Bill Pronzini - Zigzag

The second option, then. I dislike stakeouts after sitting through scores of them over the years, but I was angry and determined enough to tolerate one more of short duration. And I had a good vantage point from here, a clear look at the front entrance to the complex. Seven-thirty now. Give it a couple of hours at least.

I called Kerry to tell her I’d be home late, then tried to make myself comfortable. Good luck with that, in Tamara’s vernacular. My aging body tends to cramp up if I sit more than a few minutes in any one position, and shifting around only increases the pressure on my tailbone. I had to get out twice and take short walks in the cold wind to stretch the kinks out of my lower back.

Eight-thirty, nine o’clock. A few cars arrived and parked on the street or pulled into the nearside driveway, and half a dozen people went in through the front entrance. None of them was Vinson or Erskine.

Hunger pangs increased my discomfort. I hadn’t eaten since a light lunch. In the old days I kept a bunch of light snacks — potato chips, peanut butter crackers, cookies — in the car for unplanned-for downtime such as this, but now that I did little fieldwork and had pretty much given up junk food for health reasons, I no longer bothered to stock up. All I found when I rummaged around in the glove box was one of the dinky little energy bars Emily is fond of. Apricot, except it didn’t taste much like apricot; it tasted like chewy cardboard and only made me hungrier.

Nine-thirty.

Quarter of ten.

The hell with it. It had been a long day, I was tired and stiff and cold as well as hungry, and it was a forty-some-mile drive back to the city. No sense in pushing myself past a sensible limit. Start fresh tomorrow.

I got the engine going and headed for home.

But home was not where I went. I took an impulsive and ill-advised detour instead.

I was on Page Mill Road, nearing the intersection with Highway 280, when the thought began to nag at me that Erskine might have taken Vinson home with him. Would the son of a bitch be that bold, that callous? Sure he would. Dinner first, maybe, someplace where they weren’t known, then a return to the scene of the crime to finish up their celebration. No risk to him; he’d committed the perfect murder, hadn’t he? It wasn’t likely any of the neighbors would notice them arriving, but if they were spotted and the fact was later mentioned to him, why, he’d just say she was helping put his wife’s affairs in order, or comforting him in his time of need. He wouldn’t give much of a damn what the neighbors thought anyway.

Couldn’t hurt to swing by his house, could it? It was more or less on the way, a round-trip detour off 280 of only a few miles. If the place was dark I needn’t stop; if it showed lights I could ring the bell, late as it was, and see if I could get him to let me in — feed him a story about being on my way back from San Jose, where I’d uncovered some information about the Leno brothers. Might just work. Then what I could do was make it plain, without actually accusing him, that I had the entire scheme figured. Escalate the war of nerves — the Javert treatment. If Vinson was there and stashed someplace where she could listen to the conversation, it might scare her enough so she’d be easier to crack when I tackled her alone.

It was not much of an idea, a product of weariness, frustration, and a compulsive need to confront Erskine, but I could not talk myself out of it. When the Atherton exit came up, I turned off and let the disembodied voice guide me through a series of curves and turns to the Erskine property.

No lights showed at the front of the house, but the gates at the foot of the drive were wide open. Funny. Whether he was home or not, why hadn’t he bothered to close them?

I turned in between them for a better view. Amber-colored ground lanterns illuminated the driveway; more of the same glowed like stationary fireflies all across the grounds. I couldn’t tell from here whether or not there were any lit windows at the sides or rear of the house. Except for the night-lights, the darkness was thick with restless shadows. Overhead, fast-moving clouds driven by high-altitude winds hid the stars and the sickle moon except for brief breaks in the leaden canopy.

Well?

Well, I’d come this far. Go on up and ring the bell and let’s see what happens.

I drove through the gates and up the drive. Halfway along, where the shrubbery thinned out, I could see part of the lantern-lit path that led to the summerhouse, a darkened hulk against the screen of evergreens. A faint yellowish sheen lay over a portion of the side terrace: drapes open in the sunroom, one or more lights burning inside.

A light-colored Corvette drawn up on the white-pebble parking area confirmed that at least Erskine was here. I rolled up next to it, doused the headlamps. When I got out, I stepped over to the Corvette and laid a hand on its hood. Warm. Wherever he’d been tonight, he hadn’t been home long.

I crossed slowly to the porch. The night’s silence was broken only by wind-rattle in trees and shrubbery; there were no sounds that I could make out inside the house. If Vinson was here with him, they were somewhere at the rear — in bed together, like as not.

I put my finger on the bell, but I didn’t push it. There was tension in me all of a sudden; the skin across my neck and shoulders had begun to pull and prickle. Another of those sixth-sense feelings of wrongness, sudden this time, setting off the silent danger alarm inside my head.

For some seconds I stood still, listening, looking around. Still quiet inside the house, nothing visibly or aurally changed out here. But the feeling remained strong just the same. Strong enough to prod me off the porch, over onto a lit path that led around on the terraced side.

I hadn’t gone more than a few steps when the woman screamed.

The cry came from outside the house, toward the rear — a high-pitched shriek that shattered the stillness and brought me up short, raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Confusion of sounds then: garbled yells, scrapings and scufflings, a sharp metallic clatter as of a wrought-iron table or chair knocked over onto the terrace bricks. The woman screeched again, terrified words this time that carried distinctly on the wind.

“Peter, who... oh, God, this can’t be happening!”

Another scraping noise, the pop of shattering glass.

The woman: “What’re you doing? Why are you—? No! No, don’t—! ”

Running footfalls. And then the sudden crack of a gun, a large-caliber weapon that sent echoes hammering through the darkness.

I had taken a couple of steps toward the corner; the report twisted me around, sent me running back to the car. Only a damn fool rushes unarmed into an unknown, firearms-deadly situation. I dragged the car door open, leaned in to release the hidden compartment under the dash, yanked out the snub-nosed Colt Bodyguard I keep in there for emergencies, and ran back toward the far side of the house.

More sounds battered the night, a male voice now, yelling something I couldn’t understand.

Near the corner I slowed, holding the .38 up next to my ear, drawing in close to the sweet-smelling shrubbery that grew there; charge out into the open and you’re a target even on a dark night. Before I could get my head around for a clear look, the yelling morphed into a kind of panicked wail. Other cries followed it, diminishing. Man on the run, howling like a banshee.

I stepped out away from the shrubbery with the revolver leveled. A rent in the cloud cover opened just then, letting enough starlight and moonshine leak through to bathe the yard in faint luminescence. In the two or three beats before the tear closed, I had a glimpse of what seemed to be two figures stumbling up the steps into the summerhouse, one clinging to the other from behind. False impression, my old eyes playing tricks. Only one figure had fused into the black-dark inside — Erskine, still emitting that half-crazed wail.