Hour of the Hunter (14 page)

Iona lapsed into silence. For a while, Diana thought maybe her mother had fallen asleep. Diana sat there stunned, still grappling with the sudden knowledge that her father was illiterate.

She remembered his angry tirade when she had told him she was going to go to the University of Oregon to learn how to be a writer.

"A writer!" he had roared. "You, a writer?"

"Why not?" she had spat back at him, daring him to hit her but knowing that he wouldn't because the rodeo was just days away. Max Cooper couldn't afford to give his daughter a black eye just before the Chief Joseph Days Parade and Rodeo.

"I'll tell you why not. You're a woman, that's why not."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"Was Shakespeare a woman?" he demanded. "Were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John women? I'll say not.

They were all men, every last one of them, and let me tell you, sister, they're good enough for me!"

She remembered the conversation word for word, and all the time that lying bastard had been berating her about how good Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were, he couldn't read a one of them. Sitting there in the darkened hospital room, Diana felt doubly betrayed, not only because her father had fooled her, but because her mother had helped him do it.

"I'm glad you married Gary," Iona said at length. "He seems like a very nice boy."

"He's not a boy, Mom. He's twenty-five, five years older than I am."

"I so wanted ,Well, I just wish you'd start a family I wish to have grandchildren." Iona's eyes filled with tears she wiped away with a corner of the sheet.

Diana didn't have the heart to tell Iona that her good Catholic daughter was a mortal sinner who had been taking birth-control pills for a year now, ever since the first week of December of 1963. Gary had just happened to know of a doctor who wasn't averse to giving single girls prescriptions for the Pill.

Now that they were married, she and Gary had agreed it wasn't time yet for them to consider starting a family, especially not until he finished his master's degree. He was thinking about applying for a creative-writing Program In Arizona. Diana still had two more semesters to go before she'd have her teaching credential "He's a lot like Your father, isn't he?" Iona said.

Diana was offended by the question and didn't answer.

Gary wasn't at all like her father. She'd gone to great lengths to find someone as different from Max Cooper as he could possibly be.

Gary was smart. He had a good education and a sense of humor, and he had never once raised a hand against her in anger. Maybe he was a little lazy. If there was a right way to do something and an easy way, Gary would choose the easy way every time- Maybe in that regard there was a certain similarity between her husband and her father, but other than that, Garrison Walther Ladd was as different from Max Cooper as day from night "Does he treat YOU nice?" Iona asked.

"He treats me fine, Mom. Don't worry."

Relieved, Iona Cooper finally relaxed enough to fall . . asleep.

They did the surgery early the next morning the doctor came looking for Diana in the small waiting ' lit Of the news' room, his shoulders sagged under the weight As soon as she saw the haggard look in his eyes, Diana knew the prognosis wasn't good.

"How bad is it?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Very bad, Diana. I'm sorry. It's already metastasized. Completely inoperable. There's nothing to do but take her home and make her as comfortable as possible."

"How long does she have?"

"I don't know. A few months maybe. A year at the most."

Iona was still under sedation and wasn't expected to come out of it for several hours. In tears, Diana fled the hospital and drove like a maniac along the twisting road from La Grande to Joseph, wanting to fall into Gary's arms, to have him hold her and tell her that everything would be fine.

But when she got home, the house was deserted. She couldn't find the men anywhere. After waiting one long half hour and doing two days' worth of dirty dishes that had been allowed to accumulate in the kitchen sink, she finally thought to go check the bomb shelter behind the house.

Dug into a hillside, the shelter was Max Cooper's pride and joy. He had built it himself, cinder block by cinder block, with plans he had ordered by mail and which his wife had patiently helped him decipher.

And that was where Diana found them, both of them, father and husband, passed out cold on two of the three army cots. A litter of empty beer bottles covered the floor around them.

Sick at heart and without waking them, Diana turned on her heel and drove back to La Grande. She never told is, Gary she'd seen them like that, and if either one of them noticed that someone had come into the house and done the dishes while they were drunk and passed out, no one ever mentioned it.

"We're here," Brandon said quietly, pulling up under the brightly lit emergency-room canopy at St. Mary's Hospital.

Diana jerked awake from an exhausted sleep. She started to waken Davy, but Brandon stopped her.

"You go on inside and start filling out paperwork. I'll park the car and carry Davy in. He's way too heavy for you.

The detective eased the child out of the backseat, hoisting him up to his chest and wrapping his arms around the narrow, bony shoulders. The child stirred enough to look at him once, but he was far too tired to object. With a weary sigh. Davy snuggled his head against Brandon walker's neck, Scents of an improbable mixture of hospital disinfectant and wood smoke drifted up from Davy's sweaty hair, reminding Brandon of something missing from his own life-little boys and Cub Scout camp-outs.

carried Davy Battling the lump in his throat, the detective Ladd inside and sat with the boy cradled in his arms while Diana talked to the emergency room clerk. Walker missed his own boys right then with a gut-wrenching, almost physical ache. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd actually held either Tommy Or Quentin like this.

The boys were tiny when he went off to Nam, and Janie had taken them with her when she moved out and divorced him four years ago, claiming she was tired of playing second fiddle to the Pima County Sheriff's Department- LAlueUa Walker had raised her son right, Brandon was Only too happy to sop UP all the guilt Janie dished out. He agreed completely that the failure of their marriage must have been all his fault, accepting as gospel the idea that he had somehow let Janie and the boys down.

That, of course, was before he heard about the new expecting, about his own addition his former wife was who sons' soon-to-be half brother, Brian, a nine-pounder. Six months after Janie left Oregon. Brian's was born a scant s was also a full year and a half after Brandon Walker's birth vasectomy. Later, when he was back at the house getting it ready to sell, a neighborhood busybody had told him tie Janie and her second husband had been playing around the en off doing his duty to God whole time Brandon had be

and country in Vietnam. sometimes, but not often

He saw Tommy and Quentin enough. Eight and nine years old now, they barely knew him. He was the obliging stranger who showed up on the front porch periodically to take them to ball games or movies or to the Pima County Fair. Now that little Brian was old enough, he wanted to go along, too.

At first Brandon said absolutely not. No way! He did his best to hate the little bastard, but he wasn't able to keep that up forever. The sweet little sad-eyed guy, left crying on the porch once too often, had worn down Brandon's resistance. More of Louella Walker's guilt, perhaps, but after all, it sure as hell wasn't the kid's fault that his parents were a matched pair of creeps. So lately, Brian was usually the fourth member on the infrequent Saturday afternoon outings.

Afterward, Brandon would sometimes kick himself for being a patsy, for being too goddanned easy, but that's just the way he was. Besides, Brian appreciated going to ball games even more than Tommy and Quentin did.

When Andrew Carlisle finished shaving his head, his tender scalp was screaming at him, but as he examined himself in the mirror, he knew a sore head was well worth it. He looked like a new man, felt like somebody else completely. He'd have to be careful to wear a hat the next few days so he didn't blister his bare head, but no one would put this smooth-headed man-Phil Wharton, Andrew told himself-together with the bushy-haired Andrew Carlisle who had been released from prison early that afternoon. the previous afternoon. he corrected, glancing at his watch Jake Spaulding's watch, which was his now.

He went into the living room and checked on his mother.

Myrna Louise was sound asleep in the rocker, head resting on her chin, mouth open, a thin string of spittle dribbling from one corner of her mouth. He waved his hand in front of her face to be sure she was asleep, then he went back into the bathroom and shaved his legs.

When he finished with that, he returned to his room and retrieved the gun, Margaret Danielson's automatic. Long ago, Myrna Louise had been known for going through her son's things. And even giving him the keys to Jake's old Valiant.

Besides, she had taken good care of it and he was welcome to She told him the tags were legal and could use it anytime he wanted. He went out to the garage and slipped the gun under the base of the jack in the links spare-tire well. That way it would be safe out Of the house should he need it.

The other key his mother had given him was to his storage locker, the place where he had directed her to leave all his furniture and belongings once she emptied his house in Tucson before selling it. At the time, Myrna Louise had questioned what he was doing with all that camping equipment in storage and what did he keep in the huge metal drum? He had reassured her that his survivalist gear was nothing more than a harmless interest in camping, a hobby he might want to take UP again once he got out.

Andrew was reasonably certain all his equipment was there, at least most of it. He'd have to go down to Tucson as soon as possible and do a thorough inventory to make sure everything was in working order.

Once he was sure everything he needed Was in the barrell, he'd be ready to go hunting again.

He could hardly wait.

After what she'd been through with her mother, the last thing Diana Ladd expected to happen in the emergency room was for her to get queasy when the doctor started to put stitches in Davy's head. The doctor asked her if she'd be alright. she nodded that she would.

While she sat in the lobby head dangling between her knees feeling both foolish and helpless, Brandon Walker hurried into the emergency ROOM and held Davy Ladd's hand while the doctor sewed the little boy's scalp back together.

It didn't seem like that big a deal, really, but when Brandon Walker carried a wide-awake Davy back out of the emergency room and delivered him into his mother's waiting arms, Diana's tearful gratitude warmed his heart.

No matter what Louella said, maybe Brandon wasn't such a poor excuse for a human being after all.

He waited patiently while Davy proudly showed his mother the shaved spot on his head and the straight line of caterpillar-leg stitches that marched from his temple down one cheek.

"Ready?" Brandon asked at last.

"Yes," Diana said. "Would you mind carrying him again?

You're right. He really is too heavy."

"I can walk all by myself," Davy said. "The doctor said I was real brave. I was, wasn't I?" He looked up at Brandon for confirmation.

"Yes, you were. You barely cried at all."

They walked to the waiting Ford three-abreast, with the boy between them holding each of their hands.

"Can I sit in the front now?" Davy asked, while they waited for Brandon to unlock the door.

“You bet," Brandon Walker replied. "Any kid with twelve stitches in his head ought to get to ride in the front seat."

In La Cantina, a dive of a bar in Rocky Point, Mexico' the driver of a red Grand Prix was sipping tequila and telling a buddy of his about the tough little boy he'd met earlier that day after a spectacular auto accident.

"That kid was something else," the man was saying"Here he was with all kinds of blood pouring out of his head, but all he could think about was this poor old Indian broad who was still pinned in the truck. I was about to take off in the wrong direction to get help, but he wouldn't let me. He kept dragging on my leg and insisting there was an ambulance up on top of the mountain, for Damned if he wasn't right. If we hadn't gone up the mountain after it right then, I don't think she would have made it. Maybe she didn't, for that matter."

"You say the woman was an Indian and the kid was an Anglo?"

"A regular towhead,,, the man answered. "And cute as a button."

"wonder if there isn't a story in this," his buddy said.

"you know, human interest. I'll talk to my features editor about it when I go back tomorrow. Maybe it's something I can use next week.

Once it gets hot around here, feature stories are tough to come by."

taking a patch of salt The speaker drained his shot glass, he wiped the excess from his hand with a napkin, and took a bite from the lime on the bar in front of him. "Ready for another?"

"You tell me. Is the Pope Catholic?"

Chapter Seven

BRANDON WALKER STRETCHED out full length on Diana Ladd's long but sagging couch, and wasn't sure which of the two woke him-the boy or the -dog which lay by the coffee table.

When the detective Opened his eyes, a pajama clad Davy was munching on a rolled-up flour tortilla and sharing an occasional bite with a grateful, tail-thumping dog. Bone lay with his bristly, sPike-haired head resting comfortably on the child's knee. Both the boy and the dog were staring intently, watching Brandon Walker's every move.

"Did your mom let you sleep over?" Davy asked.

The question brought Brandon Walker fully awake and put a rueful smile on his lips. "Not exactly."

By now, his mother would have discovered her thirty-four-year-old son's overnight absence and would be absolutely ripped. Louella had never come to terms with the idea that her son was a fully grown man.