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

by J. A. Jance

  Father John stepped forward, reached out, took Looks At Nothing’s gnarled old hand, and shook it. “Nawoj,” he said. “Welcome.”

  Brandon Walker was worn out with trying to find a comfortable position on the post-modern waiting-room furniture, but he had nonetheless managed a few catnaps during the early morning hours while his mother came and went from brief visits with her husband. It was just like when President Kennedy died, Brandon thought. The doctors didn’t tell everything they knew all at once for fear of starting a panic. Brandon suspected they had known last night that there was no hope of recovery for Toby Walker, but they wanted to give the family a chance to adjust to the situation. Brandon took the news as a direct act of mercy from a God he was surprised to learn he still believed in. Louella might continue to insist it wasn’t true, couldn’t possibly be true that Toby was dying, but her son knew better.

  Each time a pale and shaken Louella emerged from the room, she was that much more entrenched in her disbelief. “I want a second opinion,” she announced at last.

  Brandon rubbed his forehead. “What’s a second opinion going to buy you except another doctor bill?”

  His question provoked Louella to outrage. “How can you mention money at a time like this? That man in there, that so-called doctors, says we should turn off the respirator. Just like that. As though it’s nothing.”

  “Pop’s not there, Mom,” her son said gently. “He hasn’t been for a long time, really. Turning off the machine would be a blessing.”

  He started to add “for us all,” but thought better of it.

  “No! Absolutely not. I won’t have it.”

  “If he lives, he’ll be a vegetable, Mom. He won’t know either of us. He won’t be able to eat on his own or stand or breathe.”

  “But he’s still alive!” his mother hissed. “Your father is still alive.”

  Too tired to argue anymore, Brandon capitulated. “I’ll go talk to the nurse about a second opinion,” he said.

  He went to the nurses’ station and asked to speak to the head nurse.

  “She’s on her break,” the clerk said.

  He nodded. “That’s all right. I’m going to the cafeteria for some coffee. I’ll talk to her when I get back.”

  He walked down the long breezeway to the cafeteria. It was mid-morning now and hot, but he felt chilled inside and out. The air-conditioning seemed to have settled in his blood and bones.

  How would he ever make Louella see reason? She was his problem now and no one else’s. Toby was still breathing with the help of his respirator, but he was really out of the war zone. It didn’t seem fair for the focus of the battle to be immune to it.

  Brandon took his cup of muddy coffee and a cigarette—he had finally bought a pack of his own—to a table in the far corner where someone had left most of a Sunday paper lying strewn with a layer of toast crumbs and speckles of greasy butter.

  He started to toss the paper aside, and then stopped when he recognized Davy Ladd’s serious picture staring out at him from the top of the page. He read the article through twice before his weary brain fully grasped the material.

  Why in the world would Diana Ladd have permitted Davy to be featured in the paper like that? He would have thought she’d want to preserve her privacy. After all, if she had an unlisted phone number, why go advertising her location on the front page of the second section of a Sunday paper?

  Shaking his head, he tore out the page and stuffed it in his pocket. Brandon Walker was the very last person to pretend to understand why women did some of the crazy things they did. If, prior to the fact, Diana Ladd had asked his advice, he would have counseled her to keep Davy’s name and picture out of the paper at all costs. You could never tell what kind of fruitcakes would be drawn to that kind of article or how they would behave.

  But the truth of the matter was, Diana Ladd hadn’t asked his advice, so MYOB, buddy, he told himself. You’ve got trouble enough of your own.

  The three men wandered over to one of the many ocotillo-shaded food booths that lined the large dirt parking lot. In each shelter, two or three women worked over mesquite-burning fires, cooking popovers in vats of hot grease, filling them with chili or beans, and then selling them to the hungry San Xavier flock, churchgoers and tourists alike.

  Father John led them to a booth where he evidently had a charge account of sorts. The women took his order and quickly brought back three chili popovers on folded paper plates and three cans of Orange Crush. No money changed hands.

  “Shall we go into my office to eat?” Father John asked. “It’s much cooler in there.”

  They went to a small office hidden behind the mission bookstore where Father John was obliged to bring in two extra chairs so they could all sit at once. While eating his own popover, Father John observed the fastidious way in which the medicine man ate. Chili popovers are notoriously messy, but Looks At Nothing consumed his meticulously, then wiped his entire face clean with a paper napkin.

  Father John flushed to think that there had once been a time when he would have thrown a visiting siwani out of the mission compound, especially this particular siwani. He had learned much since those early days, not the least of which was a certain humility about who had the most direct access to God’s ear. Over the years, he had come to suspect that God listened in on a party line rather than a private one.

  Patiently, although he was dying of curiosity, the old priest waited to hear what Looks At Nothing had to say. Father John knew full well that it was the medicine man and not Fat Crack who was the motivating force behind this visit. And he knew also that whatever it was, it must be a matter of life and death. Nothing less than that would have forced stiff-necked old Looks At Nothing to unbend enough to set aside their ancient rivalry.

  It was August, hot and viciously humid. The summer rains had come with a vengeance, and the Topawa Mission compound was awash in thick red mud. As Father John picked his way through the puddles from rectory to church, the Indian materialized out of the shadow of a nearby mesquite tree. He moved so easily that at first the priest didn’t realize the other man was blind.

  “Understanding Woman has sent me,” the man said in slow but formal English. “I must speak to you of Dancing Quail.”

  Father John stopped short. “Dancing Quail. What about her? Is she ill? She missed her catechism lesson yesterday.”

  The other man stopped, too, unexpectedly splashing into a puddle. As he struggled to regain his balance, Father John finally noticed that his visitor couldn’t see.

  “Dancing Quail will have a baby,” he said.

  “No! Whose?”

  For the first time, the blind man turned his sightless eyes full on the priest. Without being told, Father John understood his visitor must be the young medicine man from Many Dogs Village, the one people called Looks At Nothing.

  The blind man faced the priest, but he did not answer the question. He didn’t have to, for under the medicine man’s accusing stare Father John knew the answer all too well. His soul shriveled within him. His fingers groped for the comforting reassurance of his rosary.

  “How far along is she?”

  “Since the Rain Dance at Ban Thak, she has missed two mash-athga,” Looks At Nothing said, “two menstrual periods.”

  “Dancing Quail has told you this?” Father John managed.

  “Dancing Quail says nothing. It is her grandmother who has sent me. We who have no eyes have other ways of knowing.”

  “I will quit the priesthood,” Father John declared. “I will quit and marry her.”

  “No!” Looks At Nothing was adamant. “You will not see her again. She is going far away from here. It is already arranged with the outing matron. She will go to a job in Phoenix. You are not to stop her.”

  “I’ll speak to Father Mark, I’ll…”

  “You will do nothing. A man who would break one vow would as easily break another.” An undercurrent of both threat and contempt permeated Looks At Nothing’s softly spoken w
ords. “Besides,” he added icily, “Father Mark has already been told.”

  “You want her for yourself!” The accusation shot from Father John’s lips before he had time to think.

  Looks At Nothing recoiled as though he’d been slapped. In his earlier, hotheaded days, such an insult might have merited a fight to the death. The man he had killed in Ajo had died for much less, but now the medicine man simply stepped back, putting a yard or so of distance between them.

  “I am mahniko,” Looks At Nothing said slowly and with great dignity, “a cripple, marked by I’itoi as a holy man. You would do well to be the same.” With that, he turned and walked away.

  Determined to plead his case to his superior, Father John left at once for San Xavier. Father Mark refused to consider the idea of the younger priest renouncing his vows to marry the girl.

  “What’s done is done,” he said. “She’s gone. Forget about her. You have a vocation.”

  Father John returned to Topawa to find that both Dancing Quail and Understanding Woman had disappeared from the mission compound. He heard that the old woman died the following year, alone in her hut in Ban Thak. Father John didn’t see Dancing Quail again for almost thirty years, but he prayed for her daily, for her and for her child as well.

  Looks At Nothing pulled a cigarette and lighter from the cracked leather pouch he wore around his waist. Father John watched with some admiration as the blind man, with steady hands, used a Zippo lighter to fire the ceremonial cigarette, the Peace Smoke, as the Papagos called it.

  The medicine man took a long drag and then passed it to the priest. “Nawoj,” he said.

  “Nawoj,” Father John returned. He had never learned to appreciate the sharp, bitter taste of Indian tobacco, but he inhaled without betraying his opinion. He passed the cigarette along to Fat Crack, who took his turn.

  “We are here to talk about the boy,” Looks At Nothing announced.

  “What boy?” Father John asked, confused by the medicine man’s statement. Who was he talking about?

  “His name is Davy Ladd,” Looks At Nothing continued. “He is the son of the woman Dancing Quail lives with.”

  Rita Antone’s old name spun out of the past in a whirlwind of memory that gathered both old men into its vortex while Fat Crack was left temporarily mystified. Dancing Quail? Who was that? It was a name he’d never heard before.

  Father John caught himself. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Davy Ladd. I remember now. What about him?”

  “He is unbaptized,” Looks At Nothing answered. For a moment, nothing more was said as the cigarette once more made the rounds. “Unbaptized in both the Mil-gahn way and the O’othham way. He is a danger to himself, to his mother, and especially to Dancing Quail.”

  “Why do you tell me this?” Father John asked. “What does this have to do with me?”

  “His mother was once a child of your church, your tribe. She has fallen away and has never taken her baby to the church. You must fix this.”

  Father John’s first impulse was to laugh, but he had long since learned to suppress those inappropriate inclinations.

  “Siwani,” the priest said placatingly. “Baptism is a complicated issue. I can’t just fix it, as you say.”

  Looks At Nothing rose, and for a moment stood over the other two men, leaning on his cane like a strange three-legged bird.

  “You must,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone that brooked no argument. “You must, or Dancing Quail will die.”

  With that the old medicine man turned and made his way out of the room, while Fat Crack followed closely behind.

  13

  THEY SAY IT happened long ago that some quail were out eating during the harvest, Coyote crept up on them and ate them all except for one small quail who hid himself under the thick flat leaves of Ihbhai, of Prickly Pear. The frightened quail waited while Coyote ate up all his brothers and sisters. When it was safe, Quail ran home crying, “Coyote has eaten us all. He has eaten all my brothers and sisters.”

  One wise old quail heard this and decided to get even. He waited until one day when Coyote was sound asleep. He cut Coyote open and took out some of his tail fat, then Quail sewed him back up, filling the empty space with rocks. After that, Quail flew off somewhere, started a fire, and began roasting the fat.

  Coyote woke up and sniffed the air. “I smell something good,” he said. He started to follow the smell, but as soon as he moved, all the rocks inside him began to rattle. The sound made Coyote very proud. “That is the sound of my medicine drum,” he said.

  Rattling all the way, Coyote walked until he found the place where the quail were having their feast. “Your food smells good, Little Brothers. Let me have a taste.”

  They gave him some, and Coyote liked it. “Where did you get this meat?” he asked.

  “Way over there,” Quail said. “Beyond the mountains. Baskets are traded for it.”

  Coyote set off to go get some meat of his own, but as soon as he left, he heard the quail laughing and saying, “Look, Coyote has eaten his own tail fat.”

  Coyote came back. “What did you say?” he asked, but the quail wouldn’t answer. Just then a cottontail came running by. “What did the quail say?” Coyote asked.

  “They said, ‘Coyote has eaten his own tail fat.’ ”

  As soon as he heard this, Coyote knew he had been tricked, and he was very angry. He chased after the quail, who disappeared down a hole in which they had hidden a cactus all wrapped in feathers.

  Coyote dug in the hole after them. When he pulled out the first quail, he asked, “Did you do this to me?”

  “No,” the quail answered. “It wasn’t me.”

  Coyote dug further and pulled out another quail.

  “Did you do this to me?”

  “No,” the second quail answered. “It wasn’t me.” And so it went until he pulled out the very last one.

  “Did you do this to me?”

  But the last quail didn’t answer. “Ah-ha,” said Coyote, “since you don’t answer me, you must be the one,” and he bit hard on the quail, but he only hurt himself because that last quail was really the cactus.

  And that, nawoj, is the story of how Quail tricked Coyote.

  Andrew Carlisle was in no hurry to get home. Avoiding the freeway, he drove up the back way from Tucson to Tempe, coming into town through Florence junction and Mesa. He stopped at the Big Apple for a late breakfast. As usual, the previous night’s exertions left him feeling wonderfully alive and ravenously hungry.

  He had been out of prison for only two days. Already two people were dead. One a day, sort of like multiple vitamins, he thought. It was only fair. He’d been saving up for a long time, but Margie Danielson and Johnny Rivkin had been mere appetizers, something to hold him until the main course came along.

  Thinking about Margie Danielson made him remember the newspaper waiting in the car. He asked the waitress for one more cup of coffee and went out to retrieve The Arizona Sun. It was important to stay abreast of how the Picacho Peak investigation was going. If the cops suddenly moved away from their Indian suspect, if they somehow stumbled on a lead that would point them in the right direction Andrew Carlisle needed to know at once so he could take appropriate countermeasures.

  He turned to the second section, the local news section, and the name Ladd jumped off the page at him. How lucky could he get? There he was, Garrison Ladd’s own kid, complete with a picture and more than a few helpful details. Hardly able to contain his excitement, Carlisle read through the column. The names were all there, ones he’d thought he would have to search out, one by one, over a lengthy period of time—Rita Antone, Diana Ladd, and David Ladd. If the boy had been in a car accident, his name and address were now part of an active police report. Carlisle knew from personal experience that, for a price, almost everything in the Pima County Sheriff’s Department was up for sale. Cash on delivery. Discretion advised.

  Jubilant, he paid his bill, adding in an extra tip, and headed for Weber Drive. Mayb
e he’d take his mother out to celebrate that night. She wouldn’t have to know exactly what they were celebrating. He’d spend some of Johnny Rivkin’s cash and take her someplace nice like Casa Vieja in old Tempe or maybe little Lulu’s just up the street.

  Myrna Louise was sitting in her rocker when he came into the house. Fortunately, he had left the Hartmann bag in the car. His mother sniffed disapprovingly when she saw the pink pantsuit. “You shouldn’t dress like that, Andrew. What will people think? Roger was right. You should have had that first haircut much sooner.”

  Carlisle felt far too smug to let Myrna Louise draw him into that decades-old argument. “Don’t look so upset, Mama. Your neighbors won’t even notice. They’ll think your sister came to visit, or your cousin from Omaha.”

  “I don’t have a cousin in Omaha,” Myrna Louise insisted.

  “It was just a figure of speech,” Andrew Carlisle told her. “I don’t know why this disturbs you so. It’s like wearing a disguise. Maybe you should try it sometime. It’s fun, like playing dress-up. Didn’t you play dress-up when you were a child?”

  “When I was a child,” she replied stubbornly, “but not when I was fifty years old.”

  Carlisle went into his bedroom. He saw at once that the stack of manuscripts was missing from the bookshelf. Turning on his heel, he charged back down the hall to the living room.

  “Where are they, Mama?” he demanded.

  “Where are what?”

  “Don’t give me that. You know what I mean. Where are my manuscripts, the ones that came in the mail?”

  “I burned them,” she replied quietly. “Every single page.”

  Carlisle’s jaw dropped. “You what?”

  “Outside. In the burning barrel. I burned them all.”

  Andrew Carlisle went livid, his hands shook. “What the hell do you mean, you burned them?”