Hour of the Hunter (45 page)

And her cash, too, as she discovered moments later.

For half an hour now, she had sat quietly in her rocking chair, wondering what it all meant. She had already assimilated the idea that Andrew, her own son, had meant to kill her, would have killed her, if she hadn't taken the crazy notion into her head to drive off in the car.

Sure knowledge of Andrew's murderous intentions had shocked her at first, but initial shock had worn into fuming anger.

Now, she sat rehearsing what she would say to him when Andrew finally called her, as she knew he would. She had considered turning him in herself but decided against it.

Someone else would have to do the dirty work, not her, not his own mother. But if the cops happened to come to her house looking for him, she wouldn't raise a hand to stop them.

Constantly rephrasing her speech, she decided to tell Andrew that if he ever came near her again, if he ever darkened her doorstep or wrote her a letter or even so much as tried to contact her by phone, she would see to it that he rotted in prison for the rest of his natural life. How did that sound?

Andrew had finally stepped beyond Myrna Louise's considerable threshold of tolerance. Having once reached the end of her rope, she determined to no longer have a son. She would declare him null and void. As far as she was concerned, Andrew Carlisle would cease to exist.

So when the phone finally rang, it was his voice she expected to hear on the other end of the line, whining and blathering. Instead, the voice was that of a total stranger.

"Is Andrew there?" the man asked.

Myrna Louise's heart skipped a beat as she tried to conceal her disappointment "Who's calling, please?" she asked guardedly.

"A friend of his," the man said. "Is he there?"

"Not right now. May I take a message?"

It sounded as though the person on the other end of the line let out a long sigh, but Myrna Louise couldn't be sure.

"No," he said. "That's all right. I'll call back later."

He hung up-slammed the phone down in her ear, actually. She hung up, too, sitting there for a long time afterward with her hand still resting on the receiver. She wished it had been Andrew on the phone so she could have had it out with him once and for all, but it wasn't.

For that she would have to wait a little longer.

The human body isn't quite like anything else, Brandon Walker thought.

People talk about pulling the plug, but just turning off life-sustaining machines doesn't necessarily mean it's over, doesn't mean the person gives up the ghost and dies the way a light goes off when you disconnect a cord from the socket. It wasn't that simple.

Nothing ever is.

The machines had been silenced for over an hour now, but Toby Walker stubbornly clung to life, persisting in breathing on his own much to the doctor's surprise and dismay. His blood pressure was gradually falling, but there had been no marked or sudden change.

Nurses looked in on them every once in a while, respectfully, as though conscious that their presence was now an intrusion, not a help. Their concern focused on the two nonpatients-a woman quiet at last, worn out from continual weeping, and a man, the son, whose narrow jaw worked constantly, but who sat beside his dying father stiff and straight, dry-eyed and silent.

Brandon Walker had forgotten he was a cop in all this, forgotten that there was another duty calling. Sitting there, he was nothing but a grieving son, a lost, abandoned, and nearly middle-aged child, facing his own bleak future in a universe suddenly devoid of its center, an unthinkable world where his father didn't exist.

The three people waited together in a room where the silence was broken only by the old man's shallow breathing.

No words were necessary. They had all been spoken long ago, and Brandon was convinced that in that broken shell of a man on the bed, there was no one left to listen.

Detective G. T. Farrell was well outside his Pinal County jurisdiction.

He should have contacted the local lawenforcement agencies, either Maricopa County, or, in this case, the Tempe Police Department to ask for backup, but that would have taken time. Farrell knew in his gut there was no time to lose. He was propelled forward by the common force that drives all those who pursue serial killers-the horrifying and inevitable knowledge that time itself is the enemy.

Refusing to be rushed, Farrell had systematically worked the problem, marching down the Spaulding column in the phone book, calling each number in turn, always asking for Andrew-a first name Andrew-rather than giving out any further information. He had tried Spauldings in Phoenix proper. Next he worked the suburbs. Halfway through that process, a frail-sounding old woman answered the phone.

As soon as he asked for Andrew and heard the sharp, involuntary intake of breath, he knew -he had hit pay dirt.

Even while he talked to her, making sure his voice on the phone stayed calm and noncommittal, he was frantically tearing the page with her name on it out of the book. This was no time for scribbling notes.

But once in the car, Farrell couldn't risk lights or siren' That would have raised too many unpleasant questions had anyone stopped him. He drove only as fast as the traffic would bear.

A resourceful man who always carried a selection of maps in his car, Geet headed East on Camelback in the general direction of Tempe, using crosstown stops at lights and the usual rush-hour slowdowns to locate the exact whereabouts of Weber Drive and to pinpoint the address in his Thomas Guide. Farrell figured it would take him about forty-five minutes to get there. His actual elapsed time was thirty-eight minutes flat.

Getting out of the car on Weber Drive half a block away from the address, he patted his holster and felt the reassuring presence of his .38 Special. It was possible that the old woman had lied and that her son had been right there in the room with her all along, but Farrell doubted it. The old woman didn't sound as though she was that glib or that fast on her feet. She wasn't that capable a liar. At least Geet Farrell fervently hoped she wasn't.

Taking a deep breath, Farrell opened the gate, strode up the long walkway, and rang the doorbell. Almost immediately, he heard movement inside the small house. He swallowed hard to calm himself as the door opened and an old woman peered nearsightedly out at him through a screen door. "Yes?" she asked.

Carefully, using deliberate gestures, he brought out his badge. "I'm a police officer," he said, holding it up to the screen so she could see it. "I'm looking for Andrew Carlisle."

The woman squinted at the badge without reading it.

"He isn't here," she said.

"Could I talk to you then? Are you his mother?"

"For the time being," she answered.

Farrell wondered what that meant. He wondered, too, if she recognized his voice from the phone. If so, her next question gave no hint of it.

"What do you want with him?"

"We want to ask him some questions, that's all," Farrell answered.

"There are a few matters. we need to clear up."

"Me, too," the old woman added, opening the screen door, motioning him inside. "I have some matters I'd like Andrew to clear up for me, too."

Something in the woman's injured tone suggested a switch in tactics from investigator to sympathizer, from potential enemy to ally. "What kind of matters, ma'am?" Farrell asked innocently.

"He stole my money, for one thing," she answered with ill-concealed fury, "my money and my bankbooks. Then, when he saw I was leaving, he was so angry that I think he would have killed me if he could have gotten close enough, but I fooled him. I drove away all by myself. I drove all the way here. Can you believe it? Andrew never thought I would, and neither did I. After all, I'm sixty-five years old and had never driven a car before in my life, but I did. So help me I did. I wouldn't have done it, either, if he hadn't treated me so badly."

Maybe you ought to tell me about it, ma'am," Geet Farrell said. "This could be important."

Davy was surprised when he saw the bald-headed man standing outside the glass patio door. The man was wearing funny brown-colored clothes, the kind with plants painted on them, that soldiers sometimes wore in the movies.

"Nana Dahd," he called. "Someone's here."

Davy expected the man would wait outside until Rita came to the door to talk to him. Instead, he shoved the door open and stepped inside.

"Who are you?" Davy demanded. "What do you want?"

"You," the man answered. "You're what I want.The man lunged for him.

Davy tried to dart out of the way, but the man was too quick. He caught Davy by one arm, spinning him around. He swung the child up in the air and held him two feet off the ground.

"You were talking to somebody, kid. Who was it? Where are they?"

"I'm right here," a woman's voice said behind him.

"Don't hurt him."

"Nana Dahd," the boy complained. "He just came right in the house. He didn't even knock."

Suddenly, the man's arm clamped tight around Davy's throat, choking off his air. He kicked and fought, but he couldn't get away. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was the man saying, "I don't have to knock, because as long as I have you, I own the place. Isn't that right, old woman?"

Davy didn't see Rita's answering nod. It was true. As long as he had Davy, Andrew Carlisle could have anything else he wanted.

Around the Pinal County Sheriff's Department, Detective Geet Farrell had a considerable reputation as a ladies' man. With men he could be tough and hard-nosed as hell, but with women he gentled them along until even the bad ones offered to give him the shirts off their backs.

Slowly but urgently, Geet Farrell worked Myrna Louise Spaulding. He didn't rush her, but he didn't allow any unnecessary delays, either.

Within minutes, he had talked her into showing him the contents of the battered Valiant's packed trunk. He recognized Johnny Rivkin's name as soon as he saw the tag on the luggage, but he didn't let anything betray his exultation. Because it was too soon. He needed to know more.

So he led the garrulous old lady through her entire day, encouraging her to remember everything from the moment she woke up until he himself had arrived on her doorstep.

Myrna Louise loved having an appreciative audience.

She warmed to the telling and was totally engrossed by the time she got to the part about going into the office in Tucson to pick up those mysterious papers with those two women's names on it. Only then, as she was telling the detective about the papers, did she fully allow herself to know what those two names meant, what Andrew Was really going to do.

It hit Detective Farrell at the same time, like a fierce, double-fisted blow to the gut.

"Where is he now?" he demanded savagely. All gentleness disappeared from the man, transformed instantly into a single-minded intensity that was frightening to see.

"I don't know," Myrna Louise whimpered. "I don't have any idea."

"We've got to find him. Where was he when you left him?"

"I already told You. At the storage unit. In Tucson."

"Can I use your phone?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered, barely containing the despairing sob that rose in her throat. "Go ahead. Help yourself."

Chapter Eighteen

R. JOHNSTON, THE vet, was guardedly optimistic about the dog's chances for survival as he sifted a pinch of yellow powder into Bone's eyes.

"This is apomorphine," he explained, "an emetic. It gets into the bloodstream through the conjunctival sacs. It'll make him barf his guts out within minutes. He's certainly exhibiting all the classic symptoms of slug-bait poisoning. Where'd he pick it up?"

"I don't know," Diana said. "He was fine just twenty minutes or so earlier when we put him outside. He came back in acting drunk. He could barely walk."

The vet shook his head. "You've got a neighbor who hates dogs."

"I don't have any neighbors," Diana started to say, and then stopped.

A chill ran down her spine. Perhaps this was it, she thought, the beginning of what Rita called the wind coming to the windmill, the reason she was wearing a gun.

,,You'd better go on out now, Diana," Dr. Johnston warned. "Bone is going to be one miserable dog here for a while, but if we caught it as soon as you say, he should pull through. I'd like to keep him overnight, though, if you don't mind."

But Diana did mind. She dreaded the idea of going home without the dog.

Bone was her first line of defense. She glanced at her watch.

It wasn't dark yet and wouldn't be for some time, but once it was, she wanted the dog with her.

"I'd rather wait, if it's not going to be too long."

"Suit yourself," Dr. Johnston said. "It won't take long, but it isn't going to be pretty."

Half an hour earlier and 120 miles away, Pinal County homicide detective Geet Farrell had considered his options and hadn't liked any of them. He tried calling Brandon Walker directly, but there was no answer, either at his office or at home. Farrell refused to waste any more time in stationary phoning, but he didn't want to abandon his questioning of Myrna Louise Spaulding, either. There might be more she could tell him, details he had so far neglected to ask.

Farrell flung the phone back on the hook. "You do know what he's up to, don't you?"

Myrna Louise nodded. "I do now."

"I'm going to try to stop him," the detective continued grimly. "Will you help? I'll need you to come with me."

"Yes," Myrna Louise answered, rising unsteadily to her feet. "I'll do whatever I can. Just let me get my purse."

They left Weber Drive in a spray of gravel and headed for 1-10. Once across the Pinal County line, Detective Farrell switched on lights and sirens and drove like a bat out of hell. They sped south on the Interstate through the hot desert evening, while Farrell's mind grappled with the problem on threedifferent levels.

First, he dealt with the car, navigating with fierce concentration.

Second, he played radio tag, trying to get a good enough connection to be patched through to someone in Tucson who could actually help him.