With an Extreme Burning

by Bill Pronzini

  He didn't seem to notice. He'd pulled the drapes open over the sliding door to the balcony, letting sunlight pour in, and he was peering out with that little smile on his mouth again. Admiring the view. “You can see for miles from up here,” he said. “All the way from the lighthouse to Irish Beach. Come take a look, Amy.”

  “I've seen it before. I still have to go to the bathroom.” It wasn't a lie this time. She really did have to pee now.

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  For a couple of seconds she thought he was going to make the mistake of letting her go by herself. But no, he followed her down the hall. And when she went into the tiny bathroom he stood leaning against the wall right outside.

  “Leave the door open,” he said. “And come right out again when you're done.”

  “Are you going to watch me?”

  “I wouldn't do that. I'll look away.”

  Useless to argue with him. She moved to the toilet, made sure he wasn't looking before she hiked up her skirt and slid her panties down. But she had trouble going with him out there, even if he wasn't watching. The embarrassment of it made her hate him even more.

  She didn't come right out afterward. She stepped over to the sink, and when he didn't object, she washed her hands, taking her time, thinking that there might be something in the medicine cabinet she could use as a weapon, a packet of Dad's razor blades or something. Could she reach up and open it without him seeing? No. Shit. The bathroom was too small and she could see him in the mirror, which meant that he could see her, too. And his eyes were on her again.

  Back in the living room she said, “It's cold in here. There's plenty of wood—I could make a fire.”

  “No, no fire.”

  “We'll freeze once the sun goes down.”

  “Isn't there some kind of heater?”

  “There's a space heater, but it's old and it doesn't work too well. We always just make a fire.”

  “Well, we'll just have to find other ways of keeping warm.”

  Oh-oh, she thought. “How long are we going to be here?”

  “A while,” he said.

  “All night?”

  “A while. Several hours at least.”

  “Doing what all that time?”

  “Getting to know each other better,” he said. “Isn't that what we talked about, Amy? What we planned?”

  A little fear wiggled back into her. But mostly what she felt was determination. And the hate, like a wad of something in her throat, choking her. “When do you want to start? Now or later?”

  “There's no point in waiting.”

  “Whatever you want.” In her mind were pictures of things she would do to his private parts, if she just had the chance. She could endure anything for that chance. “You won't have to rape me,” she said, and began to unbutton her blouse.

  They were in the rented car again, moving through the wet afternoon toward Highway 101. Freezing in there after the warmth of Martin Delaney's house; Cecca reached out automatically to turn the heater up. It was already on as high as it would go. She pressed her hands between her thighs.

  “Jerry,” she said. “My God.”

  “You didn't look surprised when Delaney described him.”

  “No. I thought at the library it had to be Jerry.”

  Dix nodded and said bitterly, “Mr. Congeniality. The guy who'd do anything for you, give you the shirt off his back. All an act contrived to win our friendship and trust.”

  “I can't imagine a mind that could conceive of such a … a hideous revenge.”

  “I can, at least up to a point. What I can't imagine is that much hate. He killed someone I loved—in cold blood, not by accident—but I don't hate him nearly as much as he must hate us. Do you?”

  “No,” she said, “not that much.”

  “Ironic as hell, isn't it? Before the accident, he wasn't much different from you, me, any of us—a more or less normal person with a family, a job, an average middle-class life. It was the hate that pushed him over the edge.”

  “But the accident was his fault.”

  “Transference,” Dix said. “If he'd accepted culpability, he'd have been a monster in his own eyes. He couldn't bear that. So he made you three the monsters instead.”

  “How could he live so close to us for so long and never let any of it show?”

  “Force of will. Four years is a long time to us, but not to a man like him. His family was his whole life; without them he has nothing left except revenge. Just killing each of you wasn't enough for him. It would've been over too fast and then he'd have no more reason to live. He had to savor his revenge, make it last. Get to know you first, get as close to you as he could. Katy was the driver that night, Katy was his primary target. He set out to seduce her and he probably didn't care how long it took. You can't get any closer to a woman than inside her body.”

  I almost let him inside my body, too, Cecca thought. Came nearer than I ever want to admit.

  Dix said, “Hard to tell if he murdered Katy on some sort of timetable or if something happened—the trophy business, maybe—to make him do it before he wanted to. Once he committed himself, though, he was driven to go after the rest of us.”

  “Our families … we took his, he'd take ours.”

  “ ‘One's pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.’ Yeah, that was part of his plan all along.”

  “But why go after you once Katy was gone?”

  “Maybe he meant to kill me first, and blames me because he couldn't do it that way. Or his hate for Katy was so great, it included me: guilt by association. Or he'd decided all family members have to die no matter what. One thing I'm fairly sure of: Ted and his sons were the targets at Blue Lake, not Eileen. He knew about her evening walks, counted on her being away from the cabin when the timer set off the propane. The whole idea was for her to see her family destroyed by explosion and fire, as his was.”

  “Sick, so sick …”

  “He had it all planned like that, in detail. To him it must all make perfect sense, fit some kind of pattern of retribution. His mind has to be deteriorating though. The things he's done since Katy have been progressively more bizarre and disconnected.”

  Cecca watched the rain slant against the side window. After a time she said, “He must have loved his own children. How could he justify harming Bobby, Kevin, Amy? Innocent young lives.”

  “They're not innocent young lives to him. None of us is even human to him anymore, if we ever were. This is a grim analogy, but I'll bet it's reasonably accurate: In his mind we're like germs, the source of all his torment. You don't look at germs as individuals. Don't think twice about killing germs that have infected you.”

  “Germs,” she said.

  “Prevalent psychology today. Gang wars, freeway shootings, mass murders … the ones who commit those atrocities are exterminators of objects, bugs, germs, not people. Get in their way, hurt them somehow, and they feel they have every right to destroy you.”

  Again Cecca watched the rain form its teardrop patterns on the window glass. “It makes me feel so damned helpless,” she said. “The idea of a man none of us ever met or saw, a man we barely knew existed, plotting our deaths from hundreds of miles away—and then moving to our town, making friends with us and a whole new life for himself just so he could destroy us from within. If that kind of thing can happen …”

  “I know,” Dix said.

  An uneasy silence built between them. Hiss of tires, clacking of the wipers, rush of wind and water as trucks and cars passed—all external sounds. Then Cecca realized they were approaching a town. A roadside sign materialized through the misty rain: Neskowin.

  She sat up. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to Portland. We ought to be able to make the five o'clock flight to SFO.”

  “We should've stopped in Pelican Bay,” she said. “We'd better stop here.”

  “What for?”

  “To call St. John.”

  “You think he'd listen? Act without
proof? All we have to give him are sketchy facts and supposition. We can't even prove to him quickly that Jerry Whittington and Gordon Cotter are the same man, and even if we could, there's no evidence to link Jerry with Katy's death, the explosion—any of it.”

  “There has to be something at his house.”

  “Yes, but St. John can't get at it without a search warrant. And he can't get a search warrant without probable cause.”

  “He could talk to Jerry, couldn't he? Let him know we're on to him. And least that might stop him from doing anything else.”

  “Would it? I don't think so,” Dix said. “I think it would have the opposite effect. He doesn't care what happens to him, Cecca. His whole focus is revenge—finishing what he started.”

  “… You want to go after him yourself, don't you?”

  “I don't want to, no. I don't see any other choice.”

  “Use that gun you bought? Shoot him down like a dog?”

  “No. My God, I'm not a murderer.”

  “Do what, then?”

  “Force him to admit the truth, get it down on tape. It won't be admissible in court, but it'll damned well get St. John's attention. Then search his house for evidence and make a citizen's arrest. There'll be legal repercussions, but I don't care about that now. All I care about is saving our lives.”

  “If you're right about his mental state, he won't let you search his house or arrest him. He'll make you use the gun, he'll make you kill him.”

  “I won't let that happen.”

  “You may not have a choice.” She was thinking about yesterday afternoon, Elliot Messner, the pitchfork. How close she'd come to an act of deadly violence herself—a sudden step, a menacing gesture, was all it would have taken. And how she'd felt afterward.

  “Cecca? You know there's no other way.”

  “If you use that gun,” she said, “no matter what the reason, you and I will suffer for it—and I don't just mean legally. We'll suffer and Gordon Cotter will have his revenge on both of us, too. He'll have won.”

  “How can you say that? We'll be alive, won't we? Safe?”

  “He'll have won,” she said.

  “Rape you? Lord, Amy, is that what you think?”

  “Well? You want to fuck me, don't you.”

  He winced. “No. Not like this.”

  “But you said we should get to know each other better …”

  “I didn't mean that way.”

  “I don't … what did you mean?”

  “For us to talk. About you, things that matter to you.”

  “You never wanted to have sex with me?”

  “Yes, I did. Very much. But that was before, when it was part of the equation. It would have been right then. It isn't right now. It's too late. It wouldn't have any meaning.”

  “I don't understand …”

  “I know you don't. It's all right. Button up your blouse and we'll talk. Go on, button your blouse.”

  She buttoned it. She was confused, relieved, frustrated, all at the same time. Confused because she didn't know where he was coming from, he was so crazy and weird; relieved because he didn't want her body after all; frustrated because as much as she would have hated having him inside her, she could have hurt him—oh, could she have hurt him!—and then gotten away.

  “Let's go out on the balcony,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I like to look at the ocean, smell the sea air. Don't you?”

  “I guess.”

  “It should be warm enough. There's still plenty of sun.”

  It wasn't warm out there; it was almost cold. He didn't seem to notice. He made her sit on one of the canvas deck chairs and then leaned on the railing and took several deep breaths. At first he was smiling that little smile, but it went away and all of a sudden, when he turned toward her again, he looked sad—sad and lonely and kind of lost.

  “I miss it,” he said, but he wasn't really talking to her. Or even to himself. It was as if there were somebody else on the balcony with them. “I miss home. I miss you.”

  “Who?”

  He didn't hear her or just ignored her. Gulls, a whole flock of them, came swooping in over the dunes, screeching and scolding each other; he turned his head to watch them. After a couple of minutes they scattered and quit making so much racket, and he sighed and sat down on one of the other chairs.

  “Fascinating birds,” he said. “I used to watch them for hours. Grebes and ternes and pelicans, too.”

  She said, “I hate them.”

  “Do you? Why, Amy?”

  “Scavengers. Always screaming and fighting and pecking at dead things. Not like the swans.”

  “Swans?”

  “They come in the winter sometimes, drifts of them. Whistling swans. They nest or something down at the mouth of the Garcia River.”

  “I didn't know that,” he said. Now he looked sad again. “I'd like to see them sometime. But I never will.”

  “Why not?”

  “There isn't enough time. I won't be here next winter.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “With my family.”

  “I didn't know you had a family.”

  “I don't anymore,” he said.

  For a few seconds it looked like he was going to cry. Then his face smoothed and the mouth smile came back. Creepy … God, had he always been this creepy and she somehow hadn't noticed? No. Underneath, probably, but not out where you could see it. He just wasn't bothering to hide it anymore.

  “Tell me some more about yourself, Amy.”

  “… Like what?”

  “Things that I don't know about you.”

  “Personal things?”

  “Personal, private, special.”

  “Like whether or not I'm still a virgin?”

  “Well. Are you?”

  She thought about lying but she didn't. “No.”

  “I didn't think you were. But that's good.”

  “Why is it good?”

  “Sex is healthy. There's nothing wrong with sex between consenting people. Consenting, Amy. That's the key.”

  “It was consenting with me. You want to know his name and how many times and what we did?”

  “No. Don't be nasty. You're not a nasty person at heart.”

  The wind kicked up and blew fine particles of sand from the dunes below. One of them got into her eye and made it sting and water. She sat there, chilled, rubbing her eye until she got the grit out. He didn't seem to notice how cold and uncomfortable she was. It was as if he saw her only when he wanted to, when there was something he wanted to know or she did or said something that made him aware of her. The rest of the time, she might have been invisible.

  She said, “Why do you care that I'm not still a virgin if you don't want to have sex with me anymore? Why do you want to know so much about me?”

  “I just do. It's important to me.”

  “Why? Will it be easier to kill me if you know me better?”

  “Oh, Amy …”

  “Well? That's what you're going to do, isn't it?”

  “You don't understand.”

  “You keep saying that. I understand you want me dead.”

  “It's not a question of wanting.”

  “No? Then why?”

  “You're part of her, that's why.”

  “Who? My mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did my mother ever do to you?”

  “She helped destroy me.”

  “You said that before, too. It's a lie, she never hurt you or anybody else—”

  “The hell she didn't!” He was suddenly angry. His face got red; veins bulged on his forehead. “She killed them! Three beautiful lives! Her and those other bitches. An eye for an eye. One bad burn deserves another.”

  Jesus, she thought.

  He was quiet again for a while, staring out toward where the white finger of the lighthouse stuck up from the southern headland. The sun was edging down toward the horizon; the clouds around it looked like
spilled red wine. The beach was deserted now. Just her and him and the gulls for miles and miles …

  When he spoke to her again, his voice was soft and sad and his face was the same—as if he'd never been angry at all. “Do I look alive to you, Amy?” he asked.

  “… What?”

  “Alive. I look alive to you, don't I?”

  “You are alive.”

  “No, you're wrong. I'm not. Do you know what a zombie is?”

  “I saw Night of the Living Dead.”

  “Well, that's what I am. A zombie. I walk, I talk, I eat, I work, I go through all the motions, but I'm not alive. Inside I'm dead. Oh, there are sparks now and then. Sparks. When I do what I have to for them, Cheryl and Angie and Donnie, I remember what it was like to be alive. But that's all, just sparks. I'll never be alive again. The important pieces are gone. The three important pieces are gone. Three parts to the whole, and only one part is left, and that part can't survive alone. It can function until it finishes what has to be done, but it's already dead. It simply hasn't gone to its grave yet. But it will soon. Zombies can't walk for long. I won't be walking when the whistling swans come next winter.”

  He smiled at her, almost a tender smile. “Tell me more, Amy. Help me to know you. What else do you like besides the swans?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  It was after nine when they reached Los Alegres. Dix drove straight up to the Ridge. The first order of business was to arm himself with the Beretta—it was still in the drawer of the nightstand next to the bed—and his tape recorder. Then … Jerry Gordon Whittington Cotter.

  Beside him, Cecca sat huddled and silent. She'd hardly moved or spoken since they'd picked up the car at the airport parking lot. Still brooding over what he intended to do, even though she knew—had to know—it was the only course of action that made any real sense. Hated guns, hated the idea of him using one. Did she think he liked it? The mere thought of having to shoot a man, any man, roped his stomach into knots. She'd refused to go with him to Jerry's house, which was just as well; he could handle it better alone, without her to worry about, too. An hour and a half. That was as much time as she'd been willing to give him. If he didn't contact her within that time limit, she would notify the police. Reasonable enough. If he couldn't accomplish his mission and make a telephone call within ninety minutes, he would need police assistance. Or a doctor. Or a priest.