Hour of the Hunter

working.” She started toward the house, leaving him standing there.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“To call the hospital and get my car keys,” she said. Two minutes later, she emerged from the house and headed toward her car, a tiny white Honda.

“Why don’t you let me drive,” Brandon offered, motioning toward the far more powerful Galaxy. “We’ll make better time, especially if we use the lights.”

She wavered for a moment, vacillating between driving herself and accepting his offer of help.

“What did the doctor say?” Brandon pressed.

“That Davy will have to go on into Tucson for stitches.”

“See there? Let me drive. That way, you can take care of the boy.”

The detective’s good sense overcame Diana Ladd’s stubborn independence. Without another word, she headed for his car.

Later, as the Ford roared down the highway, lights flashing overhead, Diana noticed she was still holding the partially full bottle of PineSol. She clearly remembered putting it down when she used the phone, but in her frantic rush to leave the house, she must have unconsciously picked it up again. As unobtrusively as possible, she slipped the offending bottle out of sight under the seat of the speeding Galaxy. Diana Ladd was upset, and she didn’t want the detective to realize exactly how upset she was.

Fat Crack Ortiz owned the only gas station in Sells. He also owned the only tow truck. Consequently, he was the first member of Rita Antone’s family to be notified of the accident on Kitt Peak Road.

After towing the demolished Jimmy back to the station, he hurried straight to the hospital. One of a handful of Christian Scientists on the reservation, Fat Crack subscribed to neither medical doctors nor medicine men, but he was prepared to be open-minded as far as other people’s beliefs were concerned.

As soon as he turned up in the emergency-room lobby, one of the nurses, Effie Joaquin, recognized him. “Is it serious?” he asked.

Effie nodded. “It sure is. She’s ruptured her spleen and broken some ribs and one arm. There may be other internal injuries as well. She went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance. Do you want to see her before she goes into surgery?”

“If I can,” Fat Crack said.

The nurse ushered him into the emergency room. Rita, looking pale and shrunken, lay on a gurney with an IV bag draining into her flaccid right arm. The other arm was swathed in bulky, bloody bandages. He walked over to the gurney and bent close to Rita’s head.

“Ni-thahth?” he whispered gently in her ear, speaking the traditional words for his mother’s elder sister.

Her eyes fluttered open, darted around wildly for a moment, then settled on his face. “Ni- mad,” she returned. “Nephew.”

“I will pray for you,” he said, reaching out and touching her grasping fingers, feeling his own power flowing into her. His auntie did not believe according to his lights, but Fat Crack’s faith was strong enough for both of them.

“Olhoni,” she whispered.

Her nephew had not heard the name before. At first he didn’t understand what she was saying. He thought she was still worried about the spooked steer that had caused the accident.

“He’s fine,” Fat Crack reassured her. “You didn’t hit him at all.”

Rita shook her head impatiently and wet her parched lips. “The boy,” she said. “Davy. He’s outside. Stay with him. Until his mother comes.”

“Sure, Ni-thahth,” he told her. “I will see that he isn’t left alone.”

Rita’s eyes closed then as Effie came to get the gurney. “The operating room is ready now,” she said. “You’ll have to wait outside.”

“Yes,” Fat Crack said. “I will wait.”

Myrna Louise fixed her son a quick dinner of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast, washed down with a tumbler of her own rotgut vodka, then she showed him into the tiny second bedroom.

“Jake’s clothes are still in the closet there,” she said. “I haven’t gotten around to calling Goodwill to come pick them up. Maybe some of it will fit.”

Andrew Carlisle waited until his mother left the room and closed the door behind her before he hurried over to the bed. He groaned with disappointment. Three large self-addressed envelopes lay there on the chenille bedspread-manuscript-sized envelopes-each address, written in his own clear hand, said Mr. Philip Wharton.

Damn! So none of the three so-called literary agents had had balls enough to take it. He ripped open the envelopes one by one. A copy of his manuscript, A Less Than Noble Savage, was in each, along with three separate form letters saying thanks, but no thanks. For obvious reasons, he hadn’t used his old agent, but these jerks were treating him like a rank amateur.

Damn them all straight to hell anyway! Who the hell did they think they were, turning him down with nothing more than a form letter? Not even a personal note? They didn’t know what they were missing-who they were missing-but he’d show them.

Hands trembling with suppressed rage, he tore each of the rejection slips into tiny pieces and threw the resulting confetti into the garbage. Those stupid bastards didn’t know good writing when they saw it. They were too busy selling the public on half-baked, vapid fantasy/mysteries written by limp-wristed creeps who never once bloodied their own hands.

What had Andrew Carlisle always drummed into his students’ heads? Write what you know. If you want to know how it feels to be a murderer, try choking the life out of something and see how hard it is, how much effort it takes, and see how you feel about it afterward.

He felt a sudden stirring in his groin as he remembered Margaret and how it had felt to drain the life out of her. He knew now, from going through her purse and car, that the blonde’s name was Margaret, Margaret Danielson-Margie for short.

The pulsing urge came on him suddenly. He forced himself to undress and lie on the bed and just think about her. He allowed himself to masturbate until he found release, because it was far too soon for him to do anything else.

Rita opened her eyes. A brilliant white light was shining above her. Around the periphery of her vision, several people in green caps and face masks stood over her. All she could see were eyes-eyes and a few anxious frowns, no one she recognized, no one she knew.

A man leaned over her. She smelled the sharp, pungent odor of aftershave. He patted her arm gently. “It’s going to be fine, Rita. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Dr. Rosemead meant his reassuring touch and softly uttered words to offer his patient some comfort. They had exactly the opposite effect. She shrank away from his fingers, her whole body convulsing and struggling against the restraints that bound her to the operating table even though every movement sent sharp stabs of pain through her body.

“Anesthetic!” Dr. Rosemead ordered sharply. “For God’s sake, give her something!”

Davy sat quietly in the busy waiting room next to the mountain of a man he knew to be Nana Dahd’s nephew. The cut on his head had mostly stopped bleeding, although his hair was still sticky in spots where more blood had oozed out since the last time someone had cleaned it off. One of the nurses had said he would probably need stitches. He wondered if they used a sewing machine or maybe just a needle and thread.

His head ached, and when he tried to move around, he felt dizzy, so he sat still. The man next to him spoke to him briefly in Papago when he first sat down, then he seemed to go away completely. His body was there, but his mind seemed far, far away. It made Davy think of the way his mother was sometimes when she was working, so he contented himself with sitting and watching.