Nothing but the Night

by Bill Pronzini

  Breathing hard, Nick looked up the driveway and both ways along the road. No headlights, just some house lights among the trees—hers and others a couple of hundred yards uphill, her nearest neighbors. Gun hadn’t made much of a bang, and her yell had been too low to carry. Gallagher’d’ve shown himself by now if he’d heard.

  He looked for the automatic. Found it, dropped it into his coat pocket. Pocketed her purse, too, little beaded thing. Then he went to the woman, bent over her. Gurgling sounds in her throat, but she lay as still as before. Coat and dress had bunched up around her thighs, long white legs, black panties. Nick pulled the dress and coat down to cover her.

  “Why’d you have to come on like Rambo’s sister?” he said. “Why didn’t you just go on home to Gallagher like you were supposed to?”

  Then he slid his hands under her back and legs, swung her up, deadweight in his arms, and carried her to the Mazda.

  48

  Coming out of a blackout was like waking up with a bad hangover. Slow, groggy awareness. Pulse thudding in his ears, queasiness, tingly weakness in his limbs, burning thirst. Cam lay motionless with his eyes shut, trying to gauge the severity of the attack. Bad enough, but he’d experienced worse. The day at the office, when Maureen had to drive him home. The night in Portland when he’d had the nosebleed.

  He opened his eyes to slits. Soft lighting that didn’t assault the retinas; ceiling beams. Jenna’s house, Jenna’s living room. Had she come home and found him passed out?

  He moved his head experimentally. Pain, but not the crippling kind. Dull thrumming. Function?

  In inching movements, he sat up. The pain seemed to hold steady. He was still on the sofa, and he seemed not to have had another nosebleed or done any more vomiting. He listened to a heavy quiet broken only by the faint, distant ticking of a clock; the rain must have stopped. The house had the same empty feel as when he’d let himself in. Nor was there any purse or coat, anything to indicate that Jenna was here.

  How much time had he lost?

  He focused on his Rolex. Nine-fifteen. Little more than an hour.

  Where was Jenna? Even if she hadn’t been able to get away from the party until it ended at nine, she should be here by now. It was only a fifteen-minute drive from Fenwood Creek.

  He felt in his pocket for the vial of migraine capsules. It wasn’t there, and he remembered he’d had it in his hand just before he blacked out. He found it between two of the cushions, managed to get the top off without spilling any of the capsules. He tried to swallow one dry, but it wouldn’t go down.

  Teeth gritted, he pushed to his feet. Brief wave of vertigo, then he was all right. A little wobbly but not in any immediate danger of falling down. He walked slowly across the living room, into the bathroom. Too many mirrors in there; it wasn’t easy to avoid looking at his reflection, but he managed it. He swallowed the capsule with tap water, using the toothbrush tumbler, drank two more full glasses, and then splashed cold water over his face and neck. Better. He swished Scope around to rid his mouth of the foul aftertaste of wine and vomit. Then he held his hand up to eye level, palm downward, and watched it for a few seconds.

  Steady. Steady enough to drive, once the capsule did its work and the pain eased, if he was very, very careful. Thank God for that. If he’d been laid low and Jenna had had to drive him home …

  Nine-twenty-five. And still no sign of Jenna.

  He couldn’t imagine why she was so late. Perhaps she’d called to explain, decided when there was no answer that he’d left or hadn’t come here at all. Didn’t matter right now, anyway. He couldn’t wait for her any longer. Driving home was all he could cope with. Bed, sleep, a new day, then he’d find out what Jenna wanted from him.

  He retrieved his overcoat, put the key she’d given him on the hall table. She’d have another; nobody gives an only house key to another person. He pushed the Set button on the alarm pad, went out, and pulled the door shut behind him.

  For a minute or two he stood sucking in the cold night air, letting the wind dry his clammy skin. The thrumming in his head was muted and tolerable now. Keep the window down, and driving shouldn’t be a problem. BMW’s practically drove themselves; all you had to do was steer.

  Down the driveway, turn right, and he was on his way—until his headlights picked up the car slewed off onto a turnout a short distance downhill. White, a white Lexus like the one Jenna drove. There were a lot of white Lexuses on the road these days, but still…

  He braked, cut off onto the turnout in front of the parked car. The license plate was clearly visible in his lights: JENNA B. Her Lexus, all right, but what was it doing here?

  Confusion, a vague sense of alarm, prodded him out. He tried the driver’s door, found it unlocked. The Lexus was empty. Nothing of Jenna’s on the seats, no signs of anything disturbed. He shut the door, looked around the turnout, up and down the road. Footprints in the muddy earth that weren’t his. Tire tracks that also weren’t his. Made by the Lexus or another car? He couldn’t tell.

  His frayed nerves began to jump again.

  What had happened here?

  Where was Jenna?

  49

  She was dead.

  Lying curled up in the trunk pretty much the way he’d laid her in, on her left side, only now her eyes were open and glazed over, staring. He touched the side of her neck, cold, Jesus, no pulse beating there, nothing. Dead.

  Nick leaned against the open trunk lid. Wind blowing in through the doorless front of the garage, the gaps in the walls, picked at the hair on his neck like bony fingers. Carbon monoxide? No, wasn’t anything wrong with the exhaust, and her face’d be bright red and it wasn’t, it was milk-white under the smears of mud and blood. Suffocation? Not that, either. Enough air in the trunk, and he’d put the piece of duct tape across her mouth, not her nose. He’d even been careful not to wrap the tape too tight around her hands and feet.

  Sticky mat of blood on the dark hair behind her ear, glistening in the pale trunk light. Smacked-meat sound of her head hitting the asphalt … was that it? Hard blow on the head could kill somebody—almost killed Annalisa. That had to be it.

  She’d been alive when he put her in the trunk, he was sure of that. Couldn’t leave her lying there on the road, somebody might come along any second, she’d put the cops on him as soon as she woke up—had to take her along. Kept trying to decide on the long ride to the Russian River what he’d do with her, hazy idea of keeping her locked up until he was ready to deal with Gallagher. Hazy, crazy idea, but it was all he could come up with. Except killing her, and he wouldn’t’ve done that. Kill Gallagher, yeah, Gallagher deserved to die, but not a woman. She hadn’t done anything to him except wave the automatic in his face and he couldn’t blame her for that. Foulmouthed bimbo, stone-hard bitch, but she was still a woman, and he didn’t believe in hurting women unless there was no other choice, like when he’d had to punch her face. Maybe he’d’ve had no other choice if he’d kept her prisoner. But he hadn’t wanted to think about that.

  Now it didn’t matter. Now she was dead. And the thing was, he hadn’t killed her, not really. Wasn’t his fault she’d hit her head so hard. Sure, he’d punched her, knocked her down, but she was the one to blame for that, her and her little gun. He’d acted in self-defense. Banging her head was an accident. A freak accident.

  Besides, admit it, it was better this way. Better for him and Annalisa. With the woman dead, he didn’t have to run the risk of keeping her locked up for a couple of weeks. Dead, she wasn’t a threat to his plans for Gallagher. Look at it that way. Don’t think about it any other way.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to her, “I didn’t want to hurt you, it was a freak accident. But it’s better this way.”

  He shut the lid, locked the trunk and the car. Raining again, big drops like pellets of ice; he plowed through wet grass and weeds to the house, let himself in. Cold in there, even though he’d left the thermostat set at sixty-eight. He turned it up to seventy-five, went around switching
on lights to chase away the dark—night was usually his friend, but not this night. Finally settled in the kitchen because it was the warmest room in the house.

  Only he couldn’t get warm.

  Sat at the table drinking hot coffee, wall register blasting hot air at him, and his skin felt like frosted glass, and shivers and chills ran all over his body.

  He kept thinking about the Bailey woman out there in the car, cold and dead. And how she must’ve died from hitting her head on the pavement, severe head trauma from being thrown into the telephone pole—

  Pavement. Pavement.

  Smacked-meat sound, cracked her skull, twitch and she was still.

  Like Annalisa.

  Severe head trauma.

  Like Annalisa.

  No, not like Annalisa. Annalisa was alive, her head trauma hadn’t been fatal and she was going to get better but Jenna Bailey died but Annalisa wouldn’t die wouldn’t die wouldn’t die!

  He sat there shivering. And then crying, all at once, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, bawling the way he had in the hospital the night of the hit-and-run, and he didn’t know right then if all the grief leaking out of him was for Annalisa or the dead woman in the Mazda’s trunk.

  PART III

  Flood

  50

  All weekend Cam worried. About Jenna and what might have happened to her. About whether or not Nick Hendryx had had anything to do with it. About Hallie, if he should tell her about Jenna and what her reaction would be if he did. About himself, what his responsibilities were—legal, moral, personal.

  He called Jenna’s home number twice, Fenwood Creek twice. She wasn’t home, she wasn’t at the winery. No one there had any idea where she might be.

  He called Caitlin to make sure she was all right. Teddy answered, told him she was out somewhere, he didn’t know where; the kid’s voice said he didn’t much care. Sure she was okay, why wouldn’t she be? Hendryx? How should he know if she’d been with the dude Friday night? Yeah, he’d tell her Uncle Cameron called, making the word uncle sound like an obscenity.

  Monday, first thing at the office, Cam called Fenwood Creek again. Jenna wasn’t there. Hadn’t called in, simply hadn’t shown up, her assistant said, and that wasn’t like her. Mr. Collins was on his way to her house to see if maybe she was ill or something.

  The rest of the morning crawled by. A few minutes before noon he rang Fenwood Creek again, but Collins wasn’t there or wasn’t taking calls and his secretary had nothing to report about Jenna. He left a message for Bryan, then waited in an agony of suspense until Collins finally returned his call at two-thirty.

  It was as bad as he’d feared. Jenna’s car was still parked on the turnout, her house was empty, and there was no indication she’d been home since Friday night or of where she might be. Collins tried to downplay the implications, but he was as upset as Cam had ever heard him. More upset than a boss over a missing employee, it seemed, which led Cam to wonder if the usually unflappable Collins had been or still was one of her lovers.

  Bryan had notified the county’s criminal investigation department. So it was almost certain an investigator would be around to talk to Cam eventually. Someone at the Christmas party must have seen Jenna and him talking, possibly even seen her slip him the house key. The wise thing would seem to be for him to go to the authorities before they came to him. But he was afraid of them getting the wrong idea. If she’d been kidnapped or murdered, and the identity of the person responsible remained in doubt, his presence in her house the night of the disappearance would make him a prime suspect. Angry lover, sudden violence, that kind of scenario. In any case there would be bad publicity, the sort that could harm his family, harm PWS.

  The other option was to wait it out. Hope Jenna was found quickly, alive and well; and if she wasn’t found, play dumb and innocent—exactly what he was—when the CID got around to him. But that was just as potentially disastrous. If the investigators caught him in a lie, they’d be even more suspicious of him. At the very least, even though he had no conclusive information about her disappearance, he could be charged with obstruction.

  He didn’t know what to do about Hendryx, either. He called Caitlin again on Sunday, and this time she was home. His excuse was a futile plea for her to change her mind and spend Christmas Eve in Los Alegres. He managed to steer the conversation around to Hendryx, and she said no, she hadn’t been with him Friday night, he’d been away on an overnight haul. Why was he so interested? Cam said he thought he’d seen Hendryx in the Paloma Valley; she said maybe he needed glasses. And that was the end of that.

  So he still had no idea whether or not Hendryx was involved. Jenna hadn’t mentioned him at the party, or at any time since their phone conversation weeks ago. Her early suspicions had no foundation, at least so far as he knew, and neither did his. If he sicced the law on Hendryx and the man was innocent, Caitlin would never forgive him—it would destroy what was left of their fragile relationship.

  Yet what if Hendryx was guilty? What if he was a stalker, a rapist, something even worse? It was possible; anything was possible. Caitlin might be in jeopardy, Cam Gallagher might be. Would telling the county CID about Hendryx eliminate the threat in that case? Not necessarily. There was no guarantee anything could be proven against him. And the authorities nosing around might even provoke him into some sort of retaliation….

  What was right? What was best for Hallie and his daughters, Caitlin, himself?

  He didn’t know; he couldn’t decide. And what made it worse was the nagging fear that no matter what he did, something bad would come of it.

  51

  Week before Christmas, Nick went for long rides every night. Saturday and Sunday was a chicken run down to the Central Valley; but he had Wednesday and Thursday off with pay, part of North County Poultry Processors employees’ Christmas package. Wednesday and Thursday off at Goodwill, too—no pay, because they didn’t schedule any pickups right before the holidays. So he drove north and south, east and west, once as far downstate as Bakersfield, another time all the way to Truckee through a Sierra snowstorm.

  Better in the car, moving, following the open road. He felt invulnerable, exercising the same control over his life and destiny that he had over his wheels—like the psychologist’d said in the article about night riders. Rained most of the time he was on the road, and that was all right, too. Tires humming, wipers shushing back and forth, radio playing soft, all of it soothing and the night so dark you couldn’t see much except the shiny black-and-white surface ahead, as if the world had shrunk all the way down to a narrow strip that kept on curling and unwinding under the headlights. Thinking sometimes about Annalisa, sometimes about Gallagher and how spooked he must be about his girlfriend, how he’d be figuring Nick must’ve had something to do with it but be too afraid to go to the cops on account of the hit-and-run charge hanging over his head. Didn’t think about the Bailey woman except in little blips and black flashes. Mostly didn’t think about anything, just kept driving with the heater turned up as high as it would go.

  Couple of times he slept in the car. Partly because he got tired and didn’t trust himself to stay alert without some rest, but mainly to avoid going back to the house. He didn’t like being cooped up there. Before long he’d have to stick close to the place, like it or not. Work to be done, preparations to make. But not yet, not until after Christmas. Enough time would’ve passed by then, and the house wouldn’t keep reminding him of the dead woman, making him feel bad when he ought to feel good because it was almost over, he could count the days until he was back home.

  Home. Sometimes the word was a pulse in his head: home home home home home home. Other times it was the wind and the tires on pavement and the engine whine, one long steady hum: hommmmmmmmmmmme. Denver. Annalisa. Mom and Pop Foster. He missed them all so much. The missing and the wishing and the wanting got so bad late one night that he stopped at a pay phone, middle of nowhere, and called up the Fosters. Just couldn’t help himself. Mom answered, all
shook at such a late call. It choked him up so much hearing her voice, he could hardly speak, and she thought it was some crank caller and almost hung up on him before he could get the words out.

  He apologized for calling so late, said he needed to hear a friendly voice, asked how Annalisa was. Mom said she was all right, just the same, and when are you coming home, Nickie? Like I told you last time, he said. Next month. Sometime after the first week in January.

  “Can’t you come for Christmas?” Mom asked again. “Annalisa, she needs you—I know she does. And we need you, Pop and me, to be here with us. This year more than ever.”

  “I want to be there, Mom. You know how much I want to. But I can’t. Not yet, not until I’m finished here.”

  And she started to cry, and he hung up—had to hang up because it hurt too much listening to her cry like that in the middle of the night a few days before Christmas. But talking to her made him feel better, too. Love always made you feel better, even when you had to hear it and feel it from a long way off.

  Love and night rides, they were what he needed right now. To chase away the cold, chase away the dead woman, give him the strength to get through the next two weeks. And make him ready inside his head when it finally got to be time for Gallagher.

  52

  On Wednesday morning a county CID lieutenant named Dudley showed up at PWS. Cam went cold and tight inside when Gretchen buzzed and told him who was waiting. He sat for a couple of minutes to compose himself; made sure his face was sweat-free before he told Gretchen to send the lieutenant in.

  Dudley was tall, thin, flat-faced, and polite. And his visit was strictly routine; that became apparent in the first thirty seconds. He was questioning everyone, he said, who knew Jenna and who had spoken to her at the Fenwood Creek Christmas party. He knew nothing about the key, had no suspicion that Cam had been in her house that night—and Cam didn’t enlighten him. The desire to unburden himself was there, but he didn’t have the will or the courage to go through with it.