Bill Pronzini: Zigzag

“Well... just before he hit the other car, yes.”

“Only just before?”

“At the last second.”

“He claims he sounded a warning. In your statement you said you couldn’t recall hearing his horn blow.”

Mrs. Blunt sipped some of her tea, pinky extended like a character in a British drawing room farce, before she answered. “Well, all my windows were closed and it was a windy, foggy day. But I think I would have heard a horn if it had been blowing.”

Small points in Arthur Clements’ favor. Enough to sway a civil court judge and jury? Probably not.

“Could he have seen the Clements car coming as he neared the intersection?”

“I doubt it. Trees there block your vision, which is why a person should always come slow down the hill.”

“Did he seem to be fighting for control of his car, could you tell? The way somebody would if his brakes had gone out and he was trying to use gears or the emergency brake to reduce his speed?”

“That’s a hard question to answer. The accident happened so fast, as I said. He might have been, I suppose, but... well, the impression I had was of a person going too fast and not paying proper attention.”

“But you can’t be sure?”

“No. It was just an impression.” Her jaw firmed and she added deprecatingly, “I’m very aware of distracted drivers these days. The ones who talk or text on their cell phones are a menace. The fines for that kind of carelessness ought to be much larger than they are.”

I agreed completely. Stiffer fines was the only way to reduce the number of idiots who believe they can safely do one or two other things while operating a couple thousand pounds of potentially lethal machinery. But David Bishop evidently hadn’t been guilty of that particular error in judgment. He’d owned a cell phone, but it had been in his coat pocket at the time of the accident and unused for any purpose since the previous night. If he’d been distracted, something else was the cause.

I asked some more of the questions I’d put to George Orcutt, with the same lack of results. No, she didn’t know David Bishop, couldn’t remember ever seeing him prior to the accident. Yes, she knew George Orcutt slightly but couldn’t or wouldn’t say what she thought of him as a reliable witness.

“Is there anything else you can tell me, Mrs. Blunt? Anything at all that might help clarify what took place that day?”

“I wish there was, but no, I—” She broke off, frowning, the way you do at a sudden memory jog. “Oh. Oh, wait. Floyd Mears.”

“Floyd Mears?”

“I just remembered. He pulled out of the service station in that big white pickup of his just as I passed. Yes, I’m sure he did.”

“He was behind you when the accident happened?”

“He must have been. A short distance behind. But he wasn’t there when I stopped and got out after the crash.”

“Turned off the highway?”

“No, he couldn’t have. There’s no other road between the service station and Ridgecrest. In all the excitement and confusion I completely forgot about him at the time, or else I’d have told the officers.” Mrs. Blunt sat forward, peering at a point over my right shoulder while she worked her memory. “He must have made a sudden U-turn. I seem to have a vague recollection of his pickup going away in the opposite direction.”

“So he could also have witnessed the collision.”

She said, purse-lipped, “And drove away to avoid becoming involved. That would be just like the man.”

I wondered if George Orcutt had seen Floyd Mears following Mrs. Blunt and then U-turn away from the scene of the accident. No surprise that he hadn’t told me if so, as uncooperative as he’d been.

“I take it Mears is local,” I said. “Do you know him well?”

“No one knows him well. He keeps to himself, hardly has a civil word for anybody.”

“Can you tell me where he lives?”

“In the hills somewhere between Rio Verdi and Monte Rio, I don’t know exactly where. Grace Hammond at the market might be able to tell you.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“I don’t really know, except that he hunts deer and sells venison to Grace now and then. You’d have to ask him.”

“I will when I talk to him.”

“If you talk to him,” Mrs. Blunt said. “He’s an unfriendly cuss, Floyd Mears is. I’d be surprised to hear he gave you the time of day, let alone admitted to witnessing the accident.”

The drizzle had stopped by the time I rolled up and over heavily wooded Walker Hill and picked out the narrow, muddy access lane to Floyd Mears’ property from the landmarks Grace Hammond had given me. It was getting on toward four o’clock by then, the combination of overcast sky and dense pine and redwood forest creating a wet, dusklike gloom. If there were any other homes in the vicinity, they were well hidden. It had been a quarter of a mile since the last driveway before this one had appeared and then disappeared among the trees.

I turned in at a crawl in deference to the muddy surface and the fact that the lane led downhill, gradually at first, more steeply and crookedly after I crossed a platform bridge spanning a slender, fast-running creek. I’d gone a hundred yards or so before the lane curved, the trees thinned, and a broad clearing opened up ahead. Not one but three structures squatted there, all of them built of rough-hewn redwood — a good-sized cabin and two outbuildings off to one side.

Floyd Mears was home: a newish, mud-streaked, white four-door Dodge Ram pickup was parked near the largest of the outbuildings and light leaked through the cabin’s front window. A little surprisingly, given Earline Blunt’s description of him as unfriendly and reclusive, he already had company. A second vehicle, this one a nondescript Ford van several years older, was angled in behind the pickup. The visitor probably reduced even more my chances of getting Mears to talk to me.

I parked and got out onto a rough carpeting of wet pine-needled grass. It was quiet here except for the dripping of rainwater from tree branches and a faint clattering noise that seemed to come from the smallest, shedlike outbuilding. Nobody came out of the cabin. That was a little surprising, too. My car is eight years old and not the quietest vehicle on the road; they must have heard me jouncing in along the lane.

There was no front porch, just three steps to a little landing before the door. I went up and used my knuckles — once, twice, three times. Still nobody showed. Well, maybe they were in one of the outbuildings or out in the woods for some reason. Or maybe Mears had seen me through the window and just wasn’t opening up to a stranger.

I tried knocking again, gave it up, and slogged over the wet ground toward the other structures. The clattering noise grew louder and I could also hear the throb of a motor as I passed the smaller shed. Generator, a large one with a troublesome bearing — Mears’ sole source of electricity, evidently. The only wires anywhere on the property ran from that shed to both its larger neighbor and the cabin.

The other shed was set farther back against the pine woods, its facing side a blank wall against which cordwood was stacked under a hanging tarp. The entrance was around on the near side. When I turned the corner I saw the door — and something else that pulled me up short, set up a prickly sensation on the back of my skull.

A dead dog lay half-hidden in the grass just beyond the door.

Big Doberman, its jaws hinged open and teeth bared in a rictal snarl. A fifteen- or twenty-foot length of chain ran from a leather collar around its neck to an iron spike ring that had been driven into one of the trees. The animal had been there for some time, more than a few hours. Its fur was sodden, there was a buildup of rainwater in its upturned ear pocket, and the two raw wounds that had killed it, one in its side, the other in the ruff of its neck, had been washed free of blood. Bullet wounds. I’d seen enough in my time to identify them without going any closer.