J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

Johnny was beginning to enjoy himself. Here was someone who hated small talk almost as much as he did, someone else who wasn’t any good at it. Knowing that made Johnny feel in control for a change, something that didn’t happen to him very often.

“Believe it or not, for the past six years, I’ve been a housewife.” Art ducked his head as he made this admission, as though it were something he was ashamed of.

“I believe it all right.” Johnny got up and poured two more glasses of champagne. “Here. Have another. It’ll take your mind off your troubles, Art. You need to relax, lighten up, have some fun.”

“What did you have in mind?”

Johnny shrugged. He was enjoying the tete-a-tete. It was a shame to rush into it. “I don’t know. Not something terribly energetic. We’re both a bit old for that sort of thing. Maybe start out with a nice massage. I have some lovely oils in the other room. Larry always said that I’m very good with my hands.”

Art smiled sadly. “That’s something else we have in common.”

“Well, come on, then. Shall we flip a coin to see who goes first? Although my mother always said company got to choose.”

“I’ll do you first,” Art said, “unless you’d rather. .”

“Oh, no, by all means. Suit yourself.”

Trembling with anticipation, Johnny took his glass and the almost-empty bottle of champagne and led the way into the bedroom. He set the bottle and his glass on the bedside table and stripped off his jacket and trousers. If Art had been much younger, Johnny might have worried more about how his body looked, but Art Rains wasn’t any spring chicken, either.

Before Art had arrived at the hotel, Johnny had turned down the covers on the bed. Now, he lay facedown on the cool, smooth sheets and waited. He sighed and closed his eyes. This was going to be delightful.

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” Art asked.

“Not at all.”

Soon KHOS blared in his ear. Johnny didn’t much like country-western, but it was a good idea to have some background music. After all, if this was very good, there might be a few inadvertent noises. A Holy Roller family might be next door.

A moment later, Johnny was surprised when, instead of a pair of well-oiled caressing hands touching his back or shoulders, he felt the weight of a naked male body settle heavily astride his buttocks. He didn’t worry too much about that, though. There was certainly more than one way to do a massage. Johnny had heard the Japanese actually walked on people’s backs.

Suddenly, a rough hand grabbed a fistful of hair and jerked his face off the pillow.

“Hey,” Johnny said. “What’s this. .?”

The sentence died in the air. Johnny Rivkin never saw the hunting knife that cut him. In fact, he hardly felt it at first. He tried to cry out for help, but he couldn’t, nor could he free his flailing arms from the powerful hands that held him fast.

Rivkin’s body leaped in the air, jerking like a headless chicken while Glen Campbell’s plaintive “Wichita Lineman” lingered in the air and the almost-empty champagne bottle and glass fell to the carpeted floor but didn’t break.

Johnny Rivkin’s death was much bloodier than Margie Danielson’s had been. Andrew Carlisle was glad he’d taken off all his clothes, glad he’d be able to shower and clean himself up before he left the room.

He had planned to let things go a little further, indulge in a little more foreplay, but buggering an aging queer didn’t have much appeal. Besides, Carlisle was impatient. He wanted to get on with it.

He waited out the ride, which wasn’t that different from the other, although it seemed to take quite a while longer before Johnny Rivkin’s gurgling struggles ceased. Fortunately, the hotel mattress was easy on Andrew Carlisle’s sore knees. They still hurt from the scorching rocks at Picacho Peak.

It was late when Diana fell asleep, and even later when she woke up on Sunday morning. With Rita gone, the house seemed empty, and prospects for breakfast weren’t good.

On her salary, eating out wasn’t something Diana could afford often, but that Sunday morning seemed like a time to splurge. Both she and Davy had been through enough of a wringer that a special treat was in order. They drove to Uncle John’s Pancake House on Miracle Mile and waited through the Sunday morning crush.

Over brightly colored menus, Diana explained that Davy could choose from any number of Mil-gahn foods-eggs and bacon, buttermilk pancakes, Swedish pancakes, German pancakes-but popovers with honey or tortillas with peanut butter weren’t an option.

The waitress, a crusty old dame from the eat-it-or-wear-it school of food service, arrived at their table pad in hand. She fixed her eyes on Davy. “What’ll you have, young man?”

Shyly, he ducked his head. “Swedish,” he said in a strangled whisper. “With the red berries.”

“And what to drink?”

“Milk.”

“How about you, ma’am?”

“German pancakes and coffee.”

The waitress nodded and disappeared, returning a few moments later with coffee and milk. She put the milk in front of Davy. “How’d you get all those stitches?” she asked.

Davy blushed and didn’t answer. “He was in a car accident,” Diana explained, speaking for him. “Out on the reservation.”

The waitress frowned at that, but she left the table without saying anything more. A few minutes later, she was back, carrying a section of the Sunday paper. “This you?” she asked, holding the paper up so Davy could see it.

Davy looked at the picture and nodded. “What’s that?” Diana asked.

The waitress looked at Diana in surprise. “You mean you don’t know about it?”

Handed the paper, a stunned Diana Ladd found herself staring into the eyes of a clearly recognizable picture of her son, complete with stitches.

“Your breakfast’s on me this morning, sweetie,” the waitress was saying to Davy. “You sound like a regular little hero to me, saving that old woman’s life. Wouldn’t you like something else along with your pancakes, a milk shake maybe?”

“No,” Davy said. “Thank you. Just milk.”

The waitress left, and Diana turned on Davy. “How did your picture get into the newspaper?”

Her son glanced nervously at the paper. Next to his own picture was a smaller one, a head shot of the man who had spoken to him the previous afternoon. “The man had a camera. He took my picture yesterday while you were inside the hospital with Rita.”

“You talked to a reporter?” Diana demanded, her voice rising in pitch. “You let him take your picture?”

Davy squirmed lower in his chair until his eyes barely showed above the top of the booth. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He was a friend of my father’s,” Davy told her. “I was afraid you’d get mad.”

And, of course, he was right.

From George’s Beat, a biweekly column by George O’Connell in the Arizona Daily Sun , June 14, 1975:

Seven years ago Friday a young Papago woman died brutally in the desert west of Tucson. Two men were eventually implicated in the death of twenty-two-year-old Gina Antone. One of them was a student of creative writing at the University of Arizona. The other was the English professor in charge of that same program.

The professor, Andrew Carlisle, was eventually convicted of voluntary manslaughter and second degree rape. He was sentenced to serve time in the Arizona State Prison at Florence, while his student, Garrison Ladd, committed suicide rather than face arrest and conviction.

Now, seven years later to the day, two of the families involved in that earlier tragedy are once more linked together in the news, only this time with a far different result.