J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

Stymied and discouraged, Farrell trudged back to his car where the steering wheel, door handles, and seats were all too hot to touch. He turned on the car’s air-conditioning full blast, but it made very little headway. Gingerly fingering the controls on his radio, he called in to check for messages.

There were several, but the only one he paid any attention to was from Ron Mallory. The assistant superintendent at the Arizona State Prison was anxious to keep his cushy job. He was doing everything possible to cooperate with Farrell’s investigation.

Instead of heading straight out of town, Farrell drove to Metro Center, the nearest air-conditioned mall, and went inside to use a pay phone. “What’s up?” he asked when he finally had Ron Mallory on the line.

“I’ve got a name for you,” Mallory said. “I had to ask more than once, but when I finally got his attention, Carlisle’s ex-cellmate came up with his mother’s new last name, Spaulding. It was something else before that. She remarried a year or two ago.”

“Anything else besides last name? Location maybe? Husband’s first name?”

“Sorry. The last name was all I could dredge out of this guy. I was lucky to get that much.”

“You’re right,” Farrell agreed. “It is progress. I can’t expect the whole case to be handed to me on a silver platter.”

Myrna Louise made it home in one piece. That in itself was no small miracle. She got the hang of steering fairly well, although she tended to run over curbs going around corners. Her worst problem was keeping steady-enough pressure on the gas pedal. She constantly sped up and slowed down. For the last sixty miles, she held her breath for fear of running out of gas. She didn’t dare go to a gas station and turn off the motor. What if she couldn’t get it started again? All she could think of was how much she wanted to be home, safe in her own little house.

If God got her home all in one piece, she promised, she’d never ask him to do anything for her again.

As Diana and Davy returned home from San Xavier, Fat Crack’s tow truck was parking in the front drive. Diana was momentarily concerned about the presence of a strange vehicle, but Davy was ecstatic when he caught sight of Rita. He was ready to leap from the car well before it stopped.

“Be very gentle with her, Davy,” Diana cautioned. “She had surgery, you know. She has stitches, too.”

“On her head?”

“No, on her tummy.”

“I’ll be careful,” Davy promised, scurrying toward the truck. Reaching the door just as Fat Crack handed Rita down, Davy stopped short, daunted at first by the huge Indian’s presence. Then, remembering who the man was, he stepped forward. “Hi,” he said shyly to Fat Crack.

Davy’s first instinct was to throw himself at Rita, but remembering his mother’s warning, he hung back until Rita raised her good arm and beckoned him to her. He hugged her gingerly around the waist while she patted the top of his head. The gesture activated his “On” switch. With a grin, he jumped away from her and pointed to the shaved spot on his head.

“See my stitches?” he boasted. “How many do you have? Can I see them?”

Rita smiled and shook her head. “No, you can’t see them, and neither can I. I’m too fat.” She laughed, and so did Fat Crack.

During this exchange, Fat Crack pulled several loaded hospital-issue plastic bags from the truck. “I’ll take these inside,” he said.

Fat Crack went on ahead. Rita limped after him with Davy holding tightly to her good hand. Diana waited at the front door, holding it open. “Welcome home,” she said.

“Thank you.”

There was a strange formality between the two women, as though neither knew quite how to behave in the presence of Rita’s blood kin. “Do you want him to take your things out back?” Diana asked.

Rita nodded. “I’ll go, too. I want to rest.”

Davy started to follow her, but Diana called him back. “You and the dog go outside and play,” she said. “Rita’s tired.”

His face fell in disappointment, but Rita came to Davy’s rescue. “It’s okay. They can both come along. I missed them.”

Despite DuShane’s ass-chewing, Brandon still hung around the office. He wanted to be there in case his mother called, and he didn’t want to miss any messages from Geet Farrell. He took the time to read the Arizona Sun cover to cover, including both the brief account of Toby Walker’s ill-fated joy-riding incident, and the much longer front-page article about the brutal stabbing of Johnny Rivkin, a well-known Hollywood costume designer, knifed to death in his downtown Tucson hotel room.

Brandon read about the bloody Santa Rita murder with a professional’s interest in what was going on, to see what his competition at Tucson PD was doing on the case. He routinely read about homicides committed in the city in case something in the killer’s MO coincided with one of his unsolved county cases. In this instance, nothing rang a bell.

Several times he was tempted to call Diana Ladd to check on how she was doing, but each time he reconsidered. He’d been summarily thrown out of the woman’s house both times he’d been there. She wasn’t exactly keeping the welcome mat out for him. Brandon Walker knew he was a dog for punishment, but Diana Ladd dished out more abuse than even he was willing to take.

Every time he thought about that exasperating woman, he shook his head. He wanted so much to make her see reason, to help her understand the error of her ways. It was crazy for her to hole up in that isolated fortress of hers and wait for disaster to strike. Supposing her idea did work. Supposing Andrew Carlisle showed up, and she somehow managed to blow him away. What would happen then? Maybe Carlisle would be dead; but so might she. Whatever the outcome, Walker was convinced an armed confrontation would irreparably harm Davy.

Diana didn’t realize that her son was a fragile child, Brandon decided. Women always thought their male offspring tougher than they were in actual fact. Davy needed something from his mother, something he wasn’t getting. Brandon couldn’t tell quite what it was, but he sat there thinking about it, wishing he could help.

Gradually, as time passed, a plan began to form in his mind. He would help, after all, whether or not Diana Ladd wanted him to, whether or not she even knew it. As soon as Brandon got off work that afternoon, he would take the county car home, borrow his mother’s, stop by the hospital long enough to check on his parents, and then head out for Gates Pass. He’d lie in wait outside Diana’s house all night long if necessary. If Andrew Carlisle actually showed up out there, he’d run up against something he didn’t expect-an armed cop rather than some wild-eyed latter-day Annie Oakley packing a loaded.45.

In fact, the more Brandon Walker thought about the idea, the better he liked it. As a cop, he had behaved responsibly in doing what he could to talk Diana Ladd out of her foolhardy scheme. But since she was too hardheaded to give up, Walker would use her as a magnet to draw Andrew Carlisle to him. Diana might be the tender morsel necessary to lure Carlisle into the snare, but Brandon Walker would be the steel-jawed trap.

Diana went into the kitchen to fix herself a glass of iced tea. The one dusty box she had carried in from the root cellar still sat on the kitchen table. Diana looked at the box and sighed. “There’s no time like the present,” she said aloud, quoting one of Iona’s old maxims.

Squaring her shoulders, she found a butcher knife and attacked the aging layers of duct tape that sealed the box shut. The labeling may have been done by Francine, her stepmother, but the profligate use of duct tape was Max’s specialty. Diana remembered the stack of boxes he had brought down to the car on the morning she left for school in Eugene.