J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

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

“When? Now?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

“Do you remember her wipih , her nipple?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” Francine said.

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