Bill Pronzini: Shackles

Kerry, I thought.

No, I thought, no, not yet.

I put on my sport jacket and overcoat-I had taken them off last night because it had been warm enough to sleep without them-and then went around the card table, dragging my chain like a fat ghost, and plugged in the two-burner hot plate. Took the coffee pot into the bathroom and filled it with water and brought it back out and put it on the stove. Hunted through the canned goods, settled on beef stew. Opened the can, dumped the stew into the saucepan, put the saucepan on the other burner. Spooned a little coffee into the enameled mug, then added a little more because this was my first morning, I didn’t need to worry about conserving it just yet. Set out the one bowl and a plastic fork and spoon, opened a package of saltines, opened another package of paper napkins. Did all of that slowly, carefully, establishing a routine.

While I waited for the water to boil and the stew to heat, I picked up the radio and checked to see if he’d put in batteries. He had; the packet in the cardboard carton was a spare set. I flipped the On switch and listened to a steady spewing of static. It was the same from one end of the dial to the other-heavy static, with here and there a murmur of voices or music that I couldn’t distinguish. I carried the radio to the window, held it up to the glass, and fiddled with the dial again. Same thing. But the wind was up, whipping and bending the nearby trees, and it was snowing pretty heavily. Maybe I could tune in a station once the storm eased, or when the weather improved.

And maybe I couldn’t. It might be impossible to pick up anything from here with an ordinary radio. It might be that this portable was just another little torture device in his war of nerves…

The smell of the stew cooking made my stomach clench again, my mouth water. But it wasn’t appetite; it was the need to fill a cavity. I emptied the stew into the bowl, added a handful of crushed crackers, made the coffee, took cup and bowl around to the cot and ate sitting down. The stew was tasteless but I managed to get all of it down. The coffee was a handle on normalcy, part of the same morning habit pattern that had ruled most of my adult life-something that stirred me into facing up to a day’s offerings, even the burnt ones.

So I let myself think of Kerry then-not for the first time since I’d been here, but for the first time with any concentration. Was she all right? Yes. He wouldn’t bother her; he hadn’t lied to me about that. Believe it. His hatred was for me , his punishment for whatever it was he thought I’d done to him strictly personal and private. Just him and me. If he’d wanted to include Kerry he could have picked up both of us Friday night when we’d returned to her place. There hadn’t been many people on the street at that hour, either; he could have pulled off a double snatch without much trouble. But instead he’d waited for me to come out alone.

Just him and me.

But she would know by now that something had happened to me. She would have at least suspected it sometime yesterday, when I didn’t call as I’d promised, or even earlier if she’d noticed that my car was still parked near her building. She’d have gone to my flat, and when she’d found no sign of me there she would have gotten in touch with Eberhardt. By now they had probably contacted one of Eberhardt’s cop friends at the Hall of Justice. But in California you have to be unaccounted for for seventy-two hours before a missing persons report can be filed; it would be Tuesday before there was an official investigation.

Kerry would be frantic by then. Eberhardt, too, though he wouldn’t let anybody know it. It would only get worse for them as the days passed, as the investigative wheels spun and spun and churned up nothing at all. And those wheels would churn up nothing… unless someone had seen me abducted, written down the license number of the whisperer’s car, and the police were able to track him down and force him to reveal what he’d done with me. Not much chance of that, was there? No. So slim a chance it wasn’t even worth considering.

I could feel Kerry’s pain, Eberhardt’s pain, because it was the same kind that was inside me. And the longer I was chained up here, the more that pain would increase. And what if I died here in three or four months, according to plan? I have a burial spot all picked out for you. And you mustn’t worry-I’ll dig your grave deep so the animals won’t disturb you . My remains would never be found, nor any trace of what had happened to me. Vanished into thin air, vanished as completely and mysteriously as Ambrose Bierce and Judge Crater and Jimmy Hoffa. Poof! Gone. Missing and presumed dead-that would be the official nonverdict. But Kerry and Eberhardt would never know for sure. And they would wonder and they would hurt, at least a little, for the rest of their lives…

No. Dangerous territory. Off limits, back off. Minute to minute, remember? Hour to hour, day to day, don’t look ahead, don’t speculate, don’t let your imagination run away with you. Kerry’s a big girl; she’ll be fine. And you think Eberhardt hasn’t handled worse than this? They’ll come out of it all right. Just make sure you do too.

I got on my feet, went into the bathroom and washed out the soup bowl and then brought it back out and set it on top of the bookshelf. Made another cup of coffee, much weaker this time-more for warmth than anything else. Without the heater on, it was chilly in here; I could almost feel the bite of the wind that kept snapping and howling at the cabin walls outside. I moved around to the cot, picked up one of the blankets and folded it around my body.

As I stood sipping my coffee, my gaze came to rest on the calendar that lay open on the card table. Open to this week, the first week in December. With my free hand I flipped through some of the pages. One of those two-year calendar/daybook things, for this year and next. Today was… what? Sunday? Sunday, December 6. The calendar was there because he wanted me to know what day it was, to count how many had gone by and how many lay ahead. But I could turn that knowledge into an advantage by using it to maintain my orientation, my sense of order and normalcy. One thing that would surely weaken your grip on sanity would be losing track of days of the week, dates, time itself. That would put you in a shadow world, a kind of deadly limbo, and it was a short fall from there into madness.

Using one of the pencils I drew an X through the box for Saturday, the fifth, my first day here, and another X through the box for today. This would become another part of my morning routine.

I started to put the pencil down. Didn’t do it because I found myself looking at the pads of yellow ruled paper-and remembering what he’d said yesterday, in his sly way, about my writing my memoirs. Well, maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. But not in the way he’d meant it. Suppose I made a record of what had happened to me since Friday night, every detail I could remember, every impression? It might help me figure out who he was, what his motive was.

It would keep me busy too, keep my mind occupied for long periods of time. And once it was done I could go on to something else-a sort of journal, a damning chronicle of my ordeal. Put down whatever came into my head. Make writing a daily activity, to go along with an exercise program and the routine I established. I had done enough client reports in my time; I had a pretty fair grasp of English. It wouldn’t be difficult work, and it was the kind I could lose myself in once I got started.

The idea energized me a little, enough so that I caught up one of the pads and sat down with it in my lap. And before long I began to write.