Bill Pronzini - A Wasteland of Strangers

All around us, then, there was a sudden rising hiss and babble — sharp intakes of air, little frightened cries, more shouts, another scream. I pushed up off Kent, swung around on one knee. And stayed there like that, motionless, going cold inside.

Faith had the gun.

And he was pointing it straight at me.

There was nothing I could do, any of us could do. Faith was on that pistol as soon as the Chief kicked it, quick as a cat on a piece of raw liver. I had my service revolver half drawn; so did Thayer, a few steps away on my left. But we both froze when we saw Faith come up with Kent’s weapon and throw down on Novak. There might’ve been time to get off a shot at him before he could fire at the Chief, but training stopped me and the sheriff and any other officer close enough to think about trying it. People were milling around, pushing and shoving, but the immediate area was still crowded with those damn-fool TV cameramen and their whirring Minicams, photographers and their popping flashbulbs. You didn’t dare risk a wild shot in confusion like this. It was six kinds of wonder that the round Kent had triggered hadn’t ricocheted and taken some bystander’s head off.

Faith kept us all in place with bellowed words like a series of thunderclaps. “Nobody move! Come at me, I’ll shoot! Try to get behind me, I’ll shoot!”

He was moving himself as he spoke, in a scrabbling crouch to get clear of the individuals clogging the station doors. When he had his back to bare wall he stopped and lowered himself to one knee. His eyes and the Chief’s had been locked the entire time. There was maybe eight feet of wet pavement separating them.

Novak said loudly, “Do what he says. No sudden moves.” If he was afraid, being under the gun like that, he didn’t show it.

More flashbulbs exploded, the Minicams ground away. I could almost hear the reporters gleefully smacking their lips. I felt exposed and foolish and mad as hell — at myself and Thayer and Novak and Faith and most of all at that crazy drunken son of a bitch Kent lying there unconscious behind the Chief. What had possessed him? What in God’s name did he think he was doing?

Faith said, “I didn’t want it like this,” still booming his words. “Let a lawyer handle it, get some more facts before bringing it out in the open. But that bastard trying to shoot me... that’s the last straw. Now I want everybody to hear the truth, my lips to your ears, let the whole damn world know what this town’s done to an innocent man.”

Thayer found his voice. “This isn’t buying you any sympathy, Faith. Surrender the gun before—”

“Shut up. I’ll surrender it when I’ve had my say.”

“Say it, then. Get it over with.”

“Innocent man!” Faith thundered. “Innocent! I’m not a murderer, not some kind of monster. I didn’t kill the Carey woman.”

“Liar!” somebody in the crowd shouted back.

And somebody else: “You killed her, all right, you dirty—”

“No, by God, I didn’t. But I know who did. You hear me out there, all you people? I know who did! ”

I stood among a crush of others in the middle of the street, trying to see Dick and John Faith, listening to the words that were being flung against the night. But it was as if I were standing there alone, on a mist-shrouded plain, seeing and hearing everything from a great distance. I thought: Don’t hurt him, please don’t hurt him. At the same time I did not believe John Faith would shoot, knew that his cry of “Innocent man!” was the truth. The confusion spawned an intense, irrational desire to run away from here, away from the poison, very fast and very far, like the god Coyote rushing home to his sanctuary atop the dano-batin, the mountain big, that rises high above the south shore.

And when John Faith spoke again I almost did run — I took two faltering steps before the press of bodies stopped me. Then I stood tree-still with his words echoing in my ears, mixing with the frantic voices of the others to create a roaring, near and yet far off, like the mad gabbling of spooks and witches.

“ He did it!” Pointing, accusing. “ He murdered Storm Carey. Your fine, upstanding police chief, Richard Novak.”

Verne Erickson answered before I could. He said angrily, “You’re out of your mind, Faith. Nobody believes that. Nobody!”

“I’ll prove it to you, all of you.”

“You can’t prove a lie—”

“The truth. Listen. I didn’t know it was Novak that night. If I had... the hell with that. This afternoon at the hospital, that’s the first time I was able to do any clear thinking. That’s when I put it together.”

He wasn’t talking to Verne, he was talking to me; his eyes never left mine. Hot with fury, those eyes, like red-rimmed crucibles filled with molten silver. But I wasn’t afraid of him or his words or the gun in his hand. The one emotion I no longer felt was fear.

He said, “I passed a car that night, on the way to her house. Just turned out of her driveway. Dark, and I wasn’t paying attention or I’d have noticed it was a police cruiser, Novak’s cruiser. But he recognized my car, all right. And he saw me turn in. He waited long enough for me to find her body and then he came barreling back up there.”

“You call that proof?” Thayer said. “Only your word you passed another car. Even if that much is true... you can’t swear it was Novak’s cruiser.”

“Then how’d he happen to show up just at the right time? Why’d he go there at all?”

I said, “To see her, talk to her. We were friends.”

“Weren’t there before me, Chief?”

“No.”

“Had no idea she was dead before the two of us went inside?”

“No.”

“Then how’d you know she was killed with a glass paperweight?”

I stared at him without answering.

“It was half under her body and covered with blood,” he said. “I couldn’t tell what it was and I looked closer than you did. You stood off fifteen or twenty feet and called it a glass paperweight.”

“I don’t remember saying that.”

“Accused me of seeing red, picking up a glass paperweight and hitting her with it.”

I shook my head.

“Your word against mine? Except I’m not the only one you said it to. When you radioed in you used the same words to whoever you talked to—”

“Me,” Verne said. “I was on the other end.”

“You remember him saying it? Skull crushed with a glass paperweight?”

“I remember.”

“All right,” I said, “then I did say it. She kept it on an end table next to the couch. I must’ve seen it wasn’t there—”

“And assumed it was what killed her? Hell of an assumption, Chief, for a man as upset as you were. Besides, the paperweight wasn’t the only slip you made over the radio. Two blows, you said. Two.” He asked Verne, “Remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you know it was two, Chief, not one or three or six or a dozen? Her skull was caved in, blood everywhere, you’re not a doctor and you didn’t go near the body. No way you could know she was hit twice unless you did it yourself.”

Verne’s eyes were on me; everyone’s eyes were on me. The combined intensity of their stares was like surgical lasers — cutting, probing, hurting.

“Answer him, Novak.” Thayer’s voice this time, hard and cold. “How’d you know?”

I told myself to stand up, get off my knees and stand up like a man. When I did that, Faith stood, too, in the same slow movements, so that we continued to face each other at eye level.

Thayer: “Answer the question.”