Hour of the Hunter: With Bonus Material: A Novel of Suspense

by J. A. Jance

  The machines had been silenced for over an hour now, but Toby Walker stubbornly clung to life, persisting in breathing on his own much to the doctor’s surprise and dismay. His blood pressure was gradually falling, but there had been no marked or sudden change.

  Nurses looked in on them every once in a while, respectfully, as though conscious that their presence was now an intrusion, not a help. Their concern focused on the two nonpatients—a woman quiet at last, worn out from continual weeping, and a man, the son, whose narrow jaw worked constantly, but who sat beside his dying father stiff and straight, dry-eyed and silent.

  Brandon Walker had forgotten he was a cop in all this, forgotten that there was another duty calling. Sitting there, he was nothing but a grieving son, a lost, abandoned, and nearly middle-aged child, facing his own bleak future in a universe suddenly devoid of its center, an unthinkable world where his father didn’t exist.

  The three people waited together in a room where the silence was broken only by the old man’s shallow breathing. No words were necessary. They had all been spoken long ago, and Brandon was convinced that in that broken shell of a man on the bed, there was no one left to listen.

  Detective G. T. Farrell was well outside his Pinal County jurisdiction. He should have contacted the local law-enforcement agencies, either Maricopa County, or, in this case, the Tempe Police Department to ask for backup, but that would have taken tune. Farrell knew in his gut there was no time to lose. He was propelled forward by the common force that drives all those who pursue serial killers—the horrifying and inevitable knowledge that time itself is the enemy.

  Refusing to be rushed, Farrell had systematically worked the problem, marching down the Spaulding column in the phone book, calling each number in turn, always asking for Andrew—a first name Andrew—rather than giving out any further information. He had tried Spauldings in Phoenix proper. Next he worked the suburbs. Halfway through that process, a frail-sounding old woman answered the phone.

  As soon as he asked for Andrew and heard the sharp, involuntary intake of breath, he knew he had hit pay dirt. Even while he talked to her, making sure his voice on the phone stayed calm and noncommittal, he was frantically tearing the page with her name on it out of the book. This was no time for scribbling notes.

  But once in the car, Farrell couldn’t risk lights or siren. That would have raised too many unpleasant questions had anyone stopped him. He drove only as fast as the traffic would bear.

  A resourceful man who always carried a selection of maps in his car, Geet headed East on Camelback in the general direction of Tempe, using crosstown stops at lights and the usual rush-hour slowdowns to locate the exact whereabouts of Weber Drive and to pinpoint the address in his Thomas Guide. Farrell figured it would take him about forty-five minutes to get there. His actual elapsed time was thirty-eight minutes flat.

  Getting out of the car on Weber Drive half a block away from the address, he patted his holster and felt the reassuring presence of his .38 Special. It was possible that the old woman had lied and that her son had been right there in the room with her all along, but Farrell doubted it. The old woman didn’t sound as though she was that glib or that fast on her feet. She wasn’t that capable a liar. At least Geet Farrell fervently hoped she wasn’t.

  Taking a deep breath, Farrell opened the gate, strode up the long walkway, and rang the doorbell. Almost immediately, he heard movement inside the small house. He swallowed hard to calm himself as the door opened and an old woman peered nearsightedly out at him through a screen door. “Yes?” she asked.

  Carefully, using deliberate gestures, he brought out his badge. “I’m a police officer,” he said, holding it up to the screen so she could see it. “I’m looking for Andrew Carlisle.”

  The woman squinted at the badge without reading it. “He isn’t here,” she said.

  “Could I talk to you then? Are you his mother?”

  “For the time being,” she answered.

  Farrell wondered what that meant. He wondered, too, if the recognized his voice from the phone. If so, her next question gave no hint of it. “What do you want with him?”

  “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.”

  20

  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 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.