Hour of the Hunter

Chapter 21

S o I’itoi went to see Gopher Boys, who guard the gates of those who live below. “I need people to come help me,” I’itoi said. “I have people from the East and the West, from the North and the South, who will help me fight Evil Siwani. Are there any people here who will help me fight my enemy?”

“First,” said Gopher Boys, “you must sing for four days to weaken your enemy. After that, come again, and we will open the gates.”

Meanwhile, Evil Siwani worried about how many warriors I’itoi would bring with him, so he sent Coyote to see. Coyote ran to the top of Baboquivari and looked down just as Gopher Boys opened the gates. The people who would help I’itoi started coming out, more and more of them all the time.

It is said that long ago, if Coyote didn’t like something, he could laugh and change it. So Coyote laughed and said, “Will these people never stop coming?” Right then the hole in the earth slammed shut, and no more people came out.

Coyote ran back to tell Evil Siwani that I’itoi was on his way with many warriors. Wherever there were people who heard about the coming battle, they were happy to join forces with I’itoi. Finally, I’itoi’s warriors camped for the night just a little way from Evil Siwani’s village. I’itoi called his people together.

“Whoever kills first in the morning will have first choice of the place he wants to live.”

She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t, not with his hand clamped over her face, crushing her cheeks and nostrils together, cutting off her ability to breathe. Carlisle had grabbed her from behind. She felt his hot breath on the back of her neck.

“Take the gun out of the holster,” he ordered, “nice and easy. Hold it by the handle with your thumb and forefinger. We’re going to walk over and put it down on the table, very carefully.”

Where are Davy and Rita? she wondered. Where is Father John? If he was still out behind the house, he might come in and help. .

The blade of the knife pressed against her skin. “I don’t want to cut you, baby. Blood’s real messy for what I have in mind, but I will if I have to. Don’t try me. The gun. Now!”

Faint from lack of oxygen, she thought maybe that was all he intended-strangling her, but then he eased his pincerlike pressure, allowing her to gulp desperate mouthfuls of air.

“The gun!” he repeated.

She reached for it silently, cursing Brandon Walker as she did so. He had been right, damn him. She’d never had a chance to touch the gun, to say nothing of using it. All having the gun had done was to make her stupid, to give her a false sense of security.

She removed the gun from its holster and held it as she’d been told. With Carlisle clutching her from behind, they glided from door to table like a pair of grotesque waltzing skaters.

“That’s better,” he muttered once the.45 was resting on the tabletop. “Much better. Now turn around and let me look at you.”

“Where’s Davy?” she asked, without turning. “What have you done with Davy and Rita?”

His voice rose menacingly. “I gave you an order, goddamnit! Turn around.” He grabbed her by one shoulder and spun her toward him. The abrupt motion threw her slightly off balance. She almost fell, but he caught her by one wrist and held her upright. The knife seemed to have disappeared into thin air, but as soon as his powerful fingers closed around her wrist, Diana knew he didn’t need the knife. Not really. His hands alone were plenty strong enough.

“Where’s Davy?” she asked again, trying to keep her voice steady, trying not to let it expose her rising terror.

He grinned back at her. “Where’s Davy?” he mocked. “Where do you think he is? What will you give me if I show him to you? A kiss maybe? A piece of tail?”

Carlisle’s tone was light and bantering, but Diana’s wrist ached from the punishing pressure of his fingers. She knew then, with a sinking heart, that strangling wasn’t it. Carlisle would never let her off that easy.

Someone seeing the frozen tableau from outside the window might have thought the man and woman to be lovers standing face to face, might have imagined them holding hands and exchanging endearments in preparation for a romantic kiss. The man was smiling. Only a glimpse of the woman’s stricken face betrayed the reality of their desperate life-and-death struggle.

“Let me go!” She started to add, “You’re hurting me,” but she didn’t. Life with Max Cooper had taught her better than that. In an uneven contest where defeat is inevitable, she had learned to show no reaction at all, to deny her tormentor his ultimate gratification-the perceptible proof of his victim’s pain.

“You know you’re going to give me whatever I want, don’t you?” he leered at her, relentlessly pulling her closer. Steeling herself, she refused to shrink away from him, refused to cringe, but even as she struggled against him, she was beginning to fear the worst-Davy and Rita were dead. They had to be. If not, they would have given her some sign, some reason to hope.

“One way or another,” Carlisle continued, “like it or not, I’m going to have you six ways to Sunday, little lady, so you could just as well get used to the idea, lay back and enjoy it, as they say. Now tell me, how’s it going to be, hard or easy?”

She didn’t respond.

“That was a joke,” he said, laughing. “Didn’t you get it?”

By then, their lips were almost touching. For an answer, she brought her knee up and rammed it into his groin. Stunned, he doubled over, grabbing himself, groaning with pain. Momentarily, he let go of her hand, giving her the chance she needed. Dodging backward and to one side, Diana groped for the handle of the.45.

The gun was a mere three feet away, but it could just as well have been three miles. She picked it up and used both hands to pull back the hammer, but before she could aim or pull the trigger, Carlisle tackled her, slamming her hard against the wall, knocking the wind from her lungs, forcing her hand up into the empty air overhead. The gun discharged with an earsplitting roar, blasting a hole in the stucco ceiling before he knocked it from her hand and sent it whirling across the room.

“That’s going to cost you, bitch!” he snarled. “That cute trick is really going to cost you.”

He came after her then in a blind heat of rage, tearing the clothes from her body, sending her sprawling. They crashed to the floor together with him on top, using Diana’s body to cushion his own fall. The back of her head bounced off the Mexican tile. A kaleidoscope of lights danced before her eyes. The room swirled around her while she drowned in a sea of despair. Davy’s dead, she thought. My son is dead. .

By the time she could see again or breathe or move, resistance was useless. Carlisle was on her, inside her, pounding away.

Davy was still trying to waken the priest when the root cellar was rocked by the roar of gunfire. Frightened, the boy cringed against the wall. No one had to tell him what the sound meant. That terrible man, that ohb, was out there with his mother, trying to kill her. Maybe he already had. Out in the living room, braced by Nana Dahd’s secret song, it had been easy to pretend to be brave, but now cowardly tears sprang to his eyes.

“Don’t let him kill my mommy, Nana Dahd,” he sobbed. “Please don’t let him.”

“Quiet!” Rita ordered.

Davy was startled by the harshness in Nana Dahd’s voice. Never had she spoken to him so sharply. “Listen. Come help me with the medicine basket. I can’t get it out by myself.”

Davy scrambled over the priest’s prone form. He felt around Rita’s body until he located the medicine basket still hidden beneath the ample folds of her dress. The basket was too large to slip out without first unfastening some of the buttons.

“Hurry,” she urged as he struggled in the dark with the buttons and the slippery material. When the basket came free, it popped out and fell to the floor. “Find it,” Rita ordered. “Take off the lid and give me the owij.”

Davy groped on the floor until he found the basket with its tight-fitting lid still securely closed. After some struggle, he finally pried open the lid and fumbled inside until his fingers closed around the awl.

“Here it is,” he said.

“Good. Put it in my good hand, then come close. Hold your hands steady and as far apart as you can.”

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

For an answer, she poked at the twine around his wrists with the sharp point of the awl, the same way she had poked it through thousands of strands of coiled cactus. Pulled taut, the twine cut sharply into Davy’s wrists. The child yelped with pain.

“Quiet,” she commanded. “Don’t make a sound, Olhoni, no matter how much it hurts.” He bit his lip to stifle another cry.

“Once we are free,” Rita continued, “we must stand on either side of the door and be absolutely silent. When the door opens, the ohb will be there. He will expect us to be tied up just as he left us. When he does not see us, he will step into the cellar. I will try to hit him with my cast or stab him with the owij. We will have only one chance. You must not wait to see what happens. Like I said in the song, you must run somewhere and hide.”

“But what about you and my mother?” Davy whispered.

“No matter what happens, you must stay hidden until morning, until someone you know comes to find you.”

Looks At Nothing sat hunched forward in the speeding tow truck as though by merely peering blindly ahead through the windshield he could somehow remove all obstacles from their path. “How soon will we be there?” he asked.

Fat Crack was driving flat out, red lights flashing. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, not daring to take his eyes from the road long enough to check his watch. “Ten if we’re lucky.”

For a time, there was no sound in the cab other than the wind rushing through the open windows. “We will probably have to kill him, you know,” the old man said finally. “Before it’s over, one of us may kill the ohb. Have you ever killed before?”

It was a startling question, asked in the same manner Looks At Nothing might have inquired about the weather, but this was no rhetorical question, and it demanded a serious answer. “No,” Fat Crack replied.

“I have,” Looks At Nothing continued. “Long ago. When I worked in the mines in Ajo, I accidentally killed a man, another Indian. Afterward, there was no one to help me paint my face black, no one to bring me food and water for sixteen days. That is one of the reasons I’itoi took away my sight. If you are the one who kills the ohb, I will bring you food and water. If I do, will you bring it to me?”

As a child, Fat Crack had heard stories of how ancient Papago warriors who killed in battle were forced to remain outside their villages, purifying themselves by eating very little and by praying for sixteen days until the souls of those they killed were finally quiet. This was 1975. He was driving a two-ton tow truck, not riding a horse. After-battle ceremonies should have been a thing of the past, but they were not. Looks At Nothing was absolutely serious, and Fat Crack could not bring himself to deny the medicine man’s request.

“Yes, old man,” Fat Crack replied. “If you kill the ohb, I will bring food and water.”

Louella Walker left Toby’s bedside long enough to use the rest room down the hall. When she returned, she touched Brandon’s shoulder. Although his eyes were wide open, he jumped as though wakened from a sound sleep. She nodded toward the door, and he followed her into the hallway.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s a phone call for you at the nurses’ station.”

He seemed dazed. “A phone call? For me?” he asked vaguely.

She nodded. “Over there.”

Watching him go to the phone made her heart ache. He looked much as his father had looked years earlier-the same impatient gestures, the same lean features. But Brandon was almost a stranger to her. She had expended so much energy and concentration denying what was happening to Toby that she had totally lost touch with her son.

Putting down the phone, he turned back toward her with his face contorted by anger or grief, Louella couldn’t tell which. She wondered who had been on the phone. From his look, the news must have been as bad or worse than what was going on beyond the swinging door of her husband’s room.

“Brandon,” she said, reaching out to him. “What’s wrong?”

He pushed her hand aside and shook his head. “Nothing,” he said irritably. “It’s work.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Louella flared. “It isn’t nothing. It must be important. I can see it in your face.”

To her dismay, Brandon exploded in anger. “You’re right. It is important. Terribly important, but what the hell am I supposed to do? I can’t be in two goddamned places at once!”

With her child of a husband far beyond help, Louella searched her heart for strength enough to once more be a mother to her child. “It’s all right, Brandon,” she said, giving his shoulder a reassuring pat. “You do what you have to. Your father and I will stay right here. We’ll be fine until you get back.”

As Davy’s hands came free, Rita’s heart overflowed with thanks to Understanding Woman for giving her granddaughter the owij, for teaching Dancing Quail to be an expert with it. There was no tool Rita knew better, nothing she had held in her hands longer.

At once she reached down and went to work on the twine binding Davy’s feet. It was important that he be totally free and capable of running, even if her own knots were still securely tied.

Breathing shallowly, the priest lay still, while no sounds at all came from the rest of the house. The ominous silence filled the old woman with misgiving. She knew some of what had been done to Gina, and she hated to think what that ho’ok, that monster, might be doing to Diana. Whatever it was, at least Davy wouldn’t see, not if he followed her directions and did as he’d been told.

The twine around Davy’s legs tugged free at last. Rita turned her attention on her own bindings. With one arm in a cast, it should have been much more difficult, but her craftsman’s fingers quickly learned the secrets of Andrew Carlisle’s crude knots, which melted apart beneath the probing point of her awl.

With Davy quaking beside her, Rita began to pray. First she addressed I’itoi, asking that the boy and his mother both be granted strength and courage. Then she spoke to Father John’s God, asking that the priest be spared from dying there on the root-cellar floor. Finally, to comfort herself as much as the boy, she took up the refrain of her song, crooning softly in the darkness.

“Remember what I say, Little Olhoni,

You must run swiftly and not look back.

That is the only way to help your mother.

That is the only way to help me.

Be like I’itoi, little Olhoni.

Hide in a crack and do not come out.”

“Get dressed,” he whispered in her ear, snapping her head back with a savage pull on her hair that loosened some of it from the roots. As tears sprang to her eyes, the ghost of an elusive memory fluttered briefly, but she couldn’t capture it. It required all her mental stamina to resist the temptation to cry out. Earlier, sinking his teeth deep into the tender flesh of her breast, he had elicited one involuntary gasp of pain. She had sensed his excited, eager response. She was grimly determined not to let it happen again.

Carlisle let go of her hair, and she fell limply back to the bed. “I said move!”

Diana had lost all sense of time. She might have been battling with him for minutes or hours or days. After his first, frenzied attack, he had dragged her from the living room to the bedroom, where he had assaulted her again. Survival instinct warned her to obey his commands, but her body refused. Bruised and bloodied, her flesh functioned at a level that was somehow beyond whatever further violation Andrew Carlisle could inflict.

Davy’s dead. The words ran through her head like a broken record. Davy’s dead, and so is Rita. Grappling with catastrophe, Diana lost all will to carry on. Whatever happened to her no longer mattered.

Carlisle grabbed one ankle and twisted it until Diana was forced onto her back. She lay naked on the bed while he feasted his eyes on her. He particularly admired the series of angry bruises around her swollen nipples. He congratulated himself for his self-restraint for being able to let go once he had fastened his teeth on her. He was saving the nipples for later.

He enjoyed the look of wary watchfulness in her eyes. She must be wondering, dreading to learn what might come next. He regretted that he couldn’t get it up again right that minute, but there was plenty of time. He would show her that, hard-on or not, he was still full of surprises.

Her gritty silence annoyed him. Diana Ladd was one tough cookie, but he knew she wouldn’t be able to deny him forever. He’d find her weakness eventually. In the face of his carefully focused efforts, she wouldn’t always keep quiet. When the agonized sounds finally escaped her lips, they would be music to his ears. You’ll come around, he thought, smiling down at her.

Carlisle had begun the complicated process of subjugation. Having once established dominance, it was important to consolidate his control, to show Diana Ladd exactly who was boss.

Stepping from the foot of the bed to the side of it, he reached down and yanked ruthlessly on the exposed mound of auburn pubic hair, pulling out a handful of the stiff, curly stuff. She winced and gritted her teeth, but again she refused to cry out. Damn her! She was deliberately spoiling his fun.

He moved to the head of the bed and stood looking down at her, hoping that she’d shrink away from him and try to get away, but she lay beneath his gaze without moving, staring brazenly back at him, daring him to hit her.

And so he did, slapping her hard across the face. He smiled at the rewarding droplet of blood that appeared almost instantly at the corner of her mouth. Maybe now he’d start getting through to her. He hit her three times in all-twice openhanded and once with the back of his hand. He didn’t have to put much effort into it. The blows were gratuitous, stinging slaps, administered mechanically and without emotion, calculated more to humiliate than hurt.

Andrew Carlisle hit the woman primarily for effect and for his own amusement. He hit her because she dared stare back at him. He hit her because he could. It never occurred to him that hitting her was a tactical blunder. That thought never crossed his mind.

Diana tasted blood in her mouth where a tooth had cut through her cheek. She focused on the salty taste, and that, combined with the teeth-rattling blows, shocked Diana out of her stunned lethargy and forced her to remember that other man who had once hit her like this, who had pulled her hair out by the roots. The sudden surge of memory galvanized her in a way Carlisle couldn’t possibly have foreseen or predicted. It rekindled the spark of her old anger, relit a raging fire that lost hope had almost extinguished.

Without a word, she sat up.

“Get dressed,” he ordered again, flinging a pair of shorts and a tank top in her direction. “Wear these, but no shoes. I like my serving women dressed but barefoot.”

She stared blankly at the clothing. They weren’t what she’d been wearing before. Those, torn from her body in his initial fierce attack, still lay in a heap on the living-room floor.

Carlisle leered at her from the doorway, savoring the marks he’d left on her sore and naked body, but she refused to turn away from him while she dressed. “Hey,” he said jokingly, “except for a few stretch marks here and there, you’ve got a pretty good bod. Anybody ever tell you that?”

A flush of embarrassment crept up her face. She said nothing. He came over to where she sat on the edge of the bed and shoved the muzzle of the gun hard into the tender flesh of her already bruised breast.

“Don’t you have any manners at all?” he demanded. “Didn’t your mother teach you that when someone pays you a compliment, you’re supposed to say thank you?”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“That’s better. Now, get moving. We’re going to the kitchen. I want you to fix me some dinner or, better yet, breakfast. Sex always makes me hungry. How about you?”

Without answering, she started for the kitchen at once, hoping he would read defeat and submission in her every action. But Diana Ladd knew she was fighting him again, and Andrew Carlisle was far too pleased with himself to notice.

There were two sounds in the room-the priest’s breathing and the mouse-like twitchings of Rita’s owij picking at the twine. Davy wished Bone were there. He longed for the dog’s comforting presence, but Bone was at the vet’s or dead now, too, along with everybody else.

Forbidden to make a sound, Davy thought about what Rita had told him, for him to run away, to find a crack, to hide. A crack.

He thought about cracks, about the jagged one in the lumpy plaster beside his bed. He always examined that crack in great detail when he was supposed to be taking a nap, wondering if it had grown bigger or smaller since the last time he saw it. But a fly could never hide in there. Davy couldn’t even put his thumbnail in it. Flies were bigger than that.

A crack. The verse came to him, singsong, the way he had heard it at school. “Step on a crack, and you’ll break your mother’s back.” But that was a sidewalk crack. Again, not big enough.

There was Fat Crack, but he wasn’t a crack at all. He was a person.

Then, finally, Davy remembered the cave he and Bone had found, the chimney in the mountain behind the house. Now that he thought about it, maybe that cave wasn’t a cave at all. It was a crack-a crack in the mountain. That was where he would go, where he would run to hide if he ever got a chance.

Suddenly, there were voices on the other side of the door. Davy’s heart pounded, wondering how soon the door would fly open again, how soon before he would have to make his dash for freedom.

At first, Davy heard only the man’s voice, talking on and on, but then he heard another voice, that of a woman, softer and higher. Straining, he recognized his mother’s voice. She wasn’t dead after all.

Rita had finally managed to free herself. Davy tugged at the old woman’s hand, wanting to tell her the news, but she laid her fingers on his lips, warning him to silence. Carefully they moved into position. A sliver of light had appeared under the door. They used that as a guide.

They stood on either side of the door for what seemed like forever. Eventually, the smell of frying bacon came wafting into Davy’s nose. It was a long time since he and the Bone had shared their last tortillas. The smell of that frying bacon filled Davy’s nostrils and made his mouth water. His feet itched. He needed to go to the bathroom. Davy began to doubt that the door would ever open. He fidgeted a little, but Rita clamped her good hand down hard on his shoulder, poking him painfully with the awl in the process. After that, he stood quietly and waited.

A hundred yards or so from the turnoff, Fat Crack doused the lights and parked the truck. He had kept the lights flashing almost the entire way, but as they neared the house, he turned off everything, flashers and headlights included.

“Now what?” he asked, shutting down the ignition and parking the truck just beyond a curve that concealed the house from view.

“We go down there and try to take him by surprise.”

“Good luck,” Fat Crack returned. “What about the dog?”

“Dog?”

“Rita has a huge dog named Oh’o. When I was here earlier, he almost bit my leg off.”

“He must be inside,” Looks At Nothing said.

Right, Fat Crack thought. Sure he is. Famous last words. With a disgusted shake of his head, the younger man hurried around to the passenger side and helped Looks At Nothing climb down. Moving as quietly as possible, they headed for the driveway that led down to the house. The dark made no difference to the blind medicine man, but when they stepped off the pavement, Fat Crack had some difficulty negotiating the rocky terrain.

They’d gone only a few steps when Fat Crack saw, a mile or so away, the approaching headlights of another vehicle. That other car worried him. What if Looks At Nothing was wrong? What if the ohb was only now coming to the house, only now beginning his attack? If he drove up right then, they would be trapped in the open driveway with no means of retreat or defense.

“I have my stick,” the old man was saying. “What will you use for a weapon?”

“A rock, I guess,” Fat Crack replied. “I don’t see anything else.”

“Good,” Looks At Nothing said. “Get one.”

Fat Crack was bent over picking one up when he heard the dog. This time there was no warning bark, only a hair-raising, low-throated growl. The night was black, and Bone was a black and brown dog, totally invisible to the naked eye. Fat Crack straightened up and looked around, expecting to fend off an all-out attack. Instead, Looks At Nothing spoke forcefully into the darkness.

“Oh’o, ihab!” the medicine man commanded. “Bone, here!”

To Fat Crack’s astonishment, the dog obeyed at once, materializing out of the brush beside the road. He went directly to the old man, tail lowered and wagging tentatively.

Preoccupied with the dog, they failed to notice the other car again until it braked at the head of the drive. Too late Fat Crack tugged at Looks At Nothing’s arm, trying to pull him down the hill toward the meager cover of a mesquite tree.

All the way from TMC, Brandon had cursed himself for being in his mother’s car instead of the Galaxy, for being cut off from all communications. If only he had talked to Maddern again, they might have coordinated some kind of game plan. As it was, the only thing he’d thought to tell Hank was for him to call Diana and warn her.

He reached down and checked the.38 Smith amp; Wesson Special in his ankle holster. Police officers were required to be armed at all times. Ankle holsters were the only feasible choice when wearing ordinary clothing.

Brandon’s car sped over the top of the rise and roared down the long canyon road. Ahead and to the right, he could see lights glowing peacefully in the windows of Diana Ladd’s solitary house. Maybe he and Farrell were pushing panic buttons for no good reason.

Walker slowed and switched on his turn signal. As his tires dropped off the hard surface onto the dirt driveway, the headlights caught two shadowy figures dodging into the underbrush ahead of him. Walker felt a rush of adrenaline. He had surprised them, caught them in the act.

He jammed on the brakes, cutting the motor, turning off the lights. Expecting gunfire, he ducked down on the seat and drew his weapon. Heart pounding, he lay there waiting, with the desert night still and expectant around him.

Two of them, he thought. So who had that bastard Carlisle brought along with him? Whoever it was, Brandon thought, they’re going to get more than they bargained for. Not only was he here, Geet Farrell was on his way with plenty of reinforcements. In addition, there was that godawful dog. If those two jokers ran into Bone out there in the dark somewhere, they’d have yet another rude awakening.

Carlisle scrounged through the refrigerator and came away with a pound of bacon and half a dozen eggs, which he handed over to Diana. “Bacon, crisp. Eggs, over easy. Toast. Orange juice and coffee. Think you can handle that, honey? You know, if you’re a good-enough cook, maybe I’ll keep you around awhile. We’ll play house, just the two of us-cooking and fucking-and not necessarily in that order. What do you think of that?”

Diana said nothing. Carlisle, enamored with the sound of his own voice, didn’t notice. While he continued with his rambling monologue, Diana gathered what she needed for cooking-frying pan, salt and pepper shakers, the spatula. What would happen if she turned on the gas in the oven and didn’t light it? Would enough propane accumulate to cause an explosion, or would the oven just come on eventually when the gas seeped out far enough to reach the pilot lights on top of the stove? Anything was worth a try. Diana turned on the control.

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

Still talking, Carlisle had meandered into a long self-pitying dissertation about prison life. “Do you know what they do to people like me in places like that?” he was saying. “Do you have any idea? Answer me when I speak to you.”

“No,” she said, “I have no idea.”

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

“How do you like your eggs?” she asked.

“I already told you. Over easy, same as I like my women. Get it?” He laughed. “Pay attention, girl. You pay attention to everything I say, and maybe I’ll let you hang around a little longer.”

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

“That was Gary’s problem, you know,” he continued offhandedly. “He didn’t pay attention. That’s why I had to get rid of him.”

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

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

“Damn,” Walker muttered. The dog was probably inside the house, sleeping on the job. The detective lay there and tried to strategize. He had to assume that both his opponents were armed and dangerous. Two-to-one odds aren’t very good, especially for a cop dealing with crooks who may not care that much if they live or die.

He considered honking the horn to alert the people in the house of the impending danger, but that might do more harm than good. If Diana came outside to see what was going on, she might possibly fall into the wrong hands. What if the crooks took off with her before help arrived?

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

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

The bacon turned to hard, brittle curls in the pan, but an oblivious Andrew Carlisle continued talking. “There are tools for rape, you see, things you wouldn’t normally think about, but in prison you have to use whatever’s handy. You’d be surprised what people get off on. This gun, for instance. What would you think if I crammed that all the way up inside you? Would it make you come? The metal gun sight might bother you a little, don’t you think?”

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

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

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

“Wouldn’t you?” he asked, eyeing her speculatively. “I think you would. Maybe after I eat, we could have a lesson. I’ll show you how it works right here on the kitchen table. Mr. Colt has a permanent hard-on for you. I think he’d enjoy it.”

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

“Or maybe, little Mama,” he added with a malicious grin, “since you don’t think you’d like it, maybe I should bring that kid of yours out here and cram it down his throat or maybe up his ass a couple of inches. How much could he take? How much could you? What would you do then, Diana? Would you ask me to stop? Would you beg me to do it to you instead of him? Would you crawl on your hands and knees on the floor and kiss my feet and beg?”

A shock of recognition sent needles and pins through her hands and feet. Davy wasn’t dead after all. He was alive and in the root cellar. There was still hope, still a chance.

Suddenly, frowning, Carlisle stood up. “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you burning the bacon?”

Putting the key down on the table and retrieving the gun, he started toward the stove. When he was three steps away, Diana grabbed the overheated handle of the frying pan and heaved it full in his face. Pieces of blackened bacon clung to his skin wherever they landed. He screamed as fiery-hot fat burned through his clothing, sealing it to his skin.

Diana dodged to one side as the gun roared to life, shattering the window behind her.

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

Forgetting about cover, Walker charged toward the house himself, circling around the thicket of gigantic prickly pear and coming up on the front porch from the opposite direction. He tried the door handle and found it locked. He tried kicking it, but the stout old door didn’t give way. The windows all had screens. From inside the house, Walker heard the sounds of an ongoing battle, but off to the side of the porch, the detective caught sight of movement.

“Stop,” he shouted, but two shadowy figures simply disappeared into the darkness beyond the porch. Two of them, he thought. Some inside and at least two still out here. How the hell many of them are there? Walker wondered grimly.

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

Through a nightmare of searing pain, Andrew Carlisle tried to wipe the clinging grease from his face and eyes. He could see nothing. I’m blind! he thought furiously. The bitch blinded me!

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

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

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

“I’ll kill you,” Carlisle muttered over and over. It was a chant and incantation. “I’ll kill you.”

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

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

Holding her breath for fear the sound might betray her whereabouts, Diana glanced around the room, looking for an escape hatch or place to hide. On the floor beside the up-ended table, she spied the fallen key to the root cellar. As soon as she saw it, she dived for it, even though Carlisle was between her and the key.

Hearing movement, Carlisle lunged in her direction. They collided in midair and crashed to the floor together. The force of the blow knocked the.45 from Carlisle’s hand. It spun across the floor, coming to rest at the base of the sink. Of the two, he was far stronger, but being able to see gave Diana a slight advantage. Twisting away, she eluded his grasp and retrieved the key. She scrambled toward the root-cellar door and was almost there when his powerful fingers clamped shut around her ankles.

She kicked at his fingers, but her bare feet had no effect on the hands inexorably dragging her away from the door. She fought him desperately but despairingly, realizing she was no match for him, that it was only a matter of time.

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

Suddenly, for the barest moment, Carlisle let go of her. She scrambled away from him, and this time managed to shove the key into the lock before he grabbed hold of her again. She tried to push him away only to have a smarting pain shoot across her hand and up her arm. Shocked, Diana looked at her arm and hand as blood spurted out. Carlisle had his knife again. This time she knew he would kill her with it. There would be no escape.

Stymied by the latched gate, Brandon Walker dropped back and then vaulted over the barrier, which seemed to be covered by a layer of wet blankets. Inside the yard, he landed on something soft and yielding, something human. His added weight brought the other man down. They fell to the ground as one and grappled there briefly until he glimpsed Fat Crack’s face in the pale starlight.

“Fat Crack!” Walker exclaimed. “What the. .”

“It’s the detective,” Fat Crack said simultaneously.

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

Fat Crack let go at once, and they both struggled to their feet. In the melee, Walker had dropped his.38 Special. They wasted precious seconds searching for it. At last Fat Crack found it and gave it back.

“If you’re out here,” Brandon whispered, “who’s in there?”

“The ohb,” Fat Crack answered. “It’s the ohb.”

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

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

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

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

The momentary respite gave Diana one more chance. This time she made it all the way to the root-cellar door. Still on her knees, she reached up and turned the key in the lock. Before she could move out of the way, the door banged open, knocking her backward into the wall.

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

“I’ll kill you,” the man was saying over and over outside the door. “I’ll kill you.”

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

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

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

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

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

The pain was terrible, beyond anything he could have imagined, but what was worse, Carlisle feared Diana Ladd had escaped. He started toward the door.

“Where are you, bitch?”

“Here,” Diana responded from someplace else in the room. “I’m behind you.” To decoy Davy’s safe escape, she wanted Carlisle’s attention focused solely on her.

“Where?”

“Right here,” she answered again, and it sounded as though she was laughing at him.

Doggedly, like an unstoppable monster from an old B-grade movie, Andrew Carlisle whirled and came crawling toward her, but before he made any progress, something heavy landed on his back. Horrified, he felt a dog’s inch-long canines plunge into the back of his neck.

Too stunned to move and trying to stem the flow of blood from her own arm, Diana could do nothing but watch. The dog was everywhere at once, huge jaws snapping. He leaped up and backward and sideways, always staying just out of the man’s reach. Finally, Bones’s jaws closed over Carlisle’s wrist.

While the man howled in inhuman rage, the dog shook his massive head. Bones crunched in Carlisle’s mangled wrist. Tendons and nerves snapped like so many broken rubber bands.

Arm upraised, owij in hand, Rita emerged from the root cellar ready to do battle. She, too, stood transfixed, watching the man struggle to escape the attacking dog. Trying to save his mangled wrist, Carlisle attempted one last kick. The dog let go of the hand and pounced on the foot. As the dog’s jaws closed once more, Carlisle folded himself into a fetal position.

Rita remained where she was for a moment, surveying the room, while Carlisle sobbed brokenly. “Get the dog off me. Please, get him off.”

The Indian woman pocketed her owij. It was no longer needed. Across the room, she saw both the knife and the gun. She hurried at once to retrieve them. Only when she had them both firmly in her possession did she speak to the dog.

“Oh’o, ihab.” The dog came to her side at once, wagging his tail, waiting to be petted. “Good gogs,” she crooned, patting his shaggy head. “It’s over.”

Rita turned from the dog and placed the gun in Diana’s lap. “Here,” she said. “If you wish to shoot him, now’s your chance. Do it quickly.”

Diana looked from Rita to the stricken form of Andrew Carlisle, who lay sobbing on the floor in a widening pool of his own urine. Finally, Diana looked down at the gun and shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I don’t have to now. It wouldn’t be self-defense.”

A radiant smile suffused Rita’s weathered old face. “Good,” she said. “I’itoi would be proud of you.”

Behind them, Brandon Walker burst into the room. Bone turned to fend off this new attack, but before he could, the oven door blew its hinges with a resounding thump, knocking the dog to the floor.

Crying and laughing both, Diana knelt beside Bone and cradled his massive head in her lap. The dog looked up at her gratefully and thumped his long tail on the floor. He wasn’t hurt, but it had been a hard day for a dog. He didn’t want to get up.

Detective Farrell and Myrna Louise arrived just ahead of a phalanx of police cars dispatched by Hank Maddern at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. For the first time in her life, she refused Andrew’s summons when he asked for her. Stone-faced and without getting out of the car, Myrna Louise watched while her son was loaded into a waiting ambulance. Ironically, he was taken first. Of all the injuries, his were deemed the most serious.

But not serious enough, Myrna Louise thought bitterly, not nearly serious enough. If she’d been lucky-and she had never been lucky where her son was concerned-Andrew would have died. Someone would have put a bullet through his wretched head and taken him out of his misery, the way they used to do with rabid dogs.

After that, another stretcher came out of the house with someone strapped to it. The old Indian woman-what was her name again-limped heavily along beside the stretcher and climbed into the waiting ambulance to ride to the hospital, although she herself didn’t seem to be hurt.

A few minutes later, Myrna Louise recognized Diana Ladd. She, too, was carried past the detective’s car to an ambulance, with a man walking along beside her. Thank God they weren’t dead, Myrna Louise thought gratefully. She never could have lived with herself if that had happened.

Myrna Louise sat there quietly, knowing that eventually it would be her turn to answer questions. What would she say about Andrew when they asked her? Tell the truth, she thought. And what would happen when the neighbors on Weber Drive found out that Andrew Carlisle was her son? Would they still speak to her?

Myrna Louise sighed. She could always move again, she supposed. She’d done it before. Maybe she’d get herself one of those U-Hauls. What did they call that, “an adventure in moving”? She’d drive herself far away and start over again, somewhere where nobody knew her.

But first, she thought, she’d have to get herself a driver’s license, and maybe even a pair of glasses.

Davy sat in the crack and waited. That’s what he would call it from now on, I’itoi’s crack. He wondered how it would feel to be a fly and to go back down to the house. He would be able to see what was happening, but nobody would know he was there. He wanted to know and yet he didn’t. He was afraid to know.

His mother was still alive when he ran past her, and so was Nana Dahd, but were they still? He couldn’t tell. Bone had wanted to come with him, but he had ordered the dog to stay. Now, he wished he hadn’t. Why didn’t Bone come looking for him? Why didn’t someone else?

While he watched, a string of cop cars came streaming down the canyon road, lights flashing. It looked like a parade, except it wasn’t. There were no floats, no marching bands. The police cars were all going to his house. What would they find there? Would his mother still be alive?

When he first reached the cleft in the rock, he was panting, out of breath, afraid that the terrible man was right behind him. Now, as more time passed, he wondered who would come for him. Nana Dahd had been very specific about that. She had told him he must wait until morning, wait for someone he knew.

He shifted his body. The sharp rocks behind his back were growing uncomfortable. What if they forgot all about him and nobody came? Maybe he’d end up living there forever. How long was forever, anyway?

Three more sets of flashing lights came down the winding road and pulled in at the driveway. How many police cars did it take? he wondered. What was happening? He kept thinking his mother would come for him or Rita, but the longer it went without anyone coming, the more he was afraid they were dead.

What happened to you after you were dead? That was one of the things he was supposed to talk about with Father John the next time he saw him. Davy thought about Father John lying there so still on the root-cellar floor, and he thought about what the priest had said as they were leaving to take Bone to the vet.

How had that prayer gone? Davy squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, trying to remember the exact words.

“In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

The Father he could understand, and he could understand the Son, but who was the Holy Ghost? Maybe, thought Davy, the Holy Ghost was I’itoi. So he bowed his head, just as he had seen Rita do, just like Father John, and he said a prayer for his mother, for Nana Dahd, for Father John, and also for Oh’o. He finished by praying, “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of I’itoi. Amen.” It sounded a little different, but Davy was sure it meant the same thing.

Just then, as he finished the prayer, he heard a rock go scrabbling down the face of the cliff. He drew back inside the rocky cleft, making himself as small as possible, holding his breath, afraid that somehow the ohb had managed to escape and was coming after him.

He listened. Clearly now, he could hear footsteps coming closer and closer, as though whoever was coming knew the path to the crack, as though they knew all about Davy’s secret hiding place.

“Olhoni?” Someone was calling his name, his Indian name, but it wasn’t Nana Dahd. Who could it be then? No one else called him that. The voice wasn’t familiar, and Nana Dahd had given him strict orders to wait for someone he knew.

Then, suddenly, Bone thrust his spiked head into the entrance to the crack and covered the boy’s face with wet, slobbery kisses. Behind the dog, a man’s face peered in the small opening.

“Olhoni? Are you in there?”

Weak with relief, Davy let his breath out. It was Fat Crack. “Heu’u,” he answered. “Yes.”

“Come on, boy,” the Indian said, gently moving the dog aside. “An old man and I are waiting to take you to the hospital.”

Hospital? The word made Davy’s heart hurt. “Is my mother all right?” he asked. “Is Nana Dahd?”

“Your mother is hurt, but not bad,” the Indian said quietly. “Rita went with Father John. Come on. Everyone will be better once they know you are safe.”

As soon as Davy was outside the cave, Bone careened around him in ecstatically happy circles, but the boy was not ready to play. This was still far too serious. What he had lived through that day was anything but a game.

“What about the ohb?” Davy asked. “Is he dead?”

“No, nawoj,” Fat Crack replied. “The ohb isn’t dead, but he didn’t win. He’s in the hospital, too. Your dog almost bit his hand off. Rita wouldn’t let him.”

“She should have,” Davy said angrily. “What will happen to him now?”

Fat Crack shrugged. “The Mil-gahn will send him back to the Mil-gahn jail, I guess.”

“Will he get out again?” Davy asked.

“Who knows?” Fat Crack said, shaking his head. “That, Olhoni, is up to the Mil-gahn, isn’t it.”