J. JANCE - Hour of the Hunter

“We want to ask him some questions, that’s all,” Farrell answered. “There are a few matters we need to clear up.”

“Me, too,” the old woman added, opening the screen door, motioning him inside. “I have some matters I’d like Andrew to clear up for me, too.”

Something in the woman’s injured tone suggested a switch in tactics from investigator to sympathizer, from potential enemy to ally. “What kind of matters, ma’am?” Farrell asked innocently.

“He stole my money, for one thing,” she answered with ill-concealed fury, “my money and my bankbooks. Then, when he saw I was leaving, he was so angry that I think he would have killed me if he could have gotten close enough, but I fooled him. I drove away all by myself. I drove all the way here. Can you believe it? Andrew never thought I would, and neither did I. After all, I’m sixty-five years old and had never driven a car before in my life, but I did. So help me I did. I wouldn’t have done it, either, if he hadn’t treated me so badly.”

“Maybe you ought to tell me about it, ma’am,” Geet Farrell said. “This could be important.”

Davy was surprised when he saw the bald-headed man standing outside the glass patio door. The man was wearing funny brown-colored clothes, the kind with plants painted on them, that soldiers sometimes wore in the movies.

“Nana Dahd ,” he called. “Someone’s here.”

Davy expected the man would wait outside until Rita came to the door to talk to him. Instead, he shoved the door open and stepped inside.

“Who are you?” Davy demanded. “What do you want?”

“You,” the man answered. “You’re what I want.”

The man lunged for him. Davy tried to dart out of the way, but the man was too quick. He caught Davy by one arm, spinning him around. He swung the child up in the air and held him two feet off the ground.

“You were talking to somebody, kid. Who was it? Where are they?”

“I’m right here,” a woman’s voice said behind him. “Don’t hurt him.”

“Nana Dahd ,” the boy complained. “He just came right in the house. He didn’t even knock.”

Suddenly, the man’s arm clamped tight around Davy’s throat, choking off his air. He kicked and fought, but he couldn’t get away. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was the man saying, “I don’t have to knock, because as long as I have you, I own the place. Isn’t that right, old woman?”

Davy didn’t see Rita’s answering nod. It was true. As long as he had Davy, Andrew Carlisle could have anything else he wanted.

Around the Pinal County Sheriff’s Department, Detective Geet Farrell had a considerable reputation as a ladies’ man. With men he could be tough and hard-nosed as hell, but with women he gentled them along until even the bad ones offered to give him the shirts off their backs.

Slowly but urgently, Geet Farrell worked Myrna Louise Spaulding. He didn’t rush her, but he didn’t allow any unnecessary delays, either. Within minutes, he had talked her into showing him the contents of the battered Valiant’s packed trunk. He recognized Johnny Rivkin’s name as soon as he saw the tag on the luggage, but he didn’t let anything betray his exultation. Because it was too soon. He needed to know more.

So he led the garrulous old lady through her entire day, encouraging her to remember everything from the moment she woke up until he himself had arrived on her doorstep.

Myrna Louise loved having an appreciative audience. She warmed to the telling and was totally engrossed by the time she got to the part about going into the office in Tucson to pick up those mysterious papers with those two women’s names on it. Only then, as she was telling the detective about the papers, did she fully allow herself to know what those two names meant, what Andrew was really going to do. It hit Detective Farrell at the same time, like a fierce, double-fisted blow to the gut.

“Where is he now?” he demanded savagely. All gentleness disappeared from the man, transformed instantly into a single-minded intensity that was frightening to see.

“I don’t know,” Myrna Louise whimpered. “I don’t have any idea.”

“We’ve got to find him. Where was he when you left him?”

“I already told you. At the storage unit. In Tucson.”

“Can I use your phone?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered, barely containing the despairing sob that rose in her throat. “Go ahead. Help yourself.”

Dr. Johnston, the vet, was guardedly optimistic about the dog’s chances for survival as he sifted a pinch of yellow powder into Bone’s eyes. “This is apomorphine,” he explained, “an emetic. It gets into the bloodstream through the conjunctival sacs. It’ll make him barf his guts out within minutes. He’s certainly exhibiting all the classic symptoms of slug-bait poisoning. Where’d he pick it up?”

“I don’t know,” Diana said. “He was fine just twenty minutes or so earlier when we put him outside. He came back in acting drunk. He could barely walk.”

The vet shook his head. “You’ve got a neighbor who hates dogs.”

“I don’t have any neighbors,” Diana started to say, and then stopped. A chill ran down her spine. Perhaps this was it, she thought, the beginning of what Rita called the wind coming to the windmill, the reason she was wearing a gun.

“You’d better go on out now, Diana,” Dr. Johnston warned. “Bone is going to be one miserable dog here for a while, but if we caught it as soon as you say, he should pull through. I’d like to keep him overnight, though, if you don’t mind.”

But Diana did mind. She dreaded the idea of going home without the dog. Bone was her first line of defense. She glanced at her watch. It wasn’t dark yet and wouldn’t be for some time, but once it was, she wanted the dog with her.

“I’d rather wait, if it’s not going to be too long.”

“Suit yourself,” Dr. Johnston said. “It won’t take long, but it isn’t going to be pretty.”

Half an hour earlier and 120 miles away, Pinal County homicide detective Geet Farrell had considered his options and hadn’t liked any of them. He tried calling Brandon Walker directly, but there was no answer, either at his office or at home. Farrell refused to waste any more time in stationary phoning, but he didn’t want to abandon his questioning of Myrna Louise Spaulding, either. There might be more she could tell him, details he had so far neglected to ask.

Farrell flung the phone back on the hook. “You do know what he’s up to, don’t you?”

Myrna Louise nodded. “I do now.”

“I’m going to try to stop him,” the detective continued grimly. “Will you help? I’ll need you to come with me.”

“Yes,” Myrna Louise answered, rising unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll do whatever I can. Just let me get my purse.”

They left Weber Drive in a spray of gravel and headed for I-10. Once across the Pinal County line, Detective Farrell switched on lights and sirens and drove like a bat out of hell. They sped south on the Interstate through the hot desert evening, while Farrell’s mind grappled with the problem on three different levels.

First, he dealt with the car, navigating with fierce concentration. Second, he played radio tag, trying to get a good enough connection to be patched through to someone in Tucson who could actually help him. Third, he listened to Myma Louise Spaulding’s seemingly endless story.

It wasn’t until a Pinal County dispatcher hooked him up with the counterpart dispatcher in Pima, a guy named Hank Maddern, that Farrell finally felt as though he was talking to somebody real, someone with a sense of urgency.

“What can I do for you, Detective Farrell?” Maddern asked. “Brandon Walker told me to expect your call.”