Hour of the Hunter (32 page)

Once more the Little People came to help her, but the next morning she could hear that a band of His kim warriors were following her trail.

When they were almost upon her, she called out to Titoi for help. He sent a huge flock of shashani, blackbirds, who flew around and around the Yaqui warriors' eyes until they could see nothing. Meanwhile, Titoi led Old White-Haired Woman and her grandson into a wash that became a canyon. In this way, they went north toward the land of the Tohono O'othham.

But Old White-Haired Woman was very tired after her long journey.

Finally, one day, she could go no farther.

"I must stop here," she said. So Titoi took the boy the rest of the way home. When he came back, he found that the old woman's feet had grown underground and all that was sticking up were two sticks of arms.

"You are a good grandmother," Titoi said. "You may stay here and rest forever, but once a year , you will be the , most beautiful flower on the earth." He touched the sticks.

Wherever & he put his fingers, beautiful white flowers grew.

"Once each year, " Titoi said, "during the night, Wind Man will be heavy with your perfume, but when the sun comes up in the morning, you will be gone."

And that, nawoj, is the story of Old White-Haired Woman and the beautiful flower that the Mil-gahn call the night bloomin cereus. The Desert People call it kok'oi 'uw, which means ghost smell, or ho'ok-wah'o, which means witch's tongs.

Brandon Walker never clocked in, but he worked all afternoon Sunday just the same. Trying to get a lead on Andrew Carlisle, he finally was put in touch with Ron Mallory, at home, taking the frustrated assistant superintendent away from his typewriter.

"My name is Brandon Walker," he said by way of introduction. "I'm a homicide detective with Pima County."

"What can I do for you, Detective Walker?" Mallory asked cordially enough, but all the while he was wondering who the hell had given this joker his home telephone number.

"I'm trying to locate Andrew Carlisle. Your records department couldn't give me a current address."

Carlisle! Mallory thought, alarm bells chiming in his bureaucratic, cover-thine-ass mentality. Carlisle had only got out on Friday, and somebody was already looking for him?

"He's in Tucson somewhere," Mallory answered. "I can probably have an address for you next week. What's this all about?"

The slight hesitation in Walker's answer alerted Mallory that everything wasn't entirely as it should have been.

"I was the arresting officer on that case years ago," Walker said.

"I'm concerned about him being released into the same area where some of the witnesses still live.

He may go after them.

Mallory took a deep breath and used his shirtsleeve to wipe the beads of sweat that suddenly dotted his forehead.

"Look, Detective Walker," he said, all trace of cordiality disappearing.

"Andrew Carlisle was an exemplary prisoner.

He never made a bit of trouble. He was released after paying his debt to society for that particular crime. It sounds to me as though you're out to harass the poor guy."

"Harassment's got nothing to do with it," Brandon Walker countered.

"I'm not the only one who'll be looking for him."

"What do you mean?"

"When they come asking," Brandon added, "I'd have that address handy."

He put down the phone and then sat there looking at it. He had wanted to have some solid information before he called Pinal County. He wondered how his information would be received once the homicide detectives knew it had been gleaned from some aging Indian medicine man over a ceremonial smoke of native tobacco.

Brandon had already looked up the phone number and even partially dialed it twice, hanging up each time before the connection was made.

This time, he dialed and let it ring. When the call was answered, he asked to speak to the detective in charge of the Picacho Peak case. It was Sunday.

Walker guessed correctly that the detective assigned to that case would be hard at work.

"Detective Farrell," a voice said gruffly into the phone.

"My name's Walker," Brandon told him. "Detective Walker from Pima County, just down the road apiece."

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm calling about your Picacho Peak case. I may have some relevant information."

"Shoot."

"I was the arresting officer years ago on a homicide that happened out near the reservation, the Papago. A young Indian woman was murdered.

Two Anglos were the perpetrators." Brandon Walker paused.

"So?" Farrell prodded.

"That case may be related to the new one."

"What makes you think that?"

"The young woman's breast was bitten. One nipple was completely severed."

Walker could hear the other man shifting in his chair, sitting up straight, coming to attention. "Wait just a goddamned minute here!" Farrell exclaimed. "We haven't released one particle of information about that. How the hell do you know about it?"

"That's not important," Brandon said. "How about if we meet and exchange information."

"Where?"

"the coffee shop at the base of Picacho Peak. I'd like to look over the crime scene if I could."

Farrell drew back. "That's a little irregular. Are you working a case?"

"The bastard already went to prison for my case. At the time, most of the blame was passed along to somebody else who happened to be dead.

Material evidence about the bite that would have linked this joker to that part of it mysteriously disappeared between the crime lab and the evidence room. It was never found again."

Detective G. T. Geet) Farrell was nobody's dummy. "I see," he said after a short pause. "You think this is the same guy, but because of double jeopardy, you can't lay a glove on him for the other case."

"You've got it."

"I'll meet you at Nickerson Fanns in one hour," Fan-ell said. "Bring everything you've got. We'll compare notes."

"Right," Brandon Walker said. "I'll be there."

Coming back from visiting Rita in Sells with Davy asleep in the backseat, Diana Ladd pulled into the driveway of her house and felt a sudden knot of fear form in, her stomach.

For the first time, she was daunted by the isolation, by the vast distance-two miles or more-from her house to that of her nearest neighbor. It hadn't seemed nearly so far with Andrew Carlisle locked safely away in prison, but now that he was out ... Bone's welcoming woof came from just inside the door. The sound made Diana feel much better.

Davy sat up. "We're home already?" he asked.

"We're home," Diana told him, but without the internal thrill those words still sometimes gave her. Knowing Andrew Carlisle could come looking for her any time made the house seem less a refuge and more a trap--a trap or a battleground.

But then Andrew Carlisle had been a battleground from day one, from the moment she first heard his name. She had almost finished earning her bachelor's degree by then.

Carrying extra loads and going to summer school she had graduated only one semester late. Gary was eager to get out of Eugene. He said he was only keeping his promise about going elsewhere and starting over.

She found out much later that he had nearly come to blows with his adviser over plagiarism in his dissertation. If he hadn't left the University of Oregon voluntarily, he would have been thrown out.

Gary was the one who first heard about the creative writing program being offered in Arizona. He claimed that a similar one being offered in Eugene wasn't nearly as good. Both Diana and Gary had applied, but only one was accepted. Diana still smarted at Gary's words the day the two matching envelopes came. They matched on the outside, but the contents differed. One said he was in while the other announced that she wasn't.

"I guess there's only going to be one writer in our family," Gary had said with that infuriating grin of his, "and I'm it."

Those words gnawed at her still, kept her tied to her desk when she ought to have been outside enjoying her child and her life. Later, when Gary learned how hurt she was over it and, more important, when he'd wanted her to find a job in Arizona to support them, he claimed it was all a joke, that he hadn't meant a word of it. But that was after his parents learned about the canceled dissertation at the U. of O., after they cut their fair-haired boy off from any further financial aid.

And so, in the spring of 1967, Andrew Carlisle entered Diana's and Gary's lives-insidiously almost, like some exotic, antibiotic-resistant strain of infection that ordinary remedies don't touch. Diana didn't like the man from the moment she met him at that first faculty tea, the only one to which spouses were invited. She had wanted to be there as a full participant, not as some extraneous guest. She resented what she regarded as Professor Carlisle's oily charm.

Gary, on the other hand, was captivated. Once classes started, that was all he could talk about-Professor Carlisle this and Professor Carlisle that. Sometime during that first semester, she couldn't remember exactly when, the "Professor" part was dropped, first in favor of last name only and later in favor Of "Andrew.,' Meanwhile, she found herself a job. Not in Tucson, where applicants outnumbered positions ten to one. She went to work in the boonies, teaching on the Papago for one of the most impoverished school districts in the entire country. The pay wasn't all that bad, and the job did come with housing, a thirteen-by-seventy mobile home parked in the Teachers' Compound at Topawa. It wounded Diana's pride to be forced to accept company housing, but with Gary in school full time, every penny counted.

At first Gary carpooled into Tucson with two other students, but then, as his days got longer, as he came more and more under Carlisle's spell, he bought himself a beater pickup so he could come and go as he liked.

Did Diana see trouble brewing? Did she read the writing on the wall?

Of course not, she was too much her mother's daughter, too busy maintaining a positive mental attitude in the face of mounting disaster, too busy believing that what Gary Ladd said was the gospel.

Every once in a while, the smallest splinter of doubt might worm its way into her consciousness, but she ruthlessly plucked it out. Gary was working hard, she told herself. The stack of typewritten pages on his desk grew steadily taller, offering mute testimony about work on his manuscript. Besides, Diana had interests enough of her own to keep her occupied.

There weren't any Indians living in Joseph, Oregon, when Diana was growing up. The Nez Perce had long since been exiled from their ancestral lands to the wilds of Oklahoma and back to a reservation in Idaho, but Diana had learned something about them in her reading, had discovered in books things about Chief Joseph and his loyal band of followers that would have given her father apoplexy. After all, to Max Cooper's unenlightened way of thinking, the only good Indian was still a dead Indian.

So the job teaching school on the Papago was good for Diana in more ways than one. It supported them while Gary was in school, it gave them a place to live, and it provided another avenue of attack in her unrelenting rebellion against her father. She threw herself into her work with all the enthusiasm and energy she could muster. If she was going to be a teacher for the time being, she'd be the best damned teacher the reservation had ever seen.

While doing that, she was also, unwittingly, giving Gary Ladd more and more rope-enough rope to hang himself, enough rope to destroy them both.

"Gary," she had pleaded finally. "For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!"

It was early afternoon the following Friday, a full week after he'd stayed out until broad daylight after the dance at San Pedro.

"I can't," he whimpered, "I don't know what to do."

She went to him then, held him and comforted him as she would have a small lost child or a wounded animal.

She couldn't believe those frightened, despairing words came from the lips of the man she loved, from the mouth of Garrison Walther Ladd, III, someone who always had a ready answer for everything.

It had been a terrible week for Diana, a debilitating, virtually sleepless week. She alternated between bouts of fury and bleak despair over what was wrong with her husband, all the while battling her own recalcitrant body, which seemed determined to throw off every morsel of food she attempted to put in her mouth.

Gary spent the week in front of the TV set, watching everything from news to soap operas to game shows with almost catatonic concentration.

He ate a bite or two of the food she brought him and sipped the iced tea or coffee, but he barely spoke to her, barely moved. With every passing moment, her sense of foreboding grew more overpowering, until she wanted to scream at the very sight of him.

Once, while he slept, she went out and examined the pickup in minute detail, looking for a clue as to what might have happened. She dreaded finding evidence that he had been in an accident, maybe a hit-and-run, but the combat scars on the Ford's battered body were all old, rusted-over wounds. In a way, finding nothing made Diana feel worse.

What was the matter? she asked herself.

What had panicked her otherwise self-assured husband to the point that he couldn't leave the house?

On Tuesday morning, Andrew Carlisle called to find out why Gary had missed class the previous day. Diana put her husband on the phone despite his desperately signaled hand motions to the contrary. He stammered some lame excuse about food poisoning that didn't sound at all plausible to Diana and probably not to Andrew Carlisle, either.

Gary promised faithfully that he'd be in class the next day, but Wednesday came and went without him moving from the couch other than to visit the bathroom.

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.