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

by J. A. Jance

  “Damn,” Walker muttered. The dog was probably inside the house, sleeping on the job. The detective lay there and tried to strategize. He had to assume that both his opponents were armed and dangerous. Two-to-one odds aren’t very good, especially for a cop dealing with crooks who may not care that much if they live or die.

  He considered honking the horn to alert the people in the house of the impending danger, but that might do more harm than good. If Diana came outside to see what was going on, she might possibly fall into the wrong hands. What if the crooks took off with her before help arrived?

  Finally, Walker hit on the only strategy that seemed feasible. He would attempt to make his way to the house undetected. Once inside, he and Diana could probably hold the bad guys off long enough for help to arrive and catch them in a cross fire. Once the decision was made, Walker moved to put it into action.

  Closing his eyes so the overhead light wouldn’t rob him of night vision, he eased open the passenger door and quickly dropped to the ground. The door closed behind him with a dull mud, and he scuttled silently off into the desert, swinging wide and hoping to make it to the side of the house before Carlisle and his pal realized what he was up to.

  The bacon turned to hard, brittle curls in the pan, but an oblivious Andrew Carlisle continued talking. “There are tools for rape, you see, things you wouldn’t normally think about, but in prison you have to use whatever’s handy. You’d be surprised what people get off on. This gun, for instance. What would you think if I crammed that all the way up inside you? Would it make you come? The metal gun sight might bother you a little, don’t you think?”

  Diana’s stomach lurched with dread, and the hand holding the wooden spatula trembled uncontrollably.

  His voice rose in pitch. “Look at me when I speak to you. I asked you a simple question. What would you think of it?”

  She looked. He was grinning at her, holding the .45, fondling it, sensually stroking the long barrel with his fingertips. “I wouldn’t like it,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t you?” he asked, eyeing her speculatively. “I think you would. Maybe after I eat, we could have a lesson. I’ll show you how it works right here on the kitchen table. Mr. Colt has a permanent hard-on for you. I think he’d enjoy it”

  He paused, as if waiting for Diana to comment. When she didn’t, he bent over and pulled something out of the top of his boot She saw him out of the corner of her eye and trembled to think that he had retrieved his knife, which he would use on her as well, but when he straightened up, he wasn’t holding the knife at all. Between his fingers was a key—a familiar, old-fashioned skeleton key.

  “’Or maybe, little Mama,” he added with a malicious grin, “since you don’t think you’d like it, maybe I should bring that kid of yours out here and cram it down his throat or maybe up his ass a couple of inches. How much could he take? How much could you? What would you do then, Diana? Would you ask me to stop? Would you beg me to do it to you instead of him? Would you crawl on your hands and knees on the floor and kiss my feet and beg?”

  A shock of recognition sent needles and pins through her hands and feet. Davy wasn’t dead after all. He was alive and in the root cellar. There was still hope, still a chance.

  Suddenly, frowning, Carlisle stood up. “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you burning the bacon?”

  Putting the key down on the table and retrieving the gun, he started toward the stove. When he was three steps away, Diana grabbed the overheated handle of the frying pan and heaved it full in his face. Pieces of blackened bacon clung to his skin wherever they landed. He screamed as fiery-hot fat burned through his clothing, sealing it to his skin.

  Diana dodged to one side as the gun roared to life, shattering the window behind her.

  Walker, riveted by both the ungodly scream and the gunfire, knew his worst nightmare had come true. Somehow his opponents had made their way inside and were firing guns. Someone was hit and dying.

  Forgetting about cover, Walker charged toward the house himself, circling around the thicket of gigantic prickly pear and coming up on the front porch from the opposite direction. He tried the door handle and found it locked. He tried kicking it, but the stout old door didn’t give way. The windows all had screens. From inside the house, Walker heard the sounds of an ongoing battle, but off to the side of the porch, the detective caught sight of movement.

  “Stop,” he shouted, but two shadowy figures simply disappeared into the darkness beyond the porch. Two of them, he thought. Some inside and at least two still out here. How the hell many of them are there? Walker wondered grimly.

  In silent pursuit, he moved sideways off the porch. At the side of the house, he encountered only a massive wall with a tall wooden gate. He tried the gate, but it appeared to be latched from the inside.

  Through a nightmare of searing pain, Andrew Carlisle tried to wipe the clinging grease from his face and eyes. He could see nothing. I’m blind! he thought furiously. The bitch blinded me!

  He slipped on the greasy floor and crashed into the table, banging it into the wall before managing to right himself. With superhuman effort, he pulled himself above the terrible pain.

  “I’ll kill you,” he whispered hoarsely. “So help me God, bitch, I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do!”

  Diana watched in horror as Carlisle attempted to wipe the blistering grease from his skin and eyes. Pieces of his face seemed to melt away with his hand, dissolving like the water-soaked Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz.

  “I’ll kill you,” Carlisle muttered over and over. It was a chant and incantation. “I’ll kill you.”

  Somehow he still held Diana’s .45. Frozen with fear, Diana stared at the weapon, waiting for the death-dealing explosion that would end her life, but for some strange reason Carlisle didn’t seem to be pointing it at her. He turned around and around, like a child playing blindman’s bluff.

  “Where are you; bitch?” he demanded. Only then did Diana realize that he couldn’t see. The bacon grease had blinded him.

  Holding her breath for fear the sound might betray her whereabouts, Diana glanced around the room, looking for an escape hatch or place to hide. On the floor beside the up-ended table, she spied the fallen key to the root cellar. As soon as she saw it, she dived for it, even though Carlisle was between her and the key.

  Hearing movement, Carlisle lunged in her direction. They collided in midair and crashed to the floor together. The force of the blow knocked the .45 from Carlisle’s hand. It spun across the floor, coming to rest at the base of the sink. Of the two, he was far stronger, but being able to see gave Diana a slight advantage. Twisting away, she eluded his grasp and retrieved the key. She scrambled toward the root-cellar door and was almost there when his powerful fingers clamped shut around her ankles.

  She kicked at his fingers, but her bare feet had no effect on the hands inexorably dragging her away from the door. She fought him desperately but despairingly, realizing she was no match for him, that it was only a matter of time.

  Dimly, Diana became aware of Bone’s frantic scratching on the sliding glass door. If only she could let him into the house. Maybe, with the dog’s help…

  Suddenly, for the barest moment, Carlisle let go of her. She scrambled away from him, and this time managed to shove the key into the lock before he grabbed hold of her again. She tried to push him away only to have a smarting pain shoot across her hand and up her arm. Shocked, Diana looked at her arm and hand as blood spurted out Carlisle had his knife again. This time she knew he would kill her with it. There would be no escape

  Stymied by the latched gate, Brandon Walker dropped back and then vaulted over the barrier, which seemed to be covered by a layer of wet blankets. Inside the yard, he landed on something soft and yielding, something human. His added weight brought the other man down. They fell to the ground as one and grappled there briefly until he glimpsed Fat Crack’s face in the pale starlight.

  “Fat Crack!” Walker exclaimed. “
What the…”

  “It’s the detective,” Fat Crack said simultaneously.

  From deeper in the yard came Looks At Nothing’s commanding voice. “We must hurry! Come,” he ordered.

  Fat Crack let go at once, and they both struggled to their feet. In the melee, Walker had dropped his .38 Special. They wasted precious seconds searching for it. At last Fat Crack found it and gave it back.

  “If you’re out here,” Brandon whispered, “who’s in there?”

  “The ohb,” Fat Crack answered. “It’s the ohb.”

  Faced with her bloodied arm and inarguable evidence of her own mortality, Diana resolved that even if she died, somehow her son would live. Once more Carlisle’s fingers locked onto her ankle. Once more he dragged her toward him and toward the raised knife he held above his head, waiting to plunge it into her.

  She searched desperately for something to hold onto, something to give her purchase on the slippery floor. Suddenly, her flailing hands encountered heat—the still fiery-hot frying pan. Ignoring the blistering handle, she picked it up and drove it with all her strength toward Andrew Carlisle’s forehead.

  He couldn’t see it, but Carlisle felt the superheated frying part whizzing toward him. He drew back in panic, holding up his arms in an attempt to ward off the blow. The frying pan missed his skull but struck his hand, knocking the knife away from him. While he groped blindly for it, he heard her scrabbling away from him again. Weaponless except for his bare hands, he crawled after her.

  Partway across the room, something rushed past him, making for the outside door. He turned to it as if to follow.

  The momentary respite gave Diana one more chance. This time she made it all the way to the root-cellar door. Still on her knees, she reached up and turned the key in the lock. Before she could move out of the way, the door banged open, knocking her backward into the wall.

  At the sound of the second gunshot, Davy almost burst into tears. Once more Rita shushed him. “Ready now,” she whispered. “When the key turns, open the door and run.”

  “I’ll kill you,” the man was saying over and over outside the door. “I’ll kill you.”

  Davy’s heart leaped to his throat. His mother was still alive. Would she be when the door opened? He crossed his fingers and tried to remember how to pray.

  The key filled the lock. The tiny keyhole-shaped patch of light disappeared, but the key didn’t turn. The door didn’t open.

  Again they waited. Davy heard another sound now—the Bone, scratching frantically at the back door, wanting to be let in. Oh’o was home, but he couldn’t get inside to help them.

  And then, miraculously, the key did turn. Davy shoved the door with all his might, flung it open, and dashed outside. In the middle of the room, he encountered a man—at least it looked like a man—crawling toward him on his hands and knees. This terrible apparition, its face a misshapen mass of bloodied blisters, must be the ohb.

  Pausing long enough for only one look at that terrifying visage, Davy turned and raced for the sliding glass door.

  The pain was terrible, beyond anything he could have imagined, but what was worse, Carlisle feared Diana Ladd had escaped. He started toward the door.

  “Where are you, bitch?”

  “Here,” Diana responded from someplace else in the room. “I’m behind you.” To decoy Davy’s safe escape, she wanted Carlisle’s attention focused solely on her.

  “Where?”

  “Right here,” she answered again, and it sounded as though she was laughing at him.

  Doggedly, like an unstoppable monster from an old B-grade movie, Andrew Carlisle whirled and came crawling toward her, but before he made any progress, something heavy landed on his back. Horrified, he felt a dog’s inch-long canines plunge into the back of his neck.

  Too stunned to move and trying to stem the flow of blood from her own arm, Diana could do nothing but watch. The dog was everywhere at once, huge jaws snapping. He leaped up and backward and sideways, always staying just out of the man’s reach. Finally, Bones’s jaws closed over Carlisle’s wrist.

  While the man howled in inhuman rage, the dog shook his massive head. Bones crunched in Carlisle’s mangled wrist. Tendons and nerves snapped like so many broken rubber bands.

  Arm upraised, owij in hand, Rita emerged from the root cellar ready to do battle. She, too, stood transfixed, watching the man struggle to escape the attacking dog. Trying to save his mangled wrist, Carlisle attempted one last kick. The dog let go of the hand and pounced on the foot. As the dog’s jaws closed once more, Carlisle folded himself into a fetal position.

  Rita remained where she was for a moment, surveying the room, while Carlisle sobbed brokenly. “Get the dog off me. Please, get him off.”

  The Indian woman pocketed her owij. It was no longer needed. Across the room, she saw both the knife and the gun. She hurried at once to retrieve them. Only when she had them both firmly in her possession did she speak to the dog.

  “Oh’o, ihab.” The dog came to her side at once, wagging his tail, waiting to be petted. “Good gogs,” she crooned, patting his shaggy head. “It’s over.”

  Rita turned from the dog and placed the gun in Diana’s lap. “Here,” she said. “If you wish to shoot him, now’s your chance. Do it quickly.”

  Diana looked from Rita to the stricken form of Andrew Carlisle, who lay sobbing on the floor in a widening pool of his own urine. Finally, Diana looked down at the gun and shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t have to now. It wouldn’t be self-defense.”

  A radiant smile suffused Rita’s weathered old face. “Good,” she said. “I’itoi would be proud of you.”

  Behind them, Brandon Walker burst into the room. Bone turned to fend off this new attack, but before he could, the oven door blew its hinges with a resounding thump, knocking the dog to the floor.

  Crying and laughing both, Diana knelt beside Bone and cradled his massive head in her lap. The dog looked up at her gratefully and thumped his long tail on the floor. He wasn’t hurt, but it had been a hard day for a dog. He didn’t want to get up.

  Detective Farrell and Myrna Louise arrived just ahead of a phalanx of police cars dispatched by Hank Maddern at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. For the first time in her life, she refused Andrew’s summons when he asked for her. Stone-faced and without getting out of the car, Myrna Louise watched while her son was loaded into a waiting ambulance. Ironically, he was taken first. Of all the injuries, his were deemed the most serious.

  But not serious enough, Myrna Louise thought bitterly, not nearly serious enough. If she’d been lucky—and she had never been lucky where her son was concerned—Andrew would have died. Someone would have put a bullet through his wretched head and taken him out of his misery, the way they used to do with rabid dogs.

  After that, another stretcher came out of the house with someone strapped to it. The old Indian woman—what was her name again—limped heavily along beside the stretcher and climbed into the waiting ambulance to ride to the hospital, although she herself didn’t seem to be hurt.

  A few minutes later, Myrna Louise recognized Diana Ladd. She, too, was carried past the detective’s car to an ambulance, with a man walking along beside her. Thank God they weren’t dead, Myrna Louise thought gratefully. She never could have lived with herself if that had happened.

  Myrna Louise sat there quietly, knowing that eventually it would be her turn to answer questions. What would she say about Andrew when they asked her? Tell the tram, she thought. And what would happen when the neighbors on Weber Drive found out that Andrew Carlisle was her son? Would they still speak to her?

  Myrna Louise sighed. She could always move again, she supposed. She’d done it before. Maybe she’d get herself one of those U-Hauls. What did they call that, “an adventure in moving”? She’d drive herself far away and start over again, somewhere where nobody knew her.

  But first, she thought, she’d have to get herself a driver’s license, and m
aybe even a pair of glasses.

  Davy sat in the crack and waited. That’s what he would call it from now on, I’itoi’s crack. He wondered how it would feel to be a fly and to go back down to the house. He would be able to see what was happening, but nobody would know he was there. He wanted to know and yet he didn’t. He was afraid to know.

  His mother was still alive when he ran past her, and so was Nana Dahd, but were they still? He couldn’t tell. Bone had wanted to come with him, but he had ordered the dog to stay. Now, he wished he hadn’t. Why didn’t Bone come looking for him? Why didn’t someone else?

  While he watched, a string of cop cars came streaming down the canyon road, lights flashing. It looked like a parade, except it wasn’t. There were no floats, no marching bands. The police cars were all going to his house. What would they find there? Would his mother still be alive?

  When he first reached the cleft in the rock, he was panting, out of breath, afraid that the terrible man was right behind him. Now, as more time passed, he wondered who would come for him. Nana Dahd had been very specific about that. She had told him he must wait until morning, wait for someone he knew.

  He shifted his body. The sharp rocks behind his back were growing uncomfortable. What if they forgot all about him and nobody came? Maybe he’d end up living there forever. How long was forever, anyway?

  Three more sets of flashing lights came down the winding road and pulled in at the driveway. How many police cars did it take? he wondered. What’ was happening? He kept thinking his mother would come for him or Rita, but the longer it went without anyone coming, the more he was afraid they were dead.