J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

“What are those?”

“A spirit rock,” Rita answered, holding up the fragment of geode. “A rock that’s ordinary on the outside, but beautifully colored on the inside.”

“And that?” he asked.

“That is my son’s,” she said softly, fingering the frayed bit of ribbon. “Gordon’s. His Purple Heart. The army sent it to me after the war.”

“What war?”

“The Korean,” she said.

“Did your son die, too?” Davy asked.

“I guess,” she answered. “He joined the Army during World War II and stayed in. He never came home after Korea. The Army said he was missing, but he’s been missing for twenty-six years now. I don’t think he’s coming home. His wife, Gina’s mother, ran off some place. With no husband, she didn’t want a baby. I took care of Gina the same way I take care of you.”

Rita looked down at the little cache of treasure lying exposed on the bedspread. “Put them all back for me now, Davy. I want to take them with me.”

One at a time, with careful concentration, Davy put Rita’s things back in the basket then he fitted the lid on tight.

“I’ve never seen this basket before, have I?” he asked, handing it back to her.

She took it and slid it inside the top of her dress, where it rested out of sight beneath her ample breast and above her belt. “No, Olhoni. You have to be old enough before you can look at a medicine basket and show it proper respect.”

“Am I old enough now?”

“You have not yet killed your first coyote,” she said, “but you are old enough to see a medicine basket.”

By four o’clock that afternoon, Carlisle had set up camp on the rocky mountainside overlooking Diana Ladd’s home in Gates Pass. Using Myrna Louise’s cash, he had bought an AMC Matador from a used-car dealer downtown who claimed to be “ugly but honest.” So far that seemed to be true of the car as well. The layers of vinyl on the roof were peeling off and the paint was scarred, but the engine itself seemed reliable enough.

He had constructed a rough shelter of mesquite branches. The greenery not only provided some slight protection from the searing heat, it also offered cover from which he could spy on the house below without being detected. Sitting there with his high-powered binoculars trained on the house, he watched the comings and goings, counted the people he saw, and planned his offensive. During the long hours, he had to fight continually to stave off panic. In all his adventures, this was the very first time things had gone so totally wrong. He bitterly resented the fact that his own mother was the main fly in the ointment.

In taking the Valiant, Myrna Louise had complicated his life immeasurably. For one thing, she had forced him to spend some of his limited cash on a new vehicle. More seriously than that, Margie Danielson’s gun was still in the trunk of the car Myrna Louise had stolen right out from under his nose. So was Johnny Rivkin’s suitcase, for that matter-the bag containing the clothing and wigs Andrew Carlisle had planned to use for his getaway.

But far more serious than all the others put together was the loss of time. Everything had to be compressed and hurried, without opportunity for the kind of careful planning Andrew Carlisle considered to be the major prerequisite for getting away with this particular murder. Instead of having days to work out the logistics of his attack against Diana Ladd, it would have to be done in a matter of hours. He would have to retrieve the damning evidence from his mother either before or after the main event.

Carlisle knew that his mother hated staying in hotels, and she had severely limited resources besides. Like an old war-horse, she would, in all likelihood, head directly back to the barn, unless of course the cops picked her up for reckless driving somewhere along the way. The very thought of that possibility caused his heart to beat faster. Damn that woman anyway! He’d teach her to interfere.

A door opened in the yard below. He trained his binoculars on a long-legged Diana Ladd. Tanned and wearing shorts and a tank top, she emerged from the back of the house carrying a tall plastic trash can that she emptied into a rusty burning barrel at the far end of the yard. Then, using a series of matches, she set fire to the contents of the barrel and stood watching them burn.

While she tended the fire, a huge black dog gamboled up to her and dropped a tennis ball at her feet. Obligingly, the woman picked it up and threw it across the yard. The dog raced off at breakneck speed to retrieve it. They played like that for several minutes, When the woman went inside a short time later, so did the dog, still carrying the ball and leaving Andrew Carlisle sitting alone on the mountain, pondering this newest wrinkle in his well-laid plans. That dog would have to go, he thought. He worried about the gun she was wearing. Someone might have warned her. Why else would Diana Ladd be walking around with a leather holster strapped to her hip?

Of the two, the gun and the dog, the dog was really far more serious. Surprise could take away any advantage having a weapon gave her, but the dog could bark and rob him of the initiative. Andrew Carlisle thought about the problem for some time, considering the issue from every angle like a scientist dealing with some small but pesky detail that stands in the way of completing a major project. When the idea finally came to him, he acted on it at once.

Sticking to the thin cover as much as possible, he made his way down the mountainside and back to the Matador, which he had left parked at a shooting-range parking lot half a mile away. Once in the car, he headed for the nearest grocery store. Cheap hamburger was easy to find in any part of town, but liquid slug bait wasn’t. For that, he would have to go a little father afield to a top-notch nursery halfway across Tucson proper.

He hurried through traffic, careful not to speed, not calling any undue attention to the all-too-distinctive red-and-black car. A nice white Ford would have been better, but the Matador’s price was right. Besides, he didn’t expect to keep it for long.

Driving was easier than sitting on the mountain watching the house. It calmed his nerves. The more he thought about it, the more determined he was that he would be careful. Just because he’d been forced to telescope his plans didn’t mean he had to blunder around or make any more costly mistakes. Letting Myrna Louise slip away was bad enough, but if things worked out the way he hoped, he’d soon have her back in hand.

They say it happened long ago that a woman lived near the base of Baboquivari Mountain with her husband and her baby. During the day, the husband would go to work in the fields that were close to the village. After working hard in the fields, he often did not want to make the long trip home, so he would stay in the village and visit with friends. This made the woman sad, but she stayed with her baby and waited for her husband, who did not come home.

One night, when the woman was all alone, she heard Ban, Coyote, call, but this was not the usual call of Coyote, so she went out to look for him. It was very dark. At first she could not see, but finally she saw his eyes, glowing like coals in the firelight. He was a large old Coyote, but even when she came close to him, he did not move. At last she came close enough to see that he was lying beside a pool of water.

“Brother,” she said, for this was when the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People, still knew I’itoi’s language and could speak to the animals. “Large Old Coyote, why did you call to me?”

“I came to this pool to drink the water,” he told her. “This rock shifted and trapped my foot. Will you help me?”