The Stalker

by Bill Pronzini

  The limping man stared fixedly at the spot where Orange had disappeared beneath the cabin, holding the Magnum against his right thigh, teeth clamped tightly, painfully together, as if trying to prevent the escape of the fury within his body.

  Why won’t he die? he thought. Why won’t Orange die?

  How many times do I have to kill him?

  One more time, just one more. He’ll be dead then, I’ll make absolutely certain he’s dead then. I’ll kill him until he’s dead. You won’t get away, Orange, you won’t escape . . .

  Soft now. Careful. Does he have a weapon? Maybe yes and maybe no. A gun? No gun. He would have fired at me if he had a gun. No gun. Caution, though, can’t be sure, can’t go after him, have to wait, wait him out. I’ve waited ten years now, I can wait just a little while longer . . .

  The knife!

  The knife he had put into his overcoat pocket after cutting Andrea loose in the cabin, the fish knife!

  The thought struck Kilduff all at once, and his hand groped feverishly at his mud-caked pocket. Had he somehow lost it in the fall when he’d been shot? In the dive beneath the cabin? His trembling fingers probed the sodden material of his overcoat and it was there, it was there; he traced the outline of the blade, the handle, and then he drew the pocket open and took the knife out and held it in his hand. A small chance, such a pitifully small chance.

  But a chance.

  Oh you Orange you’re going to really die this time I’m really going to kill you this time you son of a bitch He would have to rush him.

  There was no other alternative.

  Kilduff held the fish knife tightly in his right hand, its bone handle slick against his palm. He was still unable to see the limping man. Twenty yards to the woodshed; it could have been two thousand. There was pain now in the area above his kidney where the bullet had entered, muted toothache pain, and the weakness had bathed his body in hot, mucilaginous sweat, had sent tiny numbing needles into his good arm and into his legs.

  I’m going to die, he thought suddenly. I’m going to die and I don’t know why. I’ll never know why and I’ll never know who he is, this is just like . . . war. Yes, war, the mud and the rain and the cold and the waiting; this is how it was in Europe in 1945 and in Korea in 1953 and in Viet Nam in 1960—you don’t really know your enemy and you don’t really understand why you’re there; oh God, this is all so terribly, horribly futile, so useless, this is war. And because it is, there is no other way except to kill or be killed, and you want so very desperately to live.

  Andrea had had enough time to get away in the boat, but it could be an hour or more before she would be able to summon help. He wasn’t sure he could keep from passing out for that length of time. And it was a certainty the limping man wouldn’t wait very much longer. This was the time to attack, then, catch the enemy off guard, the element of surprise; he had to make the first move, the bold stroke, if he was going to have any kind of chance at all.

  Now was the time.

  Right now.

  He got his left leg under him, digging into the soft mud with the toe of his shoe, leaning the upper portion of his body slightly forward, wiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his sleeve, dropping his arm to hold the knife low and in close to his body, ready now, tensing, trembling, knowing instinctively that he would never make it, knowing he had to try, counting five, four, three—And he saw Andrea.

  He saw her out of the corner of his eye, just leaving the tangled path which led to the dock, creeping through the grasses and through the slashing rain, holding a long piece of driftwood in both hands, looking frightened, looking determined. He knew instantly why she was there, what she was going to do, and he thought: You damned little fool, you crazy damned little fool! His eyes shifted toward the woodshed, but the limping man was still hidden; he hadn’t seen her yet, no, because if he had he would have shot her, the instant he saw her he would kill her, Christ in heaven, why didn’t she do what I told her to do, why?

  Go back, Andrea, go back, go back!

  But she kept coming, circling, thirty yards to the rear of the shed now, twenty-five, still coming, holding the length of driftwood clasped very tightly in her small hands, and he knew that the limping man would see her, hear her, any second now, twenty yards, any goddamned second now he would know she was there and he would kill her . . .

  Kilduff shoved forward with his left foot, scrabbling on his hands and knees, out from beneath the concealing shelter of the shack’s stairs, lifting himself onto his feet as he emerged into the pelting rain, holding the knife out in front of him commando-style, his mind completely blank, moving on instinct, and in that moment the limping man took a step away from the shed wall, into Kilduff’s vision, turning his body as he saw or heard or sensed Andrea, not seeing Kilduff yet. The gun bucked in his hand, spurting fire like a deadly toy dragon, the sound of it terribly loud in Kilduff’s ears, but Andrea was already falling when he fired, an almost comic pratfall as her feet sluiced out from beneath her on the treacherous ground. She screamed once, a high piercing sound which rose higher and higher as the muted reverberation of the gunshot died away, crescendoing, and Kilduff thought: He’s killed her, he’s killed Andrea! because he hadn’t seen her slip, didn’t know the bullet had passed harmlessly over her head, only heard her scream and saw her fall.

  His eyes were locked on the limping man, and he hurtled forward through the sloshing mud, with his lips pulled snarling back from his teeth, the weakness forgotten, running in short, quick, sliding steps, the knife rigid in front of him, ready to rip through the flesh of the enemy half-turned away from him . . .

  The limping man heard him coming.

  The limping man heard him and pivoted toward him, bringing the gun around, and Kilduff could see his face—startled, the eyes like two tiny phosphorous pools—see it very close, less than ten feet away now. The limping man raised the gun, dodging down and to the left, away from the shed; he pulled the trigger, and the wide black bore seemed to discharge a billowing flame outward, flame and a noise as loud as a cannon firing next to his ear, and Kilduff went blind and he went deaf in that single instant, but the bullet passed high over his right shoulder. He plunged forward, trying to turn in the direction the limping man had turned, slashing upward with the knife, missing, missing, but his numbed left shoulder struck something soft and yielding and there was a small, gasping cough and he felt himself toppling forward, falling, falling onto the yielding surface—the limping man—and he tried to use the knife and found that he couldn’t. As if in slow motion, then, they were rolling over and over, arms and legs locked, rolling through the oozing mud, and Kilduff felt it cling parasitically—acold noxious flowing entity—to his clothes and to his skin. He could smell the man’s breath, the breath of a satyr, thudding into his face in sharp staccato expulsions—Suddenly, the limping man was gone.

  Kilduff felt him jerk free, as if they had been exploded apart, one whole splitting into two halves, and he rolled again, coming up onto his knees, dimly able to see the limping man again and he too was kneeling, less than two feet away, staring back at Kilduff, the two of them with their arms hanging down at their sides, the two of them still with their weapons clenched in mud-fists, kneeling in the center of the brown quagmire just beyond the woodshed, gasping, frozen immobile there like two hideous, putrescent creatures risen from the slime for one long, long moment, seeming to wait one for the other, and Kilduff thought: Andrea, oh God!

  With one final terrible effort of will, he brought the knife slashing upward and buried it almost to the hilt in the limping man’s chest.

  . . . And the limping man feels the knife, hot, white-hot, tearing through his flesh, and his mouth opens and air spews out in a heaving, agonized sigh. A grayness dims his vision momentarily, puts a gathering fog across the pupils of his eyes, and there is the distant sound of whining, vibrating turbines in his ears. He does not see or hear the Magnum fall from his nerveless fingers to make a soft, wet, ugly sound in the mud. He blinks
once, twice, and finally the fog shreds and he is able to see Orange again, Orange releasing the handle of the knife, the muscles in his face relaxing, growing lax, his eyeballs rolling up in their sockets, falling backward, falling into the shallow brown bayou, lying still.

  There is no pain; miraculously, there is no pain and the limping man looks down at the front of his slippery wet overcoat, at the mottled black and white handle of the knife protruding there, looks down at the fountain of blood bubbling out around it, his blood, covering the small exposed portion of the molten blade, painting the grip now, thick and flowing free, bright red rivers meandering down the muddied cloth; he watches them in mesmeric fascination, watches the rain dilute the brilliantine color of his blood, pale it, wash it away, watches new rivers forming, flowing red and thick again.

  But there is no pain, there is only the sound of the turbines, growing louder now. He looks once again at Orange, lying still, and he thinks: He’s dead Orange is really dead this time I’ve finally killed him! He tries to smile, for the fury and the rage are gone; but he has no control over his facial muscles and his expression remains frozen, mask-like. He begins to waver, slowly, as if he has suddenly become caught in a cross-current of the wind, and the fog obliterates his vision again, thicker now, thickly gray as his blood is thickly crimson.

  . It’s over vengeance is mine Blue and Red and Gray and

  The pain comes all at once, a searing, flashing tidal flood, erupting throughout his body, a holocaust of pain consuming the cells, the pumping arteries, the tissue and the membranes, destroying everything in its path. He cries out once, sharply, tormentedly, and then his brain ceases to function and he topples sideways, sprawling face-downward in the cold brown sucking mud . . .

  Sounds.

  The wind and the rain.

  His name, screaming.

  Men shouting, far away, coming closer.

  All vague, all dream-like.

  Kilduff teeters on the edge of consciousness, close to falling, soon to fall. He seems to be drifting within himself, an aimless drifting in descending, ever-diminishing circles, as if he has somehow become trapped inside a cone-like helix that will, when he reaches its tiny beckoning bottom, hurl him into a limitless black void. His eyes are closed, and he cannot open them; the rain is cold, pleasant, soothing on his fevered skin. He lies there, waiting for the void, drifting, drifting, and then he senses a weight fall beside him, hears the anguished sounds of near-hysterical weeping. Soft hands, tender hands, familiar hands lift his head from the mud, cradle it momentarily, lower it finally onto a pillowing, familiar softness.

  Andrea’s hands.

  Andrea’s softness.

  Andrea you’re alive, you’re all right.

  Oh God, thank you, God . . .

  He tries to say the words he is thinking, but his throat refuses to work. The tender hands stroke his cheeks, and he tastes the salt-warmth of falling tears on his lips, Andrea’s tears, and Andrea’s voice is saying his name again, over and over and over, pleading with him not to die . . .

  Running feet, pounding across the marsh grasses, through the puddles and through the mud. Panting breaths. A man’s voice: “Jesus Christ!”

  Another: “Pat, get back to the car. Radio for an ambulance.”

  Another: “They’re both dead, Neal. Look at all the goddamned blood!”

  The second: “What happened here? Ma’am, what happened here . . . ?”

  He is nearing the bottom now, and the opening into the void has grown larger, grown wide. It waits for him, inviting, and he begins to drift faster and faster, reaching out for it, ready to embrace it. The sounds fade, diminish, until there is only a great, frightening silence.

  And then he spins out of the cone-like helix, into blackness, into nothingness, into oblivion . . .

  Epilogue Friday

  White on white.

  White images superimposed on a white background.

  Bright white light.

  Belly-down on white softness, cheek resting on white softness.

  The odor of antiseptic.

  Faces—blurred faces, strange faces.

  Pain in his back.

  Binding constriction of adhesive tape.

  Weakness.

  Remembering.

  “Andrea,” he said.

  “His wife,” one of the blurred faces said.

  “Andrea ...”

  “She’s all right,” another of the faces said. “She’s right outside.”

  “. . . see her. . .”

  “Not now. Rest, now.”

  Faces fading. He tried to keep them in focus, but they faded and faded and finally they were gone, and the whiteness was gone and the softness and the light were gone.

  He slept.

  He awoke thirsty.

  He was still lying on his stomach, still lying on the white softness. His vision was clear. He saw a white wall, white ceiling, whitelinoleumed floor; white nightstand and a white-uniformed nurse sitting on one of three white metal chairs, reading a magazine.

  He said, “Water.”

  The nurse stood up and looked down at him and felt his pulse. She smiled briefly and brought him a glass of water. He drank it, asked for another. The nurse let him have a little more, and then she left and he heard a door close. After a time, a doctor with black eyes and a cupid’s-bow mouth came in and began to examine him.

  “Do you have any pain?” the doctor asked.

  “Yes, a little.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “How badly am I hurt?”

  “You’ll be all right.”

  “My wife-?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Is she here?”

  “Yes.

  “Can I see her?”

  “Not just now.”

  “I’d like to see her.”

  “There are . . . some men first ”

  “Oh,” he said. “Yes.”

  “Do you feel up to talking to them now?”

  “Yes, all right.”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  His tongue felt swollen. “What hospital is this?”

  “Novato General.”

  “And what day?”

  “Friday.”

  “Morning?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “A little past nine.”

  “Almost twenty-four hours,” he said.

  “That’s not unusual,” the doctor said. “You were in surgery for five hours.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “No, you wouldn’t.”

  The doctor left—and came back again.

  With Inspectors Commac and Flagg.

  And a man named Arnstadt.

  And a male stenographer.

  The first thing he asked them was: “Who was he?”

  “His name was Marik,” Commac said. “Felix Marik.”

  “Marik? Marik?”

  “He was the driver of that Smithfield armored car you helped rob in 1959,” Commac said.

  “The driver,” he said. “Marik, the driver.”

  “That’s right,” Flagg said. “You want to tell us about it now, Kilduff? The whole thing, from the beginning?”

  He told it.

  Once.

  Twice.

  And then he asked them if they knew why Marik had done it, why he’d wanted all of the hold-up men dead.

  Commac said, “We got his name from his wallet and ran a check on him. It seems the Illinois police questioned him extensively after the robbery, although that fact wasn’t made public. They thought he might have been involved—an inside man.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he allowed the two of you to get as close to the armored car as you did,” Flagg said. “But after a while, they figured it wasn’t anything more than carelessness and gave him a clean bill. Smithfield fired him right after that. Negligence, according to the company statement.”

  Commac said, “He had a run of bad luck, bad to worse. Couldn’t seem to hold a job. And th
en his wife left him, divorced him because of the notoriety involving the robbery. He went to Michigan and got a job finally as dock worker on Lake Erie.”

  “Two months later,” Flagg continued, “a crate of heavy machinery fell out of a hoist netting and broke both his legs. He was in the hospital six months. That was the reason for the limp; tendons in the one leg never did heal right.”

  “Do you have any idea how he found out we were the ones?”

  Flagg shook his head. “An obsession can make a shrewd investigator out of any man,” he said. “We found a briefcase in his rented car out at Duckblind Slough. There were a series of folders on each one of you inside; he knew more about you than you know yourself, Kilduff. He was thorough and he was meticulous.”

  “Maybe something put him onto the fact that all six of you were recently discharged from the Bellevue Air Force Station at the time of the robbery,” Commac said. “And that, as you said, all six of you remained in Illinois for three years after the robbery. Unusual for demobilized soldiers. We’ll never know exactly how he did it.”

  “No, we’ll never know.”

  And he thought: Marik had to have somebody to blame for what had happened to him, for all the bad luck. He couldn’t admit to himself that he was the one responsible—that it was his own weaknesses, his own failings.

  Like me.

  Just like me.

  They talked to him a while longer, and then the two of them—and Amstadt and the male stenographer—left quietly and he was alone again.

  The doctor again. “Do you want to rest now?”

  “I’d like to see my wife.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said, and went out.

  He lay there looking at the wall. He turned his head on the pillow, and he could see the room’s single window. The shade was up. He was in a ground-floor room, and he was able to see out into a small courtyard with two large, spreading oak trees.

  It had stopped raining.

  The sun was trying to come out.

  He watched the wind blowing through the leaves of the oaks, and then the door opened and there were soft footsteps and Andrea was there, standing beside his bed, both her small hands clutching a black purse, wearing her wool jacket and a black skirt. She sat down on One of the white chairs, and he could see that her eyes were red and puffy and he knew that she had been crying, that she had not had any sleep the night before.