Bill Pronzini - The Vanished

It seemed like a particularly vivid dream instead of a fragment of reality, the way the events surrounding the knife episode a few months ago had later seemed. I tried to hate Holly again, but that was as useless as it had been last night; he lived in a kind of primitive, simplistic world where everything was black or white, without shading, and if the sanctity of the cave and its dwellers was threatened in any way, you fought as savagely as you knew how to protect those who protected you. There was no way to hate someone like that. Maybe, in some ways, his world was just a little better than ours; it was certainly less grim.

I went over the conversation I had had with Holly, examining again what he had told me. It was the truth, of that I was fairly certain. I did not think he would have known how to lie about something like that. He had then, as he’d said, picked up Roy Sands following the visit to the Emery farm on the twentieth of last month; then he had driven him out to this Hammock Grove and leaned on him and left him there unconscious. I was willing to accept that without disputation.

But then what?

Holly had sworn that Sands was alive when he’d left, and I believed that, too. Sands had come back here to the Redwood Lodge later to pick up his belongings, hadn’t he? And yet, if he was hurt, why hadn’t he gone to the police to press charges against Holly? Or to a doctor-who in turn would have notified the authorities because of the nature of those injuries? If he had done either, the cops would have had his name on record. So what had Sands done after coming out of it? Well-had he come out of it at all? Holly had just left him there, unconscious, and maybe he had been hurt worse than Holly thought, had had a concussion or some such, remained comatose, perhaps died of exposure…? No, if that were the case, the body would have been found by this time-unless Hammock Grove was the kind of summer picnic area no one ever went to in the winter, and it had been less than a month since December 20-oh Christ, if he had died out there, how could he have picked up his stuff and gone up to Eugene? I was thinking in pointless circles.

I swung my feet out of bed and got up gingerly and took a couple of experimental steps that seemed to work out all right. In the bathroom I tried the mirror again and it was not as bad as I expected; the swelling was gone from the one eye, and the left side of my face, under the red-orange streaks of the Mercurochrome, had begun to scab already. The cut on my cheekbone ached painfully, and I thought about taking the bandage off to apply some more antiseptic; but that did not seem like such a good idea, remembering that flap of skin, and I decided I would be wiser to leave it alone.

I knew I was going to have to see a doctor sometime today, to have the cut and the other abrasions looked at, and I did not relish the thought. Still, it had to be done and I accepted that. I did not see any point in making a report to the local cops; if I did that, I would have to give them Holly’s name-and no purpose would be served in having the poor bastard jailed. He was all right as long as no one bothered the Emerys, and who was going to bother them now?

I used a little more of the Mercurochrome on my upper lip and the side of my face, and on my scalp, and combed my hair, and ran the toothbrush around inside my mouth a couple of times; there was no sense in trying to shave or wash. I wondered what Cheryl would say when she saw me, and then I knew she would take it all right after the initial shock; she was not like Erika. I would have had to put up with a lecture from Erika, but there would be no lecture from Cheryl. The difference between the two of them was like night and day.

There was one of those instant-coffee dispensers in the room, and I made myself a cup and drank it, sitting on the desk chair. I had no desire to frighten hell out of some waitress in a local café coming in the way I looked, and I was not in any mood for breakfast anyway. The thing that had been nagging at me while I had eaten supper the previous evening was back and stronger than ever, nurtured by the revelation that Holly had jumped on Roy Sands the way he had on me. It was all starting to come together, I could sense that: the answer was here in Roxbury, and it was very close.

I finished my coffee and gathered up the bloodstained clothing. Then I soaked the towel both Holly and I had used in cold water and got down stiffly and washed the dried blood from the floor where he had lain, where both of us had spattered fluid walking back and forth. When I straightened again, I was breathing asthmatically and my arms and legs felt weak. I wadded everything together and took it out into the fresh clean morning air and dumped it into the trunk of my car.

I slid under the wheel, then, and swung around to the right of the office. There was a dark green Pontiac pulled up in front of number seven; Jardine had finally gotten another customer. Well, maybe things were starting to look up for everybody now.

I drove out to Coachman Road and onto it, passing the Emery farm and seeing no one out and around. I wanted to have a look at Hammock Grove before I saw a doctor; there might be nothing to learn out there, but I was still fresh out of other possibilities.

A couple of miles further along Coachman Road, the firs and redwoods seemed to grow thicker and there was less sunlight filtering through the ceiling of leaves and branches overhead. I had the window down, and the smell of the woods filled the car with a kind of spicy redolence that was a narcotic for the pulsing ache in my head.

Around a sharp bend I came upon a very narrow paved road leading off to the left, and a wooden sign at the junction, reading: HAMMOCK GROVE, and below that: PICNICKING • CAMPING • HIKING. I turned along there, and it was like following a tunnel through the imposing giant trees; it made you feel very small, very vulnerable, passing at the feet of some of nature’s most beautiful creations.

I traveled a quarter of a mile, and then I could see the picnic area spread out in a grotto of sorts, with parking spaces and small stone barbecues and heavy redwood picnic tables and benches. There was a thick double-link chain stretched across the road between two posts at the entrance to the grounds. Beyond that the road twisted and turned and looped back on itself throughout; like the picnic areas and facilities, it was covered with leaves and pine needles and loose topsoil, a result of the heavy winter rains. When spring came, there would be a forestry crew in to clean and rake it out for the influx of weekend Thoreaus and all their screaming multitudes.

I parked nose-up to the chain and got out and stepped over it, letting my eyes make a slow ambit of the area. The bridge Holly had mentioned was on the left, an arched, log-railed affair that spanned a wide, rocky creek; there was a quick stream within its banks now, although I suspected that it would be completely dry during the summer. It hugged the base of a steep, rounded slope grown with wood ferns and spindly firs that formed the left-hand boundary for the grove; deeper in, it hooked around to run beneath a couple of other wooden bridges through the general middle of the grotto-and behind me, it made the curve with the slope to disappear well back among the redwoods.

Except for the raucous cry of a jay somewhere high in one of the trees, it was very quiet. Cool and damp, too, with very little wind. I walked over toward the bridge and looked into the creek, and there was nothing for me to see except rocks and leaves and cold rushing water. There was nothing in the immediate vicinity of the bridge, either; the wind-swept foliage had long since taken care of any traces.

I scuffed through the leaves near the bridge, for no particular reason, but nothing of interest lay beneath the soft, wet covering. I saw that one of the foot trails which cross-hatched the grounds led to a large brown building with green-latticed entrances on either side: the rest rooms. I walked over, thinking that if I had been Sands and I had woken up from a beating in a place such as this one, I would have made for these rest rooms first thing-looking for water, towels, a mirror to check the damage.