J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

On Thursday evening, Andrew Carlisle himself showed up at the door. Diana was surprised to see him, amazed that he’d go so far out of his way in an attempt to talk Gary out of his stupor. She didn’t like Andrew Carlisle, but she grudgingly gave the man credit. She wasn’t privy to the conversation that passed between them, but she was grateful that Gary seemed in much better spirits after Carlisle left.

“What did he tell you?” she asked curiously, after the professor drove away.

“That all creative people go through black periods like this,” Gary told her. “He says it’s nothing unusual. It’ll pass.”

On Saturday morning, Diana went to the High Store for groceries. The trading post on top of the hill was abuzz with talk about the murder and the now identified victim, Gina Antone. Diana bought a newspaper and read the ugly story for herself. She was shocked to discover the victim was the granddaughter of someone she knew.

Diana worked at the school and so did Rita Antone-Diana as a classroom teacher and Rita as a cook in the cafeteria, although the two women were only slightly acquainted. Rita was known for striking terror in the hearts of children who came to the garbage cans to dump their lunch trays without first having tried at least one bite of everything on their plate.

Rita, standing guard over the garbage cans like a pugnacious bulldog and waving a huge rubber spatula for emphasis, would order them, “Eat your vegetables.” Usually, the frightened Indian kids complied without a murmur. So did a few cowed Anglo teachers.

By the time Diana got back to Topawa with both the groceries and the newspaper, it was almost noon. She was in the kitchen fixing lunch when Gary turned away from the television cartoons and picked up the paper. She saw his face go ashen. The knuckles on his hands turned white.

He let the paper fall to the floor and began sobbing into his hands. She went to him. Kneeling on the floor in front of him, she begged him to tell her what was wrong. For a long time, he sat weeping with his face buried on her shoulder. The paper lay faceup on the floor with the headlines screaming at her. Without his saying a word, she knew. Terror and revulsion took over. She drew away from him, grabbed up the paper, crumpled it into a wad, and shook it in his face.

“Is it this ?” she demanded, not caring that her voice had risen to a shriek. “Is this what the hell’s the matter?”

And he gave her the only answer she ever got from him, an agonized three-word reply that offered no comfort even while she pinned her every hope for both the past and present on it.

“I don’t remember.”

Not, “Of course not!” Not, “How could you say such a thing?” Not, “That’s crazy!” But, “I don’t remember”-a murderous kings X , as though he’d kept his fingers crossed while Gina Antone died.

The room reeled around her. Overwhelmed by nausea, she dashed for the bathroom and vomited, while her chicken-noodle soup cooked to blackened charcoal splinters on the kitchen stove.

When Diana came back out to the living room, Gary was gone. She ran to the door in time to see his pickup turning out of the Teachers’ Compound onto the highway, headed for Sells. She could have driven like a demon and caught up with him on the highway, but what would she have done then, forced him off the road?

Behind her, an unearthly howl from the telephone receiver told her that the phone hadn’t been hung up properly. At first, staring after the receding pickup, Diana was unable to respond. Soon a disembodied voice echoed through the house telling her to please hang up and try again. Shaken and too spent to do anything else, she put the phone back on the hook.

Gary left the house, and she never saw him again, not alive anyway, and that last phone call, placed to Andrew Carlisle’s home just before Garrison Ladd fled the house to go to his death, was one of the key pieces of evidence that linked the two men together.

Yes, Diana thought almost seven years later, going into the house in Gates Pass, closing and locking the door behind her, Andrew Carlisle was the invader here, the enemy. He had not yet set foot inside her home, but when he did, he would meet with implacable resistance, to-the-death resistance.

Rita Antone had said so, and so had Diana Ladd.

Detective Geet Farrell of the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department was a cop’s cop, someone who had been in the business a long time, someone who knew his way around people. Everyone in the Arizona law-enforcement community was familiar with the problems in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. At first Farrell was worried that Brandon Walker might be one of Sheriff DuShane’s bad guys.

“You dragged me all the way down here with some cockamamy story, so tell me, who is this character?” Farrell asked, leaning back in the booth, eyeing Brandon Walker speculatively.

“His name is Andrew Carlisle,” Walker answered. “Formerly Professor Andrew Carlisle of the University of Arizona.”

Years earlier, the professor’s case had been notorious, statewide. Farrell remembered it well. “If it’s the same case I’m thinking about, he got himself a pretty slick plea-bargain.”

“That’s the one,” Walker nodded. “The other guy, his student and co-conspirator, committed suicide rather than go to jail.”

“Tell me about the bite.”

“Like I said on the phone. One nipple was completely severed, and the key piece of evidence that could have been matched to a bite impression, the thing that would have determined once and for all who was responsible, disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Farrell nodded. “You boys have a man-sized hole in your evidence room down there. Somebody ought to plug that son of a bitch.” Both men knew Farrell was referring to DuShane himself and not some mythical hole.

“They ought to,” Walker agreed, “but that’s easier said than done.”

“What makes you think Carlisle’s my man?” Farrell asked.

“He was released from Florence at noon on Friday, put on the bus for Tucson. My guess is that he never made it that far.”

“How’d you know about Margie Danielson’s nipple?” Farrell asked. The Pinal County detective didn’t play games. He had already made a favorable judgment call about the quality of his Pima County colleague.

“From two Indians,” Walker answered, “an old one, a medicine man, and a younger one, too. At least I think the younger one is a medicine man. They’d heard you’d arrested an Indian.”

“Arrested but not charged,” Farrell agreed, “but how’d they know about that?”

“They didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. They were also the ones who came up with a possible connection between this case and the old one. They came to town this morning and asked me to find out whether or not Andrew Carlisle was out of prison.”

“And he was,” Farrell finished.

Walker nodded. “At exactly the right time. Florence released him Friday at noon.”

Farrell blinked at that, as though he hadn’t made the connection the first time. Noon Friday. From Florence to Picacho Peak a few hours later was indeed the right time and place. “So where is he now?”

“That I don’t know. I talked to a guy named Ron Mallory who’s assistant superintendent at Florence. He played real coy, acted like he had no idea where Carlisle might have gone, but the person in Records let something slip when I was talking to her. She mentioned that most of the time Carlisle was locked up, he worked as Mallory’s inmate clerk, so chances are, Carlisle’s got something on Mallory. He’s not going to lift a finger to help us.”

“Unless somebody holds his feet to the fire,” Farrell said. “Now tell me, Walker, what’s the real reason you’re here? What’s your beef? I can see how your ego might be hurt because this guy slipped off the hook once, but it seems like there’s more at stake here than just the usual problem with the crook that got away.”