Free Hour of the Hunter by J. A. Jance Page A

kid's been hurt, but not seriously. Needs a few stitches is all. Unfortunately, they took him out to the Indian Health Service in Sells. The doc there can't lift a finger because the kid's an Anglo.
    They've tried reaching the mother by phone. Ma Bell says the line's off hook."
    "I'll go," Brandon Walker offered at once.
    "You? How come? You're Homicide. I already told you, the kid's not hurt bad."
    "I'll go," Walker insisted.
    "You really don't want to go home, do you? But don't bother with this.
    I've got a car out by Gates Pass right now.
    "Gates Pass?" Brandon said. "Doesn't she still live in Topawa?"
    Maddem did a double take. "You know the lady?"
    Walker nodded grimly. "From years ago."
    "If you want to take her the bad news, then, be my guest," Maddem continued. "But the address they gave me doesn't say Topawa. It's out by Gates Pass somewhere.
    The telephone number is a Tucson exchange."
    The dispatcher scribbled the phone number and address on another slip of paper and handed it over to Brandon just as the switchboard lit up again. Maddern turned to answer it, waving Brandon away. "Later," he said.
    Brandon Walker didn't return to his cubicle. Instead, he hurried directly out to the parking lot where his unmarked Ford Galaxy waited.
    It was almost dark, but the temperature inside the closed vehicle was still unbearably hot. Before leaving the lot, Walker rolled down all the windows. Switching on the air-conditioning was pointless didn't work. Repairs on grunts' cars got shunted to the bottom of the priority list when it came to departmental mechanics.
    The air conditioner was out of order, but the high-output, police-pursuit engine roared to life as soon as Walker turned the key in the ignition. He peeled out of the parking lot in a hail of loose gravel and headed for Gates Pass, driving on automatic, his mind occupied elsewhere.
    Diana Ladd. It had to be her. It didn't seem possible that there would be two women in town by that same name. She had made a big impression on him. How long ago was it?
    June? Jesus, it had to be almost seven years ago since the first time he saw her. He had forgotten about her between times-had forced himself to forget because some things are too painful to remember.
    When had she moved to town? Not town exactly. The address on Gates Pass Road indicated an almost wilderness area well outside Tucson's city limits. She would have had more company in the Teachers' Compound in Topawa, living in the shabby mobile home where he had first met her.
    Had she stopped teaching on the reservation then?
    Maybe she had taken a job with District Number One in Tucson. God, she'd been pretty. Even six months pregnant she'd been pretty. And defiant.
    He remembered the last time he saw her as though it were yesterday.
    They were standing in the crowded hallway of the Pima County Courthouse after the judge announced Andrew Carlisle's plea-bargaining agreement.
    The old Indian lady-what was her name?-was sitting on a bench off to the side. Diana Ladd came up to him, grasping his sleeve with one hand while the other rested on her bulging belly. He avoided her gaze, not wanting to see the betrayal and hurt in her eyes, but he couldn't evade the accusation in her voice.
    "How could you let them do it?" she demanded, outraged, indignant.
    "How could you let them get away with-" "There was nothing I could do," he answered lamely. "I didn't have a choice."
    "We all have choices," she'd returned icily.
    Drawing herself stiffly erect, she marched away from him, walking with the awkward dignity of the profoundly pregnant. She went straight to the bench and helped the old Indian lady to her feet. The two women walked past him, the younger carefully leading the elder, as though the old woman were blind or crippled or both.
    And Brandon Walker, left alone in the midst of a milling crowd, looked after them and wondered what he could have done differently. Of course, that was years ago now. He was no longer as green, as