“Nine … one … one…”
“My husband taught me what to do in a case like this. I should make you lie flat on your back, knees up, then cover you with a blanket to keep you warm. Give you baby aspirin. Call the emergency number and perform CPR if your heart stops beating before the paramedics come.”
“… Please…”
“But I don’t think I’ll do any of that. Why should I, after all your snooping? You’re a threat to my safety. I think I’ll just let you die.”
No! Again I tried to lift myself; again I could do nothing except jerk and twitch spasmodically. The squeezing pressure in my chest seemed to be intensifying. Fuzziness in my head now so that I could no longer think clearly. A feeling of black despair moving through me.
The white face went away. Faint squeak of couch springs audible through the thrumming as she sat down nearby. Then her voice again, as if from an even greater distance.
“Can you still hear me?”
I seemed to have lost the power of speech. All I could do was make grunting, choking sounds.
Louder: “Serves you right, coming into my house, accusing me, then having your goddamn heart attack in my living room. But now that it’s happened I’m glad you came. You’re the only one who suspects the truth, the only one who can give the police cause to change their minds. Even if by some miracle you were to survive, it would be your word against mine that I didn’t try to save you. I’d just say you were delirious from the pain, I did everything I could. But that won’t happen, the miracle I mean. Those sounds you’re making—it’s getting harder and harder to breathe, isn’t it? It won’t be much longer now. I’ll just sit here and wait; I don’t have to do anything else. Or anything else to do.”
“Unh. Unh.”
“Should I put some music on? Let’s see, what would be appropriate? How about something classical? Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’?”
Crazy woman … psychotic …
“No? All right, then, suppose I amuse myself by telling you what you want to know. Yes, I killed Alice. I didn’t intend to when I went there. It was her fault, not mine. All her fault. Damn her, she deserved what she got for what she did to me.”
“… Unh…”
“She was in one of her miserable bitchy moods that morning because she’d had another e-mail from the Dellbrook woman, threatening a lawsuit, and she was going to pay her two thousand dollars to keep her quiet. She was so upset, she let it slip out—that’s how I found out she was a plagiarist. And it wasn’t just one theft; oh no, there were others, too, because her publishers wanted more and more books and she couldn’t come up with enough ideas of her own. Can you imagine how I felt? My own sister, a thief on top of everything else. It made me furious and we started arguing; we were always arguing. It got so heated she completely lost control and started screaming at me that she’d been fucking my husband for the past six months. Six months! Once a week, twice a week, every chance she had. Well, I lost it, too. I slapped her and she tried to claw me and I had to defend myself, didn’t I? We were in her office and I picked up her laptop without even thinking and hit her with it, twice, and then she was dead.”
“… Unh … unh…”
“I suppose I should have been sorry, but I wasn’t. Agoraphobe, thief, husband stealer … bitch! I left her there on the floor and went home. At first I thought it was the right thing to do because James was sure to be blamed. But Alice was alive when he left for work; she’d called Paul to tell him she was out of Valium. And I remembered about autopsies being able to determine when a person died. James left the house more than three hours before I killed her; she hardly ever let strangers in, and I was her only visitor that morning. The police were sure to find out I’d done it unless her body wasn’t found there in the house.
“So I went back there and got the spare garage door opener from the kitchen and then put my car in the garage. No one saw me except that damned busybody across the street. There wasn’t much blood, I cleaned up what there was. Then I put Alice and the computer in garbage sacks and tied up the bundle with duct tape and carried her out to the car and put her in the trunk. It wasn’t difficult, I’m strong and she didn’t weigh very much. I wasn’t sure where to take her. Someplace where she’d be found fairly soon and James would be blamed. Then I remembered the Waterbird preserve, Paul and I went there once years ago. When I got there I found what seemed to be the perfect place, made sure I was alone, and shoved her down into that little gully. It was a big risk, doing all of that, but I’ve never been afraid to take risks. You do what you have to do. Like now, with you.”
“… Unh…”
“But nobody found her. I couldn’t believe it. Days went by … couldn’t stand the waiting any longer so … matters into my own hands again and called the sheriff’s department … one of those disposable phones so the call couldn’t be traced.…”
Her voice fading, the buzzing in my ears louder so that I heard only snatches of what she was saying.
“… James deserves to be blamed … screwing that Sprague woman … saw them with their heads together in a restaurant, her hand on his … knew right away what was going on … trying to do what was best for Alice and all the time she and Paul … he’s mine; she had no right … thief, husband stealer, my own sister.…”
I could no longer hear her. Stopped talking? The gray mist had darkened so that I could barely see anything in the room. The pressure in my chest was intense now, pain radiating up and down my left arm. Another surge of fear. Random thought: What a lousy way to die.
I heard something else then, far off, a faint banging sound. Followed by another voice calling her name.
Help!
She was talking again, the other voice, too, far away at first and then coming closer so that I was aware of some of the words from both, jumbled together into disjointed fragments.
“… doing home this early, didn’t expect you until … heart attack … when … just now … where is he … there in the living room … just about to call … too late.…”
Then her voice again, the last thing I heard before the gray dissolved into black, saying as if she were whispering the words into my ear, “He’s dying. I think he’s almost dead.”
25
Kendra Nesbitt came close, very close, to being right.
Whatever else you could say about her husband, he was a competent physician and good in a crisis. Dr. Paul Nesbitt literally saved my life.
If he hadn’t come home when he did—Monday was his surgery day; he’d been up since 4:00 A.M. and had performed a difficult operation that lasted several hours; he was tired and in need of some R & R—and if he hadn’t acted quickly and efficiently I would have died on his living room floor. As it was, he told his wife to call 911—she couldn’t very well refuse—while he got me stabilized, administered baby aspirin and nitroglycerin pills to make the platelets in the damaged heart artery less sticky, minimize the threat of blood clot formation, and prevent further blockage. The EMTs got there in eleven minutes; they put me on a cannula of oxygen and hauled me off to the Walnut Creek branch of the John Muir Medical Center.
Touch-and-go there, too. The ER doctors administered clot-busting medicine, did whatever else they do to further stabilize heart attack victims, then put me in ICU. X-rays indicated the necessity for a nonsurgical procedure called coronary angioplasty to open two blocked arteries in the heart, and this was administered.
The first few hours are critical; make it through them and your survival rate rises exponentially, the more so when you’re blessed with the strong support of loved ones. When I first woke up in ICU, Kerry was there holding my hand, telling me she loved me, saying, “You’re not going to leave us, I need you, Emily needs you, you’re going to be fine”—her touch and her words giving me hope, strength, courage.
Emily was with her the second time she came, later that same day. She kissed my cheek, fighting back tears, and whispered, “Get well, Dad. Please, please. I love you so much.” More u
rgent support for me to hang on to.
The damage I’d suffered was extensive. Diagnosis: open-heart surgery. Once they considered me strong enough, I underwent a coronary artery bypass. Translation: a healthy artery is removed from another part of the body, in my case the inner thigh, and then grafted to bypass the blocked section of the damaged artery so as to provide a new route for blood to flow to the heart muscle. Dr. Nesbitt did not perform the surgery; he hadn’t administered the coronary angioplasty, either. Both were done by a well-regarded Indian cardiologist named Abhay Rajneesh.
The operation was deemed a success.
I was in the hospital for six more days. Kerry was there at my bedside every day, bringing Emily with her three more times. Tamara and Jake Runyon each visited twice. Lieutenant Frank Kowalski, who despite his raspy voice looked more like a clergyman than a cop, also came twice. I had a few other visitors, too. Mrs. Cappicotti, of all people. And James Cahill and Megan Sprague together. Plus I had phone calls from a couple of longtime corporate clients and an old poker buddy, Jack Logan. Nice to know people care when you’re down and close to having been out.
Cahill represented the one good thing that came from my near-death experience. Dr. Nesbitt had not found the voice-activated recorder pocket when he took off my coat; neither, thankfully, had his wife. I asked about it when I was well enough to consider such things, and it turned out the coat had gone to the hospital along with me in the ambulance. Somebody in the ER (I never did get the person’s name) had found it and put it away for safekeeping with my other possessions. I told Kerry about it, and she retrieved it and played the tape and then gave the recorder to Tamara, who turned it over to Lieutenant Kowalski.
The dialogue exchange and Kendra Nesbitt’s impromptu confession were on there as clear as could be—my ineffectual attempts to incriminate her, every word of her intent to let me die, her confession of the murder of her sister. Kowalski’s first visit to the hospital was to get the rest of my story before he went after her. At first, out of desperation, she tried to claim the tape was false, the voice on it wasn’t hers, one of my “people” must have manufactured it. Kowalski didn’t buy any of that, of course. He broke her down finally, and she made a formal confession, and that let James Cahill off the hook and earned him his freedom.
So I’d done the wrong thing by going to the Nesbitt home, yet I’d also inadvertently and ironically done the right thing. But I’d paid a hard price. I did not realize just how hard—or maybe I did, just refused to consider it—until Dr. Rajneesh and I had a long talk shortly before I was released.
Even with the bypass surgery, my heart was in a weakened condition. The reasons were all too obvious in retrospect. Too much physically and mentally induced strain over most of my adult life. Chronic high blood pressure. Ill-advised eating habits and insufficient weight control. Failure to have regular medical checkups.
Five to six weeks of complete rest at home were indicated to begin with. In addition to having to take ACE inhibitors to lower my blood pressure and prevent further weakening of the heart muscle, I needed to change my diet, lose the few pounds of excess weight I carried and keep them off, learn to manage stress (his recommendation was a program of relaxation therapy), and reduce physical activity. Stabilizing blood pressure and managing stress were particularly important, he said. Even though I only worked an average of two days per week, I was nonetheless engaged in a high-stress profession, as the circumstances leading up to my heart attack proved. If I wished to avoid another, perhaps fatal coronary and live a long and healthy life, his recommendation was that I remove myself entirely from this taxing environment.
In other words, pack it in. Fully retire.
I talked it over with Kerry, of course. She was all for it. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “Emily doesn’t want to lose you.”
“What would I do with myself?” I said. “Rattle around the condo all day, stare at the TV? Take up cooking or some other hobby I have no real interest in? Vegetate? You can only do so much reading, listen to so much music.”
“That’s a weak argument and you know it. There are plenty of things you can do. Non-stressful volunteer work. Consult. Teach. And we’ve always wanted to travel, haven’t we?”
“You’re still working full-time, you can’t take the time off to travel.”
“Yes I can. And I will. We’re financially secure. We can afford to go anywhere we want to, whenever we want to.”
I talked it over with Tamara, too. Same results. She was perfectly capable of running the agency on her own; she pretty much did so now as it was. Simple enough to bring in another operative to handle the work I’d been doing. She would need to consult with me from time, no doubt, but I could accommodate her on the phone without undue stress. My health was the most important thing. Nothing else mattered.
That was what it all came down to, the health issue. Kerry did not want to lose me, Emily did not want to lose me, Tamara did not want to lose me. And I did not want to lose myself.
Still, I struggled a little with the decision. Just a little, and not for long. Hell, it was time, not only because of the coronary but also because of the way I’d mishandled the final stage of the Cahill investigation—the inevitable slow erosion of skills wrought by age. I knew it, accepted it. So the day I came home I made it official. Endgame. In a way it was a relief, because from now on I would be free of situations that bred tension and turmoil, no longer need to fire a gun even on a practice range, no longer have to deal with shattered lives, no longer be plagued by ghosts.
Regrets? None worth mentioning.
It was a hell of a ride while it lasted.
“NAMELESS DETECTIVE” MYSTERIES BY BILL PRONZINI
Endgame
Zigzag (collection)
Vixen
Strangers
Nemesis
Hellbox
Camouflage
Betrayers
Schemers
Fever
Savages
Mourners
Nightcrawlers
Scenarios (collection)
Spook
Bleeders
Crazybone
Boobytrap
Illusions
Sentinels
Spadework (collection)
Hardcase
Demons
Epitaphs
Quarry
Breakdown
Jackpot
Shackles
Deadfall
Bones
Double (with Marcia Muller)
Nightshades
Quicksilver
Case File (collection)
Bindlestiff
Dragonfire
Scattershot
Hoodwink
Labyrinth
Twospot (with Collin Wilcox)
Blowback
Undercurrent
The Vanished
The Snatch
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BILL PRONZINI has been nominated for, or won, every prize offered to crime fiction writers, including the 2008 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It is no wonder, then, that the Detroit Free Press said of him: “It’s always nice to see masters at work. Pronzini’s clear style seamlessly weaves [story lines] together, turning them into a quick, compelling read.” He lives and writes in California with his wife, the crime novelist Marcia Muller. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapt
er 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
“Nameless Detective” Mysteries by Bill Pronzini
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ENDGAME
Copyright © 2017 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Michael Graziolo
Cover photographs © 2017 Shutterstock.com
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8818-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-7653-8819-3 (e-book)
eISBN 9780765388193
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First Edition: June 2017
Endgame--A Nameless Detective Novel Page 19