Bill Pronzini: The Other Side Of Silence

He swung the wheel, slewed the Jeep to a stop close to the car’s front bumper. He yanked the keys out of the ignition, unlocked the storage compartment. The Ruger was in there; so was his six-cell flashlight. He hesitated over the weapon, left it where it was, slammed the compartment shut, and flicked on the torch as he jumped out.

Above the lane you could see the starlit sky, but the crouching masses of palm crowns created a solid ceiling; in among the trees, except on the side where the flashlight continued to move in restless arcs, it was pitch-black. A faint breeze rustled and rattled in the fronds, carried the sound of a voice raised high and shrill-a woman’s voice, calling something he couldn’t quite make out.

The other car was a BMW, silver-gray, a twin to the one Vernon Young’s wife drove. Fallon ran around to the open driver’s door, threw light inside front and back. Empty. The keys still dangled from the ignition. On impulse he reached in for them, shoved them into his pocket.

The woman was still calling, louder, the shift and sway of the flash beam coming nearer. Now he could make out what she was shouting.

“Kevin! Where are you? Kevin! ”

Casey’s voice.

He aimed his flash, more powerful than hers, toward the sound. The nearby palm boles and the sandy ground around and between them leaped into stark relief. A few seconds later she appeared, running and stumbling in his direction, still crying the boy’s name in a voice that throbbed with the accents of terror.

She saw him, but at first only as an indistinguishable shape behind the six-cell. Now she was saying, as if to a stranger, “Help me, please… my son…” Then her light shifted, came up to wash over and then steady on him. He lowered his so she could see him clearly.

She staggered to a halt; the sharp intake of her breath was audible in the stillness. “Oh my God! Rick! Where’d you come from, how did you-”

“Never mind that now. What’s happened?”

She stood panting, poised as if to turn and run. He fixed her with the six-cell again. Her face was white, her eyes like black holes thumb-punched in powdered dough. “Kevin,” she said then. “He… ran away. He’s out here somewhere, hiding…”

“Why? Why did he run away?”

Mutely she rolled her head from side to side.

“You’re sure he’s out here?”

“Yes! I saw him, that’s why I got out of the car. Oh God, Rick, help me find him! Please!”

Fallon pivoted away from her, ran across to the edge of the grove on the opposite side and back down the road toward where he’d seen the darting shape. Behind him he heard Casey shout, “Not over there, he’s on this side…” Then the only sounds were the cry of a nightbird, the thin rasp of his breathing.

After fifty yards or so, he cut in to one of the narrow paths between the palms. He’d had the light aimed low as he ran; now he raised it and swung it in wide, sweeping arcs. Trunks, broken fronds, irrigation troughs, a stack of packing boxes burst into sharp relief, vanished again. He tried to make as little noise as possible, didn’t call out Kevin’s name. If the boy wasn’t responding to his mother’s voice, he’d be even more frightened by a stranger’s.

Twice Fallon paused to listen. Faintly he could hear Casey’s frantic voice shouting again, somewhere back near where the Jeep and BMW were. The second time he stopped, he thought he heard a scrabbling sound off to his left. He jabbed the light in that direction, followed it before changing direction again. Not Kevin. A night creature of some kind.

It might have taken a long time to find the boy, if he’d been able to find him at all, if it hadn’t been for a panic reaction when Fallon passed close to where he was hiding. The six-cell’s white shaft roved past just above his head, flushed him and set him running again down the next row. Fallon veered over there, heard him but didn’t see him at first in the thick darkness. Then the light picked him out-running blind, looking back over his shoulder.

The ground here had an obstacle: a long date-picker’s ladder, wide at the bottom and almost pointed at the top, had been propped sideways against one of the palm trunks. Kevin didn’t see it in time to avoid it. There was a clatter, a yowl of pain, and the boy sprawled headlong.

Fallon was there in five seconds. By then, Kevin was trying to crawl behind one of the palms. He’d hurt himself in the collision with the ladder: dragging and clutching at his left leg, the small face grimacing with pain. He quit crawling when the flash beam pinned him, squinted up into the glare with eyes that gleamed black with fear.

“Leave me alone!” Thin, gasping. “Leave me alone!”

Fallon moved the light out of his face, dropped to one knee beside him. “It’s all right, Timmy. I’m not-”

“My name’s not Timmy!”

He drew back, realizing what he’d said. Timmy. Jesus, what was the matter with him? It must have been that first clear look at the boy, the strained white face and terrified stare, the lank, light-colored hair plastered wetly to his forehead… for just an instant it had been like seeing his son alive again.

“I’m sorry, Kevin. I’m sorry.”

The boy cringed away from him, his chest heaving, his breath wheezing and rattling asthmatically.

“It’s all right, you don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you. Lie still, take shallow breaths-”

Kevin sat up instead, tried to propel himself backward with both hands. Fallon stopped him by catching hold of the waistband of his Levi’s.

“No, lie still,” he said again, and this time the boy obeyed him. “That’s it. Shallow breaths now. You have your inhaler?”

“… Pocket.”

Pants pocket. Fallon felt the outline of it, fished it out, watched as Kevin sucked in three deep inhalations. The boy’s eyes were still saucer-wide. “Who are you?” he said when the asthma medicine had opened up the breathing passages in his lungs. “I don’t know you.”

“My name’s Rick. I’m a friend of your mom’s-”

“No! I won’t go back there, I won’t!”

“Easy, easy. Where’d you hurt yourself?”

“… My ankle. I twisted it.”

“Let me see how bad.”

Fallon screwed the six-cell into the sand. When he ran his fingers gently over the injured ankle, the boy whimpered and cringed again but didn’t try to pull away. Nothing broken. Just a strain.

Fallon said, “Let’s get you up,” and put his hands under Kevin’s arms and lifted him without much struggle. It was like lifting a child-sized manikin- the kid couldn’t have weighed more than forty pounds. Stick-thin and malnourished. Court Spicer’s doing, the son of a bitch.

Casey was still calling her son’s name. It sounded as though she was on the access lane, not far away.

“Don’t make me go back there with her,” the boy said. “I hate her.”

“She’s your mother, Kevin.”

“But he’s not my father. He’s not, he’s not!”

Fallon held him gently for a few seconds, to calm him, before he said, “When I set you down, stand on your good leg and lean against me. There… that’s it. Can you walk?”

He couldn’t. His injured leg buckled when he tried to put weight on it. Fallon said, “I’ll have to carry you,” and swung him up again, into the crook of his left arm, then reached down for the six-cell.

The flash beam, and Casey’s voice calling his name now alternately with Kevin’s, showed him the way to the lane. The boy clung to him, the asthma inhaler clenched tight in his hand. He was breathing more easily now, but his small body had a corded feel and was racked with small tremors.

“Kevin, why were you running away?”

“I couldn’t stay there anymore. Not with him .”