every single goddamned thing I say, then I use my trusty knife, and you and your mother and this old lady here are all dead meat. Do you understand that?”

Davy nodded.

The room was quiet for a moment when suddenly, sitting there, looking him directly in the eye, the old lady began what sounded like a mournful, almost whispered chant in a language Carlisle didn’t recognize. He glowered at her. “Shut up!” he ordered.

She stopped. “I’m praying,” she said, speaking calmly. “I’m asking I’itoi to help us.”

That made him laugh, even though he didn’t like the way she looked at him. “You go right ahead, then. If you think some kind of Indian mumbo-jumbo is going to fix all this, then be my guest. But I wouldn’t count on it, old woman. Not at all.”

“Why did you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Why did you kill my granddaughter?”

Prosecutors and lawyers and police tend to limp around questions like that. Carlisle wasn’t accustomed to such a direct approach. It caught him momentarily off guard.

“Because I felt like it,” he said with a grin. “That’s all the reason I needed.”

A while later, Coyote followed the trail to where Cottontail was sitting. “Brother, you tricked me back there, and now I really am going to eat you up.”

“Please,” said Cottontail, “don’t eat me yet. I don’t want to die until I have seen a jig dancer one last time. Do this for me and then you may eat to your heart’s content.”

“All right,” said Coyote. “What do you want me to do?”

“Come with me over here,” said Cottontail. “First I will plaster your eyes shut with pitch. Then, when your eyes are shut, you will hear firecrackers popping. When that happens, you must dance and shout. When the dance is over, then you may eat me.”

So Cottontail plastered Coyote’s eyes shut with pitch, then he led him into a cane field. When Coyote was in the middle of the field, Cottontail set fire to it. Soon the cane started crackling and popping. Coyote thought these were the firecrackers Cottontail had told him about, so he began to dance and shout. Soon he began to feel the heat, but he thought he was hot because he was dancing so hard. At last, though, the fire reached him, and burned him up.

And that, my friend, is the story of the second time Cottontail tricked Coyote.

From the sound and cadence of that softly crooned chant, someone listening might have thought Rita Antone was giving voice to some ancient traditional Papago lullaby. It included the requisite number of repetitions, the proper rhythm, but it was really a war chant, and the words were entirely new:

“Do not look at me, little Olhoni.

Do not look at me when I sing to you

So this man will not know we are speaking

So this evil man will think he is winning.

“Do not look at me

When I sing, little Olhoni,

But listen to what I say.

This man is evil.

This man is the enemy.

This man is ohb.

Do not let this frighten you.

“Whatever happens in the battle,

We must not let him win.

I am singing a war song for you,

Little Olhoni. I am singing

A hunter’s song, a killer’s song.

I am singing a song to I’itoi

Asking him to help us.

Asking him to guide us in the battle

So the evil ohb does not win.

“Do not look at me, little Olhoni,

Do not look at me when I sing to you.

I must sing this song four times

For all of nature goes in fours,

But when the trouble starts,

When the ohb attacks us,

You must remember all the things

I have said to you in this magic song.

You must listen very carefully

And do exactly what I say.

If I tell you to run and hide yourself,

You must run as fast as Wind Man.

Run fast and hide yourself

And do not look back.

Whatever happens, little Olhoni,

You must run and not look back.

“Remember it is said that

Long ago I’itoi made himself a fly

And hid himself in the crack.

I’itoi hid in the smallest crack

When Eagle Man came searching for him.

Be like I’itoi, little Olhoni.

Be like I’itoi and hide yourself

In the very smallest crack.

Hide yourself somewhere

And do not come out again,

Do not show your face

Until the battle is over.

Listen to what I sing to you,

Little Olhoni. Listen to what I sing.

Be careful not to look at me

But do exactly as I say.”

The song ended. Rita glanced at Davy, who was looking studiously in another direction. He had listened. He was only a boy, one who had not yet killed his first coyote, but she had trained him well. He would do what he’d been told.

In the gathering twilight, Rita glanced at the clock on the mantel across the room. Seven o’clock. Fat Crack must come for her soon, because the singers were scheduled to start at nine. The very latest he could come was eight o’clock, an hour away.

One hour, she thought. Sixty minutes. If they could stay alive until Fat Crack got there, they might yet live, but deep in her heart, Rita feared otherwise. As he tied them up, she had looked into Andrew Carlisle’s soul. All she saw there were the restless, angry spirits of the dead Apache warriors from Rattlesnake Skull Village. They had somehow found this Mil-gahn’s soul and infected it with their evil. Andrew Carlisle was definitely the danger the buzzards had warned her about, the evil enemy who Looks At Nothing said was both Ohb and not Ohb, Apache and not Apache. And although the process had been started, Davy was still unbaptized.

The man sat on the floor in front of her, unmoving, seemingly asleep although his eyes were open. She had heard of these kinds of Whore-Sickness trances before, although she herself had never witnessed one. She knew full well the danger.

Looking away from their captor, Rita stared over her shoulder at the basket maze hanging on the wall behind her. She remembered the ancient yucca she had harvested to find the root fiber to make it. Howi, a yucca, an old cactus, had willingly sacrificed itself that Diana Ladd might own this basket.

And, suddenly, Rita knew that I’itoi had heard her song and sent her a message even without the use of Looks At Nothing’s sacred smoke. She would be like the plant that had given up its life so I’itoi’s design could spread out from the center of the basket. Davy Ladd had become the center of Rita Antone’s basket. She would be his red yucca root.

“Whatever you’re going to do,” she said softly, “the boy should not see.”

Andrew Carlisle seemed startled, as though she had peered into his brain and read the secret plans written there. “Do you have a better idea?”

Rita nodded. “There’s a root cellar,” she said. “Off the kitchen. Put the boy in there. I will stay with him.”

“A root cellar?”

Carlisle sounded almost disbelieving. He had been worried about how to handle the growing number of hostages in case the priest showed up as well, but now here was the old lady helping out, solving the problem for him. Carlisle knew all about root cellars. There had been one in his grandmother’s home, a place where he’d been left on occasion for disciplinary purposes. A root cellar would do nicely.

He rushed into the kitchen to see for himself, worried now that Diana might return before he was ready. And the old lady was absolutely right. Except for a stack of musty old boxes and a few canned goods, there was nothing else there.

Back in the living room, he grabbed the boy and carried him into the root cellar. Then he hauled the old woman to her feet and helped her shuffle along. With both prisoners safely stashed inside the room, he slammed the door shut and locked it with the old-fashioned skeleton key that was right there in the lock. For safekeeping, he put the key in his boot along with his hunting knife. Smiling to himself, Carlisle hurried back to the living room and stationed himself out of sight behind the door.

Actually, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea of having those first few minutes with Diana all by himself-just the two of them, one on one, sort of a honeymoon. He pulled a whetstone from his pocket and began to sharpen the blade of the hunting knife. It wasn’t necessary-the blade was already sharp enough, but it gave him something to do with his hands while he waited.

The dog had already had two accidents in the priest’s car between Dr. Johnston’s office and the driveway. Diana was embarrassed. The vet had been right all along. She should have left Bone there overnight to recuperate.

“I’m sorry about your car, Father,” she apologized.

“Don’t worry about it,” Father John said, driving into the yard and stopping in front of the house. “These things happen. Would you like him inside?”

Diana shook her head. “I don’t think so. There’s no sense taking him inside and having him be sick in there as well. If you can, take him on out to the back patio, while I work on cleaning up this mess. Ask Davy to fill his water dish with fresh water and take it out there for him.”

The vet had sent the ailing Bone home on a borrowed leash. Using this, Father John coaxed the now-docile dog through a gate at the side of the house and into the backyard. Meanwhile, Diana dealt with the lingering physical evidence of the dog’s illness, removing soiled blankets from the priest’s car and draping them over the wall for a quick hosedown.

She was surprised that Davy wasn’t waiting on the porch to greet them, but she was so busy cleaning up after the dog that the idea never quite surfaced as a conscious thought. Leaving the windows open to let the car air out, she started into the house.

With his heart hammering in his chest, Carlisle watched the car pull into the driveway. Damn! The priest was there. What the hell should he do now?

The man and woman in the car spoke briefly, then the priest got out, opened the door, and bent into the backseat. What was he doing? Getting the dog? Goddamn! The dog was back, too? What the hell kind of constitution did that dog have?

For a moment, Carlisle vacillated between following the man and staying to keep an eye on Diana Ladd. At first he couldn’t understand what was going on, but then, when she pulled the blankets out of the car and turned on the hose, he realized he was getting another chance. There was time to do both. He headed for the kitchen at a dead run.

Father John left the dog resting on the dusky patio and rose to go into the house. Seeing no sign of Rita or Davy, he stepped up to the sliding patio door, which had been left slightly ajar.

“Hello,” he called. “Anybody home?”

Hearing no answer, he crossed the threshold and turned to close the door behind him just as something heavy crashed into the back of his skull.

The root-cellar door flew open. From the darkened kitchen, something heavy was thrown in with them before the door slammed shut again. Davy felt with his feet and realized it was a person lying flat on the floor, someone who didn’t move when Davy touched him. At first the child was afraid it might be his mother, but finally he realized the still body belonged to Father John.

“It’s the priest,” he whispered to Rita.

Before locking them in, Carlisle had warned they would die if they made noise, so Davy and Nana Dahd spoke in subdued whispers.

“Try to wake him up,” Rita said.

Davy moved closer to the man and nudged him, but the priest didn’t stir. His labored breathing told them he wasn’t dead. “He won’t wake up,” Davy said.

“Keep trying,” Rita told him.

Diana stepped onto the porch and turned the doorknob. Suddenly, with no warning, the door gave way beneath her hand, yanking Diana into the house.

Before she could make a sound, before she could reach for the handle of the.45, iron fingers clamped down over her face and mouth. The razor-sharp blade of a hunting knife pressed hard against the taut skin of her throat.

“Welcome home, honey,” Andrew Carlisle said. “You’re late. It’s not nice to keep a man with a hard-on waiting.”

Diana shook her head wildly, struggling to escape, but he ground his punishing fingers deep into the tender flesh of her face. “Oh, no, you don’t lady. Make one sound, and everybody dies. Starting with you.”