Double

by Bill Pronzini

  “What kind of place is it?”

  “You never been there before?”

  “No.”

  He grinned. “Then you’ll see. I don’t want to spoil the surprise.” He turned and went back into the garage.

  I drove down Split Mountain Road, past the Elephant Tree Ranger Station. At first I saw dune buggies running along the roadside, but soon they disappeared, and by the time I got to the turnoff, I felt as if I were the only person for miles around. Within sight of the entrance to the U.S. Gypsum Mine, I turned right, onto a washboard surface, and bumped along toward the foothills.

  It seemed a funny place for a club—or for anything else. There was nothing out here but sand, sagebrush, and thorny ocotillo. As the boy had said, the last couple of miles the road was badly rutted, and I had to put the car in first gear. The road snaked through a wash, then up a steep rise toward where the eroded, wrinkled hills rose. At the top, I slammed on the brakes and stared.

  It looked like no club I’d ever seen before in my life. I couldn’t imagine what activities the members could have engaged in out here in the barren desert, much less inside such an odd structure. And the place was no less strange for the fact that I had heard it described by Wolf when he was talking about the pictures he’d seen in the file in Jim Lauterbach’s office.

  The house was low, built of adobe and native stone, whose color blended into the landscape. It was composed of curved, windowless walls and numerous cylindrical shapes, and the front door resembled the opening to a kiln. On its roof perched three giant air conditioners, known as swamp coolers, a type frequently used in desert climates. Even from where I sat in the car, I could hear their noisy rattling.

  The house stood out against the heat-hazed hills and was surrounded by dark green greasewood bushes and the ashy-white shrubs known as burroweed. To the right, at a fair distance, were the remains of an old water tower and a loading platform that apparently had once served a spur railway. The sections of track that were still there were badly rusted. In front of the house was a large parking area with one car in it —an orange Datsun.

  Well, at least there was someone here. Maybe now I’d get some answers to my questions.

  I continued downward from the rise and parked next to the Datsun. Getting out of my car, I watched the house for a moment, and when no one came out, I went around the other car and checked the glove compartment for its registration.

  The Datsun belonged to Karyn Sugarman.

  I stared at the house again, my eyes narrowed against the sun’s glare, then went up to the door. The rattle of the swamp coolers was very loud, and I could smell the resiny sweet odor of the greasewood trees. I looked around for a doorbell, then noticed that the door stood open several inches.

  Knocking on the frame, I called out, “Karyn? It’s Sharon McCone.” There was no answer. After a moment, I pushed the door open wider and looked in. There was a round entry with a slate floor and adobe walls the same color as the exterior of the house. No one was in sight.

  I stepped through the door, calling out again. It was chill inside—and very quiet. The roar of the swamp coolers was muted by the thick walls and roof.

  The curving wall of the entry was broken by five archways. The largest, straight ahead, led into a sunken living room crammed with brown modular couches that were strewn with lighter brown pillows. In the center was a round pit fireplace with a copper hood. I went down the three steps and stood looking around. The room was quite dark, because of the lack of windows, but I noticed track lighting on the ceiling. At the far side was a wet bar and on it stood a half-full bottle of Scotch.

  A living room? What people in the seventies used to call a “conversation pit”? I spied a glass on the edge of the fireplace, about a quarter full of amber liquid and small fragments of ice. I went over and lifted it gingerly, sniffed its contents. Scotch, like the bottle on the bar. Someone had been sitting here with a pretty hefty drink—and not all that long ago.

  Who? Sugarman? Probably. But then why hadn’t she answered my call?

  I went back to the entry and through the next archway, calling out again. It opened into a formal dining room, replete with a huge table and silver candelabra. The table, however, was only two feet off the ground and surrounded by mats and pillows. It would have reminded me of a traditional Japanese restaurant, except the decor—ornate red and gold and black—was distinctly non-Oriental.

  A swinging door led from the dining room to a kitchen full of stainless steel, butcher-block wood, a huge range, and three refrigerators. It had a sterile appearance, as if it hadn’t been used in a while. Retracing my steps through the dining room, I headed for the entry to try another of the archways. This time I didn’t call out; something about the silence in the house told me no one was here, in spite of Sugarman’s car.

  The archway I chose led into a hall with six doors leading off it. I opened one and saw a round room—one of the cylindrical shapes I’d noticed from the front of the house—equipped with a water bed. There was clothing in the dresser drawers and in the closet—both men’s and women’s—but not more than one would need for a weekend. A connecting bath also contained only the necessities. I went through the door on the other side of it and stepped into a room with king-sized bed.

  A woman’s tan leather purse lay on the bed, next to a half-packed overnight case. I picked up the purse, rummaged inside it, and found a wallet containing Karyn Sugarman’s driver’s license and credit cards.

  She wouldn’t have gone away and left both her purse and her car. Unless she was out walking in the desert . . .

  In this heat? She’d have to be crazy.

  I looked more closely at the overnight case. It was partially filled with underthings, and one drawer of the dresser stood open. From the way the clothing was jumbled in the case, I guessed she had been packing rather than unpacking.

  Why? I wondered. From what her secretary had implied, she’d only gone out of town this morning. Had she arrived here, unpacked and then changed her mind about staying? If so, what had caused that change? Or had she come here for the purpose of reclaiming these things?

  Again—if that was the case—why? Because they provided a link between her and this place? Because something was wrong here and she didn’t want that connection made?

  Hastily I went through three more bedrooms. Two contained water beds, another a conventional king-size. All had various personal effects stored in them, but not enough to indicate anyone lived here permanently. I hurried down the hall to the last door, stepped in, and recoiled at a sudden movement nearby. Then I realized what I’d seen was myself.

  The room—round like the others, but much larger—was all mirrors. They covered the walls and the ceiling. The floor space was taken up by the most enormous round bed I’d ever seen, covered by an equally enormous fur spread.

  I stared around and caught my wondering expression reflected over and over, everywhere I looked. And as the knowledge of what this room —indeed this whole house—was used for finally dawned on me, my expression became rueful.

  Les Club. Not bad French—a pun. L-e-s was pronounced “lay.” Lay Club.

  God, you’re innocent not to have figured it out before this, I told myself. You must have teddy bears in your brain.

  I hurried back to the entry and tried the next archway. Inside was a projection room, equipped once again with modular furniture and throw pillows. A screen was pulled down across from a projection booth, and I went in there and examined the titles on the cans of film.

  Skinkicks ... The Licentious Landlord ... Saturnalia ... Carousal on the Carousel . . . Master of the Whip . . . Bottoms Up ... Three’s a Sandwich ...

  I didn’t have to look at the films themselves to know what they were about.

  I rushed out of the projection room, crossed the entry, and went through the last archway. There was a door just inside it, heavy and carved, hung on huge iron hinges, with a big key in an old-fashioned lock. I grasped the knob and pulled i
t open.

  The inside was bathed in a blood-like gloom. I looked up and saw the source of the red glow: spots set into the ceiling. They were probably on a rheostat that had been turned down but not completely out. I felt around the door for the switch and pushed it up.

  And found myself looking at a medieval dungeon.

  “Jesus,” I said aloud.

  It was like nothing I’d ever seen before in my life. An honest-to-God dungeon, with dark stone walls and chains hanging off them, and a rack of whips. Hooks stuck out from the walls at intervals, and on them were ropes and cat-o’-nine-tails and hoods like those worn during the Spanish Inquisition. There were handcuffs and masks and blindfolds and paddles . . .

  Paddles. I remembered the sorority paddle in Elaine’s closet, the one that had surprised me because I hadn’t known she’d gone to college. And the handcuffs and leather thongs in her dresser drawer.

  “Jesus,” I said again. Sado-masochism. Or perhaps the new, sanitized version—Domination and Submission—that they were now writing feature articles and pseudo-psychological books about. D and S had turned into a big business recently. In San Francisco, there was a place that gave workshops in it; publications dealing with the joys of what its adherents called “imaginative sex” had sprung up all over. But call it S and M, or D and S—what did it matter? It was all the same, differing only in degree.

  I stepped back, leaning against the wall next to the door, and my hand brushed its surface. The stone wall was vinyl. Vinyl wallpaper.

  It would have been funny if what I was looking at hadn’t been so disgusting. Disgusting and pathetic and sad.

  I stood there, my eyes adjusting to the bloody light. Then I noticed that the room, unlike the others in the house, was not round but L-shaped. Mentally shuddering at what strange apparatus I might find there, I went over and peered around the corner into the other part of the ell.

  It was smaller and more dimly lit. I could see more hooks with S and M paraphernalia. And elaborate three-foot-high sconces, also fitted with red bulbs. And on the far wall, a cross, made of sturdy pieces of wood nailed together.

  Tied to the cross with heavy ropes was a figure. A long slender female figure whose head lolled to one side, its features obscured by a fall of light hair....

  I drew in a shuddering breath and moved forward. The cross was set low on the wall, and her head was only a couple of feet above mine. I reached up, brushed the hair back. And stared into the contorted, blood-suffused face of Karyn Sugarman.

  There were vicious bruises on her broken neck. Blood had flowed from her nostrils but was now dry. Her eyes stared blankly at some point in eternity.

  There was a ringing in my ears, and my vision blurred. I stepped back, letting her hair cover her mottled features again. My stomach lurched and I fought for control.

  Got to get out of here, I thought. Get to a phone, call the police. Get help . . .

  Behind me, in the other arm of the ell, I heard a noise. My stomach lurched again. I whirled and ran back along the wall and around the corner.

  No one was in sight. But the door to the dungeon was shut and somebody was turning the key in the latch.

  34 “WOLF”

  The detectives’ reports Carlton Ferguson had told me about—one set from Jim Lauterbach and the other from a large Detroit agency that had a name I recognized and a good reputation in the industry—pretty much corroborated the fact that Ruth Ferguson was an abusive mother. Talks with neighbors in Bloomfield Hills, tapes from bugs planted in the Ferguson house, the statement of a doctor who’d treated Timmy for a badly twisted arm and lacerations he’d received “in a fight with some other boys”—all that and more. Inconclusive in a legal sense, maybe, and some of it evidence illegally gathered and inadmissible in court, but enough for me. Not that I needed any more confirmation: what I’d seen and heard here, and my gut instinct, had already cemented my decision. You learn to trust gut instincts after a while; they’re like old and reliable friends.

  When I was done reading the reports, Ferguson and Nancy Pollard and I sat on the terrace, drinking cold bottles of Carta Blanca and talking, while Timmy splashed around in the pool out of earshot. I found myself liking the two of them. I don’t condone kidnapping, even in extreme cases like this one, but people—good people—get driven to desperate measures sometimes, and they don’t always use the best judgment.

  I found myself liking Ferguson even more when he offered to reimburse me for my plane fare and expenses—and didn’t insult me by offering any payment beyond that. I didn’t say no to the plane fare and expenses; I figured I was entitled, since I had just blown the five-thousand-dollar reward for McCone and me. I also didn’t say no when he offered to put me up for the night and to arrange a private flight straight back to San Diego first thing in the morning. He knew somebody in Los Mochis who made regular trips to Los Angeles twice a week—one of the days being Wednesday—and wouldn’t be averse to delivering me on the way. And Ferguson was willing to drive me to Los Mochis himself, if I had no objection to getting up at four a.m. I had plenty of objection to being awake at that hour, but this time I waived it. He went in and made a call and came back to say that it was all set.

  The Mexican servant, María-Elena, went out and sent Hernando on his way. A little later, she served us dinner on the terrace—pescado espada al horno, which was swordfish baked with olive oil and sprinkled with green onions and which was good enough to make even a confirmed fish-hater like me revise his opinion. Afterward we drank thick dark coffee and Mexican brandy and watched the sunset colors out over Topolobampo Bay and the Sea of Cortez. It was the kind of night you wanted to linger outside long after dark, to enjoy the stars and the lights along the coast and on the night fishers out on the bay, but the mosquitoes wouldn’t allow that. Swarms of them drove us inside before it was full dark.

  I said good night to Timmy in the big private room they’d given him. I didn’t ask him if his mother had abused him; there wasn’t any need to now, and he’d had enough pain as it was. But I did ask him if he was happy here, living with his dad and his Aunt Nancy. And he said, “Sure!” with considerable enthusiasm. “I wish my dad had sent for me a long time ago.”

  “What about your school?”

  “Aunt Nancy was a teacher once. She’s going to make me study. But that’s okay. I like to read books.”

  “You don’t want to go back to Bloomfield Hills? To your friends . . . your mother?”

  “Uh-uh. I don’t have any friends there—she never let me have any. And I don’t want to see her again. Not ever.”

  Before I left him, I also asked if he could tell me anything about the man who had bumped into his Aunt Nancy in the lobby of Lauterbach’s building on Sunday morning. He couldn’t. Kids’ memories are selective at his age; he didn’t remember the man at all.

  In my fan-cooled guest room I got undressed and lay down on the bed under its canopy of mosquito netting. I was pretty tired and I should have been able to sleep right away, but I didn’t. It was still muggy in there, despite the fan, and all I could do was doze, hanging on the edge of sleep—that kind of half wakefulness where thoughts keep running around inside your head, some of them over and over, like the words to a song or to an intrusive little jingle.

  Dear ... sweetheart . . . dear . . . sweetheart . . . dear ... sweet . . . heart . . . dear . . . heart . . . dearheart ...

  And all at once I was wide awake, sitting up in bed. Then I was out of it, out from under the mosquito netting and into my pants and on my way through the quiet villa. There were lights on in the living room: Ferguson and Nancy Pollard were still up, sitting in front of the terrace windows, sipping a last snifter of brandy before bed.

  They were surprised to see me up again, and even more surprised when I said to Nancy, “That man you saw in Lauterbach’s building Sunday morning. You said he spoke to you after you collided outside the elevator. Something like ‘Excuse me, dear,’ or ‘sweetheart,’ you said. Do you remember the exact t
erm he used?”

  She blinked at me. “No, not exactly . . .”

  “Was it dear? Or sweetheart?”

  “Neither one. Something that sounded like one or the other.”

  “Dearheart?”

  “That’s it,” she said. “Dearheart. ‘Excuse me, dearheart.’ Does that mean something to you?”

  I nodded. I’d only heard the term used once that I could remember, and that had been last Friday afternoon in the Cantina Sin Nombre, by the man who had been annoying Elaine Picard.

  Woodall. Rich Woodall.

  35 McCONE

  I ran to the door, turned the knob frantically. It wouldn’t budge. I rattled it, then pounded and shouted.

  “Let me out of here!”

  Silence on the other side of the door.

  “Let me out, dammit!”

  Nothing.

  Then I heard a sound that might have been the key being dropped on the floor, and footsteps going away. They were ponderous, heavy. I kicked the door, shouting again, but the footsteps faded and were gone. I was alone. Alone with Karyn Sugarman’s corpse.

  I let go of the knob. And then I began to shake. The shakes turned into body-wrenching shudders. I grasped my midsection and bent over, knowing I was on the way to a real attack of hysterics if I didn’t get myself under control. Finally the near-convulsions subsided and I sat down on the floor. The bloody light cast weird shadows and I closed my eyes to block it out.

  Someone else must have been in the house all along—or arrived immediately after I came in here. Who? In all likelihood, Sugarman’s killer.

  But who?

  That didn’t matter now. What mattered was getting out of here.