Hour of the Hunter

Chapter 17

T hey say this happened long ago. Cottontail was sitting next to a tall cliff when Ban, Coyote, saw him sitting there. Coyote was very hungry. “Brother,” he said to Cottontail, “I am going to eat you up.”

“Oh, no,” said Cottontail. “This you must not do, for I am holding up this cliff. If you eat me up, it will fall down and crush us both.”

Coyote looked up at the tall cliff, and he was afraid that Cottontail was right. “Come over here, Coyote,” said Cottontail. “You stand here and lean against the cliff. You hold it up while I go around to the back of the mountain and find a big stick to help hold it up.”

“All right,” said Coyote, and that’s just what happened. He came over and stood beside Cottontail to help hold up the cliff. As soon as Coyote was standing there, Cottontail ran off somewhere. Coyote stood there for a long, long time, leaning against the cliff, holding it. He waited and waited, but Cottontail didn’t come back.

Finally, Coyote got tired of just standing there. He thought that if he ran very fast, perhaps he could get out of the way before the cliff could fall on him. So Coyote let go of the cliff and ran as fast as he could. But when he let go, the cliff didn’t fall down after all. That was when Coyote knew Cottontail had tricked him.

This made Coyote very angry. “I will follow Cottontail’s trail,” he said. “The next time I see him, I will eat him up.”

And that, nawoj, is the story of the first time Cottontail tricked Coyote.

They stopped in front of an old two-story house along Speedway. “What’s this?” Myrna Louise asked.

Andrew reached in his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Run this inside for me,” he said. “They’ll give you another envelope.”

“But what is this place?” she asked again.

“It’s a rental agency,” he said. “They’re helping me find a place to live. I’ll wait here in the car. Give them this and tell them your name.”

Myrna Louise started to say that she was a lot older than he was, and if anyone was going to sit in the car, it ought to be her, but it didn’t seem worth starting an argument when the day was going so well. She got out of the car.

Inside, behind a counter, a young woman was busy talking on the phone. Myrna Louise grew impatient standing there because the receptionist was only talking to her boyfriend. While waiting, she looked around. Nothing indicated that this was a real estate office. Shouldn’t there have been signs, something that said what kinds of properties they rented?

Finally, the young woman hung up. “May I help you?” she asked.

Wordlessly, Myrna Louise handed over the envelope. The receptionist opened it, removing a blank sheet of paper that had been wrapped around a small stack of bills. She counted them out, one at a time. “And what is your name?” she asked, when she’d finished counting out $150.

“Myrna Louise Spaulding, but it’s probably under my son’s name, which is. .”

“Here it is,” the young woman interrupted, taking another envelope from a drawer. Myrna Louise was surprised to see her name, not Andrew’s, neatly typed on the envelope. So he really had intended for her to pick it up.

“Was that a deposit?” she asked, trying to make sense of the transaction.

The young woman laughed. “You could call it that.”

“Well, shouldn’t you give me a receipt or something?”

“No,” the receptionist replied. “That’s not the way we do business around here.”

Rebuffed, Myrna Louise took the envelope and went back to the car. Andrew looked decidedly unhappy. “What took so long?” he demanded. “I was afraid something had gone wrong.”

“She was on the phone,” Myrna Louise said.

Andrew reached out to take the envelope, but his mother placed it in her lap, letting both hands rest on it. Something was wrong with that place, she thought. “They didn’t give me a receipt,” she said.

Andrew laughed. “That’s all right. I won’t need one.”

How could Andrew afford to throw away a whole $150 in cash like that and not even get a receipt? Myrna Louise wondered. She had rented houses and apartments before, and she always got a receipt, especially when she paid cash. Why wouldn’t Andrew insist on one-unless he had lied to her and the money was for something else entirely, not for a rental at all.

Suspicion born of years of being lied to made her hands itch with curiosity about what was in that envelope. She wished she had opened it for a peek before she ever came back out to the car.

“Where are we going now?” she asked.

“To the storage unit. I want a few things from there.”

“Couldn’t we stop and get something to drink first?” she asked. “I’m thirsty.”

Andrew sighed. “I suppose. What do you want?”

“A root-beer float would be nice. The Dairy Queen isn’t far.”

They stopped at a Dairy Queen, and Andrew went inside where several people were already in line ahead of him. Cautiously, keeping the dashboard between his sight line and her hands, Myrna Louise slipped a bony finger along the flap of the envelope. It came loose, tearing only a little along one edge. Inside were two pieces of paper.

She scanned through them in growing confusion. There was nothing at all about renting a house. She found herself reading some kind of police report about an auto accident. Finally, she noticed the names-Rita Antone and Diana Ladd, and someone else named David. The names of those two women were branded into Myrna Louise’s memory. David had to be Diana’s son, her baby. Why had Andrew paid so much money to have something about them? You’d think he’d want to forget all about them.

Hastily, she stuffed the papers back in the envelope and licked the flap. After a lifetime’s worth of snooping, she knew there would be enough glue left to make the flap stick fairly well. By the time Andrew returned to the car, the envelope was once more lying innocently in her lap.

He brought the root beer to the window on her side of the car. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand to take the envelope. “Let me have that before you spill something on it.”

Reluctantly, Myrna Louise handed it over. She worried that he would notice the frayed flap, but he stuffed it in his shirt pocket without even glancing at it. Myrna Louise drank her root-beer float with her mind in turmoil, still trying to understand. Andrew was up to something, but what? He had paid good money for those two pieces of paper, more than he should have, but why? To get their addresses, said a tiny voice at the back of her mind. To find out where they live. Why? Why would Andrew be interested in knowing that?

For an answer, she heard only the nightmarish sound of a long-ago neighbor’s cat, screaming and dying.

Brandon Walker woke up late and got ready to go to work. The house was empty. His mother had spent the night at the hospital. He had offered to bring her home, but again Louella refused. She would stay there as long as it took, she told him. He wondered how long that would be.

At the office, his clerk shook her head as he walked in the door. “You’re in real hot water this time,” she said. “The Big Guy wants to see you.”

The Big Guy was Sheriff Jack DuShane himself. If one of the Shadows received a curt summons to the sheriff’s private office, it probably wouldn’t be for a pleasant, early morning social chat or a hit from the bottle of Wild Turkey from the sheriff’s private stash.

“On my way,” Brandon said, turning away.

“How’s your dad?” the clerk asked.

“Hanging in there,” he responded, “but that’s about all.”

Sheriff DuShane sat with an open newspaper spread out on his desk. “This is a hell of a note,” he said, glancing up as his secretary escorted Brandon Walker into the room. He pointed to the upper left-hand corner of the page. “You realize, of course, that this makes us all sound like a bunch of stupid jackasses?”

“Sorry,” Brandon said, “I haven’t seen a paper yet this morning.” Nonetheless, he had a pretty good idea about the contents of that offending article. He was sure it reported Toby Walker’s unauthorized use of a police vehicle.

“You in the habit of letting your whole goddamned family use county cars whenever they damned well please?”

“It never happened before,” Brandon began. “I had no idea my father would take the keys off the. .”

“I don’t give a good goddamn how it happened, but let me tell you this. If it ever does again, you’re out of here, Walker. We don’t need this kind of shit. Can’t afford it. Lucky for you the car wasn’t damaged, or you’d be on administrative leave as of right now. So keep your damn car keys in your damn pocket, you hear?”

Brandon had seen news clips of DuShane out in public charming both the media and his constituents. He wondered if those people knew that, on his own turf, DuShane was incapable of speech free of profanity.

The detective waited to see if there was anything else. DuShane didn’t exactly dismiss him, but he turned back to the newspaper as though Walker had already left the room. The younger man stood there wavering, wondering if he shouldn’t let DuShane know of the possible problem brewing over Andrew Carlisle.

“Well,” the sheriff said. “What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing,” Brandon replied, deciding. “Nothing at all.”

If DuShane didn’t even have the good grace to ask how Toby Walker was doing, why the hell should Brandon tell him anything? After all, it wasn’t his case, not officially.

Sister Katherine met them in the office when Diana and Davy arrived at San Xavier. The nun, taking Davy under her wing with a promise of popovers, left at once. Diana was shown into a sparsely furnished office. She sat down on a rickety visitor chair facing a spare, balding old man who introduced himself as Father John.

“I hope my telephone call didn’t alarm you, Mrs. Ladd,” he said, “but I wanted you to understand that I consider this a matter of utmost importance.”

“About Rita?” Diana asked.

He nodded. “You see, her nephew and another man, a medicine man called Looks At Nothing, came to see me yesterday. . ”

“They came to see you, too?” she asked in some surprise. “I knew they had spoken to Brandon Walker, but why you?”

Father John seemed taken aback. “You mean they discussed this situation with someone else?”

Diana nodded. “With a detective at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. He came to the house last night and told me.”

Father John folded his hands in front of him, thoughtfully touching his fingers to his lips. “How very odd,” he said. “Why would a detective have any interest in Davy being baptized?”

Now, it was Diana’s turn to be puzzled. “Davy? Baptized? What are you talking about?”

“About the accident, Rita’s accident.”

“What does that have to do with Davy?” Diana asked. “And what does his being baptized have to do with anything?”

“How long have you been here on the reservation?” he asked.

“Since sixty-seven.”

“Doing what?”

“Teaching.”

“Have you made any kind of study on the Papago belief system?” the priest asked.

“I’m a schoolteacher. Father John, a public schoolteacher. I don’t interfere in my students’ spiritual lives, and they don’t fool around in mine.”

“That may be where you’re wrong, Mrs. Ladd,” the priest said quietly. “It’s my understanding that you were raised in the Catholic Church, but that you’ve moved away from it as an adult.”

“Really, I don’t see what that has to do with. .”

“Please, Mrs. Ladd, hear me out. It is true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she answered reluctantly. “My husband was a Lutheran, for one thing, but there were other considerations as well.”

“Your husband is dead,” he pointed out.

“I’m well aware of that. Father, but I haven’t changed my mind about the other things.”

“I see,” he said, nodding.

“What do you see?” Diana didn’t try to conceal her growing impatience. “You still haven’t told me what this is about.”

“As I said earlier, it’s about Dancing Quail. . ”

“Who?”

“Excuse me. About Rita. You know her as Rita Antone. Dancing Quail was her name when she was much younger, when I first knew her. She was still a child then, not many years older than your own boy. But to get back to what I was saying about Papago beliefs, these are people with a strong spiritual heritage, you know. They have accepted much the whites have to offer while at the same time keeping much of their own. The reverse hasn’t always been true.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we Anglos haven’t always been smart enough to learn from them. As a race, we’ve been very pigheaded, all caught up in teaching others, but not bothering to learn from our students. It’s a problem I’ve been trying to rectify in my old age. For instance, I’ve learned something about Indian beliefs concerning illness and shamanism.

“In his youth, Rita’s friend Looks At Nothing, that blind medicine man, probably was a victim of what the Indians call Whore Sickness, which results from giving way to the temptations of your dreams. Eye troubles in general and blindness in particular are considered to be the natural consequences of succumbing to Whore Sickness. Looks At Nothing could see as a child, but after he lost his sight in early adulthood, he went on to become a well-respected medicine man.”

“Whore Sickness?” Diana repeated dubiously. “Do you really believe that?”

“Maybe I don’t, not entirely, but the Papagos do, and that’s the point. There’s tremendous power in belief, especially in ancient beliefs, and that’s what we’re dealing with as far as Davy is concerned-ancient beliefs. Looks At Nothing is convinced that Rita’s accident occurred because she lives in close proximity to an unbaptized baby. As such, your son is a danger to her, and will continue to be so until something is done to fix the problem.”

“This is outrageous!” Diana grumbled. “It sounds like some kind of trick to trap me into coming back to church.”

“Believe me, young lady, it’s no trick. My concern is far more straightforward than that. In addition to the accident which has already happened, Rita is evidently suffering from what the Indians call ‘Forebodings.’ These pose an additional danger, a threat not only to Rita, but to Davy and yourself as well.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Would you have any objections to your child being brought up in the church?”

She shrugged. “I never thought about it that much one way or the other.”

“Mrs. Ladd, what I’d like to propose is this. Allow me to come give the boy some religious instruction. At his age, he ought to have some say in the matter. Once he’s baptized, we can work together to solve the catechism problem and prepare him for his first communion.”

Diana Ladd remained unconvinced. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Father John sat forward and hunched his meager frame over the desk. “Mrs. Ladd,” he said earnestly. “I have been a priest in the Catholic Church for over fifty years. Priests are expected to live celibate, godly lives, and for most of my career, that has been true. But once, very early on, I made a terrible mistake. I fell in love with a beautiful young woman. I almost quit the priesthood to marry her, but an older priest, my superior, took matters into his own hands. He shipped her far away. Years later, I finally realized that I had a rival for her affections, a man of her own people. When she was sent away, not only did I lose her, so did he.”

“This is all very interesting, but I don’t see. .”

Father John held up his hand, silencing her. “No, wait. Let me finish. Afterward, the other man, the rival, swore that he and I were enemies. I always believed that would be true until our dying day, but yesterday he came to see me here at San Xavier. We smoked the Peace Smoke, and he asked me for my help.”

“The blind medicine man?” Diana asked, finally beginning to grasp the situation. Father John nodded.

“Believe me,” he said, “Looks At Nothing never would have come to me for help unless he believed Dancing Quail to be in mortal danger. Naturally, I agreed to do whatever I could.”

The old priest fell suddenly silent. He turned away from her and sat gazing up at the rough saguaro-rib crucifix hanging on the wall behind his desk. He averted his gaze, but not before Diana detected a telltale trace of moisture on his weathered cheek. She could only guess what telling that story had cost him, but she knew it wasn’t an empty ploy. He had told her only as a last resort. Now, she sat quietly, trying to assimilate it all and understand exactly how it applied to her and to her situation.

First and by far most important was the fact that Father John, right along with everyone else, believed that Rita and she were in danger. On that score, Diana and the priest were in complete agreement, although she had difficulty accepting the idea that Davy’s being unbaptized was somehow the cause of it all.

Diana’s first choice of weapon to deal with the problem was a fully loaded.45 Peacemaker, but maybe a gun wasn’t the only weapon she should consider using. Diana Ladd wasn’t prepared to ignore anything that might prove helpful.

“When would you like to come speak to Davy?” she asked finally.

Father John’s shoulders sagged with relief. He wiped his eyes, said a brief prayer of thanksgiving, and then crossed himself before turning back to face her. “Today?” he asked. “Would later on this afternoon be all right?”

Committed to action, she saw no point in delay. “Yes,” she said. “That’ll be fine. I’ll give you the address.”

As soon as they tried to leave the Dairy Queen, things started going wrong. The Valiant wouldn’t start. The battery was dead. In a huff, Andrew Carlisle stalked around the parking lot looking for someone with jumper cables. Then, as they drove toward the storage unit, Myrna Louise began chattering away in her typically inane manner.

“Do you ever think about them?” she asked.

“Think about whom?”

“About those women, the ones from the reservation.”

There had been times in his life when Andrew Carlisle could have sworn that his mother could read his mind. Part of her ability to do that, he discovered much later, had been related to her secretly devouring daily installments of his diary. He wondered now about the envelope in his pocket. Had she looked at the contents? If so, had she somehow guessed his intentions? He hadn’t really examined the envelope when he took it from her. It had seemed all right at first glance, but he couldn’t very well drag it out now and check it again in the middle of traffic.

“No,” he said eventually. “They’re in the past, and the past is over and done with. I’ve got my future to think about.”

“I wonder what kind of a baby she had, a boy or a girl.”

“For Chrissakes, Mama, does it matter?” he demanded, his voice rising despite his intentions of staying calm and collected, of not letting her provoke him. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“Don’t yell at me, Andrew. I was only wondering. Maybe I wouldn’t be so curious if I’d ever had any grandchildren of my own, you know.”

Well, you didn’t, he thought savagely. And you’re not ever going to, either, by the time I get through with you.

“Give it a rest, Mama,” he said. “I always told you I wasn’t the marrying kind.”

“You should have been. You’re a smart man, Andrew, and smart men should father lots of babies. It’s our only hope, you know. Civilization’s only hope.”

It was an old, old argument, one they’d had countless times before, but this time, under pressure, anxious to get on with the tasks at hand and worrying about whether or not the Valiant would keep on running, it was too much.

“Jesus Christ, Mama! Would you please just shut up about that?”

About that time, they arrived at the U-Stor-It-Here lot. There, Andrew Carlisle encountered the straw that broke the camel’s back. The gate was locked. Closed and locked.

Afraid to turn off the ignition, he put the Valiant in neutral, set the emergency brake, and left it running. He swore a blue streak as he headed for the small converted RV that served as an office. The door was latched with a metal padlock and bore a hand-lettered sign that said, back in fifteen minutes.

Frustrated and fuming, he headed back toward the car. He turned just in time to see the Valiant lurch forward and knock down the gate. For a second, he thought the emergency brake must have slipped, but then, in a cloud of dust, the Valiant roared into reverse. Myrna Louise was definitely at the wheel.

“Mama!” Carlisle yelled. “Stop!”

Instead, the Valiant charged out of the driveway and shot all the way across the street, smashing into a rubber dumpster before coming to a stop. Carlisle took off after the Valiant at a dead run. He almost caught it, too, but as he reached for the door handle, the car blasted forward and careened drunkenly away, leaving him in a cloud of dust. As the car swerved crazily down the flat, two-lane roadway, Myrna Louise clipped a brown El Camino on one side of the street and a second dumpster on the other. Neither one was enough to stop her.

In fact, they barely slowed her down.

It was the last straw for Myrna Louise as well. Not the locked gate-she didn’t care at all about that-but having Andrew yell and curse at her and tell her to shut up, that was just too much. It was supposed to be a fun trip for her, a vacation, he had told her. But this wasn’t fun at all.

As soon as they started having car trouble, he grew more and more surly and upset. She knew from personal experience that Andrew had a vile, mean temper. Myrna Louise didn’t want it turned on her. And if he was already angry with her, what would happen if he ever figured out she had looked at those two precious $150 pieces of paper?

When he got out of the car to go to the storage-unit office, Myrna Louise was still smarting. How dare he talk to her that way? No matter how old they were, children shouldn’t tell their parents to shut up. How could he show her so little respect? She deserved better than that. After all, how many other mothers would have opened their homes and their arms to a son when he came dragging home from doing a stretch in prison? She gave herself high marks for being loyal and broad-minded both, for not holding a grudge, although God knows, she could have.

Myrna Louise saw Andrew turn away from the door, shaking his head in disgust with his mouth twisted into an angry grimace. He was coming back to the car, madder than ever. Seeing him like that scared her, and that’s when she decided not to wait.

The keys were there, the engine already running. So what if she didn’t know how to drive a car? She had been riding in them for sixty years. She had seen other people do it, hadn’t she?

Sliding across the bench seat, she peered nearsightedly down at the gearshift and read the letters: P. R. N. D. L. The car was stopped and the needle pointed to P. That probably meant Park, she theorized. R would mean Reverse, D Drive, and L Low. Maybe she should start out in that, Low.

Cautiously, she moved the gearshift to L, and then put a tentative foot on the gas. The engine raced. The car rocked in place, but it didn’t move forward. Something was wrong. Then she remembered-the emergency brake. Jake had always talked about the importance of using the emergency brake.

Without letting up on the gas, she released the hand brake. At once, the Valiant crashed forward into the gate, breaking the lock, knocking the gate itself loose from its hinges. She glanced in Andrew’s direction. The noise had alerted him, and he was coming after her, running hard. Frightened now, desperate to get away, she shoved the gearshift to R, and found herself backing up at a terrifying speed. She tried turning the steering wheel, but the car went in exactly the opposite direction of what she intended. She heard rather than saw the dumpster crumple under the weight of the Valiant’s rear bumper.

Andrew vaulted forward. Almost at the car, he reached out to grasp the door handle. Myrna Louise had never before seen such looks of unmasked fury distorting her son’s face. What would he do to her if he caught her? Not waiting to find out, she shoved the gearshift needle over to D-D for Drive, D for Disappear-hit the gas pedal, and took off. She never looked back.

Slowing but not stopping at the intersection, she made it into traffic on Alvernon only because three other alert drivers managed to dodge out of her way.

It served Andrew right, Myrna Louise thought, gripping the steering wheel for all she was worth and seesawing it back and forth. Sons should never talk to their mothers that way, no matter what!

Fat Crack arrived at the hospital in Sells and found Rita sitting in a wheelchair on the front sidewalk. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

She nodded. “I didn’t like it in there. I didn’t want to wait inside.”

Actually, knowing his aunt’s opinion about Mil-gahn doctors, Fat Crack was surprised she had stayed put in the hospital for as long as she had. His mother had told him that ever since returning from California, Rita had adamantly refused to visit an Anglo doctor for any reason. She would have done the same thing after the accident, too, but arriving unconscious by ambulance made refusing admission impossible.

Fat Crack helped his aunt into the truck. She winced at the high step necessitated by the tow truck’s running board. “How are you?” he asked.

“All right, but the cast is heavy, and my arm aches.”

“I’ll try not to hit too many bumps,” Fat Crack told her. “We have to stop in Crow Hang to see about the singers. Are you sure you want to start with that tonight? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you’ve rested some more?”

“No,” Rita said. “Tonight will be fine.”

At Hawani Naggiak, Crow Hang Village, Fat Crack left Rita in the truck while he went to negotiate with the singers. Rita leaned her head back against the cab window and closed her eyes. She felt weak and tired. She hadn’t felt this weak since that long-ago time in California when she got so sick.

Late that September morning when she jumped off the freight train in Redlands, she asked directions and walked the eight miles out of town to the Bailey orange farm. She didn’t know what else to do. Telling everyone she was going to meet her brother was fine as far as it went, but the truth was, she didn’t have a brother. Gordon Antone was Louisa’s brother. He didn’t know Dancing Quail at all. Still, he was someone with a name, someone who would speak her language, and maybe, if she asked him, he really would help her find a job.

The sun was going down when she finally found her way to the right ranch. The people she saw working there were mostly Mexicans. When she tried asking them about Gordon Antone, they didn’t understand either English or Papago.

Almost ready to give up, she tried speaking English to a young Mil-gahn child. As soon as she asked about an Indian, he grinned and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “You must mean the chief. He’s working in the toolshed.” He pointed off toward a small outbuilding. “Over there.”

Dancing Quail found Gordon Antone bent over a file, sharpening the edge of a hoe. He looked up as she stepped into the doorway, blocking out the sunlight and turning the place into dusty gloom.

“Are you the one they call Chief?” she asked, speaking softly in Papago.

“Heu’u,” he replied. “Yes.”

Gordon Antone put down the hoe and file. The figure silhouetted in the doorway was that of a young male, but the voice definitely belonged to a female. “Who are you?” he asked.

“A friend of your sister’s, of Louisa’s. She said if I came here, you might help me find a job.”

“You know Louisa? But she’s in Phoenix. How did you get here?”

“On the train,” Rita replied simply. “Last night. I ran away.”

“You came all that way alone? From Phoenix?”

“I rode the freight train with some others.”

Gordon got up and walked over to the doorway so he could see her better. “What is your name?”

“My people call me Dancing Quail, but the Mil-gahn call me Rita, Rita Antone.”

“Your name is the same as mine.”

Now that she was here, talking to Gordon, she could tell he was someone who was easy to talk to. Just being with him made her feel much better. His saying that made her laugh.

“Yes,” she said. “We share the same name. I told the men on the train that you were my brother.”

With her hair cut short, dressed in a boy’s clothing, and grimy from travel, Dancing Quail was still a very beautiful young woman. For Gordon Antone, far from home and missing his family and friends, the real miracle was finding another person who spoke his own language. That made her more than beautiful.

“Not your brother,” Gordon Antone said, “but I will be glad to be your friend.”

At least Andrew Carlisle didn’t lose his head. He was furious with Myrna Louise, outraged was more like it, but he had sense enough to melt into the background before all hell broke loose. The owner of the El Camino charged out of an apartment across the street and looked up and down the road in both directions, but by then Myrna Louise had disappeared around the corner.

When the U-Stor-It-Here manager showed up a few minutes later, cops were already on the scene taking their reports. Carlisle chose that momentary confusion to reappear, walk past everyone, and head for his locker. Despite the stifling heat, he went inside his unit and closed the door. He had to think, to plan.

By now he had opened the envelope and suspected that Myrna Louise had also opened it, damn her straight to hell. So what the fuck was she thinking when she grabbed the car and took off like that? he wondered. Would she turn him in? No, that didn’t seem likely. Would she know what he was up to? Maybe, maybe not. That was a tough call. After all, she was his mother, and mothers often refuse to believe bad things about their precious darlings no matter how convincing the evidence.

No, she probably wouldn’t turn him in, but would she try to stop him? Damn her, she had already done that, just by taking the car. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Did she think he’d just give up? Not bloody likely. Go after her and get the car? How could he? For one thing, where would she go? Home, probably, if she could make it that far. He doubted it. The Valiant seemed to be pretty much on its last legs.

Actually, the more he thought about it, the more he decided it was just as well Jake Spaulding’s car was gone. He’d have to get a new one, and that might be inconvenient at the moment, but for what he was planning, he couldn’t risk using an undependable vehicle. No, what he needed was a new car. Not necessarily brand new, but certainly different-“reliable transportation,” as they say in car dealer’s parlance. Once he had another vehicle, he’d figure out some way to make his plan work anyhow. Not only for Diana Ladd, but also for Myrna Louise. As of now, she was on his list twiceover.

It pissed him off that she’d got away clean like that, but he’d get even for that eventually. His main problem now was one of time. How long before she would open the trunk and discover what was in it? If she did that, maybe she’d turn him in after all. He’d have to move forward, probably a whole lot faster than planned.

Standing there waffling back and forth, he was startled by a knock on the door. His heart went to his throat. Damn! The gun was still in the car along with Myrna Louise.

“Yes?” he called.

“Police,” a voice answered.

His hands trembled as he went to open the door. As soon as he did so, he shoved his hands in his pockets. The two uniformed cops he had seen earlier stood outside, both holding clipboards.

Carlisle concentrated on keeping his voice neutral and calm. “What seems to be the trouble, Officer?”

“We’re investigating the broken gate,” one of them said. “A car smashed through it. Next it took off and bashed the El Camino across the street. You came not long after that. Did you happen to see anything out of the ordinary?”

Carlisle shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “I didn’t see a thing.”

The cops apologized for disturbing him and left. It took a while for his breathing to settle back down, to get his mind back to the problem at hand. First and foremost, he thought, he had to have another car.

Focused on solving that one problem, he prepared to leave his storeroom, but first he rummaged around until he found the bulky box that contained not only his first draft of Savage, but Garrison Ladd’s manuscript as well. It was a good thing that hotshot detective had never found either one. Carrying the box, he locked the door and walked toward the street. The cops waved to him as he passed, but that was all. They didn’t really notice him, and he was careful to do nothing that would attract their attention.

In his search for Andrew Carlisle’s mother, Detective Farrell had struck out completely. The apartment complex in Peoria where Myrna Louise Taylor had been living at the time of her son’s trial was such a transient place that it turned out to be a total dead end. She had evidently moved on from there more than three years earlier. The manager had been on duty for only six months. The complex’s group memory didn’t stretch back any further than that.

Stymied and discouraged, Farrell trudged back to his car where the steering wheel, door handles, and seats were all too hot to touch. He turned on the car’s air-conditioning full blast, but it made very little headway. Gingerly fingering the controls on his radio, he called in to check for messages.

There were several, but the only one he paid any attention to was from Ron Mallory. The assistant superintendent at the Arizona State Prison was anxious to keep his cushy job. He was doing everything possible to cooperate with Farrell’s investigation.

Instead of heading straight out of town, Farrell drove to Metro Center, the nearest air-conditioned mall, and went inside to use a pay phone. “What’s up?” he asked when he finally had Ron Mallory on the line.

“I’ve got a name for you,” Mallory said. “I had to ask more than once, but when I finally got his attention, Carlisle’s ex-cellmate came up with his mother’s new last name, Spaulding. It was something else before that. She remarried a year or two ago.”

“Anything else besides last name? Location maybe? Husband’s first name?”

“Sorry. The last name was all I could dredge out of this guy. I was lucky to get that much.”

“You’re right,” Farrell agreed. “It is progress. I can’t expect the whole case to be handed to me on a silver platter.”

Myrna Louise made it home in one piece. That in itself was no small miracle. She got the hang of steering fairly well, although she tended to run over curbs going around corners. Her worst problem was keeping steady-enough pressure on the gas pedal. She constantly sped up and slowed down. For the last sixty miles, she held her breath for fear of running out of gas. She didn’t dare go to a gas station and turn off the motor. What if she couldn’t get it started again? All she could think of was how much she wanted to be home, safe in her own little house.

If God got her home all in one piece, she promised, she’d never ask him to do anything for her again.