She kicked at his fingers, but her bare feet had no effect on the hands inexorably dragging her away from the door. She fought him desperately but despairingly, realizing she was no match for him, that it was only a matter of time.
Dimly, Diana became aware of Bone’s frantic scratching on the sliding glass door. If only she could let him into the house. Maybe, with the dog’s help. .
Suddenly, for the barest moment, Carlisle let go of her. She scrambled away from him, and this time managed to shove the key into the lock before he grabbed hold of her again. She tried to push him away only to have a smarting pain shoot across her hand and up her arm. Shocked, Diana looked at her arm and hand as blood spurted out. Carlisle had his knife again. This time she knew he would kill her with it. There would be no escape.
Stymied by the latched gate, Brandon Walker dropped back and then vaulted over the barrier, which seemed to be covered by a layer of wet blankets. Inside the yard, he landed on something soft and yielding, something human. His added weight brought the other man down. They fell to the ground as one and grappled there briefly until he glimpsed Fat Crack’s face in the pale starlight.
“Fat Crack!” Walker exclaimed. “What the. .”
“It’s the detective,” Fat Crack said simultaneously.
From deeper in the yard came Looks At Nothing’s commanding voice. “We must hurry! Come,” he ordered.
Fat Crack let go at once, and they both struggled to their feet. In the melee, Walker had dropped his.38 Special. They wasted precious seconds searching for it. At last Fat Crack found it and gave it back.
“If you’re out here,” Brandon whispered, “who’s in there?”
“The ohb,” Fat Crack answered. “It’s the ohb.”
Faced with her bloodied arm and inarguable evidence of her own mortality, Diana resolved that even if she died, somehow her son would live. Once more Carlisle’s fingers locked onto her ankle. Once more he dragged her toward him and toward the raised knife he held above his head, waiting to plunge it into her.
She searched desperately for something to hold onto, something to give her purchase on the slippery floor. Suddenly, her flailing hands encountered heat-the still fiery-hot frying pan. Ignoring the blistering handle, she picked it up and drove it with all her strength toward Andrew Carlisle’s forehead.
He couldn’t see it, but Carlisle felt the superheated frying pan whizzing toward him. He drew back in panic, holding up his arms in an attempt to ward off the blow. The frying pan missed his skull but struck his hand, knocking the knife away from him. While he groped blindly for it, he heard her scrabbling away from him again. Weaponless except for his bare hands, he crawled after her.
Partway across the room, something rushed past him, making for the outside door. He turned to it as if to follow.
The momentary respite gave Diana one more chance. This time she made it all the way to the root-cellar door. Still on her knees, she reached up and turned the key in the lock. Before she could move out of the way, the door banged open, knocking her backward into the wall.
At the sound of the second gunshot, Davy almost burst into tears. Once more Rita shushed him. “Ready now,” she whispered. “When the key turns, open the door and run.”
“I’ll kill you,” the man was saying over and over outside the door. “I’ll kill you.”
Davy’s heart leaped to his throat. His mother was still alive. Would she be when the door opened? He crossed his fingers and tried to remember how to pray.
The key filled the lock. The tiny keyhole-shaped patch of light disappeared, but the key didn’t turn. The door didn’t open.
Again they waited. Davy heard another sound now-the Bone, scratching frantically at the back door, wanting to be let in. Oh’o was home, but he couldn’t get inside to help them.
And then, miraculously, the key did turn. Davy shoved the door with all his might, flung it open, and dashed outside. In the middle of the room, he encountered a man-at least it looked like a man-crawling toward him on his hands and knees. This terrible apparition, its face a misshapen mass of bloodied blisters, must be the ohb.
Pausing long enough for only one look at that terrifying visage, Davy turned and raced for the sliding glass door.
The pain was terrible, beyond anything he could have imagined, but what was worse, Carlisle feared Diana Ladd had escaped. He started toward the door.
“Where are you, bitch?”
“Here,” Diana responded from someplace else in the room. “I’m behind you.” To decoy Davy’s safe escape, she wanted Carlisle’s attention focused solely on her.
“Where?”
“Right here,” she answered again, and it sounded as though she was laughing at him.
Doggedly, like an unstoppable monster from an old B-grade movie, Andrew Carlisle whirled and came crawling toward her, but before he made any progress, something heavy landed on his back. Horrified, he felt a dog’s inch-long canines plunge into the back of his neck.
Too stunned to move and trying to stem the flow of blood from her own arm, Diana could do nothing but watch. The dog was everywhere at once, huge jaws snapping. He leaped up and backward and sideways, always staying just out of the man’s reach. Finally, Bones’s jaws closed over Carlisle’s wrist.
While the man howled in inhuman rage, the dog shook his massive head. Bones crunched in Carlisle’s mangled wrist. Tendons and nerves snapped like so many broken rubber bands.
Arm upraised, owij in hand, Rita emerged from the root cellar ready to do battle. She, too, stood transfixed, watching the man struggle to escape the attacking dog. Trying to save his mangled wrist, Carlisle attempted one last kick. The dog let go of the hand and pounced on the foot. As the dog’s jaws closed once more, Carlisle folded himself into a fetal position.
Rita remained where she was for a moment, surveying the room, while Carlisle sobbed brokenly. “Get the dog off me. Please, get him off.”
The Indian woman pocketed her owij. It was no longer needed. Across the room, she saw both the knife and the gun. She hurried at once to retrieve them. Only when she had them both firmly in her possession did she speak to the dog.
“Oh’o, ihab.” The dog came to her side at once, wagging his tail, waiting to be petted. “Good gogs,” she crooned, patting his shaggy head. “It’s over.”
Rita turned from the dog and placed the gun in Diana’s lap. “Here,” she said. “If you wish to shoot him, now’s your chance. Do it quickly.”
Diana looked from Rita to the stricken form of Andrew Carlisle, who lay sobbing on the floor in a widening pool of his own urine. Finally, Diana looked down at the gun and shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I don’t have to now. It wouldn’t be self-defense.”
A radiant smile suffused Rita’s weathered old face. “Good,” she said. “I’itoi would be proud of you.”
Behind them, Brandon Walker burst into the room. Bone turned to fend off this new attack, but before he could, the oven door blew its hinges with a resounding thump, knocking the dog to the floor.
Crying and laughing both, Diana knelt beside Bone and cradled his massive head in her lap. The dog looked up at her gratefully and thumped his long tail on the floor. He wasn’t hurt, but it had been a hard day for a dog. He didn’t want to get up.
Detective Farrell and Myrna Louise arrived just ahead of a phalanx of police cars dispatched by Hank Maddern at the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. For the first time in her life, she refused Andrew’s summons when he asked for her. Stone-faced and without getting out of the car, Myrna Louise watched while her son was loaded into a waiting ambulance. Ironically, he was taken first. Of all the injuries, his were deemed the most serious.