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

by J. A. Jance

  What happened to you after you were dead? That was one of the things he was supposed to talk about with Father John the next time he saw him. Davy thought about Father John lying there so still on the root-cellar floor, and he thought about what the priest had said as they were leaving to take Bone to the vet.

  How had that prayer gone? Davy squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated, trying to remember the exact words.

  “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

  The Father he could understand, and he could understand the Son, but who was the Holy Ghost? Maybe, thought Davy, the Holy Ghost was I’itoi. So he bowed his head, just as he had seen Rita do, just like Father John, and he said a prayer for his mother, for Nana Dahd, for Father John, and also for Oh’o. He finished by praying, “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of I’itoi. Amen.” It sounded a little different, but Davy was sure it meant the same thing.

  Just then, as he finished the prayer, he heard a rock go scrabbling down the face of the cliff. He drew back inside the rocky cleft, making himself as small as possible, holding his breath, afraid that somehow the ohb had managed to escape and was coming after him.

  He listened. Clearly now, he could hear footsteps coming closer and closer, as though whoever was coming knew the path to the crack, as though they knew all about Davy’s secret hiding place.

  “Olhoni?” Someone was calling his name, his Indian name, but it wasn’t Nana Dahd. Who could it be then? No one else called him that. The voice wasn’t familiar, and Nana Dahd had given him strict orders to wait for someone he knew.

  Then, suddenly, Bone thrust his spiked head into the entrance to the crack and covered the boy’s face with wet, slobbery kisses. Behind the dog, a man’s face peered in the small opening.

  “Olhoni? Are you in there?”

  Weak with relief, Davy let his breath out. It was Fat Crack. “Heu’u” he answered. “Yes.”

  “Come on, boy,” the Indian said, gently moving the dog aside. “An old man and I are waiting to take you to the hospital.”

  Hospital? The word made Davy’s heart hurt “Is my mother all right?” he asked. “Is Nana Dahd?”

  “Your mother is hurt, but not bad,” the Indian said quietly. “Rita went with Father John. Come on. Everyone will be better once they know you are safe.”

  As soon as Davy was outside the cave, Bone careened around him in ecstatically happy circles, but the boy was not ready to play. This was still far too serious. What he had lived through that day was anything but a game.

  “What about the ohb?” Davy asked. “Is he dead?”

  “No, nawoj,” Fat Crack replied. “The ohb isn’t dead, but he didn’t win. He’s in the hospital, too. Your dog almost bit his hand off. Rita wouldn’t let him.”

  “She should have,” Davy said angrily. “What will happen to him now?”

  Fat Crack shrugged. “The Mil-gahn will send him back to the Mil-gahn jail, I guess.”

  “Will he get out again?” Davy asked.

  “Who knows?” Fat Crack said, shaking his head. “That, Olhoni, is up to the Mil-gahn, isn’t it.”

  Epilogue

  WANTING TO BE the first to kill, Rattlesnake crept close to Evil Siwani’s camp, so the next morning, when the battle started, Rattlesnake killed first, and he chose the place that is now called Rattlesnake House.

  When the battle was finally over, Evil Siwani was dead, and his house and all his people had been destroyed.

  So I’itoi told the warriors who had helped him that they should choose where they wanted to live. Some people wanted to be farmers, and they went to live by the river. Since then they have been called Akimel O’othham, or the River People.

  Some of the warriors were hunters, so they went to live near Waw Giwulk, which means Constricted Rock and which the Mil-gahn call Baboquivari. There they found plenty of mule deer to hunt and lots of other good food to eat. The people who stayed there have been called Tohono O’othham, or the Desert People.

  And that is the story of how the Desert People emerged from the center of the earth to help I’itoi battle the Evil Siwani, and how they came to live here in this desert country where, nawoj, my friend, they still continue to live even to this day.

  The feast was well under way. In four days’ time, word had got around the reservation that Rita Antone’s luck had changed for the better. The ritual singing had been well attended, and the feast was a rousing success. The expense was more than Rita alone could have managed, but someone else was helping to defray the cost. Eduardo Jose, the bootlegger from Ahngam, whose grandson, Lucky One, had recently been released from the Pinal County Jail, was more than happy to help out.

  Rita had spent two days sitting at Father John’s bedside at St. Mary’s Hospital. Now, she sat at the head of the long oilcloth-covered table in the feast house at Sells. Davy, his face still bearing telltale traces of red chili, sat on one side of her. Diana Ladd sat on the other.

  Shyly, a girl of sixteen or seventeen sidled up to Rita’s chair, hanging back a moment before daring to say what she had come to say. “I remember you,” she said almost in a whisper. “You used to make us eat our vegetables.”

  Instantly, Davy’s ears perked up. “Wait a minute. You, too? I thought I was the only one.”

  Rita laughed. “No,” she said. “I try to get all children to do that Gordon taught me to eat my vegetables when I was sick in California.”

  “Gordon your son?” Davy asked.

  “No. Gordon my husband. I was very sick, and he and Mrs. Bailey, the Mil-gahn lady he worked for, told me that if I ate all my vegetables, it would make me better, and it worked. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  They all laughed at that, even Diana.

  In four days, mat was the first time Davy had heard his mother laugh, so maybe now she would be all right, just like Detective Walker said. He had told Davy it would take time, that the ohb, Carlisle, had hurt her badly, but that if they were very careful of her, she would be okay.

  The boy looked around, noticing for the first time that the men had all disappeared.

  “Where’s Fat Crack?” he asked.

  Rita shrugged. “Out by the truck, I guess.”

  Davy promptly set off to find him.

  The four men gathered in an informal group around the hood of Fat Crack’s tow truck. The medicine man tried to explain Whore Sickness to the detective. He told him it was Staying Sickness and not the bacon grease that had caused Andrew Carlisle’s blindness. This was all quite strange to Brandon Walker, although he tried to listen with an open mind.

  No one was surprised when Looks At Nothing opened his leather pouch and pulled out one of his cigarettes. Walker watched with renewed amazement as once again the old man flicked open his Zippo lighter and unerringly lit the cigarette.

  Upon hearing Brandon would be driving the boy and the two women out to the reservation for the baptism feast, Hank Maddem had warned his friend about not being sucked into some strange kind of peyote ritual. Brandon had quickly put Hank’s worries to rest.

  “Believe me,” he said. “Tobacco is the only thing in that old man’s cigarettes, and it’s not very damn good tobacco, either.”

  Looks At Nothing took a deep drag, said, “Nawoj,” and then passed it along to Father John. The priest had spent three full days in the hospital being treated for a concussion, but he had convinced the doctor that he had to be dismissed in time to go to a feast in Sells on Friday. The doctor had grumbled, but in the end he had let the old man have his way.

  The cigarette passed from the priest to Fat Crack to the detective, and back, at last, to the medicine man. Far to the west, a thundercloud rose over the desert. Periodically, lightning lit up the cloud’s billowing interior, but the rains had not yet come. The California river toads still slept quietly in their hardened mud beds.

  “He is a good boy,” Looks At Nothing said, “but I am worried about one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Father John asked.


  He was sure it would be some complaint that the other part of the bargain, the Mil-gahn baptism, was going too slowly, but he had only just got out of the hospital that very afternoon. Davy Ladd was scheduled to be baptized during the eleven o’clock mass at San Xavier the day after tomorrow. What more did the old man want?

  But Looks At Nothing’s objection had nothing to do with that. “Edagith Gohk Je’e,” he said, calling Davy by his new Indian name. “One With Two Mothers, this boy, has too many mothers and not enough fathers.

  “There are four of us,” Looks At Nothing continued, “and all nature goes in fours. Why could we not agree to be father to this fatherless boy, all four of us together? We each have things to teach, and we all have things to learn.”

  As soon as Brandon heard the words, he knew Looks At Nothing was right No matter how much Rita Antone and Diana Ladd loved Davy, they could not be his father. A lump caught in Brandon Walker’s throat as he listened. Fatherless himself for three days now, Brandon Walker felt for Davy Ladd almost as much as he hurt for himself.

  It grew quiet in the circle. No one said aloud that he would or would not accept the assignment. That was a foregone conclusion. The decision had been made for them long before they were asked. Looks At Nothing had decreed it so, and that was the way it would be.

  Davy himself came running up just then. “What are you guys doing?” he demanded. “I looked around the feast house, and you were all gone.”

  “We were talking,” Brandon Walker said.

  “What about?”

  “You.”

  “About me? What were you saying?”

  “That somebody needs to take you into Tucson for a haircut,” Brandon said, affectionately ruffling Davy’s hair, but being careful about the stitches.

  “You mean it?” Davy asked. “Honest? To a real barber?”

  “That’s right,” Brandon Walker replied with a slight grin. “You see, Davy, mothers don’t give crew cuts. Barbers do.”

  Queen of the Night Excerpt

  QUEEN

  OF THE

  NIGHT

  J. A. JANCE

  In memory of Tony Hillerman, Old White-Haired Man,

  and all his Brought-Back Children

  Prologue

  THEY SAY IT HAPPENED LONG AGO THAT A YOUNG woman of the Tohono O’odham, the Desert People, fell in love with a Yaqui warrior, a Hiakim, and went to live with him and his people, far to the South. Every evening, her mother, Old White-Haired Woman, would go outside by herself and listen. After a while her daughter’s spirit would speak to her from her new home far away. One day Old White-Haired Woman heard nothing, so she went to find her husband.

  “Our daughter is ill,” Old White-Haired Woman told him. “I must go to her.”

  “But the Hiakim live far from here,” he said, “and you are a bent old woman. How will you get there?”

  “I will ask I’itoi, the Spirit of Goodness, to help me.”

  Elder Brother heard the woman’s plea. He sent Coyote, Ban, to guide Old White-Haired Woman’s steps on her long journey, and he sent the Ali Chu Chum O’odham, the Little People—the animals and birds—to help her along the way. When she was thirsty, Ban led her to water. When she was hungry, the Birds, U’u Whig, brought her seeds and beans to eat.

  After weeks of traveling, Old White-Haired Woman finally reached the land of the Hiakim. There she learned that her daughter was sick and dying.

  “Please take my son home to our people,” Old White-Haired Woman’s daughter begged. “If you don’t, his father’s people will turn him into a warrior.”

  You must understand, nawoj, my friend, that from the time the Tohono O’odham emerged from the center of the earth, they have always been a peace-loving people. So one night, when the Hiakim were busy feasting, Old White-Haired Woman loaded the baby into her burden basket and set off for the North. When the Yaqui learned she was gone, they sent a band of warriors after her to bring the baby back.

  Old White-Haired Woman walked and walked. She was almost back to the land of the Desert People when the Yaqui warriors spotted her. I’itoi saw she was not going to complete her journey, so he called a flock of shashani, black birds, who flew into the eyes of the Yaqui and blinded them. While the warriors were busy fighting shashani, I’itoi took Old White-Haired Woman into a wash and hid her.

  By then the old grandmother was very tired and lame from all her walking and carrying.

  “You stay here,” Elder Brother told her. “I will carry the baby back to your people, but while you sit here resting, you will be changed. Because of your bravery, your feet will become roots. Your tired old body will turn into branches. Each year, for one night only, you will become the most beautiful plant on the earth, a flower the Milgahn, the whites, call the night-blooming cereus, the Queen of the Night.”

  And it happened just that way. Old White-Haired Woman turned into a plant the Indians call ho’ok-wah’o, which means Witch’s Tongs. But on that one night in early summer when a beautiful scent fills the desert air, the Tohono O’odham know that they are breathing in kok’oi ’uw, Ghost Scent, and they remember a brave old woman who saved her grandson and brought him home.

  Each year after that, on the night the flowers bloomed, the Tohono O’odham would gather around while Brought Back Child told the story of his brave grandmother, Old White-Haired Woman, and that, nawoj, my friend, is the same story I have just told you.

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1959, MIDNIGHT

  58º FAHRENHEIT

  Long after everyone else had left the beach and returned to the hotel, and long after the bonfire died down to coals, Ursula Brinker sat there in the sand and marveled over what had happened. What she had allowed to happen.

  When June Lennox had invited Sully to come along to San Diego for spring break, she had known the moment she said yes that she was saying yes to more than just a fun trip from Tempe, Arizona, to California. The insistent tug had been there all along, for as long as Sully could remember. From the time she was in kindergarten, she had been interested in girls, not boys, and that hadn’t changed. Not later in grade school when the other girls started drooling over boys, and not later in high school, either.

  But she had kept the secret. For one thing, she knew how much her parents would disapprove if Sully ever admitted to them or to anyone else what she had long suspected—that she was a lesbian. She didn’t go around advertising it or wearing mannish clothing. People said she was “cute,” and she was—cute and smart and talented. She didn’t know exactly what would happen to her if people figured out who she really was, but it probably wouldn’t be good. She did a good job of keeping up appearances, so no one guessed that the girl who had been valedictorian of her class and who had been voted most likely to succeed was actually queer “as a three-dollar bill.” That was what some of the boys said about people like that— people like her. And she was afraid that by talking about it, what she was feeling right now would be snatched away from her, like a mirage melting into the desert.

  She had kept the secret until now. Until today. With June. And she was afraid, if she left the beach and went back to the hotel room with everyone else and spoke about it, if she gave that new-found happiness a name, it might disappear forever as well.

  The beach was deserted. When she heard the sand-muffled footsteps behind her, she thought it might be June. But it wasn’t.

  “Hello,” she said. “When did you get here?”

  He didn’t answer that question. “What you did was wrong,” he said. “Did you think you could keep it a secret? Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  “It just happened,” she said. “We didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “But you did,” he said. “More than you know.”

  He fell on her then. Had anyone been walking past on the beach, they wouldn’t have paid much attention. Just another young couple carried away with necking; people who hadn’t gotten themselves a room, and probably sho
uld have.

  But in the early hours of that morning, what was happening there by the dwindling fire wasn’t an act of love. It was something else altogether. When the rough embrace finally ended, the man stood up and walked away. He walked into the water and sluiced away the blood.

  As for Sully Brinker? She did not walk away. The brainy cheerleader, the girl who had it all—money, brains, and looks—the girl once voted most likely to succeed would not succeed at anything because she was lying dead in the sand—dead at age twenty-one— and her parents’ lives would never be the same.

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1978, 11:20 P.M.

  63º FAHRENHEIT

  As the quarrel escalated, four-year-old Danny Pardee cowered in his bed. He covered his head with his pillow and tried not to listen, but the pillow didn’t help. He could still hear the voices raging back and forth: his father’s voice and his mother’s. Turning on the TV set might have helped, but if his father came into the bedroom and found the set on when it wasn’t supposed to be, Danny knew what would happen. First the belt would come off and, after that, the beating.

  Danny knew how much that belt hurt, so he lay there and willed himself not to listen. He tried to fill his head with the words to one of the songs he had learned at preschool: “You put your right foot in; you put your right foot out. You put your right foot in, and you shake it all about. You do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around. That’s what it’s all about.”

  He was about to go on to the second verse when he heard something that sounded like a firecracker—or four firecrackers in a row, even though it wasn’t the Fourth of July.

  Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam.

  After that there was nothing. No other sound. Not his mother’s voice and not his father’s, either. An eerie silence settled over the house. First it filled Danny’s ears and then his heart.