A Wasteland of Strangers

by Bill Pronzini

  “Not so far. But a lot of them are young and restless. I keep remembering how the crowds Friday night almost got out of hand.”

  “How many people so far? Rough estimate.”

  “Counting the media, over a hundred.”

  “You send anybody out to keep order?”

  “Sherm and Jake. Nobody else here right now but me.”

  “Who’s out on patrol?”

  “Mary Jo and Jack.”

  “Call them in. If you need anybody else, go down the off-duty roster.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll have Thayer put some of his deputies on standby alert. And Della, make sure our people keep everything low-key, same as Friday night. The last thing we need is somebody provoking trouble.”

  Trisha Marx

  I SNUCK OUT and walked down to Municipal Park because I had to see John one more time, even if it’d be from a distance and he’d be in handcuffs on his way to jail. I knew I’d cry when I saw him, and it was what I wanted—to feel even worse than I already did. Sometimes you just have to wallow in your own misery, you know?

  I thought maybe Anthony’d be there, too. More reason to feel crappy, seeing him, even if I did feel kind of sorry for him. He must’ve been blown away to find out what a scumbag Mateo really was. Give him a little sympathy, show him I was a better person than he was. Show him I was more miserable than he was. I guess it’s true what they say: Misery loves company.

  But Anthony wasn’t there. Home with his people, or else out somewhere getting high. That’s always been his answer to anything wrong or lame—get high, feel good so you didn’t have to think about feeling bad.

  Some of the other kids were over by the bandstand, but I didn’t see Selena so I didn’t go over and hang with them. She was about the only one I could’ve stood to hang with tonight. I took a spot by myself under one of the trees near the street, where I could see the front of the police station. All the lights over there were blurry from the mist that was rising off the lake, blowing in in curls and long, ragged streamers. It made the people look sort of blurry, too, like will-o’-the-wisps. Newspaper and TV reporters waiting for John, not because they cared about him but because they thought he was a murderer and murderers are hot news. It was sick and freaky, in a way. If they knew he was innocent and a good person besides, they wouldn’t want anything to do with him, he could drop dead in the street and they wouldn’t even look at him twice. The guilty ones like Mateo, they’d fall all over themselves to get close and stick a microphone in his face and call him Mr. Munoz and feel sorry for him if he said he was a kidnapper and a rapist on account of he’d had a shitty childhood—

  “Hello, Trisha.”

  Ms. Sixkiller. She’d come right up beside me and I hadn’t even noticed her. Right away I was nervous and wary. But she didn’t start in about John or her boat or anything; she just stood there hunched inside her coat, her arms folded and her breath making puffs in the cold night air.

  I could’ve moved away and maybe she wouldn’t’ve followed, but I didn’t. Pretty soon I said, “I, um, heard about what happened last night. I’m real sorry it was you Mateo picked on.”

  “So am I. But it’s over now.”

  “He’s a pig. Anthony’s not like him at all.” Now, what did I want to defend Anthony for?

  “I know he’s not.”

  “We broke up. Anthony and me.”

  “Because of Mateo?”

  “No, it was before that.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Um, no.”

  “All right. But we do need to talk about John Faith.”

  “… Why would I want to talk about him?”

  “He’s why you’re here, isn’t he?”

  “He’s why everybody’s here. You too, right?”

  “Right. You know he saved me from being raped?”

  I nodded. “So maybe you don’t think he’s the lowlife everybody else does.”

  “That’s right, I don’t.”

  “He didn’t kill Mrs. Carey. I mean—”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Maybe Mateo did it. Did anybody think of that?”

  “Yes. If he did, it’ll come out when he’s caught.”

  “If he’s ever caught.”

  “He will be. Trisha, about John Faith.”

  “What about him?”

  “I know you helped him. All you did and how you did it.”

  Oh, God. I didn’t say anything.

  “He tried to convince me otherwise, to protect you. He asked me not to give you away to the police.”

  Right. That was the way John was. “So?”

  “So I’m not going to. I don’t believe in making trouble for people I like. And I think I understand your reasons.”

  “Then you have to believe he’s innocent, too.”

  “I do. I also believe it’ll be proven eventually.”

  “Not soon enough to keep him out of jail.”

  “Life and justice aren’t always fair, Trisha.”

  “Tell me about it. I figured that out a long time ago.”

  We stood there for a while. Then I said, “I owe you an apology, Ms. Sixkiller,” and saying it was easier than I’d thought it would be. “About your bathroom window and your boat and everything. I feel … you know, wrong about messing with stuff the way I did.”

  “Can I count on you to use better judgment in the future?”

  “Yeah. I won’t do anything like that again.”

  “Then your apology is accepted.”

  “I’ll pay for the window and fixing the damage—”

  “I don’t want your money,” she said. “Tell you what I would like from you, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Three or four hours of your time next summer. You obviously know how to drive a powerboat, but you can use some lessons in how to dock one. Lessons in general boat safety, too.”

  I didn’t laugh or smile and neither did she. We stood quiet again, and when the wind gusted and I shivered she put her arm around my shoulders and kind of hugged me. I didn’t pull away. I guess maybe we both needed somebody to lean on, right then.

  Zenna Wilson

  WHEN HELEN CARTER and I arrived at Park Street, quite a crowd had already gathered. There must have been more than a hundred people standing and milling around. No wonder we hadn’t been able to find a parking space any closer than three blocks away. I saw four television vans, and there were reflector lamps and handheld spotlights that turned the mist swirling in off the lake white and shiny, like crystallized smoke, and half a dozen men and women carrying portable microphones and those bulky cameras with lights jutting from their tops—Minicams, I think they’re called. I recognized a roving reporter from Channel 5 in San Francisco, too. Everybody was talking in keyed-up voices, but other than that, the crowd was really very well behaved. I’d been concerned about that, the presence of rowdies looking to start trouble, and there was a noisy group of teenagers by the park bandstand, but uniformed policemen and sheriff’s deputies, bless them, seemed to have everything under control.

  Still, it was exciting. That was the word for it. You could actually feel the excitement in the air, like electricity. If it hadn’t been the end of a terrible tragedy, I think I might even have been thrilled.

  “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” I told Helen as we made our way to the parking lot on the near side of the station. She agreed. And if Howard doesn’t like it, I thought but didn’t say, well, that’s just too bad. I’d asked him to come along, but he wouldn’t even consider it. He’d been in such a strange and irksome mood lately—critical, even cruel at times. When I first heard that that evil man Faith was still alive and had been arrested, I took the news straight to Howard and he said nastily, “You must be really disappointed he’s not burning in hell.” I was, yes, as any good Christian would be to find out that one of Satan’s own is still among us, but I didn’t appreciate having it flung at me in a tone t
hat made it sound like an accusation. Well, he could sit home and sulk or whatever. Helen was much more pleasant company. Much more agreeable, too. She’s a member of my church and her worldview is a lot closer to mine than Howard’s.

  There was hardly room for one person, much less two, up close to where most of the media people were congregated. But we were determined and we made room. One of the men I accidentally jostled turned and gave me a piercing look. I was about to answer him in kind when I recognized him. Douglas Kent.

  I altered my expression to a smile and said to him, “You remember me, don’t you, Mr. Kent? Zenna Wilson.”

  He leaned closer, squinting. I drew back. His breath … well, he simply reeked of liquor. He wasn’t very steady on his feet, either. Really quite intoxicated, to the point where he hadn’t bothered to shave today, or, for that matter, to bathe. I find public drunkenness disgusting; uncleanliness, too. There is no excuse for either one. Even so, I decided that Christian charity was called for in Mr. Kent’s case. Everyone knew the poor man had a drinking problem. And after all, he had written that inspiring editorial based on what I’d told him about the stranger in our midst.

  “Ah, Mrs. Wilson,” he said. “Of course I remember you.”

  “We’ve spoken several times, but only met in person two or—”

  “In tongues, eh?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Spoken in viper tongues.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t—”

  “Not to worry, dear lady. What’s your opinion of all this?”

  “Well, it’s very exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Exciting. Oh, yes. But it will be a good deal more exciting once the gladiators arrive.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so. Absolutely positive of it. The Romans had the right idea, by cracky.”

  “Romans?”

  “Death struggles on the floor of the coliseum. All thumbs down. Blood spilled while the hungry legions roar.”

  I glanced at Helen. She had no more idea of what he was talking about than I did.

  Richard Novak

  THE RIDE FROM Pomo General to the police station takes a little less than fifteen minutes. I talked Thayer into riding up front with Verne, and I sat in back with the prisoner. I kept watching Faith, but for his part, I wasn’t even there. He sat with that ramrod posture, his big, shackled hands between his thighs, and stared straight ahead in stony silence. None of us had anything to say. The quiet in the cruiser had an odd, stagnant quality, like a pocket of dead air just before heat lightning.

  When we neared the center of town the media lights were visible from a distance, a wash of brightness against the restless banks of tule fog. I could tell from the cars packing Main and the side streets that the waiting crowd had grown even larger. I tensed as Verne turned down Water Street, toward the municipal pier. The crowd seemed orderly enough, but that didn’t mean it would stay that way.

  “Look at that, will you,” Verne said as we reached Park. “Must be a hundred and fifty people, maybe more.”

  Thayer muttered, “Damn three-ring circus,” but he didn’t sound worried or unhappy. If anything, he was eager. Anticipating the grinding cameras and exploding flashbulbs, probably.

  Faith sat forward, his hands balling into fists. I sensed rather than saw the trapped-animal desperation in him again.

  Verne made the swing onto Park. Heads and bodies had swiveled in our direction; arms lifted, fingers pointed. I could see mouths moving as though in an exaggerated pantomime.

  “Pull up even with the entrance,” I said to Verne. “You and I get out first and come around front and back. Leo, you stay inside until we’re on your side.”

  “You don’t have to tell me procedure, Novak.”

  “I’m not telling you anything. I’m reminding you.”

  “You’re the one who needs reminders, not me.”

  “Don’t start up again.”

  “It’s not a dead issue,” he said, “just remember that. I don’t care what Seeley says.”

  We rolled past the gawking faces, into the outspill from all the lights. The glare seemed unnaturally bright. Half a dozen Minicams were on us like huge, hungry eyes. Thayer had his head turned toward the window glass, toward the cameras; I couldn’t see his face, but I knew he was wearing his official expression, the one with flared nostrils and upward-jutting jaw.

  The cruiser stopped. The door beside me clicked as Verne flipped the toggle to unlock.

  We were almost there.

  Douglas Kent

  STANDING CLOSE TO the front of the gathered rabble, I patted Roscoe on his little hammer head.

  “How you doing in there, pal?”

  “Same as you’re doing out there, pal.”

  “All set to lose the Faith?”

  “Knock off the puns. We have serious business here.”

  “Very serious business here. Avenging Storm.”

  “Not a bad title for a book.”

  “I won’t be around to write it.”

  “You never know. First-person account of a sodden newspaper hack who goes cunningly bonkers after the murder of his beloved town punchbag, anthropomorphizes his old man’s—”

  “Big word for a little gun.”

  “—I say, anthropomorphizes his old man’s .38 to the point of holding interior philosophical discussions with it, and the two of them exact their vengeance in front of a couple of hundred eyewitnesses and an eager TV audience of many thousands. Socko stuff.”

  “Not really,” Kent said. “All we’re doing is following in giant footsteps—imitators, not innovators. Nobody’d publish it.”

  Voices rose around us in an excited roar. I looked and said, “Ah, the cop chariot enters the arena at last.”

  “Americans and Romans,” Roscoe said pityingly, “you can’t have your metaphors both ways. How many fuzz with Faith?”

  “Three. And only one of you.”

  “I’ll still get off first.”

  “You’d better. Look, they’re climbing out.”

  “I can’t look, I don’t have eyes.”

  “Shut your muzzle.”

  “Then I can’t get off at all.”

  “Here they come. Ready, pal?”

  “Ready, pal.”

  “Heigh-ho, here we go.”

  Roscoe and me, and Jack Ruby makes three.

  Jay Dietrich

  I WAS INTENT on John Faith lifting his huge body from inside the police cruiser, Chief Novak on one side and Sergeant Erickson on the other and Sheriff Thayer standing off a couple of paces with his attention shifting between the prisoner and the TV cameras, when somebody bumped into me from behind, It was a hard, lurching bump, hard enough to nearly knock me down. I glared at the man who’d done it, who was now pushing past me.

  Mr. Kent.

  I hadn’t even known he was here. Drunk as usual, that was obvious. How he could function with so much—

  Hey, what was he doing? Staggering out onto the brightly lit sidewalk, making a beeline toward Faith and the officers. Pulling a shiny object out of his pocket—

  Oh my God’

  “He’s got a gun!” I yelled it at the top of my voice. “Look out, he’s got a gun!”

  Richard Novak

  IT ALL SEEMED TO happen at once, everything jumbled and compressed into one long, bulging moment.

  I heard the warning yell, saw the man coming toward us, recognized him, saw the handgun he was bringing to bear, heard someone else shout and a woman scream and feet and bodies beginning to scramble out of harm’s way—and on automatic reflex I threw a shoulder into Faith to take him from the line of fire, then lunged to meet Kent. I deflected his arm downward just as he squeezed off. The pistol made a flat crack that was lost in the bedlam around us, the bullet going harmlessly into the sidewalk, chipping pavement but not ricocheting. I battered Kent’s wrist with my right hand, clawing for the weapon with my left. It came loose from his grasp, but I couldn’t hold it; it fell with a clatter
and by accident I kicked it with my shoe. Then I had both hands on his coat and I jerked him off his feet, flung him down hard. But I lost my balance as I did that, slipped, fell on top of him. A grunt, the whoosh of his breath, and he went limp under me.

  All around us, then, there was a sudden rising hiss and babble—sharp intakes of air, little frightened cries, more shouts, another scream. I pushed up off Kent, swung around on one knee. And stayed there like that, motionless, going cold inside.

  Faith had the gun.

  And he was pointing it straight at me.

  Verne Erickson

  THERE WAS NOTHING I could do, any of us could do. Faith was on that pistol as soon as the Chief kicked it, quick as a cat on a piece of raw liver. I had my service revolver half drawn; so did Thayer, a few steps away on my left. But we both froze when we saw Faith come up with Kent’s weapon and throw down on Novak. There might’ve been time to get off a shot at him before he could fire at the Chief, but training stopped me and the sheriff and any other officer close enough to think about trying it. People were milling around, pushing and shoving, but the immediate area was still crowded with those damn-fool TV cameramen and their whirring Minicams, photographers and their popping flashbulbs. You didn’t dare risk a wild shot in confusion like this. It was six kinds of wonder that the round Kent had triggered hadn’t ricocheted and taken some bystander’s head off.

  Faith kept us all in place with bellowed words like a series of thunderclaps. “Nobody move! Come at me, I’ll shoot! Try to get behind me, I’ll shoot!”

  He was moving himself as he spoke, in a scrabbling crouch to get clear of the individuals clogging the station doors. When he had his back to bare wall he stopped and lowered himself to one knee. His eyes and the Chief’s had been locked the entire time. There was maybe eight feet of wet pavement separating them.

  Novak said loudly, “Do what he says. No sudden moves.” If he was afraid, being under the gun like that, he didn’t show it.

  More flashbulbs exploded, the Minicams ground away. I could almost hear the reporters gleefully smacking their lips. I felt exposed and foolish and mad as hell—at myself and Thayer and Novak and Faith and most of all at that crazy drunken son of a bitch Kent lying there unconscious behind the Chief. What had possessed him? What in God’s name did he think he was doing?