Nothing but the Night

by Bill Pronzini

  “You’re lying,” he said.

  “Go up and look, you’ll see—Nick, please, for the love of God…”

  His head hurt so much he couldn’t think straight. Trick, some kind of trick. But what could they do? He had the gun and they didn’t have anything and Gallagher would have to be half dead by now anyway so he could be all the way dead—

  Was he dead up there?

  Everything wrong, and now this.

  “I’ll shoot you right now if this is a trick.”

  “It’s not a trick, Cameron is dead.”

  Dead before his execution?

  “Nick, if you ever cared anything about me let me out of here!”

  “… Go back upstairs first.”

  “What? I can’t—”

  “Go upstairs, or I won’t open the door. He’s really dead, I’ll let you out.”

  “He is, oh Nick—”

  “Go on go on go on.”

  Thump, thump, thump—back up the stairs. He ran to the front bedroom, got his flashlight, and brought it back with him. “Cat? Sing out so I know you’re still in the attic.”

  “Hurry, please hurry.”

  All right. He lifted the two-by-four free, leaned it against the wall. Gallagher, you son of a bitch, you can’t be dead. He took the automatic out, took the key out, used his left hand to slip the key into the lock. Listened. Can’t be dead. Turned the key, stepped away from the door as soon as the lock clicked.

  It stayed shut, no trick there.

  He reached out with his left hand, turned the knob, pulled the door open, creaking on its hinges.

  Thick dark, cold air, Gallagher dead in the cold dark? He bent toward the opening, switched on the flashlight.

  And something came rushing out at him from the light-splashed blackness.

  Something white and big as the door, mattress with hands clutching it on either side, Gallagher using the mattress as a shield, and Nick squeezed the trigger, blew a hole in the mattress, and then Gallagher and the thing hit him and drove him backward and smashed him into the wall.

  74

  The gun going off was thunderous in the confines of the hallway. Cam felt the bullet’s impact high up on the mattress, but it didn’t come through. An instant later, his legs already giving out, he collided with Hendryx and they slammed the wall, slanted downward to the floor. The mattress was under him and on top of Hendryx, his weight pinning the other man despite a furious flailing of arms and legs. Over the pulse-roar in his ears, Cam could hear Caitlin running on the attic stairs.

  He was too weak to hold Hendryx down. It had taken all his strength and Caitlin’s help to quietly maneuver the mattress into the dark stairwell and then to mount his charge. Hendryx bucked and squirmed, freed part of his body. Dimly Cam saw an arm come up, a hand with the gun still in it. He clutched frantically at the weapon; his fingers slid off, but he managed to clamp a grip on the wrist as Hendryx writhed all the way out from under the mattress.

  They were sprawled together then, thrashing body to body, face-to-face, bulging eyes staring into his half-blind ones. Hendryx’s other hand ripped at his imprisoned wrist, struggling to free it. Cam would have lost the scuffle if Caitlin hadn’t been there. She came up cursing shrilly and kicked Hendryx in the head, hard enough to bring a bellow of pain. Cam twisted, got his other hand on the gun. A second kick caused Hendryx’s fingers to spasm, slacken their grip, and Cam was able to tear the weapon loose.

  He couldn’t hold it; it skidded along the hallway. He kicked away from Hendryx, scuttled after the gun on all fours. Didn’t see it, didn’t see it… it was as though he were crawling in slow motion through a thick, viscous liquid. Behind him there was a confusion of sounds, Caitlin still hurling obscenities. Then he saw the automatic, over against the far baseboard. He scrambled that way, and just as his hand closed over the butt, Caitlin shrieked; an instant later, he heard the thud of a body smacking the floor.

  Cam came up on his knees, swiping at his eyes to clear them. Caitlin wasn’t hurt; Hendryx must have toppled her somehow, and now she was scooting away from him on her back, knees and clawed fingers upraised like a cat in fighting position. Hendryx, bleeding, seemingly dazed, paid no attention to her. He was dragging himself up the wall opposite, leaving blood smears on the paper forget-me-nots.

  Cam’s hands were shaking; he wrapped both tight around the automatic to hold it steady. Caitlin had flopped over and was getting up. He sent a ragged shout at her: “Stay there, I’ve got the gun!” Hendryx was on his feet, swinging around against the wall to look in Cam’s direction. Another ragged shout held him where he was: “Don’t make me shoot you!”

  Frozen tableau for a clutch of seconds, the three of them in a triangle, staring and breathing noisily, blood dripping down from a gash in Hendryx’s cheek. His mouth hung open; the whites of his eyes showed.

  Caitlin moved first, taking a sideways step toward her brother. That acted as a release on Hendryx. He rotated his head and body and went stumbling away along the wall.

  “Shoot him, Cameron!”

  But he couldn’t shoot a man in the back, any man. He struggled to stand, and Caitlin rushed to help him. “Jesus,” she said, “what if he has another gun?”

  Hendryx had reached the rear bedroom; Cam could see him through the open doorway, heading straight to the window in the far wall. He staggered forward with his left arm around Caitlin’s waist, his legs so wobbly he would’ve fallen without her support. He saw Hendryx tugging at the window sash. It came ratcheting up, letting in a blast of frigid wind and rain, as he and Caitlin piled through the doorway.

  “Hendryx!”

  The madman bent his body into the opening, throwing one leg over the sill.

  “Hendryx! Don’t do it, you can’t get away!”

  Caitlin cried, “Cameron, let him go!”

  Hendryx threw a look at her, another at Cam. His face was an anguished crimson mask.

  “I didn’t hurt your wife,” Cam yelled at him. “I’m not the one who hurt your wife!”

  Hendryx shook his head. “Wrong,” he said clearly, “it’s all wrong.”

  And he swung his other leg over the sill and pushed off.

  The splash was audible even with the noise of the cataract. Cam let go of Caitlin, fell to his knees in front of the window. The wind flailed him with rain and surface spume as he thrust his head out. The flood-waters had risen to within a few feet of the window, mostly inundating the downstairs rooms by now; they boiled and frothed, creating little whirlpools clogged with flotsam. Hendryx was caught in one of these thirty yards out, turning this way and that, his arms lifted high as if seeking absolution. All around him other wreckage heaved and churned.

  “God,” Caitlin whispered.

  Cam said nothing. Another few seconds, and the madman wasn’t there anymore.

  75

  Annalisa!

  76

  They were trapped in the house for another twenty-eight hours before rescuers came.

  The rains stopped for good late Thursday afternoon, and the river was no longer rising at nightfall. Rescue boats and helicopters were out at dawn Friday morning, as the floodwaters slowly began to recede. Caitlin, wrapped in a blanket and keeping watch at the rear bedroom window, saw the boat coming their way shortly before ten. Three men wearing neoprene wet suits, two of them Paloma County sheriff’s deputies, were in the house a few minutes later.

  Cam was pretty sick by then. High fever, hot and cold chills, swollen lymph glands. He was in bed in the front bedroom, swaddled in the remaining blankets. Caitlin had made him swallow as much drinkable water as was left in the hot-water pipes and water heater; made him eat most of the food Hendryx had left, to keep up his strength. But he was still dehydrated and too weak to walk by himself. The rescue team wouldn’t risk taking him out by boat; they called for a medevac helicopter. Two hours after that, he was in a private room at Santa Rosa General, jabbed full of antibiotics and hooked up to an IV.

  VISITORS THAT NIGHT,
after he woke up:

  Hallie, her eyes moist, holding his hand and saying, “There’s no fluid in your lungs, darling, you don’t have pneumonia. The doctors say you should be able to come home in a day or two.”

  The county CID lieutenant, Dudley, asking terse questions and reporting that Hendryx’s body hadn’t been found yet. They thought it might have washed out to sea, but there was so much cleanup left to be done along the river, it might yet turn up.

  “Any chance he survived?” Cam asked.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Mr. Gallagher.”

  And Caitlin, almost shyly uncomfortable, not making eye contact and not staying long. Their conversation was limited to the flood, the worst in the river’s history, with a crest of forty-nine feet, six inches, and enough about the house for Cam to know that it had suffered considerable damage and that she no longer wanted it in her life, either. Both avoided the issue of Rose’s death. There would be another time to talk about that.

  IN THE MORNING Hallie brought Leah and Shannon to see him. After ten minutes she sent the girls out so she could speak to him alone.

  “There’re all sorts of media people waiting to see you,” she said. “You’ll have to talk to them sooner or later.”

  “I can stand it. Have they bothered you?”

  “Not much. I won’t let them bother me.”

  “Am I going to be charged with anything?”

  “No, thank God.”

  “Lucky,” he said. “Lucky all around.”

  “Caitlin told me about your nightmare in the attic, how Rose really died. How do you feel about remembering?”

  “Like a weight has been lifted off me.”

  “Caitlin knows it wasn’t your fault. I think she wanted me to tell you that.”

  “I hope she can forgive me.”

  “There’s nothing for her to forgive,” Hallie said. “You’re the only one who has to do any forgiving.”

  “Of a terrified ten-year-old boy.”

  “Exactly. Then maybe the nightmares will stop.”

  What Hendryx had done to him was terrible, monstrous, but some good had come out of it. He’d learned more things about himself than he might ever have otherwise. And he’d found out how to be Somebody. He’d found out how to be Cameron Gallagher.

  “Yes,” he said. “Then the nightmares will stop.”

  AFTER HALLIE HAD gone, Lieutenant Dudley came again.

  “We’ve tracked down quite a bit of information about Nick Hendryx, Mr. Gallagher,” he said. “I figured you should know before we release any of it to the media.”

  “About his past, you mean?”

  “That’s right. Came mainly from his wife’s family in Denver. The Fosters. He was in contact with them periodically over the past six years. They kept trying to talk him into coming back there so they could get him psychiatric help, the last time a few days before Christmas. But he wouldn’t listen, and he’d never tell them exactly where he was.”

  “Six years?”

  “That’s how long it’s been since the hit-and-run.”

  “He talked as though it was no more than a year or so.”

  “He was more disturbed than you could’ve known. He kept sending the Fosters letters addressed to his wife, for them to hold until she got well enough to read them. Six years of letters, sometimes more than one a week.”

  “Did they open any?”

  “The first few. After that, they let them pile up until about a year ago. It’s too bad, but Mr. Foster couldn’t take it anymore and burned them all. Burned the ones that came afterward, too.”

  “Why would he do that? Isn’t there any chance his daughter will get well?”

  “Annalisa Hendryx died three weeks after the accident, Mr. Gallagher. She’s been dead nearly six years.”

  77

  He regained his senses at the edge of high ground, caught in a snarl of brush and other junk, humped in the crotch of the tree limb he’d grabbed onto. He crawled out of the flood, up a grassy slope. Buildings nearby, house and barn. He was hurt and half-drowned, but he could walk all right. Made it to the house, nobody there, residents evacuated long ago. Back door wasn’t locked. He went in and found a bed and stripped and fell into it.

  Stayed in the house all that day and night, sleeping mostly, eating canned stuff from the larder. Morning of the next day, he woke to patches of blue sky and the flood level dropping. Cleaned himself up and left the place wearing somebody’s clothes that fit him well enough, carrying what was left of his own. Followed a muddy road back of the barn until he saw the ocean in the distance. Then he threw his old clothes into some weeds in a gully. Only things he kept were his Colorado driver’s license and the sketch. Lamination had kept the flood from damaging either one.

  After a mile or so he came to a highway that ran along the ocean. Mouth of the river was there, long bridge across it, and on his side of the bridge a skinny old guy was working hard to change a flat on a mud-spattered pickup. Nick offered to help. Old guy looked him over and wanted to know what’d happened to him. He said he’d been working in Guerneville, got caught and hurt in the flood, lost everything he owned. When he finished with the tire, old guy asked him if he’d ever worked on a sheep ranch. Nick said no, but he’d do any kind of work as long as it was honest.

  So he went with the old guy up the coast to Mendocino County, a sheep ranch back in the hills, and started work the next day. Hard work and not much money, but all his meals came with the job, and the old guy’s wife was a good cook. Pretty soon the rancher let him do some driving around the place, into the nearest town to pick up supplies. Felt good being behind the wheel again, even if it was almost all short rides and daylight mileage.

  He stayed on the sheep ranch three months, saving up. Then the old man sold him his other pickup, a dented GMC Nick’d done some engine work on, for five hundred dollars, most of what he’d earned working there. First time he went out night riding, he didn’t come back. Just kept on going up Highway 1 into Oregon.

  In Eugene he got a job delivering pizzas and then wrote Annalisa a long letter and then started showing the sketch around. Showed it all over Eugene, Salem, Portland, then up in Washington. He landed a driving job with a short-haul gypsy outfit in Tacoma and stayed with it long enough to build up a stake. Then he bought a better set of wheels, ’eighty-nine Toyota that had 97,000 miles on it but ran fine with a little tune-up.

  It was late summer when he rolled into Phoenix. Been there once before, so long ago he could barely remember it. Found a soup kitchen, ate and got cleaned up, and went out showing the sketch. More he showed it, more he had a good feeling about this town. Nothing to get excited about, not yet, but a feeling with hope in it.

  Went to a mall that night, big covered mall, lots of people. He was showing the sketch in front of a bookstore when the man came out.

  Nick had a good look at him, straight on, and it was like being kicked in the groin. He couldn’t get his breath. Blood pounding in his ears like the ocean during a storm, a wild roaring that was hate and excitement and thankfulness and a dozen other feelings all wrapped up together.

  Him. Man in the sketch, the face he’d lived with every day, that haunted his sleep, that he’d been hunting so long. Son of a bitch bastard who’d hurt Annalisa. No doubt of it, no mistake like he’d made with Gallagher and the five or six others before Gallagher.

  It was him!

  About the Author

  Bill Pronzini has published seventy-nine novels, thirty-eight of which feature the Nameless Detective, Americas longest-running PI series, begun in 1971. He is also the author of four nonfiction books and three hundred fifty short stories, and the editor of numerous anthologies. Among his many awards is the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, presented in 2008—a distinction he shares with his wife, crime novelist Marcia Muller, the 2005 Grand Master recipient. The couple lives in Northern California.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or
any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1999 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-2999-8

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10014

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  EBOOKS BY BILL PRONZINI

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