Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini

  A cold wind laced with the smells of mist and sea salt chased me inside a narrow enclosure not much larger than a walk-in closet. A counter bisected it, and behind the counter were a hatchet-faced woman with orange hair and a console TV set tuned to a sitcom, the volume up loud. Canned laughter reverberated off the walls, creating an echo-chamber effect.

  The woman saw me come in, if she didn’t hear me, but the sitcom had her in thrall. Somebody said something on it and the canned laughter boomed and she made it worse with a high, whooping squawk, like a chicken having its neck wrung. Her eyes shifted to me, strayed back to the TV screen. She was on the edge of her chair now, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to trade pleasure for business.

  My patience was strung out thin; I had to curb an impulse to slap my hand on the counter and demand her attention. Alienate her and I wouldn’t get any cooperation. I settled for leaning forward over the counter, making myself more visible while I pretended to look at the TV to see what she was watching.

  It was another few seconds before she got to her feet, and then only because the show had gone to commercials. She used a remote control to mute the noise. In the sudden silence she said, “That Roseanne. What a hoot. I swear, she’s the funniest person who ever lived.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m looking for one of your guests, a fat, bald man about—”

  “You don’t want a cottage?”

  “Maybe later, after I talk to this man. Bald, fat, about forty-five, pale skin and big hands—”

  “Mr. Stevens,” she said.

  “Mr. Stevens, right. Which cottage is he in?”

  “Eight. You a friend of his?”

  “No,” I said. “We have some business. Eight, you said—that’s up front here or in back?”

  “In back on the beach side.”

  “How long has he been staying here?”

  “Came in last night.”

  “He have any visitors? A young woman within the past half hour?”

  “Not that I know about. I been watching television.” Saying the word shifted her eyes back to the screen. It was the only thing she was interested in. For all I knew it was the centerpiece of her life, her religion, and her one true love.

  “Thanks. I’ll just go on back and surprise Mr. Stevens.”

  “Sure,” she said, still looking at the TV. “We got plenty of vacancies.” She flicked the remote again as I turned for the door, refilling the office with the sitcom’s laugh track and a woman’s nasal, shrieking blather—probably Roseanne, the funniest person who ever lived.

  I left my car where it was and went on foot to the rear of the grounds. Walking fast until I’d gone halfway, then more slowly with my hand on the .38 in my pocket. Two of the cottages on the beach side showed light behind drawn curtains, but their numbers were eleven and twelve. A car was angled up in front of eight farther back—a new or near-new convertible with sporty lines. Melanie’s, I thought; I couldn’t see Chehalis driving a car like that. So where were his wheels and why was the cottage dark? They must have gone off somewhere together, most likely to find an ATM machine.

  I cut over between the mist-blurred shapes of nine and eight. No window in eight’s wall on this side; I kept going, around to the rear. Sliding glass door there, drapes drawn across it, that gave access to a meager patio with a rusted wrought-iron table and two chairs bolted to the asphalt. I pressed an ear against the cold glass. No sounds inside, or at least none that were audible above the sullen wash-and-thunder of the surf and the rumbling passage of cars on Highway 1.

  In the south wall was a tiny bathroom window. I didn’t hear anything there either. At the front corner I checked the grounds to make sure I still had them to myself; then I drifted up to the door, tested the knob with two fingers. Locked. Pick it, wait for them inside? That seemed the best way to—

  Sound from behind the door, faint, lifting for an instant and then dying away.

  I froze, straining to hear. It came again, a little louder, but I still couldn’t identify it—a sound like no other I had ever heard. I’d been cold before, from the sea wind and the fog; now, all at once, I was chilled clear through. I unpocketed the .38, held it down along my right leg, and stood motionless with my ear tight to the door panel.

  Silence for almost a minute. Then the sound rose once more, different this time, almost a keening that broke off abruptly.

  Hurt sound, pain sound.

  I acted without thinking. Stepped back for leverage and drove the sole of my shoe against the door panel just above the knob. That one thrust was enough; the lock was flimsy and it snapped with a thin screech not much louder than the wind. I went inside in a crouch with the gun up, and in the darkness something moved, and out of the darkness came the pain sound and mingled body fluid smells that nearly gagged me. I felt for the light switch, flipped it, kicked the door shut behind me.

  “Oh Jesus God!”

  The words tore out of my throat, a pain sound of my own that robbed me of breath. I stood shock-frozen, staring. The room was like any motel room, all of its spartan furnishings in place but for the queen-size bed: its mattress was askew, its sheets and coverlet dragged off onto the floor. No wreckage or other evidence of the brutal act that had been committed here.

  Except for Melanie.

  Except for the blood.

  She lay on her side next to the bed, knees drawn up against her breasts, one hand clutching her abdomen and the other fisted under her chin. Right eye squeezed shut, left eye swollen shut. I still did not recognize the sounds that came from her broken mouth; they were whimpers and moans and cries, and yet none of these, or maybe all of them blended together—utterances that were more alien than human. Most of her clothing had been ripped off; what was left was in tatters. Bruises and lacerations disfigured her face, torso, arms, legs. Red finger-marks and purplish welts formed an obscene necklace at her throat. Blood leaked from a broken nose, blood was smeared over her groin area, blood spatters fouled her bare skin and ragged clothing, the bedsheets and the floor and one of the walls.

  Battered mercilessly, choked, raped . . . his own daughter.

  His own daughter!

  Sick and light-headed, I sank to one knee beside her. I said something—soothing, empty reassurances—but she didn’t hear me, didn’t even know I was there. Shock. But she’d know if I tried to touch her, lift her off the floor; she’d think I was Chehalis come back for seconds, and panic, and fight me and maybe hurt herself even more. I couldn’t help her. All I could do was cover her to keep her warm, then call 911. Help was paramedics, hospital doctors, rape-crisis people.

  The nearest covering was the bedspread. I stood up to get it, and hidden underneath were her purse and wallet; the wallet was turned inside out, empty. I laid the spread over her as gently as I could. Even so, the fabric’s touch made her flinch away, pried loose another of those inhuman sounds.

  There was a telephone on the near nightstand, but the son of a bitch had yanked the cord out of the wall; I could see the damaged end under the bed. At the door I reached up to shut off the light. Before the room went dark, I saw Melanie burrowing all the way under the spread—trying to hide. I went out with my teeth clenched so tightly that lines of pain radiated along both sides of my jaw. Eased the door shut, made sure it would stay that way, and ran for the office.

  Why? Why had he done this?

  Money had nothing to do with it; rifling her wallet was an afterthought. I’d been way off base with that explanation. He had to have jumped her as soon as she walked in. There was not enough time for her to have turned down a request for cash, for them to have had any kind of conversation. Premeditated . . . attacked her so suddenly and methodically that she hadn’t been able to scream and alert the other guests. His one and only purpose in luring her out here. But there had to be more to it than a warped desire to inflict pain on another woman, some reason to want to hurt Melanie specifically....

  Revenge?

  I was at the office. Inside the office. T
he orange-haired woman was still plugged into her TV—another sitcom, another mindless laugh track. I leaned over the counter, hauled up the phone I’d seen earlier on the desk underneath, and snapped at her, “Shut that thing off.”

  She gawped at me. “What? What’s the idea—”

  “Shut that goddamn thing off! Now!”

  The look on my face, if not my words, galvanized her into thumbing the remote. I punched out 911, waited, waited, finally got an operator. “A woman’s been raped and beaten at the Surf and Sand Motel, Duvall Road, Pacifica. Unit eight. She’s in a bad way—shock, windpipe damage, possible internal injuries. Get somebody out here as fast as you can.”

  “Right away. Your name, please? The victim’s name?”

  I told her, repeated the address and location, and banged the handset down.

  The proprietress had let out a squawk when I spoke the words raped and beaten. Now she repeated them in wide-eyed disbelief, and added, “But how could a thing like that . . . none of the other guests . . .”

  “None of them heard anything. He made sure of that.”

  “Mr. Stevens? He’s the one . . . ?”

  “His name is Chehalis, Stephen Chehalis.”

  Revenge?

  The woman started to come around the counter. I said, “Stay where you are. If you go down there you’re likely to stir up a crowd. Wait for the police and the paramedics.”

  “But the girl . . . if she’s that badly hurt . . .”

  “There’s nothing you can do for her.”

  “Who is she? A hooker? I don’t allow hookers—”

  “She’s not a hooker.”

  “Then who is she? Who are you? What—”

  “Shut up. I can’t think with you babbling. Shut up.”

  She shut up. Sank down on her chair and made dry rubbing sounds with her hands, looking nervous and frightened. Afraid of me now, probably, as much as of what the notoriety would do to her business.

  I still had my hand on the telephone receiver. My intention was to call the Los Gatos police; it was up to them to update and upgrade the pickup order on Chehalis. But I didn’t make the call. I just stood there. And inside, I started to shake.

  Revenge.

  That had to be it. It fit the psychological profile of men like Chehalis in situations like this one. Snapped when he learned he’d been exposed and was wanted, or maybe even before that, when he murdered his wife. Now he was completely out of control. He’d run, sure, he had no choice, but not until he did a little more hurting, hurt the people responsible for exposing him . . . the three people responsible. One was his wife and he’d already punished her. The second was Melanie, who’d started his downfall with her search for her real father. Now he’d punished her too.

  The third was me.

  But he didn’t attack men; he attacked women. He wouldn’t come after me directly. He’d try to get his revenge on me the only way a psycho like him knew how.

  Through my wife.

  Through Kerry.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I HAD HIS MOTIVES right this time, and no mistake. Even so, I tried to tell myself there was no cause for alarm. He couldn’t get at Kerry as quickly and easily as he’d gotten at Melanie Ann—not tonight, he couldn’t. It was possible that he’d found out we were married recently, even that we still lived apart, but there was no way he could know she and I planned to be away together this weekend. Or where. No way—

  One way.

  Christ! One way!

  I couldn’t remember Tamara Corbin’s telephone number. Had to look it up in my address book, fumbling through the pages with fingers that had gone fat and clumsy. “Be home,” I muttered aloud, “be home.” And she was.

  “Where you calling from?” Surprise in her voice; I was the last person she’d expected to hear from tonight. “Cazadero?”

  “No. Never mind that. I saw the printout you left on my desk this afternoon—two calls. That all, or was there a third—man asking for me or about me?”

  “Yeah, around four. A Mr. Johnson.”

  I didn’t know anybody named Johnson. “You tell him I was in Cazadero?”

  “Well, that’s where you said you’d be. And he said he needed to talk to you right away, it was real important. That’s why I didn’t put his call on the printout. I figured he—”

  “Did you tell him my wife was there with me?”

  “On your honeymoon, right.”

  “Give him the address?”

  “Man, you sound strung out. What—”

  “Did you give him the address?”

  “Hey, if I shouldn’t have I’m sorry. But you said it was all right to—”

  I threw the receiver down, ran for the door and the car. The orange-haired woman shouted something behind me; I paid no attention. Outside, sirens pierced the night, close now on Highway 1. . . . Hurry, get the hell away from here before the police show up. I burned rubber making a U-turn and skidding out of the lot. The signal was against me at the Duvall intersection with 1, but that was all right because it gave me time to look up the number of the Cazadero house, jab it out on the cellular phone.

  The signal changed as I hit the last digit—and at the same time an ambulance and a trailing police car surged into view heading south on 1, their flasher lights throwing bloody shadows across the billows of fog. I didn’t wait for them to make the turn into Duvall Road; I accelerated across the intersection with the phone receiver tight against my ear.

  Ring, ring, ring, ring . . . nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

  No answer.

  Don’t panic, I thought. It’s not Chehalis, he hasn’t had anywhere near enough time to get from here to Cazadero, no matter how fast he drives. Maybe she’s in the bathroom. Or she went out for a walk or—Kerry, goddamn it, come on, come on, get in there and pick up the phone!

  Ten more empty rings, until the circuit burrings seemed as loud as bells going off inside my head. Reluctantly I disconnected. Give it five minutes, then try again. She’ll be there by then. She’ll be there.

  I caught another red light on the north end of town and used this one to call DeFalco’s number. Nancy answered, but he was right there, so I didn’t have to wait. I told him what had happened tonight and why, and of the danger to Kerry—clipped sentences, talking through two attempts to interrupt. When I finally did let him speak he sounded shaken.

  “Have you called the law yet?”

  “No. It’ll take more explaining than it just did to you and I don’t want to tie up my phone. You do it, Joe. Talley or Butterfield in Los Gatos, the FBI, too, if that’s what it takes to alert the highway patrol and the Sonoma County sheriff.”

  “I’ll make damn sure they understand the urgency. What’s the address of the Cazadero house?”

  “Fifty-nine hundred Austin Creek Road.”

  “Is that where you’ll be?”

  “Only if I can’t reach Kerry.”

  “You’ll reach her. Call me back after you do. One quick question: The girl, Melanie . . . she’ll be all right?”

  “She’ll live.”

  “His own daughter . . . how could a man do that to his own daughter?” He didn’t want an answer. He said immediately, “I hope he tries to resist arrest. I hope they blow his fucking head off.”

  But I didn’t. I kept seeing Melanie lying there, kept hearing the sounds she’d made, and I wanted him to suffer. I wanted Stephen Chehalis to suffer every torture and torment of the damned, alive as well as dead.

  As soon as I disconnected I called Cazadero again. And Kerry still didn’t answer. For God’s sake, where are you?

  It took me less than twenty minutes to weave my way across the western rim of the city and onto the Golden Gate Bridge; it seemed like an hour. I was nearly wild by then. Three more calls at five-minute intervals—three more no answers. Time was growing short. Between sixty and ninety minutes since Chehalis had finished abusing Melanie and left the Surf and Sand Motel . . . still not enough time for him to reach Cazadero, a two-ho
ur drive from Pacifica unless you had phenomenal luck with traffic, and even then you couldn’t do it in less than an hour and forty-five minutes. Roughly half an hour of leeway left, and that was stretching it. Fifteen minutes, then. No more than fifteen minutes . . .

  Halfway across the bridge I tried the number again. No answer. Up Waldo Grade, through the tunnel, down the north side of the hill past Sausalito and across Richardson’s Bay. Once more I tapped the redial button on the receiver. And once more the line brred emptily.

  Bitter taste in my mouth, the taste of guilt. My fault. All of this, my fault. Maybe I couldn’t have prevented the attack on Melanie by calling the Pacifica police, but I’d sure as hell set it up by opening my mouth to Chehalis. And I’d just as effectively set Kerry up by telling Tamara Corbin it was all right to give out the address of the Cazadero house. Stupid. Stupid and careless. If he got his hands on Kerry too . . .

  San Rafael. Phone, redial button, circuit noises. Five, six, seven, eight—

  Click, and her voice said a little breathlessly, “Hello?”

  The feeling of relief that surged through me was as intense as orgasm. “Where the hell have you been!”

  “... Well, hello to you too! Excuse me while I go pick up my bitten-off head.”

  Less harshly: “Where have you been? I’ve been calling for thirty minutes.”

  “Out at the grocery store. I started to build a fire and there wasn’t a match—”

  “Kerry—”

  “—in the house. And where are you? I left you a note, I thought you’d be here by now—”

  “Kerry, for God’s sake, listen to me. And do what I tell you, no arguments. Get out of there right now, the instant we hang up. Drive to Monte Rio, the River Inn—remember? We had dinner there once.”

  “I remember.” Her tone had changed, become as intense as mine. “What’s happened? Why do I—?”