With an Extreme Burning

by Bill Pronzini

  “I'm not. How many times do I have to say it?”

  “But suppose you were. Because you were bored and looking for some excitement … whatever reason. Who would you be having it with?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “A man you've known for a long time—a friend? Like Tom Birnam or Jerry Whittington or George Flores—”

  “Sweetie, you're being ridiculous. Don't start jumping to wild conclusions.”

  “I'm not, I'm only asking.”

  “Well, the answer is no.”

  “Too close to home?”

  “Yes. Too close to home.”

  “But it wouldn't be somebody you just picked up, in a bar or someplace. I mean, the AIDS thing—”

  “No. Can we just drop this?”

  “I don't want to drop it. I find it fascinating.”

  “Well, I don't.”

  “It couldn't be a stranger, could it? It couldn't for me. I'd have to have some feelings for the guy before I could go to bed with him. Be able to talk to him about things that mattered, before and after. Feel comfortable with him.”

  “… Okay, yes, for me, too.”

  “So it wouldn't be just sex, the big O. There'd have to be some real emotion, too.”

  “If you're talking about love …”

  “I don't mean love. I mean feelings.”

  “Feelings.”

  “You'd have to like him. Not love but like.”

  “I suppose so. Is there any more wine in that bottle?”

  “Help yourself. What if it grew into more, though—got really intense?”

  “Intense? What're you talking about now?”

  “Same subject. Your affair.”

  “Eileen, if you don't stop …”

  “All right, your hypothetical affair. What if it turned into something more than sex, deeper than just liking?”

  “That wouldn't happen.”

  “Are you sure it couldn't?”

  “I wouldn't let it.”

  “Suppose it was heading that way. What would you do?”

  “Break it off.”

  “Just like that? Sorry, it's been nice, good-bye?”

  “Not quite that coldly, but … yes.”

  “So you'd never leave Dix? No matter what?”

  “I don't think I could, no.”

  “That doesn't sound very definite.”

  “Bad phrasing. No, I wouldn't leave Dix. Never, no matter what.”

  “You love him that much?”

  “That much. Always have, always will.”

  “Suppose he finds out about the affair?”

  “There's nothing for him to find out, Eileen.”

  “If there was. Would he leave you?”

  “No. Never.”

  “He might. Men are unpredictable sometimes.”

  “Not Dix.”

  “He'd just forgive you and go on as if nothing happened?”

  “Sooner or later. But it would never come to that.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because he'd never find out. I wouldn't let him find out.”

  “Famous last words. Skeletons have a way of falling out of closets, honey, you know that.”

  “I'd do anything to keep that from happening. Anything. And if you start spreading this nonsense around town, start a lot of nasty rumors, our friendship is kaput. I mean that. I'll never speak to you again.”

  “Oh, lighten up, will you? We're just playing a game here.”

  “Some game.”

  “How long would you let it go on?”

  “… What?”

  “The affair. A few weeks, a few months, a year or more?”

  “Oh, God. No, not that long.”

  “Six months?”

  “No.”

  “How long, then? Maximum?”

  “Three months, okay? Are you satisfied now?”

  “Three months. I guess you could get a lot of screwing in in three months. How many times a week would you do it with him, anyway? Two, three, four?”

  “Shit, Eileen—!”

  “How often do you and Dix do it? Three or four times a month? That seems to be the general marital frequency for people our age. Sometimes I think that's the real reason we have affairs, men and women both—not so much because we want to try out another body, but because we want more nookie than we're getting from our spouses. What do you think?”

  “I think you're a motor-mouth when you drink too much. I think you're driving me to distraction with all this talk. I think I'm going home.”

  And she'd done just that. Stood up and put on her coat and walked out without even saying good-bye.

  Eileen related the gist of this to Cecca, who said, “I still don't see anything to make you so certain she was lying.”

  “You weren't there, honey. You would if you'd been there.”

  “And she wouldn't talk about it after that?”

  “Froze me out completely. Closed issue, she said.”

  “That's it, then,” Cecca said. “If you think of anything else, anything at all, call me. Okay?”

  “Maybe I'd better just come home.”

  “Oh, Eileen, no. You've been there only one day.”

  “There might be something I can do.…”

  “There isn't. What could you do that Dix and I can't? You stay right where you are.”

  “How can I relax with this going on?”

  “You'll find a way. I'll let you know if there's anything to report. Just do me one favor—don't tell anyone else about this.”

  “Not even Ted?”

  “Ted, yes, if you swear him to secrecy. But not Laura, Beth, any of our friends.”

  “Honey, one of them might know something …”

  “Then Dix and I will find it out. Please, Eileen? The worst thing right now is for too many people to know, rumors to start flying.”

  Motor-mouth Eileen. Can't keep a secret for ten minutes. Well, it was true, wasn't it? Biggest gossip-monger in Los Alegres … no wonder Katy hadn't confided in her. She sighed. “Ted and nobody else. I swear. But you have to promise me you'll call the minute you find out anything or anything else happens.”

  “I promise.”

  As soon as she put the receiver down, her eye fell on the jars and the loaf of bread on the table. I don't want any more of that, she thought, and immediately made herself another sandwich, thicker than the last one, so that some of the jam squeezed out when she bit into it and plopped on the floor. She left it there, the hell with it. She was too upset for housekeeping chores.

  There was something Cecca hadn't told her, she was sure of it. Some even more startling piece of information. Didn't trust her with it, which meant that it must be really explosive stuff. She couldn't imagine what it was. Her fault for being the way she was—though she had every intention of keeping her promise not to blab to anyone but Ted. But still she felt left out. Of all times to be away on vacation! Maybe she should go home, Ted and the boys could fend for themselves … no, that was silly and selfish. Cecca was right, there wasn't anything she could do. Except fret, and she could do that right here at Blue Lake.

  She finished the sandwich and went into the bathroom to wash her hands. She felt bloated and a little sick to her stomach from all the food. But her mind was active, and as she dried her hands something began to scratch at her memory like a cat trying to get through a door. Something about Katy … something she'd done or said. Not that half-drunk June Friday; later, quite a bit later. It hadn't had anything to do with a lover, but … what the devil was it?

  There was a banging out in the kitchen. Footsteps. Ted's voice: “Eileen, where are you? Come take a look at what the old man caught this morning.”

  She'd remember it sooner or later. That was the good thing about a memory like hers—she always remembered what she wanted to sooner or later. She put the towel down and hurried out to tell Ted about the awful phone calls and Katy's affair with a maniac.

  EIGHT

  Lone M
ountain Road was narrow and not in the best of repair. Edges had crumbled away in places, making it even narrower; if two cars met at these places, one would have to back up or down to let the other pass. The road corkscrewed its way up into the hills for more than six miles, finally deadending just beyond the gate to the Chenelli ranch near the top of a piece of high ground some obscure local wag had christened Lone Mountain. Once you were on the road, there was no way to get off except to turn around and drive back down to the intersection with East Valley Road. It had been built in the twenties by the county to accommodate the ranchers whose property flanked it. The only other people who used it, as far as Dix knew, were kids on beer parties and lovers looking for a private place to park and screw.

  It seemed incredible, now, that he hadn't questioned Katy's presence up there on the night of August 6. Just assumed she'd taken Lone Mountain Road on a whim, as part of her pattern of aimless driving. Blind trust. Now, though, his faith had been badly shaken. Women alone don't drive out to a remote lover's lane for no good reason; they drive there to meet a man, a lover. Park and screw. Forty-one years old and humping in the backseat of a car like a teenager.

  Why?

  And how did he get her earrings that night?

  There were plenty of places to park off the road. Little clusters of oak and madrone, cowpaths that skirted hummocks and the boulder-size rocks littering the hillsides. Occasionally county sheriffs deputies cruised up there, when one of the beer parties got too noisy or out of hand and a rancher called in a complaint. But for the most part nobody bothered the lovers in their parked cars. None of the ranchers gave much of a damn, and why should they? A minor trespassing offense meant nothing as long as their fences weren't knocked down or their cows harmed or spooked.

  This is a waste of time, Dix thought. I shouldn't have come up here. I don't want to look at the place where she died.

  His hands were sweaty on the Buick's steering wheel. But he didn't brake or turn around; he continued to drive slowly uphill, through the monotonous series of twists and turns. He had gone about three miles now and there were no dropoffs or dangerous curves at the lower elevations. Just the scattered trees, the rocky fields of summer-cured brown grass, the placidly grazing cattle—Friesians, black with white harnesses, and brown and white Guernseys. And ranch buildings clustered here and there in distant hollows.

  He had the window rolled down and the air was breezeless, sticky with early-afternoon heat. Dry grass and manure smells clogged his nostrils. When he glanced up at the rearview mirror he saw the valley spread out behind him, watery with heat haze. If a wind came up later, fire danger in the general area would be high. Especially in the hills to the north, behind the university, where there were more homes and fewer cattle to help keep the grass cropped low.

  Four miles by the odometer. The highway patrolmen hadn't told him the exact location of the accident, just that it was “near the top of Lone Mountain Road.” Getting close; the pitch of the road had grown steeper, twisting through cutbanks, along sere shoulders. His back had begun to ache from the stiffness of his posture. He bent forward, squinting against the sun-glare.

  Another half-mile, the road climbing at a sharper grade. The terrain on the south side had begun to fall away—gradually in some places, more steeply in others. Around a curve, through a stand of trees. A brush-choked ravine opened up below on his right. Another curve—

  And there it was.

  Sheer, rocky slope, at least twenty degrees down and a hundred yards long, from the road to the ravine. Gouges in the earth, dislodged rocks, burned grass, shards of glass and pieces of metal agleam in the sun—a trail of destruction that ended in a huge blackened section of the ravine and the higher ground on both sides of it. Dix's stomach churned. He drove past the place where she'd gone off the road, up to where there was a flat parking area half-hidden beneath a clump of oaks. For half a minute he sat there, gathering himself. Then he got out and walked back down to where it had happened.

  It registered on his mind that the burned area could have been much larger, that the fire from the wrecked Dodge might have spread over hundreds of acres if Harold Zachary, the rancher who owned this property, hadn't been home and heard the crash. He'd notified the county fire department and they'd gotten equipment out as quickly as they could. The Dodge had been an inferno by the time the firemen arrived. I don't think she suffered, Mr. Mallory. Chances are she was … already gone before the gas tank exploded. At least that. It's all any of us can ask for at the end. To go fast, without suffering. Yes, but that hadn't made it any easier then and still didn't now.

  They had winched up the burned-out hulk of the car, trucked it away, but the spot where it had landed and the fire had first raged stood out plainly. A blackened pit at the bottom of the ravine. In spite of himself, he imagined the stench that must have been in the air that night, and the sensory perception made his gorge rise. He turned away, stood with his back to the scarred slope.

  After a time he grew aware of the road surface. No skid marks. The highway patrolmen hadn't mentioned that fact to him; neither had the account in the Herald. The road was straight here, too—a seventy-five-yard stretch from the oaks above to the curve below. Her car had gone over midway down.

  The absence of skid marks didn't have to mean anything significant. Dark that night, no moon, clouds, and she might have been driving too fast or been preoccupied and not paying enough attention to the road. Wheels slid off the edge, she overcorrected or didn't correct in time … that was the way accidents happen. Still, there should be some tire skin on the road, shouldn't there? Or some crumbling along the asphalt edge. There were no marks on the slope close to the road either; the first deep gouges in the grass were at least fifteen yards down—as if the Dodge had sailed off at some speed and landed hard, nose to the ground. As if she had driven off at an accelerated speed, on purpose—

  No, he thought, Cecca and I settled that issue. It wasn't suicide. Katy did not commit suicide.

  And the highway patrol hadn't questioned the circumstances, had they? Trained investigators, weren't they? Yes, but every accident scene is different and it had been night and they had no real reason to suspect foul play and even trained observers overlooked things, made mistakes.…

  How did he get her earrings?

  It keeps coming back to that. She wouldn't have given them to him, not those earrings, not under any circumstances. They were her favorites; she wore them all the time; she'd be afraid her husband would notice they were missing.

  Took them from her. He must have.

  Before he killed her?

  Up here alone with her, hit her, knocked her out, put her under the wheel, wedged the accelerator down with the emergency brake on, jerked the brake off so the car would shoot downhill and off the road?

  Monstrous … senseless …

  Before he murdered her?

  Harold Zachary's ranch buildings were old, weathered, in need of paint—a reflection of the difficult times rather than neglect, because the grounds were orderly and the fences in good repair. The woman who answered the door at the house said she was Mrs. Zachary and her husband was probably in the dairy barn. Dix found him there, working from a toolbox on one of the automatic milking machines.

  Zachary was a spare man, with a wild shock of ginger-colored hair and sweat glistening in deep creases on his neck. Not unfriendly, and sympathetic enough when Dix introduced himself, but wary at first. “Don't know what I can do for you, Mr. Mallory. The accident happened on my property, but that's a county road out there. Just not my responsibility.”

  “I know. That's not why I'm here.”

  “Then?”

  “I can't help but wonder why my wife was up here that night. As far as I know, she didn't know anybody who lives off Lone Mountain Road.”

  “Can't help you there either.”

  “There was no one else around that night, no other car, when you reached the scene?”

  “Didn't see anybody, no.”


  “How soon did you get there after the crash?”

  “Few minutes. Not more than ten,” Zachary said. “Knew it was bad as soon as I heard the explosion and saw the flames. Told my wife to call nine-eleven, and lit out in my truck.” His eyes shifted away from Dix's. “Wasn't nothing I could do for her. Wish to God there had been.”

  “Thank you. The Herald printed a photo of my wife. Did you see it?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

  “I never knew your wife, Mr. Mallory.”

  “No, I mean had you ever seen her before?”

  “I see people every time I go into town. Can't remember them all.”

  “Not in town,” Dix said, “up here. On Lone Mountain Road.”

  “Hard to tell from a newspaper photograph.”

  “Does that mean you might have?”

  “Might have. Once.”

  Dix took Owen's portrait photo of Katy from his wallet. “This is a much better likeness of her,” he said.

  Zachary studied it for a few seconds. Returned it without saying anything. His mouth had a pinched whiteness at the corners.

  “Mr. Zachary?”

  “Couldn't tell much about her car that night, by the time I got there. The fire. Paper said it was a Dodge.”

  “That's right. Three-year-old Dart.”

  “What color?”

  “Burgundy. Dark red.”

  “Personalized license plate?”

  “KATYDID. Her name was Katy.”

  “All right,” Zachary said. He still wasn't meeting Dix's eyes.

  “You did see her, didn't you.”

  “Once. Just once.”

  “When? How long ago?”

  “Can't say exactly. Three, four weeks before.”

  “Before the accident?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Driving on Lone Mountain Road?”

  “No,” Zachary said. “Parked.”

  “Alone? Or with somebody?”

  “Alone. Waiting for somebody, she said.”

  “You spoke to her, then.”

  “Middle of the afternoon, sitting there all by herself. My property. I was on my way to town, so I stopped, asked her what she was doing there.” He paused. “Thought maybe she needed some help.”