With an Extreme Burning

by Bill Pronzini

  “All right. Come on in.”

  Owen declined the offer of a drink, went to perch on the edge of a chair in the living room—stiff-backed, his big hands gripping his knees. Dix occupied the sofa across from him.

  “What's on your mind, Owen?”

  “Cecca. She's always on my mind, it seems.”

  “… Yes?”

  “You know how I feel about her. It's no secret.”

  “Yes?” Dix said again.

  “I have to know this, Dix: Is there something between you and her? Are you … involved?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The way the two of you acted at Jerry's Saturday night, for one thing. And the way she's been toward me lately—cold, distant. That's not like her, not at all.”

  “She has a lot of things on her mind,” Dix said.

  “What things?”

  “Losing one close friend and half the family of another in less than a month. You're not that insensitive, are you, Owen?”

  “Of course not. It's been a terrible time for all of us. But that isn't what I mean. I'm talking about her personal attitude toward me, as if I'd done something to her. As if she'd be glad if she never laid eyes on me again.”

  “I'm sorry if that's how you feel, but—”

  “It's not just how I feel,” Owen said, “it's the way things are. And you haven't answered my question. Are you and Cecca involved?”

  “No. Not the way you mean.”

  “What other way is there?”

  “You don't have to sleep with a woman to have a rapport with her.”

  “Is that all it is with you two? A rapport?”

  “That's all it is.”

  “You swear to that?”

  “If it's what it takes to convince you, yes, I do solemnly swear I am not having an affair with Cecca Bellini.”

  “Then it's something else,” Owen said. “Or somebody else.”

  “I don't think she's romantically involved with anyone. In fact, I'm sure she's not.”

  “Would she have told you if she was?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “What is it, then? Why has she turned against me?”

  “Maybe you're misinterpreting her actions—”

  “I'm not.”

  “All right, then maybe it's that you're coming on too strong. Hanging around her all the time, calling her, dropping over at her house uninvited. Back off a little. The last thing she needs right now is to be pressured.”

  “I can't help it,” Owen said miserably. “I think about her all the time, I dream about her, I can't stand not being near her. Dix, what am I going to do?”

  His expression was even more rumpled; he looked like a big, gangly kid getting ready to bawl. Dix had always regarded him as something of an Inadequate Personality—likable, but emotionally underdeveloped. (And wasn't that a joke, him sitting in judgment of another man's inadequacies? In some ways he was an IP himself. Too many ways.) In the past he'd viewed Owen with compassion; you made allowances for your friends. But sitting here now, he could no longer work up any sympathy for the man. No feelings other than wariness, a lingering mistrust, and a vague dislike.

  All of this an act, part of some sly ploy? Owen the tormentor, a cunning madman laughing behind his poor, fumbling, IP façade? It was possible. Anything was possible, no matter how bizarre; that was one lesson Dix Mallory had learned well in recent weeks. And even if Owen were as harmless as he'd always believed, his weakness was much less tolerable than it had been in the past. He sat diminished in Dix's eyes. Maybe, Dix thought harshly, because he himself sat diminished in his own eyes.

  He said, “I don't have any advice for you, Owen.” He meant to keep his voice neutral, but the words came out sounding cold. “Except what I said before. Back off, give Cecca some breathing room.”

  “I don't know if I can.”

  “If you care about her, you will.”

  It took him a few more minutes to pry Owen off the chair and out of the house. Five-ten by then: almost time to leave. He'd been calm enough before Owen's arrival; now he was keyed up, restless. The little scene they'd just played bothered him, and not only because he was uncertain of Owen's motives or his discovery that in any case he no longer cared for the man. Owen's questions had made him face something he'd been avoiding: his own feelings for Cecca.

  He had told the truth about their relationship, but it was less than the complete truth. They were not involved, and yet they were. Bound by more than just their shared torment—a growing closeness, stirrings and yearnings that he sensed in her as he felt them in himself. Neither was yet ready or willing to bring it out into the open, to add another complication to their lives; and he wasn't sure he could handle a deeper relationship so soon after Katy's death. But the feelings, the capacity, were there, want them or not. Owen, whatever his motives, had cut straight through to the heart of the matter.

  EIGHTEEN

  Buckram Street was two blocks long and ran up the side of a hill at a steep slant. The houses in the lower block were small bungalows and ranch-style homes, on quarter-acre lots; the houses in the upper block were fewer and larger, mostly white frame and brick over stucco, built on half- to one-acre lots. Louise Kanvitz's property was one of the two biggest parcels, at the top on the east side—a two-story frame house with a partially enclosed front porch, surrounded by trees and shrubbery. The front yard was a cactus garden littered with exotic, and not very tasteful, wrought-iron, wood, and cement sculptures. A Jeep Wrangler was parked in the driveway. But what caught and held Dix's attention was the Ford station wagon drawn up at the curb in front.

  The wagon was Cecca's.

  He drove on past, made a tight loop where the street dead-ended at a patch of woods that crowned the hill, and braked to a stop behind the Ford. What was she doing here? On the same mission he was, probably. But she shouldn't have come alone, without telling him and without bringing along anything that had the persuasive power of the Beretta. She was inordinately afraid of guns; she'd made Chet sell two handguns and his hunting rifles after they were married. That was another reason Dix had wanted to confront Kanvitz alone.

  He hurried through the garden, up onto the porch. There was an old-fashioned doorbell, the kind with a button inside a recessed circle like a nipple on a miniature breast; he pushed it. Chimes, not very melodious. He waited, but the front door stayed shut. He pushed the button again, and when that also didn't bring anybody, he moved over to a nearby window. Drawn shade behind chintz curtains; he couldn't see inside. He worked the bell a third time. Still no response.

  The restlessness in him had given way to a formless unease. He left the porch, followed a path through the cactus garden and along the side of the house, paralleling the driveway. At the rear the path right-angled toward a set of steps that led to a porch entrance. He climbed up there and knocked on the screen door. Listened to silence, knocked again, listened to more silence.

  On impulse he opened the screen and tried the inner door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open, took a cautious step inside. Service porch, an archway on his left opening into the kitchen. Both the porch and the kitchen were empty. The house was still except for the faint hum of a refrigerator.

  “Hello,” he called. “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Cecca? Louise? It's Dix Mallory.”

  He thought he heard something this time, movement somewhere toward the front. Footsteps? He couldn't be sure because the sound wasn't repeated. His unease deepened. He slid his hand into his jacket pocket, closed fingers around the Beretta, then walked all the way inside, letting the screen door bang behind him.

  “Cecca? Are you in here?”

  Movement again, the creak of a floorboard—definitely footsteps, hurrying. He went ahead to the archway. Just as he stepped into it, a swing door on the far side of the kitchen opened partway, cautiously, and Cecca's head appeared. There was a frozen moment as they stared across at each other. The look of her changed his edgi
ness to alarm: Her face was milk white, her eyes wide and dark with fright.

  “Oh, Dix!”

  He went to her, yanked the door all the way open. She came up hard against him, put her arms around his waist and her head tight to his chest. There was a thin quivering in her body, like a wire vibrating in a high wind. He held her for a few seconds, then took her arms and moved her back away from him. Her skin was cold, and when he glanced down he saw that her arms were rough with gooseflesh.

  “Cecca, what is it, what's happened?”

  “God,” she said.

  “Where's Louise? Why didn't you answer the bell?”

  “I was on the phone to the police. I didn't know it was you. I thought … I was afraid he'd come back.”

  “The police? What—?”

  “The front hall,” she said, “the stairs …”

  He started to turn her so she could show him. She balked. “No, I'm not going back in there.”

  “All right. Wait here.”

  He crossed a formal dining room to the hallway beyond. The palms of his hands were moist; his mind seemed to be working in stuttering fashion, thoughts coming too fast and then not at all. The hall led him past a staircase to the upper floor. Two paces into the front foyer, he came to an abrupt standstill. There was no surprise in what he saw there, only a sick feeling of helplessness. His gorge rose; he swallowed to keep it down.

  Louise Kanvitz lay crumpled at the bottom of the stairs, hips and legs twisted upward over the first three risers, veined and mottled flesh showing where her skirt had hiked up. Her head and shoulders were on the carpeted floor, head twisted at an impossible angle. Blood from a smashed nose streaked the lower half of her face. One eye, wide open, bulging goiterlike, stared sightlessly up at him.

  Fell down the stairs, he thought. Tripped somehow … an accident …

  But it wasn't. He knew that as unequivocally as he knew her neck was broken.

  He retreated until he could no longer see her, then turned and ran back into the dining room. Cecca wasn't at the swing door; he found her in the kitchen, splashing her face with handfuls of cold tap water. He tore off a long section of paper towel from a hanging roll, gave it to her so she could dry off. There was a little color in her cheeks now. She seemed to have a better grip on herself.

  She said, “He killed her, Dix. He killed her to keep her from telling who he is.”

  Dix nodded grimly. “How long have you been here?”

  “Not long. A few minutes before you rang the bell.”

  “Why did you come alone?”

  “She called me at the office this afternoon. She said she wanted to talk, she had something to tell me.”

  “About Katy's lover?”

  “She wouldn't say. But it's obvious, isn't it?”

  “You should have let me know.”

  “I tried to. You'd already left the university, so I called you at home, left a message on your machine.… You didn't get the message?”

  “No. I didn't think to check the machine.”

  “Then why are you here? You weren't going to try to force the truth out of Louise—?”

  “That's just what I was going to do.”

  “You can't admit that to St. John,” she said. “We'll tell him you did get the message, you drove over to meet me—”

  “St. John. Jesus, he'll be here any second.”

  “Dix, did you hear what I— Dix!”

  He was already running. Out through the front of the house because it was faster that way, even though it took him a few seconds to fumble the door open. He could hear the sirens then—close, very close. Off the porch, across the yard, into the Buick. He had just enough time to lock the Beretta inside the glove compartment before the first police car turned into Buckram Street and came racing uphill.

  St. John was angry. “I told you people to stay away from Louise Kanvitz. Didn't I tell you that?”

  “And I keep telling you,” Cecca said, “she called and said she wanted to see me. What was I supposed to do?”

  “You should have notified me.”

  “If she'd wanted to talk to you, wouldn't she have called you instead? I was afraid she wouldn't talk at all if the police were here.”

  “You notified Mr. Mallory. Or claim you did.”

  “I did.”

  Dix said, “The message is still on my machine. We can go up to my house and listen to it if you like.”

  “You could have faked it.”

  “Faked it? Why in bloody hell would we do that?”

  “I didn't say you did. I said you could have.”

  “You don't think we had anything to do with Kanvitz's death?”

  “Did you, Mr. Mallory?”

  “No! Cecca told you the woman was dead when she got here.”

  “Can anybody else corroborate the fact?”

  “There was nobody else here! Dammit, St. John—”

  They were sitting at a Formica-topped table in the kitchen; St. John slapped it with the palm of his hand, a pistol-shot sound that made Cecca jump. “Don't come on hard to me, mister,” he said to Dix. “You're on shaky ground as it is. The woman who owns this house is dead in the front hall—maybe an accident, maybe not. You two have no good reason to be here, especially after I warned you against it. At best you're guilty of trespassing—”

  “And at worst we're murderers, is that it?”

  “I'm going to tell you one more time in a polite way: Answer my questions truthfully and don't give me any more crap. Otherwise you'd better call your lawyer. Understood?”

  Dix struggled to put a leash on his emotions. There was the harsh taste of frustration in his mouth. “Understood,” he said thinly.

  “Good.” St. John took a cigarette from his shirt pocket, began his rolling routine on the tabletop. “Let's go through it again, Ms. Bellini,” he said to Cecca. “What time did Louise Kanvitz call you?”

  “About three-thirty.”

  “Was she calling from here or her gallery?”

  “I don't know. She didn't say.”

  “What did she say, exactly?”

  “That it was time we had another talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Katy Mallory.”

  “What specifically, concerning Mrs. Mallory?”

  “I asked her that, but all she said was that I should come here after five-thirty. Then she hung up.”

  “What did you think she had in mind?”

  “I wasn't sure at the time. But she sounded angry.”

  “At you?”

  “I don't think so. At the man she was shielding, blackmailing, whatever. They must have had some sort of falling out.”

  “Over what?”

  “Money. She wanted more to keep quiet … something like that. That's why he killed her.”

  “If he killed her. If anybody killed her.”

  “Have it your way.”

  “What time did you arrive here?”

  “A little before five-thirty. Five minutes or so.”

  “And Mr. Mallory wasn't here yet.”

  “No, he wasn't.”

  “Why didn't you wait for him?”

  “I don't know. I … I was nervous, I wanted to get it over with, to find out what she knew.”

  “Why did you go inside the house?”

  “The front door was ajar and her car is in the driveway. I thought she must be here, that she hadn't heard the bell for some reason. I stepped into the foyer; I was going to call out her name.”

  “And that's when you saw the body.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you touch her, touch anything in the foyer or on the stairs?”

  “No. Just the door. I think I shut it.”

  “Why?”

  “I'm not sure. I wasn't thinking too clearly.”

  “How long was it before you called us?”

  “Almost immediately. A minute or two.”

  “And when did Mr. Mallory arrive?”

  “Just as I finished t
alking to you.”

  St. John turned his vulpine gaze on Dix. After a few seconds he put the cigarette in his mouth, as if he were thinking about lighting it, changed his mind, and began thumb-rolling it on the table again. Floorboards creaked overhead: other officers moving around upstairs. Finding anything? This whole process was maddening in its mechanical slowness.

  “It's your turn, Mr. Mallory,” St. John said. “What did you do when you arrived?”

  Dix told him. All of it, leaving out nothing except details of his conversation with Cecca and the Beretta.

  “Did you touch the body?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “We found Ms. Kanvitz's purse in the living room. Did either of you touch that?”

  “No.” But we damned well would have if we'd seen it. “I don't suppose there was anything in it that might help identify the man?”

  “If there had been, I'd have told you. Did you touch anything on this floor? Open drawers, cabinets?”

  “No,” Dix said. “All we touched were doorknobs and the sink tap over there.”

  “Go upstairs?”

  “No.”

  “Why were you outside when we arrived?”

  “… What?”

  “Simple question. You were out on the street next to your car when we arrived. Why?”

  “Waiting for you. Why do you think?”

  “You left Ms. Bellini in here alone while you went out front to wait? As upset as she was, in the house alone with a dead woman?”

  “I didn't stay in the house,” Cecca said. “I went into the backyard. I was there until I heard you come in through the front.”

  “Why the backyard?”

  “I needed some air and I wasn't ready to face anybody yet. Are all of these questions necessary?”

  “I think they are, yes—”

  “Lieutenant.” Another cop had opened the swing door and poked his head through. “See you for a minute?”

  St. John went away with him. Dix reached over to take Cecca's hand; her fingers were still icy. She said, “He doesn't believe us.”

  “About why we came here, no.”

  “What do you think he'll do?”

  “Nothing. What can he do? We've been cooperative and we haven't really broken any laws.”

  The swing door squeaked and St. John reappeared, alone. He stood behind his chair and looked down at each of them in turn—long, searching looks—before he said, “Did you know Louise Kanvitz owned a handgun?”