Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini

“No questions. And no dawdling-straight to the car, straight to Monte Rio. Call me on my car phone when you get to the inn. I’ll explain everything then. Hang up now. Go.”

  “On my way,” she said, and the line clicked again in my ear.

  I blew out a breath, a sound like wind in a tunnel, and leaned down to replace the receiver in the console unit. It nearly slipped out of my hand before I got it slotted. I hadn’t realized it before, but I was drenched in sweat.

  SHE DIDN’T CALL.

  Twenty minutes, thirty, forty . . . she didn’t call.

  It was six or seven miles from Austin Creek Road to Monte Rio; even at night, on a winding two-lane road, it shouldn’t have taken her more than twenty minutes to get to the River Inn. But the phone stayed silent. All the way to the Russian River resort area along Highway 116, it stayed silent.

  The reason did not have to be Chehalis. It did not have to have anything to do with Chehalis. A minor highway accident, a flat or a breakdown, and she was still trying to get to a phone

  ... that kind of thing always happens at the worst possible time, doesn’t it?

  Sure it does. Sure.

  She couldn’t have misheard what I’d said about calling; Kerry didn’t make mistakes like that, even under pressure. She’d heard me right or she’d have asked, to make certain. Couldn’t be, either, that state or county law had arrived before she left the house. If she was safe with highway patrolmen or sheriff’s deputies, she’d have called by now. No reason for them not to let her do that.

  Breakdown or flat, one or the other. Nothing more serious than that . . .

  But the panic rebuilt in me, and when she still hadn’t called by the time I reached Guerneville, I was wild with it again. Cold and feverish at the same time, a prickling on my skin as if it had sprouted stubble, everything so knotted up inside that even my bones felt tight; I had to keep swiping at my eyes to clear them of a gritty sweat. Another six miles to Monte Rio; and six or seven after that to 5900 Austin Creek Road, if I had to go that far. I fought the urge to drive even faster. I was doing twenty and twenty-five over the speed limit as it was, braking hard on the curves, passing any vehicle I surged up behind—reckless as hell on an unfamiliar two-lane county road on a moonless night. Any more speed and I was liable to wrap the car around a tree or put it into the river, and what good would I be to Kerry then?

  Traffic was light; that was one thing in my favor. The Russian River resort area is crowded in the summer, but after Labor Day some of the resorts close down, and with the year-round population relatively small, you can maintain a pace on an early-November week-night that would be impossible in July or August. I was through Guerneville and back up to speed in less than two minutes.

  The six miles to Monte Rio seemed to fly and crawl by in a confused time-jumble. I passed two more cars, neither of them a county or highway patrol cruiser. None of the cars I’d seen since turning onto the river highway had been official . . . and why not? Where the hell were they all?

  The River Inn’s blue neon sign swam up out of the night ahead. I slowed, yanked the wheel and slid off into the lot flanking the old two-story frame building. Five vehicles were slotted there; Kerry’s wasn’t among them. I drove around on the far side —two more unfamiliar cars—and then negotiated a fast U-turn, came back and swung onto the highway again.

  No point in checking inside the inn; she hadn’t been there, hadn’t made it this far. Still a chance I’d find her and her stalled car on the highway between Monte Rio and Austin Creek Road ... but I no longer believed in that explanation, if I ever really had. The house or somewhere near the house, unharmed or not, with the law present or not—that was where I’d find her. I felt it now with the same undercurrent of bleak inevitability you feel when you contemplate your own mortality.

  The house was where she’d been since my call.

  And where he’d been too. Still was, maybe.

  Chehalis.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE CAZADERO HIGHWAY was a crooked tunnel bored through the black wall of night. Towering redwoods flanked the twisty blacktop, their branches interweaving overhead to shut out the sky. Houses and rustic cabins bulked here and there among the trees on both sides, a few shedding pale light; but the road was empty, its surface unwinding like dull-gloss film under the glare of the car’s high beams. Twice I almost lost control on sharp curves, had to grind down on the brakes and drop the transmission into a lower gear and power out of each skid.

  Two miles, and still no sign of the law. At least one county or highway patrol cruiser should have reached the house by this time. But they better not have blundered in with flasher lights and sirens, better have been damn careful. Chehalis wouldn’t hesitate to use Kerry as a hostage. Wouldn’t hesitate to kill her either.

  Almost to the bridge now; less than a mile to the house. To the east, where Austin Creek ran in close to the highway, the scattered dwellings were all on the far bank. That was where the Broadnax house was, too, a short distance north of the bridge, on high ground at the bank’s edge. There were open spaces among the trees along here, revealing the span of the creek; light-spill from windows and outside globes struck glints off the shallow trickle of water, off mica particles in the rocks that formed broad stretches of creek bed.

  The sign for Austin Creek Road came up so abruptly that I nearly missed it. I braked hard, cut the wheel, managed to complete the turn without quite sideswiping the concrete bridge abutment. I slowed for the turn north on the far side. This section of Austin Creek Road was narrow and uneven, virtually one lane except for turnouts among the trees; I couldn’t do more than twenty-five. But it was less than a third of a mile to the belly turn around a huge bent-bole redwood that marked the south edge of Tom Broadnax’s property. Kerry had pointed out the tree the one time we’d been up here before.

  When the bow-shaped redwood appeared in the headlamps, I veered off onto a nearby turnout and shut down the engine and the lights. I tried to run as soon as I got out, but I’d been driving for so long, under such tension, that the muscles in my legs and upper body were constricted; the right leg cramped, then the left, then they both threatened to buckle. I hobbled across the road to the bent-bole tree and leaned on it, grimacing while I stretched and massaged out the knots. The night was cool, breezy, but not cold; that fact helped. On a chilly night the muscles would have stayed stiff much longer.

  The house was not visible from here because of a dense copse of trees and the configuration of the land, but I could make out a dim glow over that way. House lights, pale and stationary—no headlights or flashers. Absence of voices and other sounds too. I didn’t like that. It scared me even more.

  Two minutes and I could move all right; another two minutes wasted. The .38 was in my hand as I went along the road to where I could see the house. Two cars were drawn up on the parking area on the far side, where the house’s front entrance faced north. It was too dark to make them out clearly, but their size and shape and the way the larger was angled across behind the other was enough. The smaller one was Kerry’s Honda. The larger model looked to be a two-door of some solid light color: no way it could be a county sheriff or highway patrol cruiser. The drag-ass law hadn’t got here yet.

  That made the other car Chehalis’s.

  He had Kerry, all right. He’d had her for over an hour now.

  Blood pounded in my ears; there was a swelling pressure in my head, as if it were being pumped full of nitrogen gas. I had to stop myself from charging the house like a mad bull. I actually started to do that, took three or four running steps before I realized what I was doing and pulled up short. I sidestepped into tree shadow and leaned against crumbly bark to regain control, to look and listen.

  The house bulked large, a collection of juts and angles made of redwood logs and shakes that seemed to have been thrown up against the dark. Deck on the near side, extending from the front steps around to the rear; potted ferns lined the railing and turned my view of the front door oblique. T
he light came from two places: the farthest of the front windows, creek side, which would be the living room; and a faint glow somewhere at the rear, probably one of the bedrooms.

  Nothing stirred in the darkness outside, and if there was movement inside I couldn’t see or hear it. Night sounds: birds, insects. A distant hissing as a car passed on the highway beyond Austin Creek. The faint percussive notes of a piece of classical music playing in one of the neighboring homes—probably the nearest, a hundred and fifty yards uproad and on the far side. But not a whisper came from the house ahead.

  In a crouch I made my way through the patch of woods. The closer I got to the deck, the more carefully I watched where I stepped. Even small noises carry on a still night, and the ground was strewn with dry redwood needles, small branches, and twigs. A stack of cordwood six feet long and three feet wide, most of it covered with a tied-down piece of canvas, paralleled the forward half of the deck; I angled along there to the rear. The quickest way into the house was through the front door, but I did not want to breach it there unless I had to. I’d make noise—have to make noise if the door was locked—and if Chehalis had any warning, he’d stick a gun to Kerry’s head before I could throw down on him. If I could get in at the back, I’d have a better chance of surprising him.

  I crept around the rear corner. Another lighted rectangle appeared then—the window in the larger of the two bedrooms, creek side. No steps gave access to the deck here, but the ground was humped enough so you could stretch a hand up to the railing, a foot to the deck boards. I did those two things, slowly lifted myself and climbed over the railing.

  Outside and inside: stillness.

  The .38 slick in my fingers, I walked heel-and-toe to the wall and along it to the lighted bedroom window. A shade was pulled over the glass, but down only a little more than halfway. I held a breath, steeling myself, then leaned out and peered under the shade.

  Empty.

  Bed neatly made, furniture all in place, no signs of disturbance.

  I let the breath out, sleeved sweat off my face while I tucked the gun inside the waistband of my trousers. Then I ran fingers around the bottom edge of the window frame, took as much of a grip as I was able to on the sash, gave it enough upward pressure to find out if it would open. It wouldn’t. Locked or stuck tight.

  In the wall behind me were two other windows. The small one for the bathroom was the sliding type, open about an inch; but it was also screened on the inside, and too narrow for me to wiggle through anyway without making noise. I retreated to the other bedroom window. The sash on that one yielded a little when I lifted it. It also made a low squeak that froze me in place.

  Nothing happened inside.

  At the end of half a minute I tried the sash again, being even more careful. It came up another few inches, soundlessly. The curtain inside billowed in the night breeze but didn’t flap. I kept inching the window up until I had an opening I could bend my body through. Thirty seconds later, with only the faintest of scrapings as I crossed the sill, I was standing inside.

  The inner door opposite the window was ajar. A wedge of indirect light, probably from the living room, spread in across a bare-wood floor from the hallway beyond. The wedge thinned the darkness just enough to show me the way around the bed. At the door I widened the crack, craned my head out to check the hall. It and what I could see of the living room were deserted.

  Still nothing to hear. Why not?

  I cleaned more sweat off my face, out of my eyes, and stepped out into the corridor. At least two lamps were burning in the living room, both out of the range of my vision; the room was brightly lit. I went that way, in close to the rearmost wall. A floorboard creaked; I stood still. The heavy silence remained unbroken.

  Moving again. More of the living room opened up ahead, all of it empty. The drapes were drawn across the outer wall, most of which was made of glass. Everything looked all right in there, undisturbed—until I neared the end of the hall, and the part of the room fronting the native-stone fireplace became visible.

  Throw rug bunched up over the hearth. Sticks of cordwood spilled out of a wrought-iron carrier, fireplace tools upset and scattered. Table and magazine rack overturned, shattered remains of a crystal bowl . . .

  The room seemed to shimmer and distort for an instant, then to snap back into such sharp focus that it might have been klieg- instead of lamp-lit. I came out of the hall in a rush, the .38 at arm’s length and a cry locked down in my throat, and swept the muzzle right to left, left to right.

  Kerry wasn’t there.

  Chehalis wasn’t there.

  This room was empty too.

  I ran all the way to the front to make sure. Deserted. Short, rough struggle, the way it looked—but no blood, hair, tissue, or other residue of violent injury. I started across the lighted foyer past the front door, heading for the kitchen. The door was pushed to but not latched, but that wasn’t what halted me in mid-stride.

  Here was where the blood was.

  On the wall next to the door, smeared finger marks of it trailing down over the jamb. More streaks stained the knob, the latchplate. Clotting but still sticky wet, glistening darkly in the pale ceiling light: not much more than half an hour old.

  Kerry’s blood?

  I rushed into the kitchen, put the fluorescents on in there long enough to determine that nobody occupied it and that it was free of any more blood marks. The bathroom was empty, too, hadn’t been used for cleanup.

  Deserted house . . . as deserted as Chehalis’s house when I’d found the bloodstains there on Tuesday. Same reason? Killed Kerry, dragged her body off somewhere to bury it ... ?

  I rapped my chin with the gun butt, used the pain to drive the thought away. Go crazy if I let myself believe that she was dead.

  Back to the foyer. I shut off the ceiling globe, scraped the door open far enough so I could look out across the deck. As empty as the interior. Shadows, deepened by the massive redwoods, shrouded the two parked cars, lay ink-black over the rest of the packed-dirt yard. Motionless, all of them. Rustle of wind in the trees, distant murmur of classical music I’d heard earlier: no other sounds.

  Bent low, I eased out through the door, off to the right to keep the deck railing with its topping of potted ferns between me and the cars. Then I moved ahead to where the railing ended at the steps, knelt there to listen again. This time I thought I heard a stirring in the brush beyond the far corner, where the ground chopped off to the creek bank. My lips peeled away from my teeth: an involuntary rictus. The .38 was slick again in my hand. I shifted it to the other hand, dried the palm and fingers, took another tight grip.

  The stirring came another time, then turned slithery, then stopped altogether. Human or animal? I couldn’t tell. And it wasn’t repeated.

  A few strained seconds, and I heard something else: car engine, approaching on Austin Creek Road from the direction of the bridge. Approaching fast.

  I stared hard at the brushy cutbank where I’d heard the stirrings. The absence of moonlight and the immense trees made the darkness impenetrable; I couldn’t even distinguish one stationary shape from another.

  The car noise grew louder, close now. When I glanced toward the road I saw its lights probing erratically through the woods. Seconds later the car itself came sliding around the bent-bole redwood, yawing a little because of its speed, high beams slicing wedges out of the night. The driver knew where he was going: he must have slowed farther back to read numbers on the roadside mailboxes. Brake lights flashed; the bright headlamps arced in toward the house, washing the two parked cars with brilliant yellow and then fixing them in stark relief as the new-coer rocked to a stop.

  County law, and about damn time: markings on the door and an unlit strobe flasher on the roof. I shifted my gaze back to the cutbank. The cruiser’s headlights lit up some of the underbrush there, let me see partway across the rocky creek bed to where the stream ran. Still no sign of life out there. Whatever had been moving was either gone or hidden somewhere
below the cutbank.

  The cruiser’s door popped open and the driver emerged cautiously. Uniformed deputy, young, hand on the service revolver holstered at his hip. And alone; the interior dome light confirmed that. First response after all this time and it was a single deputy who looked nervous as hell and couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

  I had no choice but to reveal myself. He’d started toward the house and in another ten paces he would reach the steps; if he saw me crouched there with a weapon in my hand he was liable to begin shooting before I could explain myself. Gritting my teeth, I slid the gun into my jacket pocket and straightened slowly with my hands high in plain sight.

  Even so, I startled him and he fumbled his revolver free. I stood stock-still and identified myself. That wasn’t good enough for him; he made me repeat my name. Then he said loudly, “Come down here where I can get a better look at you.”

  I descended the steps, doing that slowly too. My voice cracked a little when I said, “The man we’re after, Stephen Chehalis, is around here somewhere. So is my wife. That’s his car there, and hers. He got here before she could get away and he may already have hurt her. There’s blood in the house.”

  “Jesus. Where is he? Where’s your wife?”

  “I don’t know. Where’s your backup?”

  “Bad accident on the highway above Jenner. I was on my way there from Bodega Bay when I got the call to divert here. It might be a while—”

  “We don’t have a while. He’s been here with her at least—behind you, look out!”

  His reaction time was poor; he didn’t entirely trust me yet, and my yell and sudden sideways lunge confused him. He never saw the bulky man-shape that had stepped out around the far corner of the house with one arm extended. His eyes were on me, and when I hit the ground still yelling and digging the .38 free of my pocket, he might have shot me if he’d had the time. But he didn’t have the time. He was backpedaling, trying to come to terms with what was happening, when Chehalis opened up on us.