Bill Pronzini: Shackles

But there was one thing I should have thought about; I realized that when I reached Deer Run. The place had an eerie look at this hour of the morning, everything still and empty. The only lights anywhere were nightlights inside Mary Alice’s general store. The through road and the ones that branched off it were all clear, shiny in the moonlight like bands of black silk loosely arranged among the hill folds. As with the terrain below, what had been mostly unbroken snowfields just last Sunday now showed ragged black at the edges, as if with some encroaching fungus, and spotted black in low places that could be reached by both the wind and the sun.

It was the roads that made me think of the access lane to the cabin. Last week it had been choked with snow. What was it like now? And how would Brit travel it-on foot or in his car?

I made the turn onto Indian Hill Road, braked, cut the headlights but not the engine. If the access road was still packed with snow, and he wanted to go up by car, he would have to stop and put chains on the rear tires; and if he wanted to go up by foot he would have to use snowshoes. Even if the snowpack had thawed enough so that the road was passable without either chains or snowshoes, traversing it would be slow work. So no matter how he did it, it would take time-probably more time than I had allowed him so far. If I could help it I did not want him to see me coming before he got to the cabin.

I made myself sit there, fidgeting, for ten minutes. I had intended to take a full fifteen but the stress was getting to me again, bunching muscles, putting the twitch back in my hands. Without even making a conscious choice I put the transmission in gear and flicked on the headlights and went on up Indian Hill Road.

Its surface stayed clear and dry all the way up. There was evidence of thaw on the access lanes to other cabins in the area, including the one to the Carder A-frame. All the visible cabins I passed were dark; the only illumination came from the Toyota’s headlamps probing the road ahead, the moon glinting off stretches of open snow.

When I climbed to where the tree-clad hillside walled the road on my right I slowed to twenty and rolled my window down for a better look at the snowfield that was opening up on the left. I saw the Mercury as soon as I came around the last bend below the access lane to the Lanier cabin. He had pulled it into the lane by ten feet or so and it sat there dark. If I had seen any sign of him on the road or anywhere else in the vicinity I would have driven on past and out of sight above-just a local resident coming home late-and then waited another few minutes before doubling back. But there was no sign of him.

I eased over behind the Mercury, stopped at an angle that blocked it off from Indian Hill Road. The thaw had had its effect here, too: Parts of the lane’s surface were visible and the skin of snow on the rest looked to be no more than eight to twelve inches deep. I could also see that he’d gone along it on foot, without snowshoes; in the moonshine his tracks in what was left of the snowpack were clearly outlined.

I shut off engine and headlamps, got out of the car. The wind made a thin, preternatural murmur as it blew across the meadow, but it carried no other sounds with it. I buttoned the bush jacket to my throat, slid my hands into the pockets and gripped the butt of the.22, and tramped ahead along the lane.

The footing was slick in places and I had to move at a retarded pace. But that was all right because he would have had to do the same thing. Twice on the climb to the top of the first hill I blundered into pockets of deeper snow, but I got out of them again without doing any damage to myself. The cold wind slapped at my ears and cheeks, numbed them a little; but it also braced me, kept me alert and in control for what lay ahead.

Near the crest I slogged over to one of the spruce trees and went up the rest of the way in its shadow, to keep from skylining myself in the moonlight. But I needn’t have bothered. I could see all the way to the cabin from there and Brit wasn’t in sight. His tracks went right up near it on the left, then vanished among the trees. He must be inside by now-but the cabin was still dark. Good. My timing had been just right. He hadn’t found out yet that I was gone. When he did he was certain to put the floor lamp on to investigate.

I moved downslope, hurrying as much as I could. I was halfway up to the cabin on the other side when the light went on; I could see the glow obliquely through the shutters on the front window, more clearly where it spilled out across the snow from the side window. I started to draw the.22, remembered how cold can numb bare fingers in a short space of time, stick the flesh to metal surfaces, and let it stay where it was.

Snow crunched under my boots as I moved up the last stretch of ground to the cabin, but the wind’s murmurings were loud enough to cover those sounds. The ground directly in front of the cabin door had been thawed and wind-scoured enough so that I didn’t have to walk on snow at all to get to it. I put my left hand on the latch and stood listening: the wind, little unidentifiable noises from inside, the pounding of blood in my ears. The door should be unlocked; I had left it that way and he wouldn’t have had any reason to lock it. I took the gun out, drew and held a breath. And opened the door and went on through in a shooter’s crouch, both arms out and both hands on the.22.

“Hello, Brit,” I said.

He was over near the shelves that contained the remaining few provisions. He whirled, froze with one hand up in an unintentional mockery of a greeting. But I couldn’t see him clearly enough yet to identify him. The lamp was in front and to one side of him so that his face was shadowed under the bill of his cap. Shadows crouched everywhere in the room-along the fireplace, in the open doorways, in the corners, among the trappings of what had been my prison cell. Like phantoms. Like memory ghosts screaming in voices just beyond the range of hearing.

“You!”

“Keep your hands where I can see them. If you move you’re a dead man.” The gun was clenched so tight in my right hand I could feel its surfaces cutting into finger pads and palm. Just the slightest additional pressure on the trigger…

But he didn’t move; he stood rigid, staring at me. “You can’t have got free. Goddamn you, you can’t have!”

“But I did.”

“How? How?”

“Turn around, lean against the wall with your feet spread.”

He didn’t obey. He just kept staring at me out of the shadows that hid his face.

“Do what I told you. Now.”

Another five seconds of frozen defiance-and then the rigidity left him all at once and he went slack, seemed almost to shrink an inch or two. In a duller, more controlled voice he said, “I’m not armed.”

“Face the wall. Do it!”

He did it. I used my left hand to shut the door, then went over to him and kicked his legs back and put the.22’s muzzle against the back of his neck. I took my finger off the trigger entirely while I patted him down one-handed; I did not trust myself to leave it there.

He hadn’t been lying: He was unarmed. I backed off from him, around on the other side of the cot. “All right,” I said then. “Come over here and sit down in the light where I can see you.”

He did that, too, without resistance. And for the first time I stood looking into the face of the enemy.

I knew him, of course, yet it was several seconds before I recognized him. He was thinner than I remembered, his face gaunt, the pale, ascetic features pinched and stamped with changes-ravages, maybe. His eyes were those of a fanatic: wide, shiny, savage with hate.

The look of him was a surprise, but a bigger one was his identity. For more than a week I had been laboring under a complete misapprehension: He had never had anything to do with Jackie Timmons, and his revenge against me had nothing to do with Jackie Timmons either. Our paths had first crossed less than six years ago. I had never once considered him for that reason, and because the circumstances did not seem to warrant such a maniacal vengeance, and because the number thirteen had nothing to do with those circumstances. And yet there had been clues, a string of little clues over the past three days that should have told me the truth.