The Hidden

by Bill Pronzini

  “My name is Joseph,” he said.

  T W E N T Y - E I G H T

  MACKLIN DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to think. As far as he could tell, nothing had been taken from Shelby’s purse; her wallet was inside, the unopened can of Mace tucked into a side pocket. Logic blocked the notion that there’d been a pair of cruisers and Shelby and the driver of this one had left together in the second. A deputy might have abandoned his vehicle if it was disabled in some way, but he’d sure as hell have locked it first. And Shelby would never have willingly abandoned her purse, not for any reason.

  Something bad had gone down here, something that accounted for Brian Lomax being dead. The possibility that Shelby might also be hurt made him frantic. But no matter what had happened she was alive, he refused to think otherwise. Around here somewhere, or out by the highway. Alone? Lomax’s body had been left where it had fallen; there was no reason for Shelby to’ve been taken away, hurt or not. Unless … hostage? No, no, what would anybody need a hostage for? She had to be in the vicinity.

  He started to back out of the cruiser, stopped when his gaze rested on the pump-action shotgun in its console brackets. He didn’t like guns, hadn’t had anything to with any type of firearm since the time his father had taken him out hunting quail in his early teens, Pop’s one and only effort to “make a man out of him.” But in a situation like this you did what was necessary, whatever was necessary.

  Desperation gave him the strength to tear the shotgun loose from its moorings. It was loaded: The slide worked smoothly and he heard a shell snick into the chamber.

  The fireplace poker was useless now; Macklin tossed it into the runoff stream. With the shotgun crooked carefully under his arm, he swung the flash beam in a wide arc. It passed over the black woods, the deserted lane, the estate fence, the entrance gates—

  He jerked it back when he realized that the gates stood partway open. They’d been shut all the times he’d driven by; he and Shelby had both assumed the place was closed up for the winter.

  Was that where she was, somewhere on the estate grounds? The gates might have been blown open by the storm, but that wasn’t likely since they opened inward. Somebody must’ve unlocked them … somebody was there or had been there.

  Macklin hurried across the roadway, and as he sloshed through swampy earth and grass he had the presence of mind to click off the flash. He’d already thrown light over the gates, but anybody on the other side would have to be close by to have seen it. Possible someone was hiding there in the dark … he couldn’t just go blundering onto the property with the flash on. Take it slow and careful.

  He eased up to the nearest gate half, stopped there to peer through the gap. Thick darkness, unbroken except for the faint vertical outlines of trees—a dozen people could be hiding within twenty yards of him and he wouldn’t be able to see any of them. He put a strain on his hearing. Magnified faucet-drip from the waterlogged branches, the distant pounding of surf. No other sounds.

  He stepped through, took a few steps forward and felt the driveway begin to slope downward. He might be able to follow it down through the woods without using the torch, but he was afraid to risk it. Too easy to veer off, stumble and fall … hurt himself, bring on another cardiac episode. His breathing was a little off again and the squeezing sensation had returned. There was a growing numbness in his hands and feet, too—the bitter windchill penetrating the layers of clothing and robbing him of body heat.

  He had the flash pointed straight down, his thumb on the switch, when the light flickers showed below.

  Now he knew for sure someone was on the grounds. Moving in or beyond the timber on the south side, where he judged the estate buildings to be. He stood tensed, watching, as the flickers lengthened and then steadied into a long shaft. Whoever it was had moved out from behind the screening trees, probably onto the driveway, and was heading this way.

  Before the shaft cut around in his direction, Macklin backed up quickly to the gates and then went to his right along the fence. Some kind of scraggly ground cover grew along it; he trampled through the vegetation, his shoulder brushing the rough boards, his shoes sinking into a soggy cushion of pine needles.

  The approaching light was slanted upward now, not quite piercing the darkness as far as the gates.

  Shelby?

  But the hope died as fast as it had been born. She’d be running or at least hurrying, and judging by the rate the beam was advancing, whoever held the torch was maintaining a steady pace but in no real hurry. Going where?

  A thick pine trunk jutted a few feet to Macklin’s right; he pushed off the fence and stepped over to use the tree as a shield. His heartbeat had quickened and the metallic taste was back in his mouth. The stock and barrel of the shotgun had a heavy, leaden feel in his gloved fingers.

  Two choices. Step out when whoever it was reached the gates, click on his flash, catch the person by surprise. Or stay hidden and try to see who it was, where he was headed.

  No-brainer. He still had no idea who had killed Lomax—Shelby or the missing deputy or some unknown third party. Or why Lomax was dead. Or what the situation was here. He’d be the one at a disadvantage if the light-holder was armed and dangerous. He had no experience with a shotgun; to use it he’d have to take the glove off his right hand, and his fingers were cramped and without much feeling as it was. He’d be a damn fool to even think about trying to fire it one-handed while holding the flashlight steady on his target.

  He bent forward against the pine trunk, watching the wavering ray draw closer, reach up to splash brightness over the gate halves. A single figure took dim shape behind it, slowed and then stopped to pull one and then the other half wide open. There wasn’t enough backspill for Macklin to get a clear look at him. But he could tell one thing as the man and the light passed out through the opening: What he was wearing was not a deputy sheriff’s uniform.

  Macklin waited half a dozen beats. Snippets of light coming through chinks between the fence boards told him that the man was moving across the lane toward the parked cruiser. But he wasn’t planning to leave the area, head for the highway; he wouldn’t have opened the gates all the way if that was his intention. Must be going to bring the cruiser back inside, hide it on the estate grounds.

  Was he the one who’d killed Lomax? If so, then wouldn’t he also want to get the corpse off the lane? Put it into the cruiser or drag it into the woods where it wouldn’t be easily found? That would take time, and so would stopping to close the gates after he drove the cruiser through.

  Hurry!

  Macklin stepped out to the rain-slick driveway, eased along it several paces in the dark while he altered his grip on the torch, closing his fingers around the bulb end and splaying them over the lens. When he switched on, enough light leaked through on a downward slant to show him what lay directly ahead, let him lengthen his stride. Every few steps he glanced over his shoulder at the gates. If the cruiser’s headlights appeared before he reached the end of the driveway, he’d darken the torch and get off into the trees as fast as he could.

  His breathing was still erratic; he kept expecting the chest constriction to erupt into smothering pain. But he didn’t let it slow him down. Finding Shelby was all he let himself think about.

  The driveway’s looping descent had almost cleared the woods when he saw, first, the yellowish rectangle ahead to his left and at almost the same time, the brighter illumination tingeing the night above and behind him. But the cruiser’s headlamps were still outside the fence, just now swinging around to the entrance. He couldn’t make out the gates from where he was, but the buildings had begun to materialize ahead, the dark outlines of the big estate house on the edge of the bluff and the smaller, closer structure with the lamplit window.

  The driveway forked; he veered onto the left fork, drawn by the light ahead.

  Halfway there, he took another look beind him. Headlight glare showed through the trees … moving at first, then becoming stationary. The cruiser was inside the gates and the
man had gotten out to close them. Only a matter of minutes before he’d be down here.

  The small building was a rough-built cabin. Macklin stumbled and slowed as he neared it, his breath like fire in his lungs. He passed a closed door, brought up next to the unshaded window. Sleeved his eyes clear of rain and sweat and peered through the streaked glass.

  Jesus!

  He lunged sideways to the door, dragged it open just long enough to thrust his body inside. On the battered gray sofa Shelby’s head came up and her eyes rounded into an open-mouthed stare. She cried his name, twice, in a voice that cracked with emotion.

  Relief flooded him. She wasn’t hurt, she looked all right.

  “Thank God, Jay, but how did you—”

  “No time now. He’s coming, he’ll be here any minute.”

  “Quick then … get a knife, cut me loose.”

  Macklin sidestepped the wounded deputy—recognized him, Ferguson—and stumbled into the kitchenette. Didn’t have to open drawers to find a knife; there was a wooden block of them on the sink counter. He exchanged the flashlight for a long-bladed carving knife, stumbled back out to the sofa.

  His hand was shaking so badly he was afraid he might add another cut to Shelby’s already torn and bloody flesh if he tried to slice through the duct tape one-handed. He propped the shotgun against the sofa, stripped off his right glove, then held the knife in both hands to steady it as he steered the blade to the narrow gap between her wrists.

  As he began sawing, she said with awe in her voice, “You came all this way on foot? Miracle you made it …”

  “I’m okay.”

  Damn knife blade was dull; he sawed harder. Nicked her in his haste—a line of fresh blood slithered along one wrist.

  “Is he on foot or in the cruiser?”

  “Cruiser.”

  “Pray he doesn’t notice the shotgun’s missing, it’ll put him on alert.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “Coastline Killer. Hurry, Jay!”

  One more cut and her hands were free. She took the knife from him, sliced the tape around her ankles, then reached for the pump gun. He tried to take it from her; she said, “No, let me have it, you’re in no condition,” and came up off the bed with it in her hands. She looked shaky, but not as shaky as he was.

  He said, “Shell in the chamber,” and she nodded. She knew how to handle the weapon; you couldn’t do emergency work around cops for ten years without having seen a riot gun being used.

  Rising sound of a car engine outside. Headlight glare slid obliquely over the front of the cabin, across the window.

  Shelby said, “Get out of the way, Jay, over by the stove.”

  He didn’t argue. His tank was almost empty; he’d been running on scant reserves for some time now. He shoved himself upright, made it over to an old armchair by the wood stove and leaned heavily against its back, straining to get his breathing under control.

  Shelby moved past the deputy to the right side of the room, at an angle to the closed door; stood there with the shotgun leveled, her legs spread and her hands steady now. Frozen tableau for half a minute. Then the door opened and a blond man Macklin had never seen before came inside. Hadn’t noticed the pump gun was missing from the cruiser, hadn’t been put on alert, just walked right in.

  The blond man saw the empty sofa, stopped abruptly at the same time Shelby said in a sharp commanding voice, “Stand still, soldier! I’ll blow your head off if you don’t do what you’re told.”

  He stiffened, staring at her with surprise on his wet face; then the surprise shifted into tight-lipped anger, then into something else for a second or two, then to no expression at all. His posture seemed to turn even more rigid, into a military erectness—both arms flat against his sides with the still-burning flashlight pointed at the floor, shoulders drawn back, chin up, eyes straight ahead and unblinking.

  Shelby ordered him to unbutton his coat, take it off and let it drop on the floor, then to lie facedown on the sofa, hands behind his back, feet together. “If you don’t obey orders, you’re a dead man. I mean it, Joseph.” Then she said something Macklin didn’t comprehend. “I’ve got a soldier’s courage, remember? And you know soldiers don’t make idle threats.”

  “I know,” the blond man said. Just that, nothing else.

  The round boyish face was still expressionless. Macklin, exhausted, not tracking too well anymore, thought that he must have misread what he’d seen there before the blankness set in.

  It had seemed almost like relief.

  E P I L O G U E

  N E W Y E A R ’ S DAY

  THIRTY-SIX HOURS NOW, every one a blur.

  Shelby sat in the waiting room at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, drinking coffee to stave off fatigue and remain alert. As far as she knew Jay was still in the OR—it seemed like he’d been in there half the day. The head staff surgeon who was performing his bypass operation had been cautiously optimistic. Jay’s coronary had been relatively mild; the damage to his heart didn’t seem to be as severe as it might have been given his night prowl through the lag end of the storm. But any number of things could go wrong during major surgery, and there was always the chance they might find further blockage that hadn’t been revealed by the tests.

  That kind of thinking wasn’t making the wait any easier. She made an effort to blank her mind, or at least to shift it into a state of semiawareness. No good either way. The concern for Jay kept intruding. So did the dulled memories of Wednesday night.

  Some of the details of what she’d endured between the time of Jay’s heart attack and his arrival at the cabin had already begun to fade. She’d been over them so many times she’d lost count, with various law officers and the first wave of media vultures, and yet it was as if it had all happened months ago. A form of mental self-protection, she supposed. The more awful an experience, the quicker the mind sought to bury it under layers of scar tissue.

  The rest of that long night was a little clearer in her memory—for the present, anyway. A time of organized chaos. Douglas’s term for an intense Saturday night in ER. (Douglas. Her feelings for him still uncertain and unresolved. But this wasn’t the time to be thinking about them. Or about anyone except Jay.)

  But yes, organized chaos was just what it had been. Jay holding the shotgun and telling her how he’d found her while she taped Joseph’s wrists and ankles. Joseph lying with his face turned away from them, as docile as if he’d been drugged … no, as if he were a resigned prisoner of war who wanted as little as possible to do with his captors. Helping Jay out of his wet clothes, then getting him comfortable in the bedroom while she checked his vital signs. Using the radio in Ferguson’s cruiser to report the situation and ask for medical assistance. Cutting the semiconscious deputy loose and tending to his head trauma as best she could. Finding out from Jay that it was Brian Lomax, not Joseph, who’d killed Gene Decker; that Claire was hiding somewhere in or near the cottage, and why. Waiting for what seemed like hours, but was only about thirty minutes, for the Basic Life Support ambulance operated by the Seacrest Volunteer Fire Department to arrive, along with a caravan of sheriff’s department and highway patrol officers.

  Watching a bundled-up Jay and the wounded deputy being whisked away toward Fort Bragg in the BLS ambulance because the weather was still too poor for a medevac helicopter to land at Seacrest. Answering a seemingly endless string of questions before one of the deputies finally drove her to Fort Bragg. By then the BLS ambulance had rendezvoused with an Advanced Life Support ambulance at Albion, Jay had been hooked up to a cardiac monitor and had an IV started and been fast-driven to Mendocino Coast District Hospital, which had a landing pad that allowed helicopters to land even in stormy weather, and then transferred by Reach 1 to Santa Rosa Memorial’s cardiac care center.

  Another string of questions for her at the Fort Bragg sheriff’s office. An interminable two-hour car ride to Santa Rosa. New rounds of Q&A with the staff at SR Memorial, with Lieutenant Rhiannon at the local highway
patrol office, and then, briefly, with the members of the media swarm she wasn’t able to avoid. Four hours of restless sleep in a motel room, all she could manage despite her exhaustion, and back here to the hospital for more waiting.

  One long continuous blur. It was a wonder she could remember any of it, think clearly at all.

  If Jay came through the surgery all right—and he would, he would—the worst was past. Something else was past, too, or she was pretty sure it was: her fear of the dark. If that hellish night hadn’t cured her nyctophobia, nothing ever would.

  But it would be a while before the authorities and the media let them alone. She hadn’t looked at TV or read a newspaper, but she could imagine the headlines: SOUTH BAY COUPLE CAPTURE COASTLINE KILLER AFTER NIGHT OF TERROR. She didn’t want any part of it, and she was sure Jay wouldn’t either, but like it or not they were temporary celebrities. It wouldn’t last long, though. This kind of thing never did. There was always a new and different piece of sensationalism for the newshounds and the public to feed on.

  She got up to use the bathroom. Came back, wondering if she could stand to swallow any more coffee—and the surgeon, still in his scrubs, was waiting for her. The small tired smile he wore told her everything she needed to know.

  Everybody kept telling Macklin he was lucky to be alive. Shelby, the North Coast EMTs, an ER doctor at Santa Rosa Memorial, the surgeon who performed his triple bypass surgery. As if he needed confirmation of the fact. Nobody knew it better than he did.

  But he was thankful for an even greater piece of luck—that he’d had enough stamina to do what he’d set out to do, that Shelby was alive and unharmed. One of the nurses called him a hero for risking his life to save his wife’s. Bullshit. Heroes were cut from a whole different variety of cloth than Jay Macklin. The kind of cloth Shelby had been made from—she was the real hero here. He was just a man who’d finally stepped up, finally proved to himself—and if he was lucky, to her—that he wasn’t a failure or a loser after all.