J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

The mutual but unacknowledged attraction between them had long been held at bay by sobriety and by the singular force of Father John’s convictions. Now, those convictions crumpled. What passed between them then was as unanticipated and electrifying as a bolt of lightning on a clear, still night.

It happened once and only once, but as is so often the case, once was more than enough. The damage was done.

Again Andrew Carlisle took his time at the scene of his latest triumph. He treated himself to a luxurious bath-Johnny Rivkin’s bathroom held numerous wonderful bath potions. Finished bathing, Carlisle meticulously removed all body hairs from the drain and flushed them down the toilet. He went through the room, looting it at leisure, taking all the cash, leaving everything else, and thoroughly cleaning each surface as he finished with it.

The closet was another matter entirely. There were some things in there that he simply couldn’t bear to leave behind, including a loose-fitting lush pink silk pantsuit that fit him perfectly. Two more wigs, these of much better quality than the one he had purchased, some underwear, and two pairs of hooker-heel shoes that might have been made for him. After choosing some items to wear, Carlisle stowed the rest, including the clothing he’d worn into the hotel, in one of Rivkin’s monogrammed Hartmann suitcases.

He took more than usual pains with his makeup, so that shortly after six that Sunday morning, when a well-dressed woman walked through the lobby carrying a suitcase, nobody paid the slightest attention to her. She paused outside the door long enough to pull a Sunday edition of the Arizona Daily Sun out of a vending machine, but nobody noticed that, either.

Three blocks away, totally out of sight of the Santa Rita, Andrew Carlisle climbed back into Jake Spaulding’s waiting Valiant. As he drove north, he took perverse pleasure in anticipating the kind of effect his costume would have on his mother. Myrna Louise had never approved of him dressing up, not even when he was little.

Oh, well, he thought, dismissing her. Other than packing his lunch and maybe washing a few clothes now and then, what had Myrna Louise ever done for him?

Driving home from breakfast, Diana seethed with anger. Some of it was aimed at Davy, but most was reserved for that damn full-of-business columnist. It was despicable for him to have taken advantage of an innocent child, to interview him and pry out information. Not only that, what, if anything, had he told Davy about his father? How much did George O’Connell know to tell?

Not as much as I do, Diana thought, with her whole body aching from the pain of remembering. Not nearly as much.

Garrison Ladd had slept the entire day away while Diana waited with her stomach roiling inside her. She wanted him to wake up and talk to her.

Feeling so physically ill bothered Diana. It wasn’t like her to be sick. Since she wasn’t feverish, she chalked it up to lack of sleep and a bad case of nerves. She steeled herself for what she regarded as the worst it could be-another other woman, she supposed. The very thought of it sent her spinning into a dizzying wash of memory, of coming home to Eugene from Joseph unexpectedly one weekend during her mother’s final illness, of walking into her own house and finding Gary in bed with one of the female teaching assistants.

Already worn by the constant strain of care-giving, Diana snapped, turning into a wild woman and running raving through the house. She screamed and threw things and broke them, while the terrified T.A. cowered naked behind a locked bathroom door. Gary followed Diana from room to room, trying to keep her from hurting herself, pleading with her to listen to reason.

Reason! He had balls enough to use the word reason on her, as though she were a child pitching a temper tantrum. Still raging, she left the house vowing divorce. She went straight back to Joseph and to caring for her mother. What else was there to do?

Predictably, Gary appeared in Joseph two days later, bearing flowers and candy and gift-wrapped apologies. He begged and cajoled. He hadn’t intended for it to happen, but he was so lonely with Diana gone all the time. It never would have happened if he hadn’t missed her so much. He’d change, he promised. As soon as Diana got her undergraduate degree, they’d leave Eugene, whether he was finished with his Ph.D. program or not. They’d go somewhere else and start over, if she’d please just take him back.

Christ! she thought, waiting for him to wake up and fighting back a wave of nausea. How could I have been so dumb? How could she possibly have believed him? she wondered, and yet she had. Why? Because believing was easier than admitting you were wrong, easier than telling your dying Catholic mother that her only daughter was getting a divorce. But most of all, because believing was what Diana Ladd had wanted to do more than anything else. In spite of everything that had happened, she loved Garrison Ladd. She wanted him to love her back with the same unreasoning devotion.

At four that afternoon, Gary got up and came out into the living room of their shabby, school-owned thirteen-by-seventy-foot mobile home. “Hello,” he said sheepishly.

“Hello,” she returned. “How are you?”

“Hung over as hell. That cactus wine is a killer.” Gary had uttered the words without even thinking, and then, as they registered, he turned ashen gray.

Diana didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but she remembered the incident later with terrible clarity as the nightmare of Gina Antone’s death began to unfold around her. What he said was nothing more than a slip of the tongue, but it was a clue. If she had paid attention, it might have warned her of what was to come, but she wasn’t smart enough to pick up on it, and what difference would knowing have made? She couldn’t have prevented what happened any more than she could have hoped to stop a speeding locomotive bare-handed.

She remembered Gary groping blindly for the back of a chair and dropping heavily into it. He had buried his face in his hands and wept. It was the first time Diana ever saw her husband cry.

Her own nausea totally forgotten, she hurried to comfort him and to bring him a glass of chilled iced tea. Whatever was wrong, she would do her best to fix it for him. Whatever it was, she would somehow smooth it over. After all, she had Iona’s shining example to follow, didn’t she? That’s exactly what her mother would have done, had done for all those years, all her life. Smoothed things over. For everyone.

Fat Crack’s tow truck looked at home among the others parked in the dusty San Xavier parking lot. Many of the vehicles had out-of-state licenses or rental stickers, but by far the majority were beat-up old pickups, station wagons, and sedans that belonged to the regular parishioners. Hard as it was for out-of-state guests to fathom, the musty-smelling mission still functioned as a church, with a regular schedule of well-attended masses.

While Looks At Nothing stayed in the truck, Fat Crack went to the door of the church and waited for Father John to come out. He did at last, accompanied by a somewhat younger-looking priest.

“Father John?” Fat Crack asked tentatively.

“Yes.”

“My name is Gabe Ortiz, Juanita’s son, Rita Antone’s nephew.”

A concerned frown furrowed the old man’s forehead. “I hope your aunt’s all right.”

Fat Crack nodded. “She’s fine. She’s in the hospital, but fine. I have someone over here who needs to speak to you.”

“Of course,” Father John said, excusing himself from his colleague.

Fat Crack led the way. They entered the row of parked cars a few vehicles away from the tow truck just as Looks At Nothing climbed down from his seat. The old medicine man stood leaning on his cane. He seemed to stare right through them with his glazed and sightless eyes.