Hour of the Hunter

thing I could do about it. If you’re short, Diana, I’ll be happy to advance you some cash.”

“No,” she told him. “I’m fine.”

The next morning, when it was finally over, Diana prepared to have it out with Max Cooper. He hadn’t even bothered to come tell his wife good-bye. She tried calling, but no one answered. Finally, after paying the bill with her own money, she checked out of the hotel and drove back to Joseph. She’d done what she could, but all other arrangements would have to wait until her father arrived in La Grande with his new checkbook.

Driving up to the house, Diana tried the door, but it was latched from the inside. She knocked, only to have the door opened by a complete stranger. The last thing Diana expected was to find a strange woman ensconced in her mother’s place, someone Diana didn’t recognize and who didn’t know Iona’s daughter, either.

“Yes?” the woman said tentatively, as though Diana were some kind of suspicious door-to-door salesman.

Something about the possessive way she opened the door warned Diana this wasn’t some thoughtful neighbor come to help out in time of trouble.

“I live here,” Diana said, pushing her way into the kitchen. “Who are you?”

Just then Max came into the room from the living room. One thumb hooked under his suspenders, he carried a can of beer in his other hand. At nine o’clock in the morning, he was already swaying slightly from side to side. “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

Diana looked at him with absolute loathing. “Who is this?” she spat, pointing at the woman.

“Francine. Francine Duncan. You mean you two haven’t met? Francine, this is Diana.”

“Oh,” Francine said.

“And where were you?” Diana demanded furiously, moving past Francine to stand directly in front of her father. “Where’ve you been for the last month and a half?”

“Busy,” he mumbled. “I been real busy around here. Besides, like I told you and your mother both, I can’t stand hospitals.”

“You won’t have to worry about it anymore,” Diana said. “It’s over. She’s gone.”

Max Cooper sank to the floor as though someone had suddenly lopped him off at the knees. Francine rushed to his side. “Oh, Max, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You stay out of this,” Diana snapped. “Nobody asked you.”

She left Joseph that afternoon and never went back. The boxes came two months later, a week after Max and Francine’s handwritten, after-the-fact wedding announcement. Diana came home from school and found the boxes sitting waiting for her on the patio of the apartment in Eugene. A note on the top one said, Your mother’s things.

Ten years later, Diana had yet to crack the masking tape on even one of those boxes. Knowing Francine had packed them had somehow desecrated Iona Dade Cooper’s possessions. Diana didn’t know if she’d ever be able to bring herself to touch them.

Andrew Carlisle had looked down on Myrna Louise for as long as he could remember, but this was the first time he ever remembered hating her. He went to the tiny, spartan bedroom assigned to him in his mother’s house and fell onto the narrow bed while his whole body throbbed with abhorrence.

How could she have done this to him? How could she?

A Less Than Noble Savage was gone, completely gone. Oh, he still had a rough, rough draft, but six years of refinements had been obliterated. It was as though Myrna Louise had amputated a part of his body. This was his baby, his creation, something he’d nurtured and suckled throughout the endless days in prison.

At times, polishing the exploits of his main character was all that had kept him sane. Carlisle had liked his brute of a protagonist, Clayton Savage, had related to him both as a man and as a character. This modern-day, self-appointed, bloodthirsty renegade had only one objective while slicing and dicing his way through 643 double- spaced manuscript pages-making sure Custer Died for Your Sins, that powerful Native American polemic, was more than just a catchy title.

And now the new and revised Clayton Savage was lost to him, another sin to lay at Diana Ladd’s door. Something else for which that bitch would be held accountable.

Practicing biofeedback, a trick they’d taught him in the Joint, Carlisle managed to get his breathing back under control. Don’t get mad-get even, he told himself. That was the secret.

Finally, with the embryo of a plan forming in his head, he got up and went over to the dresser. Deliberately, he felt along the front of it until he found a loose piece of fascia board. He tugged at it until it broke off in his hands, then he went out into the living room still carrying the broken piece. He walked past his mother, who had not yet moved from her rocker.

“Where are you going?” She asked the question mechanically, strictly out of habit, even though she didn’t want to. She had no need to know where her son was going or what he would do, but she was unable to change a lifetime’s worth of asking.

“To the lumberyard,” he said. “I need some glue. A piece of wood broke off the dresser in my room.”

Away from the house, away from her, he was able to think more clearly. He bought the glue for the dresser. He also bought some caulking compound and a caulking gun. He told the man at the check stand that he was installing a tub in an add-on bathroom.

By the time he came back home, Andrew Carlisle was his old self again, his old charming self.

“Sorry I was so upset earlier, Mama,” he said. “It’s not that big a deal, really. Besides, you’re right. It probably wasn’t all that good a book in the first place.”

“You’re not mad at me anymore?”

“No,” he lied. “Not at all. How about going out to dinner? We could go someplace special, for a steak or whatever you like.”

Myrna Louise’s eyes lit up. She was always game for going out to dinner. “I really like that place over in the shopping center,” she said. “Lulubelle’s or whatever. They have good ribs.”

“That settles it,” her son told her with an easy smile. “That’s where we’ll go then, and tomorrow, if you like, we could ride down to Tucson together. I have a few more errands to run. It’s a long drive. It would be fun to have some company.”

Late in the afternoon, Diana and Davy drove out to Sells. Right after they arrived, Diana took Davy around to the side of the building and held him up so he could speak to Rita through the open window. Then, warning him not to talk to anyone else in her absence, Diana left him in the lobby and went down the hall to Rita’s room.

“Davy sure looks good,” Rita said. “The cut on his head isn’t too bad?”

“No. It’s fine. He’s proud of all his stitches.”

The two women were quiet for a moment. Over the years, they had spent so much time alone together that long silences between them were not unusual. There was nothing in the older woman’s placid countenance to warn Diana that a storm was coming.

“My nephew was here earlier,” Rita said at last. “He came to give me some news.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Carlisle.”

At the sound of the name, Diana’s heart caught in her throat. “What about him?”

“He’s out.”

“When?”

“Friday. Already he has killed again.”

“No. Are you serious?”

Rita nodded. “Fat Crack told me. They have arrested an Indian, but it was Carlisle who did it. He bit her.”

“My God,” Diana breathed. “I’ll have to get in touch with Detective Walker right away and let him know.”

“No,” Rita said. “Detective Walker already tried with Carlisle, and he failed. Gina is dead. Your husband is dead, and now Carlisle is free. We will not give Detective Walker another chance.”

“What are you saying?” Diana asked. She knew what Rita was thinking, but she didn’t dare put it into