Hour of the Hunter (22 page)

And if "spreading her legs," as her father would have said, was all it took to win him, then bring on the double bed and spread away. She knew what those words meant now, and she was beginning to have some sense of her own power. She'd show her father, all right. If sex was the bait and Gary Ladd was the prize, she'd screw until Garrison Ladd couldn't walk or talk or see straight, if that's what he wanted. She'd do whatever he asked and more besides.

As she stood there in the apartment's small living room waiting for him, Diana Cooper couldn't see that the furnishings were relatively cheap.

Compared to what she knew from Joseph, it was palatial. What she saw convinced her that she'd found the man of her dreams, one worthy of her undying loyalty, someone she could afford to lavish her love on, someone who would give her love and laughter in return.

She was so smitten, so convinced by her own initial, naive assumptions, that it was years before she began to question them. By then, it was too late.

"You can come in now," he called.

As she'd suspected, the bed had been hastily made, with lumpy covers pulled up over pillows but not properly tucked in. He was closing the closet door when she walked into the bedroom.

For the first time, Garrison Ladd seemed slightly unsure of himself.

"The couch isn't very comfortable," he said hesitantly. "I thought we could lie here and watch television or something."

The fact that he seemed nervous filled her again with that headspinning, newfound sense of power. Without a word, she kicked off her shoes, slipped out of her jeans, and peeled the University of Oregon sweatshirt off over her head. When she looked up from unfastening her bra, Garrison Ladd was still standing with his hand frozen to the knob on the closet door. He stood unmoving, his eyes feasting hungrily on her nakedness.

"Well?" she said airily, moving toward the bed and turning down the covers. "Are you coming or not?"

jumped away from the closet.

didn't want us to watch television with our clothes on, you?"

"No," he said with a startled laugh. "No, I guess not."

He hurried out of his own clothes then, dropping them on the floor as he went, and flipping on the switch of the tiny television set as he came to the bed. Gradually, the picture appeared, but the sound stayed off.

Laughing, Garrison Ladd fell across the bed and landed on top of Diana, knocking the breath out of both of them, making them both laugh some more. He kissed her once and then settled his head on the pillow beside her.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, "the 'Playboy Advisor' always said there were girls like you in the world, but I never believed it. Not for a minute."

-Girls like what?" Diana asked, feigning innocence, as though she had no idea what he meant. She wanted to hear him say the words.

"Girls who like doing it," he returned.

She bit him gently on the exposed side of his neck, and was gratified to feel under her fingertips the fine layer of gooseflesh that rose at once on the bared skin of his chest.

She remembered how, during one of their Rodeo Royalty weekends in Pendleton or Omak or one of those places, her attendants had explained to her in gory detail exactly how biting affected men, how it turned them on' It was one of those all-night gabfests with the chaperon fast asleep in the motel room next door when Diana finally confessed to the others that the current year's queen of the Chief Joseph Days Rodeo was still a virgin. Shocked runners-up Charlene Davis and Suzanne Lake took it upon themselves to give Diana Lee Cooper the benefit of their own somewhat wider experience.

"If you really want to drive a man crazy," Charlene said, "you bite him all over. Most men can hardly stand it if you do that."

"Or lick 'em," Suzanne added mysteriously. "Like an all-day sucker."

The other two girls rolled on the bed with laughter although Diana didn't quite understand what was so funny.

"And then. . Suzanne said, still laughin and gasping for breath, and then ... when they're all excited, you leave 'em high and dry. I did that to stupid Joe Moore, remember him? I'll never forget. His little prick was standing straight up in the air, waving like a rabbit's ear.

When I got out of the car, he started to cry, I swear to God. I mean, he was literally bawling like a baby. He came after me and begged me to get back in the car and finish it, and I said to him, 'I don't know what kind of a girl you think I am.

And Suzanne and Charlene laughed some more. Diana joined in, but only halfheartedly. It wasn't so funny to her, because she knew then for the first time what her father had meant when he called her that-a prick-tease.

Once more she swore to herself that she wouldn't be that.

If she teased a man, it would be because she intended to do something about it.

She bit Gary Ladd again, harder this time, just at the base of the neck, her sharp teeth leaving a line of small indentations in the smoothly tanned skin. He groaned above her, and she could feel the hardness of him pressing at her through the covers.

He pawed at the sheet and blanket and pulled them away from her, then he fell on her, burying himself deep inside her body. Bruised and sore, she nonetheless raised welcoming hips to meet him, while behind them, on the silenced television set, Jack Ruby mutely gunned down a handcuffed Lee Harvey Oswald.

It was a weekend where no one got quite what they bargained for-not Ruby, not Oswald, and certainly not Diana Lee Cooper.

Because Toby Walker had essentially stolen a county car, Brandon was reluctant to report it through regular channels. He called Hank Maddem at home and asked for advice.

Maddern,s suggestion was succinct. "Report it," he said at once.

"That'll get word out to the cars so everybody's looking. In the meantime, I'll come over and we'll see what we can do."

Leaving Louella with strict instructions to remain by the phone, Brandon escaped from the house and his mother to the relative sanity of Hank Maddern's Ford F-100.

Maddem drove through the neighborhood in ever-widening circles while the younger man brimmed over with self- reproach. "All of it. I never should "It's all my fault," he fumed.

have left the damned keys there in the first place, but I just didn't think about it. In Our house, car keys have been kept on that pegboard for as long as I can remember."

"He's never done anything like this before?" Hank asked.

"Never."

"There's always a first time," Maddem said with a shrug.

One-handed, he shook two cigarettes out of a pack, passed one to Brandon, and then punched the lighter. "And out whose fault it is.

Fault doesn't for Chrissake, forget ab matter. By the way, what was your old man wearing when he took off?"

"Pajamas," Brandon answered. "Red-and-white-striped cotton pajamas."

"Somebody dressed like that shouldn't be too tough to find. How were you fixed for gas?"

"Gas? Almost empty, actually. I should have filled before I left the office yesterday, but I didn't want to take the time. I drove all the way out to Sells and back last night."

"And didn't come home until late, either," Hank added with a mischievous wink. "Did you get lucky?"

"Look, Hank, it wasn't anything like that," Brandon said quickly.

"Diana Ladd needed help with the boy, that's all."

until five o'clock in the morning? According to Tom Edwards, five was the last time your mother called looking for YOU."

"Great," Brandon muttered, shaking his head. "That's just great. A little privacy might be nice."

Maddern heard the edginess in Brandon's voice and dropped the subject.

"Does your dad have money?"

"With him? A little, maybe, but not much."

"What kind of credit cards? Any bank cards?" "No. Mom took those away. The department-store cards as well. He probably has a Chevron and a Shell. Maybe a couple of others."

"That's where we'll start then, with gas stations."

They headed north on Swan, stopping at every gas station along the way where Brandon knew his father had a working credit card. They went west on Broadway and south again on Alvernon. At a Chevron station on Alvernon south of Twenty-second Street, they finally hit pay dirt. The young Mexican kid tending the pumps remembered To by Walker well.

Hey, man, I thought it was crazy. This guy comes in wearing pajamas and no shoes, driving a county car, and wanting to know how to get to Duluth. Where the hell is Duluth?"

"Minnesota," Brandon said quietly.

"Duluth," Maddern repeated. "Why Duluth?"

"It's where he grew up. On a farm outside Duluth."

The attendant thumbed through the credit-card receipts.

"Here it is. Tobias Walker. He took 15.9 gallons of premium and said something about a farm, about going there for dinner. He asked me how to get back over to 1-10, and I told him."

I They drove to where Alvemon intersected with the freeway. "Which way?" Walker asked. "He's got plenty of gas. He could drive two hundred and fifty miles in either direction without having to stop for more.

"At least we know what to do now," Maddern said.

"What's that?"

"Call the Highway Patrol. If your dad's out on the freeway, it's not just our problem anymore."

Public transportation as known in the Anglo world was nonexistent on the reservation. Hitchhiking was the alternative.

As Fat Crack left Casa Grande for Sells late in the afternoon, he stopped for a hitchhiker just inside the reservation boundary. Fat Crack could tell from the way the man shambled after the truck that he was drunk, but he offered a ride anyway. "Where to?"

"The Gate," the man said. "I just got outta jail, and I want to get drunk. It sure was bad in there."

For an Indian, this was a talkative drunk. Fat Crack found himself hoping his rider would pass out and sleep until they reached Sells.

They drove past the turnoff to Ahngam. "Do you know Eduardo Jose?" the rider asked.

Fat Crack nodded. Eduardo Jose's bootlegging exploits were legend.

"His grandson's sure in big trouble," the man continued.

"They brought him in to the jail tins morrung. For raping and killing a white lady."

"That's too bad," Fat Crack told him.

They drove for several more miles in stony silence. Both of them knew full well that Indians who went to jail for raping white women didn't generally live long enough to see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a penitentiary.

"He bit her," the man said much later. "What kind of a sickness would make him do that?"

But a stunned Fat Crack didn't answer right away. "You say he bit her?"

The man nodded. "Her wipih," he said. "Her nipple.

Almost off. One of the deputies told a cook, who told some of the others."

The hairs on the back of Fat Crack's neck stood erect under his gray Stetson. He had heard once before about someone who did that to women, a killer who bit off his victims' nipples. It had happened to Gina, his cousin.

Supposedly, Gina's killer was dead.

The cab of the tow truck was suddenly far too small, and the hot air blowing through the opened windows took Fat Crack's breath away.

Just as Looks At Nothing, despite his blindness, had known unerringly where to find the shady grove of uses, Fat Crack knew at once, despite the fact that Gary Ladd was dead, that there was some connection between this dead woman at Cloud Stopper Mountain and his cousin, found murdered in the charco of deserted Rattlesnake Skull Village seven years earlier.

Unable to do anything else about it, Fat Crack tightened his grip on the steering wheel, and he began to pray.

Diana must have slept. When she woke up, it was early evening. She dressed hurriedly and guiltily, worrying about what Davy was up to.

She found him on the living-room couch. She could see his head over the back of the couch and see Bone's long, curving tail sticking out from in front of it.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, pausing in the doorway.

Davy didn't look up. He was working on something in his lap, staring down intently, lips pursed, shoulders hunched, brow furrowed.

"What are you doing?" Diana asked when he didn't answer.

She walked up to him and peered down over his shoulder.

His lap was full of whitened yucca leaves. In his hand was the small awl Rita had given him for his birthday.

"What in the world are you doing with Rita's yucca?"

Diana demanded. "You know you're not supposed to touch those."

Davy looked up at her, his eyes filling with tears. "I'm trying to make her a basket," he said. "But I don't know how to do the center."

Chapter Nine

WHEN HE LEFT the storage unit, Andrew Carlisle took with him only the hunting knife. The blade had been honed to a razor sharp edge, which years of careful storage hadn't dulled- The knife was big enough to be deadly, but small enough to conceal in the brightly colored summer bag among his other purchases.

Back in the Valiant, he drove to the Reardon Hotel off Fourth Avenue.

He had checked his bank balance and found that he didn't have as much cushion as he wanted. Once finished with Diana Ladd, he would disappear. He needed cold hard cash, running money. He wanted it quickly and from a quarter where no questions would be asked.

When it came to not asking questions, the seedy Reardon suited his purposes admirably. Carlisle had heard about the hotel and bar and its singular clientele from some of the other residents of the joint.

Joint. Thinking about Florence in that jading bit of jargon always brought a mental smile to Carlisle's Ph-D.-trained ear. Phraseology wasn't all he'd picked up in prison, not by a long shot. There were always lessons to be learned in that all-male, survival-of-the-fittest environment where sex was a valuable commodity, a bargaining chip. It was a milieu that regarded small men as prized possessions, and Andrew Carlisle was a small man.

Once he understood that exploitation was inevitable, he surrendered willingly and made himself available to the highest bidder, to partners who could make the physical pain and mental degradation most worth his while. He closed his mind to the reality of it even while it was happening, and learned to stand outside himself during the blowjobs and the rest, to calmly total up the privileges each encounter would give him, all the while keeping score of what the outside world would owe him once it was over the world in general, and Diana Ladd in particular.