A Wasteland of Strangers

by Bill Pronzini

  “Chief, is there any connection between this killing and Storm Carey’s murder?” Dietrich, the kid who works for the Advocate.

  “What kind of question is that? No, there’s no connection.”

  “None with John Faith, either?”

  “No. Domestic incident, that’s all.”

  “What about Faith? Anything new on him?”

  I didn’t answer that. The ambulance from Pomo General was approaching now, no siren but its flasher lights staining the night. I chased Dietrich and the rest back out to the sidewalk, told Mary Jo’s partner, Jack Turner, to keep them there. I spoke briefly to the attendants, showed them inside to where Mary Jo was talking to Lori Banner in the kitchen. Johannsen arrived a couple of minutes later and I took him in to where Earle Banner’s corpse was sprawled in a beat-up recliner.

  “Deceased several hours,” he said when he’d had his preliminary look. “Advanced rigor and lividity.”

  “She didn’t report it right away. His wife.”

  “Why not?”

  “Said she fell asleep, slept for five or six hours. Possible?”

  “Quite possible,” Johanssen said. “Heavy, druglike sleep is not an uncommon reaction to severe stress. I remember one case during my residency—”

  “Paramedics are with her now,” I said, “but maybe you’d better have a look at her, too.”

  “Of course. You’re not done with the deceased yet, I take it?”

  “Not yet. Nichols still hasn’t shown up.”

  He gave me a look as if it was my fault we had to make do with a not always reliable civilian photographer, and went off to the kitchen. I returned to the porch. A couple of minutes later Mary Jo came out and joined me.

  “Hospital case?” I asked her.

  “Afraid so. She’s calm enough now; doesn’t look like they’ll need to medicate her here. If not … okay if I take her? She shouldn’t have to ride in the ambulance.”

  “As long as Johanssen has no objections.”

  “Do I read her her rights?”

  “Depends on the details of the shooting. She tell you?”

  “Most of it. Banner’d been drinking all day, out and at home both. Trashed a bunch of her personal possessions, and when she got back from shopping he started smacking her around. Then he got his handgun and threatened to shoot her like a horse. Can you believe that? She managed to knock the weapon out of his hand, pick it up, and when he came after her again she popped him in self-defense. Happens like that sometimes, right? In the heat of the moment.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “it happens like that. What started the abuse this time?”

  “Same as usual. He accused her of being with another man.”

  “Was she?”

  “No. She swears she was faithful. I believe her.”

  “About the shooting, too?”

  “Absolutely,” Mary Jo said. “Justifiable homicide, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll write it up that way.”

  “Your call.”

  “Will you back me, Chief? With the D.A.? I mean, Earle Banner was a pig and everybody in town knows it. She shouldn’t have to go to prison for shooting an animal that kept mauling her.”

  I was silent. I trusted Mary Jo’s judgment; she may have been the youngest officer on the Porno force, but she had a good head on her shoulders and a solid grasp of police work. The silence had nothing to do with her or Lori Banner. It had to do with Storm, and Faith, and suffering and retribution.

  “It’s not like she’ll get away with anything,” Mary Jo said. “She has to live with it the rest of her life. Punishment enough, isn’t it?”

  “For some people.”

  “For Lori Banner?”

  I said, “For Lori Banner. No formal charges, Mary Jo. And don’t worry, I’ll back you all the way with Proctor.”

  Audrey Sixkiller

  FOR WHAT SEEMED like a long time the car slithered along a mostly smooth, winding road, the tires hissing through rain glaze and puddles. No more laughter poured out of him, no more filthy threats; he seemed to be concentrating on his driving, on whatever thoughts crept and crawled through his sick mind. The windshield wipers clacking, the beat of the rain on the car’s roof, the clogged, nasal rasp of my breathing were the only sounds.

  I did not let myself think about anything except a brick wall. A very old wall, the adobe bricks rough and chipped in places, the mortar holding them together, thin but strong. Moss growing in patches, tangles of ivy at one end, and over it all, bright and warm, splashes of lateafternoon sunlight that gave the wall the appearance of glowing, as if with a pale inner fire. William Sixkiller’s trick for inducing sleep or getting through any difficult static situation. Imagine something warm and pleasant. Focus on it, distinguish every detail, until it expands to fill your mind. I chose a wall, solid and unyielding, as a barrier against the forces of darkness massing on the other side.

  Finally the car slowed and we turned off the smooth, paved road onto rough and muddy ground. The reflected shine of the headlights dimmed, but the dash lights remained on: driving now with just fog or parking lights. The car bounced, lurched, slid; something wet slapped against the passenger side, brushed along the window glass, and was gone. I watched the wall, the sunlight glowing on the waxy, stippled green of the ivy leaves. One of the tires thumped into a hole or deep rut with enough force to rock the car, nearly pitching me off the seat. He said, “Shit!” I continued to watch the bricks, the sunlight, the ivy.

  The car stopped. All the lights went out briefly, then the dome light flashed on as he got out. Door slam. I expected him to open the rear door, drag me out or get in with me, but he had something else in mind. Footsteps squishing on grass or leaves, fading. Silence except for the rain.

  I counted forty-seven ivy leaves, each a different shade or mixed shades of green. Then he was back; the rear door jerked open and he bent to fill the opening. Wearing the ski mask again, and that was good because if he was still hiding his face, it might mean he didn’t intend to kill me after all. If he did let me live, it would be his second-biggest mistake. I knew who he was now. And knowing made it worse, too; he was a man capable of violent excesses, sexual and otherwise, fueled by power, alcohol, drugs, or a combination of all three. I mustn’t let him know I knew his identity. Whatever he did to me, I must not let him know.

  Hands on my body, and his voice raspy again when he said, “Here we go, bitch,” and he dragged me out of the car. Threw the blanket over my head to blot out the sight of him and the dark, dripping night. Lifted me, slung my body over his shoulder. Car door slamming. Moving away from it. Shoes crunching and slithering; a lurch and another sharp epithet. Stopping again. Creaking sound … door on rusty hinges. The whisper of the rain diminishing, the thud of his footfalls on solid wood. Inside a building of some kind. He’d switched on a flashlight: I could see downward through an open fold in the blanket, make out the faint backsplash of the beam as it probed restlessly from side to side.

  He carried me through a narrow opening like a doorway, scraping my arm and head against one side of it. Then he halted again, shifted my weight, set me down hard on my feet, and ripped off the blanket. Then he pushed me, hard, so that I toppled backward onto something springy that smelled of must and old leather. I bounced, slid off to the floor. Light danced through heavy darkness, shapes appearing and vanishing again with the suddenness of phantoms; then it steadied on my face, bright enough to cause me to squint and turn my head aside. He’d put the flashlight down on some kind of chair nearby, so he’d have both hands free.

  The hands grabbed hold of me again, lifted me roughly off the floor onto the yielding surface, straightened my legs on it. Couch … leather webbed with cracks, stuffing like white blood leaking through holes and tears. Then he ripped the tape off my mouth, viciously enough to take skin with it. I didn’t make a sound. Hurt me far worse than that and I still wouldn’t even whimper.

  “Okay, bitch,” he said. He was breathing hard, but not from exertion. Exci
tement now—lust. His voice wheezed and quivered with it. “Now you get what you been begging for. All night long, just what you been begging for.”

  He’d been at the edge of the light; now he came into it, stood at a quarter turn so I could see what he was doing. Unbuckling his belt. Unzipping his fly. Lowering and stepping out of his pants, his underpants. He was already aroused.

  “Some hunk of bone, huh?” He came forward a pace, his hand around his sex, stroking it, holding it high like a pagan offering. “Biggest bone you ever had in your mouth. Suck it dry, yeah, suck the bone dry as a bone.”

  No, I won’t, I thought, I’ll bite it off. But I knew I wouldn’t. He’d kill me for sure if I hurt him that way, and I did not want to die like this, here, at his mercy. I closed my eyes—

  “Look at me, bitch. We both gonna watch this.”

  —and I opened them again. He was advancing again, holding his sex, aiming it toward my mouth. I swallowed involuntarily. But only partway, because my throat was still sore, swollen as if with a blockage. If I couldn’t swallow …

  I’m not afraid, I won’t be afraid.

  The wall. Think of the wall, the bricks, the sunlight, the ivy, each leaf a different shade or mixed shades of green, glowing warm and bright and clean.

  And he leaned close, almost touching my lips. The unwashed stench of him caused another upheaval in my belly.

  And then—

  Sudden sliding, scraping noise. A second light slashed on somewhere behind and to one side of me, this one even brighter, pinning the masked face with such dazzling brilliance that he threw up a startled arm and tried to turn away from it. In the next second something came hurtling through the crossing beams, a short, jagged-ended piece of wood, and exploded against the side of his head with a sound like a melon being split. He screamed, staggered, fell to one knee. A huge, dark shape rushed after him, swinging the length of wood, hitting him again as he groped for his pants. The next swing missed and that gave him time to tear the Ruger automatic out of his pants pocket, but not enough time to use it. The board swished down once more, thudding into the hand holding the gun, knocking the weapon loose and skittering it away across the floor.

  He lurched to his feet, turning, still clutching his pants—no longer trying to fight, trying only to get away from the savage blows. His mask had been ripped loose along one side of his face; I had a clear look at the face, all bloody, the ear torn, one eye bulging as if it were about to burst from the socket. Then it was bare buttocks I saw, churning and pumping as he fled.

  Confused scrambling after that, swirls and stabs of light. The two shapes coming together for a few seconds, creating a gigantic blob that filled the doorway across the room. Grunts, another thudding of wood against flesh and bone, another screech of pain. The shapes bursting apart, disappearing into the other room, the light forming wild, sweeping patterns and then something heavy hitting a wall or the floor. Running, banging sounds that soon faded into a thick, roaring silence.

  I held my breath, waiting.

  The flashlight beam steadied in the other room. Swung around and slid back into the one I was in. Man-shape behind it, heavy, uneven footfalls drawing closer. The beam shifted, picked me out, steadied on me but not directly in my eyes, allowing me to see him as he walked unsteadily into the stationary light from the other flash still propped on the nearby chair. Big, naked to the waist, a bandage obscuring part of his massive torso.

  John Faith.

  I was beyond shock or surprise. Not even capable yet of feeling relief. I lay there staring up at him.

  “Son of a bitch got away,” he said thickly. “Almost had him. Would’ve if I was in better shape.”

  I licked the inside of my dry mouth. Tried swallowing again, and this time I was able to do it. No crushed cartilage or damage to my trachea. Vocal chords?

  “Pretty sure I’ve seen him somewhere before,” John Faith said. “You get a look at his face? Know who he is?”

  It took a few seconds and two tries before I was able to speak. My voice was stronger than I’d expected.

  “I know him,” I said. “His name is Munoz. Mateo Munoz.”

  Harry Richmond

  THE RAIN WOKE me up. Not that I’d been in a deep sleep; I was too depressed to get a decent night’s rest. Damn rain only made it worse.

  I could’ve had another full house tonight if it hadn’t been for the weather and the couldn’t-care-less media. Just three cabins occupied on a Saturday night, and none by a newshound. Still a few of them around, but they were all over in the town proper—and they’d be gone, too, soon enough, if John Faith’s body didn’t turn up pretty quick. Well, good riddance. Liars, users, full of phony promises that got a man all stirred up and hopeful and then left him high and dry, with his expectations hanging out limp as a flasher’s cock.

  I rolled out of bed and put on my robe and went to the kitchen to find something to eat. Nothing much in the refrigerator appealed to me. Finally I dragged out a couple of powdered-sugar doughnuts I’d bought at Miller’s, poured a glass of milk to wash them down with. Comfort food. That was what Dottie used to call milk and doughnuts. Cake and chocolate eclairs and butter toffee and hot fudge sundaes and every other calorie-rich thing you could think of, too. All that comfort food was what blew her up to two hundred and eighty-seven pounds, what killed her quick that hot July night ten years ago. Quick and comfortable.

  Dottie. Wasn’t often anymore that I thought about her, much less missed her, but tonight I wished she were sitting there across the table, helping me eat the powdered-sugar doughnuts. I’m not the kind of man who gets lonely; I like being by myself, doing for myself, not having to answer to anybody else. But sometimes, when I’m down like this, I crave other company besides my own. And I get mad as hell at Dottie for dying hog-fat the way she did, leaving me to run the Lakeside all by myself, put up with ten years’ worth of hassles and frustrations and limp expectations and then for a reward be forced to sell out and go live with an ungrateful, man-crazy daughter and her rotten teenage kids for the rest of my life. She’d gone easy, easy and comfortable; she hadn’t suffered. I was the one who’d suffered, who’d keep right on suffering. And when my time came I’d go hard, sure as God makes little green apples. Hard and uncomfortable.

  I wedged half a doughnut into my mouth and the crumbs and sugar spilled down inside my pajama top and that made me so mad I smashed the plate against the wall and the glass of milk after it. Let fat-assed Maria clean up the mess tomorrow. Let it lie there until it rotted, for all I cared.

  Those bastards. TV newswoman saying my interview was one of her best, promising it’d be shown today, and not even a whisper of my name much less the interview on the noon or seven o’clock or eleven o’clock news programs. Plenty of other Pomo residents and businesses getting attention, but not Harry Richmond and the Lakeside Resort. Chronicle reporter swearing he’d use my name and give the resort a plug in his story, and did he? Hell, no. Not a word. They wouldn’t show the interview or mention me tomorrow or any other day, either. Not the way my luck was running.

  All I’d asked for was one lousy little break, a few seconds in the spotlight, some free publicity. A small businessman fighting to survive, a hardworking, taxpaying citizen, is entitled to that much, isn’t he? Why should others get some good out of what’s happened in Pomo and not me?

  It’s not fair. It’s just not fair!

  Audrey Sixkiller

  “DON’T BE AFRAID.” John Faith had found the Ruger automatic and was tucking it into the waistband of his trousers. “Munoz won’t be back and I won’t hurt you.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  He flicked the flash beam over my face. “No, you’re not, are you? Of me or of him. He didn’t do anything to you before he brought you here?”

  “Rape me? No.”

  “Choked you, though … those marks on your throat. You breathe okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll be all right.”

  “Where’d he take you from?” />
  “My garage. Hiding inside when I came home.” Some of the shock was wearing off; I felt relief now, a loosening of the tension in my body which created a tingling weakness in the joints. “My hands,” I said. “They’re numb.”

  “Roll over on your side so I can get at the tape.”

  When I’d done that he knelt and set the flashlight down. I could feel his fingers at my back, on my upper arms, but I was numb below the elbows.

  He asked, “Why’d he bring you here?”

  So no one could hear my screams. “I’m not sure where we are.”

  “Nucooee Point Lodge.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “He must’ve been here before. Seemed to know his way around.”

  “So do you,” I said.

  “Be glad I’m alive and I picked this place to hole up in.”

  “I am. If you hadn’t been here …”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “I can’t think about anything else.”

  “Yeah. I wanted to jump him sooner, but I had to make sure I took him by surprise. I’m hurting and I wouldn’t have done you or me any good if I’d lost the fight. But I’d feel better if he was lying on the floor right now with a broken head.”

  I said nothing.

  “Bad choice of words,” he said. “You probably won’t believe it, but I didn’t kill Storm Carey.”

  “All right.”

  “Gospel truth. Okay, your hands are free.”

  “I can’t feel them.”

  “Here, I’ll help you.” He lifted one arm, laid it across my hip. Turned me by the shoulders, gently, and propped me against the couch’s side rest, then lifted the other arm onto my lap. Both hands felt like blobs of dead flesh. He took them in his big fingers and began to massage them. “Tell me when they start to tingle.”

  It took three or four minutes.