Night Is the Hunter Read Online Free Page B

up and taken control of him.”

CHAPTER 4
    J anie glanced over from the passenger seat of his truck as they drove south from Mount Shasta toward San Francisco.
    â€œBy not approaching your father head-on, you’re treating him like a suspect rather than as a possible victim of a disease. Like you’re lying in wait.”
    Donnally glanced in his rearview mirror at Ray McMullin following them, his eyes concentrated on Donnally’s tailgate as though being led through fog.
    â€œI don’t want to just stumble into things. He might react by thinking I’m trying to get him diagnosed with Alzheimer’s as revenge for what he did to Donnie. He knows his public confession doesn’t change what happened and he knows his feeling guilty doesn’t mean I’m obligated to forgive him.”
    Janie shifted her body so she could face him. “But you have forgiven him, haven’t you?”
    â€œI’m not even sure I understand forgiveness. The forgive-but-not-forget idea. Seems to me it’s only for saints.”
    A curve west left him squinting into the sunset fanning out against the sky. The next turn broke them free from the pine-lined highway and angled them toward the snow-tipped Castle Crags, the bright granite spires seeming more brutal, than beautiful.
    â€œThat’s not right,” he said. “It’s more that I know people forgive terrible acts, but some acts are just too terrible.”
    Donnally felt Janie still looking at him.
    â€œIs that how you feel about what he did?”
    Donnally shrugged but didn’t answer.
    â€œYou think Donnie would’ve forgiven him?”
    Now he looked over. “Don’t play that game. Dead people are just hand puppets and we’re the ventriloquists. And thinking the words we put in their mouths reveal real insight into who they were and what they would’ve done is a delusion.”
    Janie’s face reddened. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. Donnie had a personality, a way of looking at the world. It’s not ventriloquism to imagine what his thoughts and feelings might be.”
    â€œMaybe that’s the problem. Donnie probably would’ve forgiven not just my father, but the people who ambushed him.”
    Janie turned back in her seat and folded her arms across her chest. She stared ahead, her lips compressed.
    They rode in silence except for the rumble of his tires on the ice-pitted pavement and the hum of tension in the cab. Donnally knew he’d started it and that it was on him to quiet it.
    â€œSorry. I went off course and didn’t answer your question.”
    Janie blew out a quick breath through her nose. “All of our serious conversations these days seem to go off course.”
    â€œNot all of them. Just the ones that begin with my father.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make it any easier.” Her voice was edged with resentment and impatience.
    â€œI suspect Alzheimer’s will. He’ll be a different person and a lot easier to forgive.”
    She looked over. “So answer me. Why are you treating him like a suspect?”
    â€œBecause I don’t know enough about Alzheimer’s and dementia in general and his behavior in particular. Because his moment of insight into one thing hasn’t made him less rigid in everything else. And because I’ll only have one chance to get it right.”
    â€œI’m not sure it’s true you’ll have only one chance. It’s not like you’re playing the part of judge and jury.”
    â€œBut it will seem that way to him, with you as a coconspiring expert witness.”
    Donnally thought back to his fireside conversation with McMullin, then realized the doubts the judge expressed about his handling of the Dominguez case were confusing his own thinking about how to deal with his father. The two men had merged in his mind as objects to be examined and, perhaps, manipulated for their own