Hour of the Hunter (46 page)

Third, he listened to -Myrna 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."

"Where is he?"

"At the hospital. His father's dying."

"I'm sorry as hell to hear it, but this can't wait. You've got to get him on the phone for me."

"Why?"

"Tell him we've got trouble. Tell him it's bad. I just don't know how bad."

"It could take some time," Maddern cautioned. "They're in the ICU at Tucson Medical Center. Can anyone else help?"

Considering what Myrna had told him about Carlisle's illegal purchase of police records and what Farrell himself knew about the graft and corruption in the Pima County Sheriff's Office, the detective was leery about bringing in any more players whose loyalty might be questionable.

Maddern sounded like the genuine article, but Farrell remained skeptical. Someone high in DuShane's administration had helped Andrew Carlisle at least once before. It might very well happen again.

"I don't want to have to brief someone else if it isn't necessary," Farrell hedged. "Try getting through to Walker.

I'm just now passing Picacho Peak. If you can't reach him within a matter of minutes, then we'll have to do something else."

By six-thirty Wanda Ortiz, Fat Crack's wife, was finishing the last batch of tortillas. She had started out early that morning by making six dozen tamales, a big vat of pinto beans, and another of chili.

With a dozen preparations left to do before the singers arrived, she was hot, sweaty, and tired. She was also annoyed.

She was annoyed because her mother-in-law, Juanita, had refused to lift a finger to help her. Real Presbyterians didn't participate in pagan baptisms, Juanita had archly informed Fat Crack when he had gone to his mother's house asking for help. She wouldn't lend her support to Looks At Nothing's crazy idea, not even as a favor for her own sister.

So Wanda had done all the cooking herself, not complaining, but with a layer of very un-Christianlike anger seething just beneath her seemingly placid surface.

This was Wanda's second church-related battle with her mother-in-law in less than a month. The first had been over whether or not Juanita's grandchildren would attend Presbyterian Daily Vacation Bible school.

Juanita had won the skirmish hands down since the Presbyterian church also happened to own the reservation's only swimming pool.

There were times, Wanda thought, slapping the last tortilla on the griddle and picking it off with nimble fingers, that she wished all the Anglo missionaries would go back where they came from. Even Fat Crack's Christian-Science studies sometimes provoked her.

Wanda was still nursing her grudge when Looks At Nothing pounded on the door with his walking stick. She wasn't especially happy to see him, either. At that particular moment, the Indian medicine man was more trouble than all the others put together.

"What is it?" she asked curtly, wiping her hands on her apron.

"Where is your husband?"

"Taking a nap. He has to stay up all night with the singers. He wanted to sleep before going to get Rita."

"We must go now," Looks At Nothing said urgently.

"It's started."

Wanda shook her head. Gabe had given her strict orders not to wake him up until seven. He had spent the whole afternoon dragging a stalled BIA road grader out of a sandy wash, and he had wanted to sleep as long as possible. Looking at the agitated old man, Wanda wondered if perhaps he was crazy in addition to being blind.

"No," Wanda replied. "Nothing has started yet. It's too early. The singers don't come until nine."

Not the singers," he snapped. "The ohb. We must go quickly, or it will be too late."

In Dr. Johnston's waiting room, Diana Ladd alternately sat and paced while Father John thumbed through a worn pet-food catalog. She berated herself for leaving Rita and Davy home alone, for being stupid about waiting for the dog, for not accepting Brandon Walker's offer of help.

When Dr. Johnston's receptionist got up to leave, Diana asked to use the phone.

The phone at home rang nine or ten times without anyone answering.

That in itself wasn't alarming. When Rita was out in her room, she and Davy sometimes didn't hear the phone ringing.

Just as Diana started to hang up, Rita answered. "Hello."

"Rita, it's me. Diana. Is everything okay there?"

"Okay?" Rita's voice seemed distant, hollow. "Yes.

Everything here is okay."

"Bone's still with Dr. Johnston," Diana rushed on.

"We're waiting for him. We'll be home as soon as we can. Did Davy tell you he can go with you if you have to leave before I get home?"

"No," Rita replied. "He didn't tell me, but that's good."

Diana hung up, too preoccupied to think it odd that Rita had answered the phone instead of Davy. Without leaving the desk, Diana decided to swallow her pride and call Brandon Walker. The least she could do was let him know what had happened and ask for his advice, but he wasn't in.

With a frustrated sigh, Diana sat back down. It was probably just as well. What she and Rita planned for Andrew Carlisle should be kept totally secret.

If she talked to Brandon Walker, she might accidentally let something slip.

Father John glanced at her. "The dog's going to be fine," the priest said reassuringly, misreading her agitation as concern for Bone. "We got him here so soon after it happened that I'm sure he'll be okay."

Diana nodded but said nothing. According to Rita, things were still all right at home, but with Andrew Carlisle on the loose, the dog was really the least of her worries. She sat there wishing she'd left the 45 at home with Rita.

"It's taking so long," she said, glancing at her watch for the second time in less than a minute.

"Some things can't be rushed," Father John replied.

Diana started to argue and then thought better of it. What Father John didn't know wouldn't hurt him. If he thought she was only worried about the dog, so be it.

Now that he was actually inside Diana Ladd's house, Carlisle felt downright invincible. His plans were working perfectly. Still holding the boy, Carlisle ordered the old woman to sit down on the couch. She did so at once. Her immediate compliance gratified him. Carlisle was sure that holding the boy hostage would work exactly the same magic on Diana Ladd. With Davy in jeopardy, she would have to submit to his every demand, give him whatever he wanted when and how he wanted it.

The phone blared, startling him so that he almost dropped the child.

He held the knife to Davy's throat. "Answer it," he growled at the old woman. "Try anything funny and the boy dies."

Clumsily, Rita heaved herself off the couch and hobbled over to the phone. Carlisle nodded with satisfaction at her curt answers. As far as he could tell, she made no attempt to pass along any secret messages.

"Who was it?" he asked when she put the phone back in the cradle.

"Diana Ladd?" The old woman nodded. "What did she say?"

"She'll be back soon."

"Good," he said. "We'll be waiting, won't we? Pull the cord out of the wall."

The old woman hesitated as though she didn't understand him. He brandished the knife over the now fully awake boy.

Seeing the knife, the boy regarded him through terrified eyes, but he made no effort to fight.

"I said pull it out," Carlisle repeated. "No more phone calls." Rita yanked the phone cord from its receptacle, and Carlisle smiled.

"Good.

Now, back on the couch." He almost laughed aloud at the way the old woman jumped to do his bidding. He was enjoying having them all by the short hairs.

Carlisle knew firsthand how abject submission works.

If he had learned nothing else, his tormentors in Florence had taught him that lesson well. He had seen how, in order to avoid pain, victims can become so eager to please that they transform themselves into willing participants in their own destruction. The old woman's reaction was a textbook case. Diana Ladd's would be as well.

With the younger woman, though, he would have to be careful. Pacing would be everything. He would have to restrain himself in the beginning and not go too far.

The kind of dehumanizing submission he wanted from her would take time and effort and a certain amount of finesse.

There were those in the prison community who took the position that raping a rapist qualified as poetic justice and maybe even as a kind of aversion therapy. Well, Andrew Carlisle was here to tell those jokers that it hadn't worked out that way for him. Physical violation hadn't "cured" him at all. Instead, it had only added fuel to his Diana Ladd bloodlust, given him something else to blame her for. He'd spent years planning every move of his campaign against her. He wouldn't settle for anything less than total capitulation. He looked forward to having Diana Ladd crawling naked on the floor before him. He wanted to see her on her hands and knees, subject to his every whim. He wanted the pleasure of hearing the bitch beg.

Carlisle sat the boy down on one end of the couch and ordered him to stay still while he tied up the old woman.

Busy with the twine, Carlisle found he was having difficulty concentrating. His whole body pulsed with eagerness for the coming confrontation. What would happen in those first crucial minutes? he wondered. Would she fight or give in at once? Would the very sight of him strike terror in her heart? Would she guess what was in store for her?

He didn't think so. The others hadn't, why should she?

For the first time, Carlisle considered whether or not she'd bring the priest back with her. He hoped not. Carlisle was not a religious man, nor was he terribly superstitious, but the idea of killing a priest lacked appeal. Not only that, he was reluctant to expend his energies on any side issue that might dull his appetite for the main course.

"What are you going to do?" the old woman asked, intruding rudely into his thoughts. He didn't answer immediately. Finished tying her one good hand to the cumbersome cast, he went to work binding her swollen ankles together, hobbling her like a horse with the short lengths of twine he had cut up and brought along for that express purpose.

Advance planning was everything.

"Whatever I want," he replied nonchalantly. "I'm going to do whatever I want."

Diana was about to call home again when Dr. Johnston returned to the waiting room. It was almost seven, a whole hour after the veterinarian's office had been scheduled to close.

"I think we're over the hump now," Dr. Johnston said.

"He's been one sick puppy, but I believe he's going to be okay. Plenty of rest, plenty of liquids. Tell Davy not to overtax him for the next few days. He's probably through the worst of it, but we'd better cover your car seat with some old blankets, just in case."

Dr. Johnston's assistant, a burly teenager named Scott, carried the ailing dog back out to Father John's car and laid him gently on a layer of hastily assembled blankets.

With a huge sigh, the dog put his chin on his front paws and closed his eyes.

"Call me in the morning," Dr. Johnston said, "and let me know how he's doing."

Diana replied with a grateful nod. "I'll call first thing."

"That was weird," Scott said as Father John's Buick pulled out of the office parking lot.

"What's weird?" Dr. Johnston asked.

"How come that lady was wearing a gun?"

"A gun? Was she really?" Dr. Johnston sounded startled. "I was so concerned about the dog that I never even noticed."

The old woman sat silently at one end of the couch.

Carlisle ordered Davy to the opposite end, where he began tying the boy up as well. He wanted his prisoners relatively immobile but easily trans-portable when necessary, because Carlisle had no intention of playing out his whole game in Diana Ladd's house.

it was fine for the first major skirmish to take place here. Invading Diana's private territory and bloodying her there was an essential part of his psychological warfare against her. But after that, after he'd humiliated her and established a pattern of absolute control, then he would take his prisoners to the cave, to Gary Ladd's own special cave, for dessert.

Carlisle theorized that the isolated cave by what had once been Rattlesnake Skull Village was eminently suited to his purposes. No one, not even that wise-ass young detective, had ever figured out that the cave, not the charco, had been the actual scene of Gina Antone's last moments on this earth.

During the pretrial proceedings, Carlisle had made absolutely sure that no one knew of the existence of Gary Ladd's manuscript with its whining references to the cave. Once he left three more bodies there to rot, he would have all the more reason to see that Gary Ladd's crude manuscript disappeared off the face of the earth. Too bad Myrna Louise hadn't thrown that in the burning barrel instead of Savage.

She would have been doing something useful for a change.

He thought longingly about the cool, dark cave, about how the timeless limestone walls would swallow up whatever agonized sounds his particular brand of pleasure might wring from his captives. In that dusky cave, with the added luxury of total isolation, no one would interrupt him or interfere with the process. There, once and for all ...

Carlisle had tried explaining that same thing to Gary Ladd years before, the morning after their little debacle, but the man had been hysterical when he learned the girl was dead, astounded that things had got so far out of hand while he slept.

Even then, things would have been fine if Ladd hadn't lost his nerve and gone back later to move the body so she could have a proper burial.

The fool dumped her in a water hole, for God's sake, thinking people would be stupid enough to believe she had drowned. With the rope burns around her neck and her nipple bitten off? What the hell kind of dumb-ass idea was that? And then, a week later, if Carlisle hadn't stopped him, Ladd would have gone to town and confessed for both of them, taking his tell-tale manuscript with him. Thanks a lot, buddy, but no thanks.