Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini

  There were at least four shots and at least one bullet struck the deputy. I heard him cry out, a sound like a bird being mauled by a cat, brief and shrill above the staccato banging of Chehalis’s handgun. None of the other slugs came near me as I rolled and kept on rolling until I was behind the cruiser. I levered up instantly, ran to the front bumper, flattened out on the ground there with the .38 aimed toward the house corner.

  But there was nothing for me to shoot at.

  Chehalis was gone. As suddenly as he’d appeared, he’d vanished again into the dark.

  Chapter Twenty

  I SHOVED UP ON ONE KNEE, straining to hear. Faint crunching sounds carried from the creek bed: he was stumbling across rocks down there. I stood and ran around behind the cruiser instead of across in front of it, to avoid spotlighting myself in the headlight blaze; past the motionless figure of the deputy and over to the house. From the corner I could see into the creek bed, but just as far as the headlights and house lights reached. All of that limited expanse was barren. I could still hear him on the rocks, to the north somewhere; the darkness in that direction was subterranean. Tree shapes were all I could make out, their upper trunks and branches in silhouette against the sky. The creek and the far bank and Chehalis were completely hidden.

  My first impulse was to rush down onto the streambed and give chase. Fool’s errand: I couldn’t find him or Kerry by blundering around blindly. Instead I pivoted and ran back to the cars.

  The deputy was still alive: twitching a little now, moaning softly. I hesitated, then stepped around him and leaned in through the open door of his cruiser. There was a pump-action shotgun hooked upright against the dash; I looked at it but left it where it was. Too bulky and too ineffective in the dark. Next to the pump was the thing I was after—a powerful six-cell flashlight. I dragged that loose and backed out and started away with it.

  Another moan from the deputy brought me up short. I glanced at him, struggling with myself, and then swung back and squatted and put the flash on him briefly. Shot once, in the back just above the right kidney. He’d lost a lot of blood already, the bright arterial kind. I straightened again, thinking frantically of Kerry, of Chehalis. But I couldn’t just leave a wounded kid to drain his life into the dirt....

  One second I was standing over him with my mind in turmoil; the next I was back inside the cruiser, yanking the radio mike off the dash, thumbing the switch. What did the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department use, 9-Code or 10-Code? I remembered the 10-Codes for Man Down and Officer in Trouble, but the 9’s wouldn’t come. Hell with it. When the dispatcher’s voice acknowledged I said, “Code Three, Code Three,” which in both 9 and 10 meant Emergency—Use Red Lights and Siren. Then: “Officer shot, repeat, officer shot, ambulance and back-up units to fifty-nine hundred Austin Creek Road, off Cazadero Highway.” I repeated the address, released the switch, and dropped the mike on the seat. The dispatcher’s voice squawked at me but I didn’t listen to it. Now I was running for the creek.

  As soon as I reached the bank’s edge, I paused to listen. I couldn’t hear Chehalis any longer; either he was off the rocky bed or too far away for his sounds to carry.

  I said, “Shit!” under my breath and pocketed the gun and flashlight so I could scramble down the bank, using tree roots and clumps of fern to maintain balance. At the bottom there was a section of brush, deadfall limbs, root-tangled earth. I fought my way through that to where the rocks began, the limbs tearing at my clothing and opening a gash in one shin. But I couldn’t put the torch on until I knew where he was: it would pinpoint me and give him a target to shoot at.

  The creek-bed rocks were not pebbles; most were large, the size of baseballs, and packed loosely together. Walking on them was difficult enough in daylight. In the dark you couldn’t see clearly where you were putting your feet and so you couldn’t run or even trot. Come down wrong on one of the bigger stones and you’d turn or break an ankle. I plowed ahead at a retarded pace, stopping every few feet to strain my ears. Still nothing but the thin, labored plaint of my own breathing.

  I’d gone maybe forty yards when a car came whizzing along the Cazadero Highway, on the high ground to my left. It was traveling north with its high beams on. Ahead on that side, the road ran so close to the edge that there were no redwoods and only a few scrub pines between it and the sharp-sloping bank. The beams splashed over and through the pines as the car passed, at just enough of a downslanted angle to briefly illuminate a section of the creek bed seventy or eighty yards from where I was. At that point the stream forked for a short distance, flowing around a miniature island about ten feet wide. Low shrubs and tufts of grass grew on the island; part of a deadfall log was canted across its upper end. And near the log—

  Chehalis, bent at the waist, moving north in a lurching gait.

  I wanted to run, made myself stretch my legs out in a power walk instead. At that I stumbled twice, nearly fell. But I was sure I was covering more ground than he was, and the important thing now was that I had him located. Get close enough to spotlight and blind him with the torch, that was all I had to do. It would be like shooting a jacklit animal.

  But I wouldn’t kill him. Not yet, not until I found out what he’d done with Kerry . . .

  I was at the creek now. I heard it gurgling, thought it was still a little ways off and then stepped into it. Shallow, icy, no more than a foot deep here. I veered off from it—and I could hear him again, not far away and at an angle to my right, back on the stones. Crunch, crunch, and then a low, painful grunt as if he’d made a misstep and hurt himself. Fall down and break an ankle, you son of a bitch. But he didn’t. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

  Where was he headed? To where Kerry was? To find a neighboring house where he could steal a car? One thing he wasn’t doing was doubling around to pick up his own set of wheels. The deputy’s cruiser was blocking his car as effectively as he’d blocked Kerry’s, something he must have seen when he came out shooting.

  Another grunt, louder this time, almost a moan. Maybe he had hurt himself at some point. That lurching gait . . . the way a man moves when he’s in pain. I chanced a little quicker pace, no longer bothering to step lightly: I didn’t care anymore if he knew I was behind him. Even with the noise I was making I could hear his steps, and there was no change in their cadence. Same plodding crunch, crunch.

  Couldn’t be much more than thirty yards separating us. Put the light on him when I’d cut that distance in half and I would be sure of an accurate shot with the .38. I extended the torch, held it ready with my thumb on the switch.

  A mass of something loomed out of the blackness directly in front of me, blocking my way. I saw it just in time to keep from falling over it, but not in time to avoid kicking a stone that rattled metallically against its surface. The sound carried and I sucked in breath, stood poised for a second. Crunch, crunch, crunch. I released the breath. If he’d heard the rattle, it hadn’t alerted him.

  The thing on the rocks was long and thigh-high. I brushed against it, felt thin ridged metal, and identified it: discarded section of drain pipe, maybe three feet in diameter. As I felt my way along it, another car sped by on Cazadero Highway, this one heading south. The sweep of its lights penetrated just far enough down here to show me where the end of the pipe was—and where Chehalis was.

  Thirty yards between us, all right, him still shambling in the same dogged gait. I half-ran around the pipe, got myself locked in on him again. Twice in the next minute he let out pained sounds that had a dazed ring to them, made me think that he might be hurt enough to be disoriented. A dozen more steps, and the rasp of his breathing became audible: labored, wheezy. Just a little farther . . .

  A loose stone slid under my foot; I did an awkward little two-step, managed to stay upright. Foolish to wait any longer and risk an injury, risk him getting away. I thumbed the switch on the six-cell.

  After the darkness, the sudden tracer of light was dazzling. I missed him with it at first: rocks, another cutbank, and high ground
rising a few yards ahead. I swung the beam hard right—and there he was, twenty yards away, turning toward me with his left arm flung up to shield his eyes, his right hand full of a weapon that had the shape of a Luger. Grimace on his mouth and the whole left side of his face streaked with blood from a temple wound.

  He was trying to bring the Luger to bear on the light when I shot him.

  Clean, accurate shot: the round took him in the right leg, just above the knee, and put him down in a hurry. He didn’t make a sound. He hit the rocks on his right forearm and the impact jarred the Luger loose. He flopped half-over on his back, jerked and flopped toward the Luger again; looked for it one-eyed because the other was blind with blood. I was at his side by then and I kicked it away before his scrabbling fingers touched it.

  Losing the weapon and pain that was double-edged now took the fight out of him. He rolled onto his back and lay there breathing hard. I stood over him, aimed the light straight down into his face. The glare was yet another source of pain; he lifted an arm to shut it out.

  “You,” he said, as if it were an epithet. “You, you.”

  “Where is she, Chehalis?” The voice did not sound like mine; it was congested with dry phlegm and fury. “What’d you do to her?”

  “You. Fuck you.”

  “Where is she, you miserable sack of garbage? Tell me where she is or I’ll empty this gun into you—both kneecaps, both elbows, the last one point blank in the crotch. I mean it, what did you do with her?”

  “Nothing.”

  Shaking again, inside and out. “Where is she?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Goddamn you, if you’ve hurt her—”

  “Hurt me, the bitch.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Almost tore my head off.”

  “Hit you with something? When?”

  “Bitch ...”

  “Call her that one more time and I’ll smash your teeth in. What happened after she hit you?”

  “Ran.”

  “And you chased her, caught her.”

  “No. Couldn’t find her.”

  I leaned down and yelled in his face, “You’re lying! You got five seconds to tell me what you did with her!”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Four, three, two—”

  I was too close to him and I’d misjudged his lack of resistance. He levered his upper body off the rocks, swiped at my head with force but not enough swiftness. I jerked out of the way in time. His fist struck the flashlight and knocked it, spinning whorls of light, out of my grasp. But that was all right—that was just what I wanted, because it gave me an excuse to hit him—all along I’d been aching for an excuse to hit him. I clubbed the side of his head with the flat of the .38, the same spot where Kerry had somehow opened the bleeding gash. He bellowed, flailed wildly at me with those hands that had given so much pain to so many.

  I threw the gun away behind me—I didn’t need a weapon anymore—and dropped down on top of him. I could see him all right, in black-and-white shadow like a photographic negative, because the torch was still burning where it had landed, its lens angled in our direction. He punched me twice, blows that didn’t hurt; he didn’t have much strength left. I popped him once in the eye, once on the cheekbone. The last shot stiffened him, collapsed his arms. I hit him again, a less solid blow, and then I got my hands on his neck and squeezed, the way he’d squeezed the necks of Melanie Aldrich and his other victims, and bounced his head on the stones, and squeezed, and squeezed, and it was as if my head were bulging, too, from the pressure, nearing a bursting point. The black-and-white image of him faded, began to turn red as though I were seeing it through a haze of blood—

  Something struck me on the back, hard.

  Again.

  Something clawed and tugged at my arms.

  Again.

  Dim thought that it must be Chehalis ... and I squeezed harder, squeezed—

  Another blow on my back. More clawing at my arms. And a voice, far off, crying something I couldn’t understand.

  —and squeezed—

  Crying something that had my name in it.

  —and squeezed—

  Pummeling, clawing, and the voice grew louder and then seemed to burst through the swelling, erupt in my ears, shatter the red haze as if it were glass.

  “Stop it, stop it, you’re killing him!”

  Kerry.

  Standing close, alternately hitting me with her fists and working desperately to tear my hands from Chehalis’s throat. Screaming, “Don’t kill him, for God’s sake, stop it!”

  It was like electric-shock therapy: lost and crazy one moment, rational again the next. I let go of him. Reared up and stared at my hands and then scrambled off his inert body. Knelt weak and panting, racked with tremors of a different kind now, laboring to pull my thoughts together.

  The black-and-white image of Kerry backed off to where the flashlight lay, picked it up, turned it first on me and then on Chehalis. He lay unmoving, arms and legs splayed out; the bruises on his throat were livid in the white glare. Dead? Kerry kept the light on him—and his chest heaved, heaved again. A sound came out of him that wasn’t a whimper or a moan or a cry, yet might have been all of them together; a sound that in my ears was almost exactly like the ones Melanie Aldrich had been making when I found her.

  Relief brought a hissing sigh out of Kerry. She shifted the torch beam to the stones where I knelt, sank to her knees in the puddle of light it made and then laid the torch down and wrapped her arms around me. We clung to each other like a pair of supplicants. Not long—a minute or so, until my pulse rate slowed and the trembling ceased and I could drag in the cool night air without it feeling hot in my lungs. I held her away from me then, just far enough so I could look into her shadowed face.

  “Thank God you’re all right. He didn’t hurt you?”

  “No,” she said. “Just bruises and scratches. You okay?”

  “Now I am.”

  “I was so afraid you’d kill him, that I couldn’t stop you in time.”

  “I thought he’d hurt you, raped you like the others.”

  “He would have.” I felt her shudder. “If I hadn’t got hold of a piece of firewood while he was trying to tear my clothes off.”

  “You hit him and ran out here?”

  “He had my car blocked. And it wouldn’t start before, the ignition’s been acting up—that’s why I was still here when he came, ten minutes after you called. I almost wet myself when I realized who he was.”

  “Kerry, I’m so sorry, this is all my fault—”

  “Hush. Nobody’s fault but his.”

  “Why didn’t you run for a neighbor’s?”

  “No time. He staggered out of the house right behind me, he’d have caught me if I’d run for the road. So much darker down here . . . all I could think was to hide.”

  “Where? Where’d you come from just now?”

  “Back a little ways. There’s a piece of hollow metal pipe, big enough for somebody my size to crawl into.”

  “Drain pipe,” I said. “I almost stumbled into it in the dark. You were right there and I walked away from you.”

  “I heard you—I thought it was him. He kept stumbling around, hunting for me. Then I heard shots ... and another shot close by. I was too petrified to move until I heard you talking to him.”

  “That sock you gave him scrambled his brains. He stumbled back to the house and opened fire on me and a county deputy. The deputy wasn’t as lucky as I was.”

  She shuddered again. “Dead?”

  “Not when I left him. He will be if he doesn’t get medical attention soon.”

  “Maybe there’s something we can do for him.” I nodded, and we helped each other up. Then she cocked her head and said, “Listen. Sirens.”

  I heard them, too, a faint rising wail somewhere south on Cazadero Highway. But the last thing I listened to before we started away was Chehalis making those terrible hurt noises. I was glad Kerry had prevented me from c
hoking the life out of him; as much as I hated him for what he’d done to her, to Melanie Aldrich, to his wife, to all those other women, I did not want his blood on my hands—no more blood on my hands. But I didn’t mind hearing those sounds. Nor did I mind the fact that I’d caused them.

  They were the sounds of retribution. They were the sounds of justice.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  EXCEPT FOR GULLS AND SANDPIPERS, Kerry and I had the beach to ourselves. It was a wide white-sand beach, part of the miles-long stretch along Monterey Bay between Watsonville and Monterey. There were dunes, and private and rental cottages and condos set back behind them, and far to the north was a cluster of surf fishermen. Here, though, at seven o’clock on a Friday morning, there was just us. Bundled against a pale early sun without warmth and a chill sea wind, walking along on the wet sand at surf’s edge, holding hands when Kerry wasn’t rummaging around in piles of kelp in a vain hunt for perfect sand dollars.

  We’d been here two days now and we had two more to go before we returned to the city. Our honeymoon at last, five days instead of three, a cottage on Monterey Bay instead of a house on Austin Creek in the redwoods. We’d wanted something totally different, after what had happened at Cazadero, and this had been the right choice. I hadn’t quite managed to relax yet, but I was getting there. Kerry, who is more adaptable than me, seemed to be utterly at ease two hours after our arrival.

  The previous couple of weeks had not been good. We’d spent too much time in police stations and interview sessions, in talking to media people and in dodging them. Joe DeFalco had not only broken the story in a big way, he’d used me as its centerpiece. Out of gratitude, as he claimed, or more likely because the facts, in particular the finale in Cazadero, made for sensational copy. The result was not only a monkey-see, monkey-do media blitz, but a flurry of calls and visits from clients, would-be clients, and flat-out cranks who wanted me to investigate wives, husbands, in-laws, or neighbors they suspected of being murderers, dope dealers, and in one case, an agent of an extraterrestrial government. When I complained to Tamara Corbin, who had been a considerable help in handling calls and routine business, she’d grinned and said, “Mr. Hero, that’s the price of fame.” Mr. Hero. Another price I had to pay.