The Hidden

by Bill Pronzini

  “Brian Lomax,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “He owned the house at the far end.”

  Another neighbor. He hadn’t even known he had neighbors until tonight. Well, once he’d gone out on the platform behind the estate house and he’d seen lights in the big place up there, but he’d never seen the people. Never given them any thought. He’d spent most of the past two and a half weeks forted up right here. Pretty spot even with all the old-growth trees along the crease clear-cut down to stumps; that was why he’d decided to squat here for a while, and most of the necessary provisions had already been laid in by the old man he’d buried in the woods. He’d only left the property a few times, for long drives along Highway 1 and once to buy some stuff he needed in the store in Seacrest.

  “You shot all those other people, too,” she said. “The Coastline Killer.”

  “I don’t like that name. I’m not a murderer.”

  “You’re going to murder me.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Then let me go so I can get help for my husband.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  On the floor the deputy twitched a little, moaned, but didn’t wake up. When he was quiet again, the woman said, “What happened with him? Why is he here?”

  What happened. Come snooping around, that was what happened. Pushed his way in through the locked gates and walked down here through the rain with a flashlight and an umbrella, looking for the caretaker because somebody in Seacrest had mentioned not seeing the old man for a while. He’d claimed to be the old man’s nephew, but the deputy wouldn’t buy it. Suspicious looks, suspicious questions, then a sudden move for his sidearm. Not quick enough, though, not a well-trained soldier like he was. Easy enough to get the jump on him. He’d come close to putting a bullet in the deputy instead of cracking his head with the Glock. Why hadn’t he? The uniform, maybe—the army taught you to respect a uniform, military or civilian. He wished now that he had popped the deputy, because at the time it would’ve been justified, another case of self-defense.

  Couldn’t shoot him after he was down, unconscious. Couldn’t make himself do it. Tied him up instead, then took his keys and went up to move the cruiser inside the estate gates in case somebody came along. Just got the driver’s door unlocked when he saw the woman’s light; jumped quick into the woods before she spotted him. Would’ve stayed out of sight if she hadn’t come right up to the cruiser, opened the door … he knew she was going to use the radio as soon as she got in. Couldn’t just pop her, either, so he’d catfooted up and dragged her out. More damn hassle, then—a kick in the shin and an elbow in the gut and having to chase her around in the dark before and after that asshole with the sidearm, what was his name, Lomax, showed up.

  It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. All this crap blindsiding him, screwing up his life just when he thought he had it on track and running smooth for the first time ever. No control over any of it, forcing him to take the kind of action he didn’t want to take. A woman and a deputy and an armed head case. How could you guard against anything like that?

  The Glock was right there on the table in front of him, three inches from his hand. The deputy’s service revolver was in his coat pocket—he’d thrown Lomax’s piece into the woods. Plenty of firepower … against a defenseless woman and an unconscious, duct-taped cop. Shit, man. Slaughter was all it would be. He might not lose too much sleep over killing the deputy, but doing the woman … that’d be the hardest thing he’d ever faced and he knew he’d hate himself for it later on. Never forget it, never forgive himself.

  Maybe he should buy a little more time to come to terms with it. Bind her hands and feet, too—he hadn’t done that yet, hadn’t touched her at all—and then do what he’d intended doing before, go up and move the deputy’s cruiser inside off the lane before any more crap went down.

  “You didn’t answer me about the deputy.”

  “Never mind the deputy.”

  “How long has he been here?”

  “Why?”

  “Whatever his reason for coming, he must’ve notified his dispatcher where he was headed. They’ll be looking for him when he doesn’t report in.”

  “Not right away. Not on a night like this.”

  “Before too long, though. And when they do they’ll find his cruiser.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then you also know you can’t stay here. The sooner you leave, the safer you’ll be. Why not just go now?”

  “And leave both of you here alive.”

  “Why not? We haven’t done anything to you. By the time we’re found, you’ll be long gone.”

  “You know what I look like.”

  “Like any one of ten thousand young blond men—”

  “No,” he said, “I’m different. Easy to recognize, no camouflage. A soldier never jeopardizes himself or his mission if he can help it, and that’s what I’d be doing.”

  “What mission are you on?”

  “To keep the enemy from destroying what God made.”

  “What enemy?”

  “Spoilers of nature,” he said. “The ones who turn beautiful places into wastelands. They don’t deserve to live.”

  “I’m not somebody like that. Neither is my husband. Or the deputy.”

  He looked at the Glock, looked back at her. “I almost wish you were.”

  “Why? Because that would make it easier for you?”

  Smart, clever, but she wasn’t fooling him any. All her talking was calculated to distract him, her eyes flicking here and there when she thought he wasn’t looking straight at her, searching for something she could use against him, a way to get free. Wasting her time. The cabin was just two rooms, three if you counted the tiny kitchen, and there wasn’t much in it; the old caretaker had lived a pretty lean life. Only a few sticks of furniture, bare walls, bare floor. There was a hunting rifle in the bedroom closet, but he’d unloaded it when he moved in. Fire tongs on a rack next to the woodstove, but she was too far away to get her hands on them quick enough and she was smart enough to know it.

  He really did feel sorry for her. Liked her, too, because he could tell she had a soldier’s kind of courage. The way she’d fought him up there on the lane, not making a sound the whole time, as hard to hang on to as a bagful of cats. And when he’d caught her down here … no screaming or crying or begging, no fuss of any kind. Just accepted the situation and was dealing with it the best way she knew how, the way a trained soldier would. Calm and cool under pressure.

  He’d always admired that kind of courage in women. It was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with Georgia … main reason, maybe. Georgia wasn’t pretty, didn’t have a great body, but she’d been a hell of a soldier and she had the guts of a lion. He’d rather have her as a battle buddy than 95 percent of the men in his Third Infantry unit. They’d done some hot and heavy loving over there in her CHU, really making the bed in that trailer rock, before she lost an arm in a firefight in Fallujah and they’d shipped her back home to Fort Bliss.

  A dozen times he’d e-mailed her at the VA hospital but she never answered even once, just cut him out of her life without any kind of explanation. PTSD, probably, like he and so many other combat soldiers had suffered and would go on suffering. He’d tried to find her after they gave him his medical discharge and sent him back stateside, but her relatives in Oklahoma City wouldn’t tell him where she was and he hadn’t been able to track her through anybody else he talked to. She hadn’t died, he’d’ve been able to find out that much if she had, so that was something to be thankful for. He hoped she’d rehabbed by now and was getting on with her life, wherever she was. She deserved some peace if anybody did.

  He wondered if he’d’ve married Georgia if things had turned out differently in their part of the damn war. Probably not. He wasn’t husband material. Too unsettled, too much of a loner. Needed to go places by himself, see things he’d never seen before, like California and the Pacific Ocean, get as far fro
m the heat and filth and death-stink of Iraq as he could. That was why he’d come here. Clean sea air, unspoiled beauty. Calm, peaceful. Running on tracks along the edge of the world.

  The woman was saying something else now, something he didn’t catch. He said, “What?”

  “How long are you going to make me suffer?”

  “I’m not trying to make you suffer.”

  “But that’s what you’re doing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t keep saying you’re sorry. I don’t want to die, I don’t want my husband or the deputy to die, but if you’re going to shoot me, why don’t you just go ahead and get it over with?”

  His head had started to ache. A dull throbbing centered behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut and knuckle-rubbed them, then dug the heels of his hands hard into his temples.

  “Well?” she said.

  Opened his eyes again, quick, but she hadn’t moved. “I don’t like this any more than you do.”

  “But that’s not going to stop you, is it.”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said. “I don’t know!”

  And he didn’t, he still didn’t. It was like being back in Iraq, having to make another in a string of hard and fast decisions in order to survive. He’d handled it all right on the first tour, no problem, but on the second, after Georgia lost her arm and Charley got wasted and he had to scrag those two Iraqi civilians, it got harder and harder. To the point where he didn’t know what was right and what wasn’t, didn’t know what to do, didn’t want the responsibility, just wanted it to be over and done with one way or another.

  He’d felt bad then and he felt bad again now. Harder and harder. Too much responsibility. Made him feel the way he had when they stuck him in that clinic over in Iraq—as if he’d lost part of himself, the way Georgia had lost her arm. And that it didn’t really matter what he did tonight or from now on, shot the woman and the deputy or didn’t shoot them, shot any more of the spoilers or not, because there was no way he could ever get it back.

  T W E N T Y - S E V E N

  HE WAS NOBODY SHELBY had ever seen before. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, lean and muscular, with a round baby face and thin blond hair wet and tangled from the rain. He didn’t look dangerous; he looked like the boy next door all grown up. There wasn’t enough light in the cabin for her to get a clear look at his eyes, but his expression—flat, almost placid—was not that of a homicidal lunatic. He didn’t talk or act like one, either. Soft-voiced, except for flashes of anger that lasted for only a few seconds. Hadn’t touched her or even come close to her, just ordered her to sit on the sofa and then sat down himself at the table across from it. Seemed almost apologetic each time he said he didn’t know yet what he was going to do about her and the trussed-up deputy.

  The Coastline Killer. She’d realized that must be who he was as soon as he caught her and now he’d confirmed it. Hiding out right here the whole time she and Jay were at the cottage. The Coastline Killer on one side and another violent weirdo, Brian Lomax, on the other. Sandwich meat between two slices of crazy.

  Shelby kept trying not to look at the silver-framed automatic on the table in front of him, but her eyes were drawn to it mothlike. He’d killed a bunch of people already with that gun, for some warped reason that had to do with preserving the coastal environment, and pretty soon now, when he worked himself up to it, he would add two more to the list.

  She was terrified, but she had the terror tamped down under the calm she had learned to adopt in crisis situations. If she let him see any sign of fear, it might be the impetus he needed to go ahead and use that automatic. All she could do was keep him talking, try to postpone it as long as she could while she continued to look for some miracle way to prevent it from happening.

  She kept chafing her hands together to try to restore circulation; she’d stripped off what was left of the torn and sodden gloves when she first sat down. The cuts on her palms and her cheek stung like fury. But the rest of her felt numb, stiff from the wet and the cold. She had to clench her jaw muscles to keep her teeth from chattering.

  The blond man’s eyes were downcast now, in a squint that ridged his forehead with horizontal lines. Again Shelby made a surreptitious eye-sweep of the cabin. There was a wood box next to an old-fashioned woodstove, some sticks of cordwood stacked inside. Maybe, if she could get him out of that chair and closer to her …

  “It’s cold in here,” she said. “The fire’s almost out and I’m freezing.”

  He didn’t respond. He was massaging his temples again, as if he had a headache.

  “Maybe you could put some more wood in the stove?”

  “No.”

  “Or let me do it—”

  “No. You just stay where you are.”

  No use. The cut logs were ten feet away, the deputy was on the floor between her and the table, and any sudden movements she made were bound to be clumsy. As soon as she came up off the lumpy sofa, he’d have the weapon in his hand—and one or two seconds after that she’d be dead.

  Ferguson’s limbs spasmed again, but his eyes remained shut. She hadn’t gotten an answer to why he was here, what had happened between him and the blond man, but it didn’t really make any difference. Even if his arms and ankles weren’t bound, he’d be of no help to her or to himself. Nasty head wound—blunt force trauma, probable concussion. Likely he’d be so disoriented when he regained consciousness he wouldn’t even know his own name.

  Another groan brought the blond man’s eyes back up. They flicked over Ferguson, lifted to resettle on her.

  She said, “I don’t know your name.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’d like to know. I told you my name.”

  “Shelby Hunter. I like that, it’s kind of appropriate.”

  “Why appropriate?”

  “The Hunter part, I mean.”

  “I’m not a hunter. I don’t like to kill living things.”

  “Neither do I, but sometimes it’s necessary.” Then he said, “Soldiers are hunters, that’s what I meant. Were you ever a soldier?”

  “No.”

  “You could’ve been. You’ve got the courage.”

  She ignored that. “I’m an EMT.”

  “Medic? That’s good. Can’t do without medics.”

  “It’s how I know my husband needs medical attention. If I hadn’t been there to stabilize him after his heart attack, he might’ve died then.”

  “You told me that before. I’m sorry.”

  “The deputy needs attention, too,” she said. “Why don’t you let me look at his wound?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe there’s something I can do for him—”

  “I said no.”

  Shift to another subject. Soldiers, the military.

  “What branch of the service were you in? Army? Marine Corps?”

  “Army infantry.”

  “NCO?”

  “What else? I made corporal.”

  “Serve overseas? See combat?”

  “Iraq, two tours,” he said. “I hated it over there.”

  “I can’t imagine what it was like.”

  “No, you can’t. It was hell. But once you’re there, all you can do is embrace the suck.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make the best of it. Deal with all the shit until you …” His voice trailed off; he shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about Iraq.”

  Keep him talking about something!

  “Where are you from?”

  “Nowhere,” he said.

  “You were born someplace, grew up someplace—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Do you have family? Brothers, sisters?”

  “No.”

  “What about your mother and father?”

  “I never knew him and the old bitch is dead.” He was becoming agitated; his voice had risen, taken on a sharp edge. “There’s no point in asking me all these questions. It won’t work.”


  “What won’t work?”

  “Trying to distract me. You can’t overpower me and you can’t get away.”

  “I know that. I wasn’t trying to distract you—”

  “Don’t lie to me. I don’t like to be lied to.”

  “All right.”

  Silent stare for several seconds, his face showing the bunched effects of his headache. Then abruptly it smoothed; he pushed his chair back, picked up the automatic, and got to his feet. Resolute expression now, as if he’d made some kind of decision. Shelby tensed, but he didn’t turn the weapon in her direction; held it straight down along his side.

  “Lie down,” he said, “on your belly.”

  “Why? What for?”

  “Do what you’re told, medic.”

  “Are you going to shoot me now?”

  “Not if you obey orders.”

  There was nothing else she could do. She pulled her legs up and stretched out, slowly turned over with her cheek against a cushion that smelled of dust and mildew and pipe tobacco. A bullet in the back of the head, execution style? She resisted the impulse to close her eyes.

  He said, “Put your feet together and your hands behind your back.”

  No, that wasn’t his intention, not yet. He was going to tie her up as he’d done the deputy. She released the breath she’d been holding, let the prayer that had come into her mind slide back out again.

  “Now don’t move.”

  She obeyed while he tore off pieces from a roll of duct tape, wrapped her wrists together crosswise, then bound her ankles.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said.

  He didn’t answer until he was finished and he’d tested the tape to make sure it was secure. “I have to go out again for a little while.”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But you’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be back.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know yet. Be quiet now, just be quiet.”

  At the periphery of her vision she saw him walk across to the door, open it, then stand there looking back at her. His face was impassive in the lantern light, but he had one more thing to say to her, oddly, almost shyly, before he went out and shut the door behind him.