Bill Pronzini: The Other Side Of Silence

“I don’t want any fucking food.”

“Your body needs the nourishment.”

“No.”

“I’ll force-feed you if I have to.”

She held out a little longer, but her eyes were on the bar the entire time. When she finally took it, it was with the same gesture of self-loathing. Her first few bites were nibbles, but the honey taste revived her hunger and she went at the bar the way she had at the water bottle, almost choking on the first big chunk she tried to swallow. He made her slow down, sip water after each bite.

“How do you feel now?” he asked when she was finished.

“Like I’m going to live, damn you.”

“We’ll stay here for a while, until you’re strong enough to walk.”

“Walk where?”

“My Jeep, over on the trail. Four hundred yards or so, over pretty rough terrain. I don’t want to have to carry you the whole way.”

“Then what?”

“You need medical attention. There’s an infirmary at Furnace Creek Ranch.”

“And after that, the psycho ward,” she said, but not as if she cared. “Where’s the nearest one?”

Fallon let that pass. “If you feel up to talking,” he said, “I’m a good listener.”

“Talk about what?”

“Why you did this to yourself.”

“Tried to kill myself, you mean.”

“All right. Why?”

“You read my note.”

“Pretty vague. Who’s Kevin?”

She turned her head away without answering.

He didn’t press her. Instead, he shifted around and lay back on his elbows, with his upper body in the lean-to’s shade. He was careful not to touch the woman.

It was another windless day, the near-noon stillness as complete as it had been the other morning in the Funerals. For a time nothing moved anywhere; then a chuckwalla lizard came scurrying up the bank of the wash, followed a few seconds later by a horned toad. It looked as though the toad was chasing the lizard, but like so many things in desert country, that was illusion. Toads and lizards weren’t natural enemies.

Before long, Casey stirred and asked if there was any more water. Her tone had changed; resignation flavored it now, as if she’d accepted, at least for the present, the burden of staying alive.

Fallon sat up, removed one of the remaining two full quarts from his pack. “Make this last until we’re ready to leave,” he said as he handed it to her. “It’s a long walk to the Jeep and we’ll have to share the last bottle.”

She drank less thirstily, lowered the bottle with it still two-thirds full. Good sign. Her body was responding, its movements stronger and giving her less pain.

He let her have another energy bar. She took it without argument, ate it slowly with sips of water. When it was gone, she lifted herself into a sitting position, her head not quite touching the slant of the blanket. She was a few inches over five feet, more sinew than flesh. Her relatively young age, and the kind of body she had and the fact that she’d taken care of it, explained her survival and the relative swiftness of her recovery.

She said, not looking at him, “I guess you might as well know.”

“Know what?”

“About Kevin. The rest of it.”

“If you want to tell me.”

“He’s my son. Kevin Andrew Spicer. He’s eight and a half years old.”

“Court Spicer your husband?”

“Ex-husband, and I hope his soul rots in hell.”

“So you hate him. Divorce does that to some people.”

“Hate doesn’t begin to describe what I feel for him.”

“What did he do to you?”

“He took Kevin.”

“You mean a custody battle?”

“Oh, yes, but I won that. I had full legal custody of my son.”

“Had?”

“Court kidnapped him,” Casey said. The words seemed to stick in her throat; she coughed again and swallowed heavily before she went on. “Four months ago, not long after the judgment. He had visitation rights, every other weekend. He picked Kevin up one Friday afternoon and never brought him back.”

“Where was this? San Diego?”

“Yes.”

“You still live there?”

“I don’t live anywhere anymore,” she said.

Fallon said, “You must have gone to the authorities.”

“The police, the FBI, a private detective I hired-nobody’s been able to find them.”

“How could they vanish so completely?”

“Money. Everything comes down to money.”

“Not everything.”

“Court claimed he was broke when I divorced him. All I got was custody and child support that he never paid.”

“But he wasn’t broke. Hidden assets?”

“I thought so, my lawyer thought so, but we couldn’t prove it.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“Musician. Second-rate musician.”

“Then where’d the hidden assets come from?”

“He had another income, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

Fallon said, “He must have wanted the boy pretty badly.”

“Not because he loves him. He did it to hurt me. He hates me. He can’t stand to lose money, property, people, any of his possessions.”

“He sounds unstable.”

“Unstable is a polite term for it.”

“Abusive?” Fallon asked. “You, your son?”

“The verbal kind. His rants caused Kevin to have more than one attack.”

“Attack?”

“He’s asthmatic. He needs medication… if he doesn’t get it and he has a serious attack, he could die.”

“Spicer wouldn’t let that happen, would he?”

“He’s capable of it. He’s capable of anything, any kind of viciousness.”

“Against his own son?”

She didn’t answer. She sat stiffly, squinting in the direction of Striped Butte, where the sun threw dazzling glints off its anamorphic conglomeration of limestone and other minerals.

“Banning,” Fallon said. “Who’s he?”

“The last straw.”

He waited, but she didn’t go on.

“What happened to your face? You didn’t get those cuts and bruises from the desert.”

The question made her wince. She said in a dry whisper, “I don’t want to talk anymore. My mouth hurts and my throat’s sore.”

“Drink some more water.”

She sucked from the bottle, then lapsed into a brooding silence.

Time passed. Fallon looked up at Manly Peak and the taller, hazy escarpments of Telescope Peak to the north. Some people found the Panamints oppressive. Bare monoliths of dark gray basalt and limestone like tombstones towering above a vast graveyard-mute testimony to the ancient Paiute legend of how they were formed, in an eons-long war among the gods. It was easy enough to imagine them that way, as the earthly remains of cosmic battles in which thunderbolts were hurled like spears, fire was summoned from the earth’s core, mountains melted and flowed into the Valley, massive stone blocks were ripped up and flung helter-skelter until they piled so high, new peaks were created.

But there was a stark beauty in them, too. And to Fallon, a sentinel-like quality-old and benevolent guardians, comforting in their size and age and austerity. They held his gaze while he sat there waiting and listening to the silence.

HE GREW AWARE OF heat rays against his hands where they rested flat on his thighs. The sun had reached and passed its zenith, was robbing the shelter of shade. If they didn’t leave soon, he would have to reset the position of the lean-to.

“How do you feel?” he asked Casey. “Strong enough to try walking?”

She was still resigned. “I can try,” she said.

“Stay where you are for a couple of minutes, while I get ready. I’ll work around you.”

He gathered and stowed the empty water bottles, took down the lean-to and stowed the stakes, strapped on the pack. When he helped Casey to her feet, she seemed able to stand all right without leaning on him. Carefully he put his sun hat on her head, easing it down to cover her sunburned forehead and scalp. Shook out the blanket, draped it over her head and shoulders so that her arms were covered, and showed her how to hold it in place under her chin. Then he slipped an arm around her thin body and they set out.