Hour of the Hunter

Chapter 13

They say it happened long ago that some quail were out eating during the harvest, Coyote crept up on them and ate them all except for one small quail who hid himself under the thick flat leaves of Ihbhai, of Prickly Pear. The frightened quail waited while Coyote ate up all his brothers and sisters. When it was safe, Quail ran home crying, “Coyote has eaten us all. He has eaten all my brothers and sisters.”

One wise old quail heard this and decided to get even. He waited until one day when Coyote was sound asleep. He cut Coyote open and took out some of his tail fat, then Quail sewed him back up, filling the empty space with rocks. After that, Quail flew off somewhere, started a fire, and began roasting the fat.

Coyote woke up and sniffed the air. “I smell something good,” he said. He started to follow the smell, but as soon as he moved, all the rocks inside him began to rattle. The sound made Coyote very proud. “That is the sound of my medicine drum,” he said.

Rattling all the way, Coyote walked until he found the place where the quail were having their feast. “Your food smells good, Little Brothers. Let me have a taste.”

They gave him some, and Coyote liked it. “Where did you get this meat?” he asked.

“Way over there,” Quail said. “Beyond the mountains. Baskets are traded for it.”

Coyote set off to go get some meat of his own, but as soon as he left, he heard the quail laughing and saying, “Look, Coyote has eaten his own tail fat.”

Coyote came back. “What did you say?” he asked, but the quail wouldn’t answer. Just then a cottontail came running by. “What did the quail say?” Coyote asked.

“They said, ‘Coyote has eaten his own tail fat.’ ”

As soon as he heard this, Coyote knew he had been tricked, and he was very angry. He chased after the quail, who disappeared down a hole in which they had hidden a cactus all wrapped in feathers.

Coyote dug in the hole after them. When he pulled out the first quail, he asked, “Did you do this to me?”

“No,” the quail answered. “It wasn’t me.”

Coyote dug further and pulled out another quail.

“Did you do this to me?”

“No,” the second quail answered. “It wasn’t me.” And so it went until he pulled out the very last one.

“Did you do this to me?”

But the last quail didn’t answer. “Ah-ha,” said Coyote, “since you don’t answer me, you must be the one,” and he bit hard on the quail, but he only hurt himself because that last quail was really the cactus.

And that, nawoj, is the story of how Quail tricked Coyote.

Andrew Carlisle was in no hurry to get home. Avoiding the freeway, he drove up the back way from Tucson to Tempe, coming into town through Florence junction and Mesa. He stopped at the Big Apple for a late breakfast. As usual, the previous night’s exertions left him feeling wonderfully alive and ravenously hungry.

He had been out of prison for only two days. Already two people were dead. One a day, sort of like multiple vitamins, he thought. It was only fair. He’d been saving up for a long time, but Margie Danielson and Johnny Rivkin had been mere appetizers, something to hold him until the main course came along.

Thinking about Margie Danielson made him remember the newspaper waiting in the car. He asked the waitress for one more cup of coffee and went out to retrieve The Arizona Sun. It was important to stay abreast of how the Picacho Peak investigation was going. If the cops suddenly moved away from their Indian suspect, if they somehow stumbled on a lead that would point them in the right direction Andrew Carlisle needed to know at once so he could take appropriate countermeasures.

He turned to the second section, the local news section, and the name Ladd jumped off the page at him. How lucky could he get? There he was, Garrison Ladd’s own kid, complete with a picture and more than a few helpful details. Hardly able to contain his excitement, Carlisle read through the column. The names were all there, ones he’d thought he would have to search out, one by one, over a lengthy period of time-Rita Antone, Diana Ladd, and David Ladd. If the boy had been in a car accident, his name and address were now part of an active police report. Carlisle knew from personal experience that, for a price, almost everything in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department was up for sale. Cash on delivery. Discretion advised.

Jubilant, he paid his bill, adding in an extra tip, and headed for Weber Drive. Maybe he’d take his mother out to celebrate that night. She wouldn’t have to know exactly what they were celebrating. He’d spend some of Johnny Rivkin’s cash and take her someplace nice like Casa Vieja in old Tempe or maybe little Lulu’s just up the street.

Myrna Louise was sitting in her rocker when he came into the house. Fortunately, he had left the Hartmann bag in the car. His mother sniffed disapprovingly when she saw the pink pantsuit. “You shouldn’t dress like that, Andrew. What will people think? Roger was right. You should have had that first haircut much sooner.”

Carlisle felt far too smug to let Myrna Louise draw him into that decades-old argument. “Don’t look so upset, Mama. Your neighbors won’t even notice. They’ll think your sister came to visit, or your cousin from Omaha.”

“I don’t have a cousin in Omaha,” Myrna Louise insisted.

“It was just a figure of speech,” Andrew Carlisle told her. “I don’t know why this disturbs you so. It’s like wearing a disguise. Maybe you should try it sometime. It’s fun, like playing dress-up. Didn’t you play dress-up when you were a child?”

“When I was a child,” she replied stubbornly, “but not when I was fifty years old.”

Carlisle went into his bedroom. He saw at once that the stack of manuscripts was missing from the bookshelf. Turning on his heel, he charged back down the hall to the living room.

“Where are they, Mama?” he demanded.

“Where are what?”

“Don’t give me that. You know what I mean. Where are my manuscripts, the ones that came in the mail?”

“I burned them,” she replied quietly. “Every single page.”

Carlisle’s jaw dropped. “You what?”

“Outside. In the burning barrel. I burned them all.”

Andrew Carlisle went livid, his hands shook. “What the hell do you mean, you burned them?”

“They were trash, Andrew. Smutty, filthy trash. You have no business writing such terrible things, about all those people killing and being killed. It made my blood run cold. Wherever do you get such terrible ideas!”

Andrew Carlisle sank into a chair opposite his mother, hoping she was lying, knowing she wasn’t.

“Mama,” he croaked. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? Those were my only copies of A Less Than Noble Savage. I’ll have to rewrite it from scratch.”

“I’d set about getting started then, but try to write it a little nicer this time, Andrew. And leave out the woman who gets burned up, the one who gets set on fire with paint thinner. That was horrible. It reminded me of the Harveys’ cat.”

Even now she could remember the agonized screams of that poor dying cat, her next-door-neighbors’ cat, after Andrew and some of his friends had lit it on fire with paint thinner and matches. Over the years, she had almost managed to forget about it, but reading the manuscript had brought it all back in vivid detail.

The remembered sound in her head had kept her awake for hours. Temporary relief had come when, around midnight, she had donned a robe and gone outside to burn the book. It had taken a long time. Hours even. Myma Louise had wanted to be sure that each page was properly disposed of, with every shred of it reduced to crumpled ash, so she had fed the manuscripts into the flame one typewritten page at a time.

The problem was, after she was finished and when she went back inside, the sound came back anyway. It was screaming in her head even now as she sat staring at this stranger in the pink silk pantsuit who was supposedly her son.

Yes, the cat was back with a vengeance, and Myrna Louise was afraid it would never go away again.

They took away the breakfast tray without Rita’s noticing.

This time Understanding Woman took her concerns straight to the convent’s superior. After hearing what the old Indian woman had to say, Sister Veronica made arrangements for a hasty trip to San Xavier, where they spoke at length to Father Mark. He listened gravely and agreed to take immediate action.

The next afternoon while Dancing Quail was busy with her endless dusting, she heard visitors being ushered into the convent. Soon Sister Mary Jane came looking for her. “Someone is waiting to see you, Rita.”

Dancing Quail was thunderstruck when she came to the arched doorway of the living room and found her grandmother sitting on the horsehair couch with Sister Veronica. Across a small table, in matching chairs, sat Father Mark from San Xavier and the BIA outing matron from Tucson; Dancing Quail stood transfixed for a moment, looking questioningly from face to face.

“Good afternoon, Rita,” Father Mark boomed heartily. “Come in and sit down.”

Dancing Quail slipped warily into the room. She made for a small footstool near Understanding Woman. When she sat down next to her grandmother, she looked to the old woman’s weathered face for answers, but Understanding Woman made no acknowledgement.

“We’re here about you and your baby,” Father Mark said brusquely.

Father Mark’s loud, forthright ways were often offensive to the politely soft-spoken Papagos who made up his flock. At this frontal attack, Rita’s features darkened with shame, but she made no attempt at denial.

“You must go away at once, of course,” he continued. “Your staying here is entirely out of the question. To that end, I have contacted Mrs. Manning here. Between us, we’ve made arrangements for you to have a position with a good family in Phoenix. Isn’t that right, Lucille?”

Over the years, the outing matron’s once-red hair had faded to a muddy gray, but Dancing Quail still remembered the withering look the woman had given her years before when the Mil-gahn woman discovered that the little girl from Ban Thak had no shoes.

Lucille Manning nodded. “They are a very respectable family in Phoenix. Under most circumstances, they wouldn’t consider taking someone in your. . in your condition. But Adele and Charles Clark are old friends of Father Mark’s. They’re also very interested in Indian basketry. When I told them you were a basket maker, they decided to make an exception.”

“I don’t understand. .” Rita began.

The priest cut her off. “Of course you do, girl! You’re not stupid. It would be very bad for Father John if you stayed here to have this baby. It would drive him out of the priesthood, destroy him completely, leave him to rot in hell. You wouldn’t want to do that, now would you?”

“No, but. .”

“And we’ve found a place where you can go. It’ll be a good job, one that pays more than the sisters can.”

“But what about my grandmother?” Dancing Quail asked. “What will happen to her?”

“I will go home,” Understanding Woman said, speaking for the first time. “I will go home to Ban Thak and wait to die.”

Father Mark told Rita to pack her things, that the outing matron would leave shortly to take her to Tucson and the train. The girl left the convent with Understanding Woman.

“Please, ni-kahk,” Dancing Quail begged. “Grandmother, please don’t send me away.”

Understanding Woman was adamant. “You must go,” she said firmly. “To lead a holy man or a priest away from his vows is very bad luck, for you and for him as well. You must go far away and never see him again.”

Without further argument, Dancing Quail gathered her things. This time she didn’t use a burden basket. The girls who worked in town said that burden baskets were old-fashioned and clumsy. One of the nuns had given her a cast-off leather case. Into this battered relic, she put her own meager possessions.

She was about to strap the case shut when Understanding Woman appeared at her side. “Ni-ka’amad,” the old woman said. “Granddaughter, here. This basket is not as good as that other one. Be careful not to lose it this time.”

Tentatively, Dancing Quail picked up Understanding Woman’s medicine basket, the last one the old woman ever made. She opened the top and peered inside. There were the things she remembered-a clay doll, another fragment of the same beautiful spirit rock, an arrowhead, and a hank of long black hair. Tears streamed down the young woman’s face as she replaced the lid and carefully wedged the basket in one corner of the case.

Because of Father John, her grandmother was sending Dancing Quail away, but with her blessing rather than without. The old woman’s puny medicine basket could offer only the slightest protection against the outside world, but it was far better than no protection at all. Besides, it was the only gift Understanding Woman had to give.

The two Indians left San Xavier and drove to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Fat Crack had been here on business numerous times, and he knew his way around. He also understood the kind of treatment they could expect.

“I want to speak to Detective Walker,” he said, going up to the glass-enclosed cage that separated clerk from waiting room.

“He’s not in,” the clerk said.

“Can you call him?”

“He’s not on duty today.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“I’m telling you, he’s not in.”

“We’ll wait,” Fat Crack said, and showed Looks At Nothing to a chair. An hour later, they were still there.

Sheriff DuShane didn’t usually come in on weekends, but he had forgotten his golf clubs at the office, and he needed them now. He was surprised to find two Indians seated stolidly in the front waiting area. There were usually plenty of Indians in the cell-block, but not that many out front.

“What’s with the powwow in the lobby?” he asked.

The clerk shrugged. “Who knows? They want to talk to Walker. I told them plain as day that it’s his day off.”

“Like hell it is,” DuShane growled. “You call him and tell him to get in here to take care of it. I don’t need a bunch of Indians sitting around stinking up the place.”

“But he’s at the hospital with his father. .”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass where he is. You get him on the horn and tell him to take care of it. Brandon Walker’s in deep shit with me about now. He’d by God better not drag his heels.”

Brandon Walker was both mystified and relieved by the departmental phone call that summoned him from Tucson Medical Center. The relief came from having a legitimate reason to abandon his distracted mother who was still waiting for the appearance of the second-opinion doctor, a process that Brandon could neither stop nor speed up. He wondered why two reservation Indians would insist on seeing him this ragingly hot Sunday afternoon.

In the waiting room, he immediately recognized the younger of the two as the person looking after Davy Ladd in the hospital at Sells. The old man, blind and bent, leaning on a gnarled ironwood cane, was a complete stranger.

“Would you like to come back to my office?” Walker asked.

Fat Crack translated Brandon’s words. The old man shook his head emphatically, speaking rapidly in Papago.

“He wants to talk outside,” Fat Crack explained. “He wants to smoke.”

The crazy old coot could smoke in here where it’s cool, Brandon thought, but he shrugged his shoulders in compliance and followed the other two men outside into the ungodly heat. Fat Crack led them to a small patch of shade under a thriving mesquite tree. The old man sat cross-legged on the ground and opened the flap of a leather pouch that he wore around his waist. Removing a homemade cigarette, he started to light up. Brandon reached for his own cigarettes, but the younger man stopped him.

“Looks At Nothing would like you to join him,” Fat Crack said, sitting down next to the old man.

Obligingly, Walker left his package of filter-tips where they were. He squatted down close to the other two and waited. He tried unsuccessfully to estimate ages. The younger man was probably in his mid-to-late forties, but the older one’s sundried, weathered skin defied categorizing.

After deftly lighting his cigarette with a worn brass lighter, the old man puffed on it in absorbed concentration. He reminded Brandon of the aged Vietnamese villagers he had seen during the war, venerated old wise men who had seen one regime topple after another, and who had waited patiently for the inevitable time when the Americans would disappear as well.

At last the old man turned his sightless eyes in Brandon’s direction. He held out the cigarette, offering it to the detective. “Nawoj,” he said.

Brandon’s first inclination was to say thanks but no thanks, that he’d have one of his own, but instinct warned him that there was more at stake here than just refusing a certain brand of cigarettes, homemade or not.

“Take it,” Fat Crack urged. “Say ‘nawoj.’ ”

“Say what?”

“Nawoj,” Fat Crack repeated. “It means ‘friend’ or ‘friendly gift.’ ”

“Now-witch,” Brandon said hesitantly, mimicking the strange sounding word as best he could. He accepted the cigarette and took a deep drag while Fat Crack nodded approval. The smoke was far stronger than the white man had anticipated. He managed to choke back a fit of coughing.

“Indian tobacco,” Fat Crack explained as he in turn took the cigarette.

This is crazy, Brandon thought. What if someone sees me? But just then the old man started speaking in Papago. For a gringo, Brandon Walker was fairly fluent in Spanish, but this language wasn’t remotely related to that. He couldn’t understand a word. When the old one stopped speaking, the younger one translated.

“He says he’s sorry about your father, but that sometimes it is better to die quick than to be old and sick.”

Brandon’s jaw dropped. How did this aged Indian know about Toby Walker? “How does he. .?” Brandon sputtered, but the old man spoke once more. Again Fat Crack interpreted.

“He’s sorry to bother you like this, but we must speak to you about my cousin, about Gina Antone, who was murdered years ago.”

The blind man’s mysterious knowledge about Toby Walker was forgotten as Brandon’s finely honed detective skills took charge. “Gina Antone? What about her?”

“We want to know about the other man, the one who went to jail.”

“He’s still in prison. In Florence.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“We would like you to check.” This time Fat Crack spoke on his own without waiting for the old man.

“When? Now?”

Fat Crack nodded. The Indians showed no inclination to move. Shaking his head in exasperation, Brandon Walker rose to his feet and went back inside. He was gone a long time, fifteen minutes, to be exact. During that time, Looks At Nothing and Fat Crack sat smoking in the shade in absolute silence.

Finally, Brandon Walker returned. He stood over the other two men for a moment, examining each enigmatic face. Finally, he squatted back down next to them.

“I just talked to the records department in Florence,” he said. “Andrew Carlisle was released on Friday. Now tell me, what’s this all about?”

Once more the hairs on Fat Crack’s neck stood up straight beneath the weight of his Stetson.

“Do you remember when my cousin was killed?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember her wipih, her nipple?”

“I remember,” Walker said grimly. It was something he had never forgotten. “But the man who did that is dead,” Brandon added. “He committed suicide.”

“He is not dead,” Fat Crack declared quietly. “It has happened again, just like that. On Friday, near Picacho Peak. The sheriff has arrested an Indian, but an O’odham wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t bite off a woman’s nipple. Neither would a dead man.”

A spurt of adrenaline surged into Brandon Walker’s system, but his face betrayed nothing. “How do you know about this?” he asked.

“From an Indian who was in jail in Florence,” Fat Crack answered.

“And why did you come to me? Why not go to the sheriff in Pinal County? They’re the ones who have jurisdiction in the case.”

“Because,” Fat Crack said simply, looking at the second Indian. “My friend here is an old man. He doesn’t like to travel so far.”

To release her anger, Diana’s first impulse on arriving home was to clean her house from top to bottom. Not that the house was dirty. She had to find something to occupy her hands and body. She swept and mopped and scrubbed. She even ventured into the root cellar behind a door she seldom opened where she still kept all those packed boxes-Gary’s stuff and her mother’s stuff-sitting there like ticking time bombs of memory, filled with things she couldn’t throw away because she couldn’t stand to sort them.

Against one wall were Gary’s boxes. Rita had packed those for her. It was the first thing Rita had done for Diana, packed Gary’s belongings into tidy stacks of boxes during the three days Diana was in University Hospital having Davy. And across the narrow room, stacked against another wall, labeled in Diana’s stepmother’s bold, careless printing, were the boxes that held all that remained of Iona Dade Cooper’s worldly possessions.

The last month and a half, Iona Cooper was in the hospital in La Grande. During that time, Diana’s world shrank even smaller. Sympathetic nurses brought Iona’s food and looked the other way when Diana ate it, not that she ate much. She was listed as a guest in the La Grande Hotel, but she went there only to shower and change clothes. Most of the time she slept sitting up in a chair beside her mother’s bed.

The two women spent most days entirely alone, with sporadic interruptions by passing doctors and nurses. Max Cooper came by a few times during the first week or so, then he disappeared and didn’t return. Iona asked for him sometimes, but Diana refused to call him and beg him to come. If he couldn’t come on his own, the hell with him.

There was nothing Diana could do except be there with a comforting word and touch during Iona’s occasional lucid moments, whatever hour those increasingly rare moments surfaced. The rest of the time, Diana’s sole function and focus was as her mother’s advocate, as an insistent voice in the bureaucratic wilderness, demanding medication and attention from busy nurses and attendants whose natural tendency was to ignore an uncomplaining patient.

During the last week, Diana prayed without ceasing for the struggle to be over, for it to be finished. The afternoon before Iona died, Diana went back to the hotel to shower and change clothes. She checked for messages, as she always did. There was one: See the manager.

Mr. Freeman, the manager, a bespectacled older gentleman who had always treated Diana with utmost kindness, came out from his little office behind the desk. He was carrying a check that Diana recognized instantly as one she had written only the day before.

“I’m very sorry, Mrs. Ladd, but there seems to be some problem with the check.”

Diana was mystified. “How could there be a problem?” she asked. “There’s plenty of money in the account.”

Constantly worried about money, her mother had waited far longer than she should have before agreeing to go to the hospital, but then she maintained that her daughter and son-in-law shouldn’t have to shoulder any additional expenses on her account including Diana’s bill at the hotel.

Since Iona’s initial hospitalization, Diana had been a signer on her parents’ checking account. Iona insisted Diana use that account and no other each week when she paid her hotel bill.

Tentatively, apologetically, the manager handed over the offending check. Stamped across the face of it in screaming red letters were the words account closed!

“I don’t know how this can be, Mr. Freeman. I’ll have to check on it later. I need to get back to the hospital right now.”

“Of course, Mrs. Ladd. Don’t you worry. Later will be fine.”

That afternoon, before the bank closed in Joseph, and while nurses were busy changing Iona’s bedding, Diana called Ed Gentry. He was full of apologies.

“Your father came in and closed that account two days ago. Since he’s a bona fide signer, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. If you’re short, Diana, I’ll be happy to advance you some cash.”

“No,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

The next morning, when it was finally over, Diana prepared to have it out with Max Cooper. He hadn’t even bothered to come tell his wife good-bye. She tried calling, but no one answered. Finally, after paying the bill with her own money, she checked out of the hotel and drove back to Joseph. She’d done what she could, but all other arrangements would have to wait until her father arrived in La Grande with his new checkbook.

Driving up to the house, Diana tried the door, but it was latched from the inside. She knocked, only to have the door opened by a complete stranger. The last thing Diana expected was to find a strange woman ensconced in her mother’s place, someone Diana didn’t recognize and who didn’t know Iona’s daughter, either.

“Yes?” the woman said tentatively, as though Diana were some kind of suspicious door-to-door salesman.

Something about the possessive way she opened the door warned Diana this wasn’t some thoughtful neighbor come to help out in time of trouble.

“I live here,” Diana said, pushing her way into the kitchen. “Who are you?”

Just then Max came into the room from the living room. One thumb hooked under his suspenders, he carried a can of beer in his other hand. At nine o’clock in the morning, he was already swaying slightly from side to side. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

Diana looked at him with absolute loathing. “Who is this?” she spat, pointing at the woman.

“Francine. Francine Duncan. You mean you two haven’t met? Francine, this is Diana.”

“Oh,” Francine said.

“And where were you?” Diana demanded furiously, moving past Francine to stand directly in front of her father. “Where’ve you been for the last month and a half?”

“Busy,” he mumbled. “I been real busy around here. Besides, like I told you and your mother both, I can’t stand hospitals.”

“You won’t have to worry about it anymore,” Diana said. “It’s over. She’s gone.”

Max Cooper sank to the floor as though someone had suddenly lopped him off at the knees. Francine rushed to his side. “Oh, Max, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You stay out of this,” Diana snapped. “Nobody asked you.”

She left Joseph that afternoon and never went back. The boxes came two months later, a week after Max and Francine’s handwritten, after-the-fact wedding announcement. Diana came home from school and found the boxes sitting waiting for her on the patio of the apartment in Eugene. A note on the top one said, Your mother’s things.

Ten years later, Diana had yet to crack the masking tape on even one of those boxes. Knowing Francine had packed them had somehow desecrated Iona Dade Cooper’s possessions. Diana didn’t know if she’d ever be able to bring herself to touch them.

Andrew Carlisle had looked down on Myrna Louise for as long as he could remember, but this was the first time he ever remembered hating her. He went to the tiny, spartan bedroom assigned to him in his mother’s house and fell onto the narrow bed while his whole body throbbed with abhorrence.

How could she have done this to him? How could she?

A Less Than Noble Savage was gone, completely gone. Oh, he still had a rough, rough draft, but six years of refinements had been obliterated. It was as though Myrna Louise had amputated a part of his body. This was his baby, his creation, something he’d nurtured and suckled throughout the endless days in prison.

At times, polishing the exploits of his main character was all that had kept him sane. Carlisle had liked his brute of a protagonist, Clayton Savage, had related to him both as a man and as a character. This modern-day, self-appointed, bloodthirsty renegade had only one objective while slicing and dicing his way through 643 double-spaced manuscript pages-making sure Custer Died for Your Sins, that powerful Native American polemic, was more than just a catchy title.

And now the new and revised Clayton Savage was lost to him, another sin to lay at Diana Ladd’s door. Something else for which that bitch would be held accountable.

Practicing biofeedback, a trick they’d taught him in the Joint, Carlisle managed to get his breathing back under control. Don’t get mad-get even, he told himself. That was the secret.

Finally, with the embryo of a plan forming in his head, he got up and went over to the dresser. Deliberately, he felt along the front of it until he found a loose piece of fascia board. He tugged at it until it broke off in his hands, then he went out into the living room still carrying the broken piece. He walked past his mother, who had not yet moved from her rocker.

“Where are you going?” She asked the question mechanically, strictly out of habit, even though she didn’t want to. She had no need to know where her son was going or what he would do, but she was unable to change a lifetime’s worth of asking.

“To the lumberyard,” he said. “I need some glue. A piece of wood broke off the dresser in my room.”

Away from the house, away from her, he was able to think more clearly. He bought the glue for the dresser. He also bought some caulking compound and a caulking gun. He told the man at the check stand that he was installing a tub in an add-on bathroom.

By the time he came back home, Andrew Carlisle was his old self again, his old charming self.

“Sorry I was so upset earlier, Mama,” he said. “It’s not that big a deal, really. Besides, you’re right. It probably wasn’t all that good a book in the first place.”

“You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“No,” he lied. “Not at all. How about going out to dinner? We could go someplace special, for a steak or whatever you like.”

Myrna Louise’s eyes lit up. She was always game for going out to dinner. “I really like that place over in the shopping center,” she said. “Lulubelle’s or whatever. They have good ribs.”

“That settles it,” her son told her with an easy smile. “That’s where we’ll go then, and tomorrow, if you like, we could ride down to Tucson together. I have a few more errands to run. It’s a long drive. It would be fun to have some company.”

Late in the afternoon, Diana and Davy drove out to Sells. Right after they arrived, Diana took Davy around to the side of the building and held him up so he could speak to Rita through the open window. Then, warning him not to talk to anyone else in her absence, Diana left him in the lobby and went down the hall to Rita’s room.

“Davy sure looks good,” Rita said. “The cut on his head isn’t too bad?”

“No. It’s fine. He’s proud of all his stitches.”

The two women were quiet for a moment. Over the years, they had spent so much time alone together that long silences between them were not unusual. There was nothing in the older woman’s placid countenance to warn Diana that a storm was coming.

“My nephew was here earlier,” Rita said at last. “He came to give me some news.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Carlisle.”

At the sound of the name, Diana’s heart caught in her throat. “What about him?”

“He’s out.”

“When?”

“Friday. Already he has killed again.”

“No. Are you serious?”

Rita nodded. “Fat Crack told me. They have arrested an Indian, but it was Carlisle who did it. He bit her.”

“My God,” Diana breathed. “I’ll have to get in touch with Detective Walker right away and let him know.”

“No,” Rita said. “Detective Walker already tried with Carlisle, and he failed. Gina is dead. Your husband is dead, and now Carlisle is free. We will not give Detective Walker another chance.”

“What are you saying?” Diana asked. She knew what Rita was thinking, but she didn’t dare put it into words.

“I remember what he said in the hallway,” Rita continued slowly. “When the deputy’s back was turned and when he thought no one else was looking. He said he would come for you, for us. Let him.”

“Let him? Do nothing and wait for him to come after us?”

Rita nodded. “That’s right. I have one very old friend who is a powerful medicine man. He and my nephew will help us.”

An involuntary shiver ran up and down Diana’s spine. “You’re saying we should take care of Carlisle ourselves?”

“Yes.”

“But how can we when we don’t even know where he is?”

“He will come to us. We must let him.”

“And then what?”

Rita considered her words carefully before she spoke. “The Tohono O’odham only kill to eat or in self-defense. If Carlisle comes after us, then it is self-defense, isn’t it?”

It wasn’t as though Rita Antone was attempting to talk Diana Ladd into something she had never considered on her own. Selling the idea wasn’t necessary. For almost seven years now, Diana had longed to throttle Andrew Carlisle with her bare hands.

“How do we find him?” Diana asked.

“We don’t,” Rita answered. “Windmill doesn’t go looking for Wind Man. Neither will we. While we wait for him to come, we have much to do.”