Bill Pronzini - Hellbox

I retreated down the driveway. People were still showing up; eight or nine cars were now strewn along both sides of Skyview Drive. Men and a few women had begun milling around in little groups, their faces reflecting shock and that avidity you always see in the watchers at disaster scenes-a mixture of dread, relief that it was somebody else’s disaster, and a primitive eagerness for the horrors they might be confronted with. A fat man in a stained undershirt crowded up next to me as I came out onto the road, saying excitedly, “What was it? The furnace blow up?” I shook my head at him, moved over to stand next to my car. I didn’t want to talk to anybody else. I felt bad for whoever had died in that house, but it was a distracted sympathy. All I could think about was Kerry.

A few seconds later, the fire trucks came rushing into view, three of them with Green Valley VFD written on their sides, the one in the middle a tanker; a paramedic unit made it a caravan of four. They barreled up the access drive, lights flashing and sirens dying, and veered off across the yard. Firefighters jumped out and scurried to unload hoses, axes, shovels, and other equipment. A pair of EMTs emerged, too, but there was nothing for them to do except stand around looking alert.

No other vehicles came down Skyview Drive; a roadblock must have been hastily set up to keep out any more gawkers. The two deputies on the scene had joined forces to disperse the ones that were already here. One of them had a bullhorn and was shouting through it, telling everyone to leave the area for their own safety. The small crowd broke up pretty fast, people heading for their cars but with their heads turned and their eyes fixed on what was happening on the property-firemen deploying with hoses that sprayed water and fire retardant foam, other volunteers swarming along the hill above and behind the burning house to dig firebreaks. I was anxious to leave, too, get back to the cabin to find out if Kerry had returned. At the same time, I was reluctant because I didn’t know for sure that she hadn’t been inside the house when it exploded. Crazy notion, the odds against it millions to one. What would she have been doing here? But I could not get it out of my head.

I had the driver’s door open when a white van careened down over the rise, let through for a reason that soon became clear. Somebody near me called out, “Look! That’s Ned Verriker’s van.” It raced up, slewed to a stop, and a wiry, dark-faced man in work clothes jumped out and started a splay-footed run up the driveway. I knew then why his name sounded familiar: he was one of the trio who’d occupied the booth behind Kerry’s and mine in the Green Valley Cafe yesterday.

The deputies got in his way, held him back. “You don’t want to go up there,” one of them said. “Nothing you can do.”

“She… she didn’t get out? Alice?”

“Looks that way. I’m sorry, Ned.”

“Oh God, that’s her car in the yard, she must’ve just got home when… What happened? I don’t understand-”

“Easy now. Easy.”

“I had to work late or I’d’ve been in there, too. Alice… oh Jesus, Alice!”

I felt a little sick listening to Ned Verriker’s outpouring of pain, but at the same time, his words brought a sense of relief. Must’ve just got home, he’d said. Then Kerry couldn’t have been anywhere in the vicinity when it happened; there was no sensible reason for her to have hung around an empty house.

A sudden roaring, echoing crash drowned out the other sounds: the roof of the house collapsing into the black- and white-foamed shell. Flames and firebrands burst up and outward through fresh billows of smoke. The firefighters manning the retardant hoses continued to pour foam over the house while the water pumpers worked on saving the barn, putting out the grass fires. Keeping the blaze contained so it didn’t spread into the surrounding timber was the important thing now.

All the onlookers were in their cars, backing and filling and jockeying into a stream that flowed uphill on Skyview Drive. I maneuvered into the middle of the pack. It crawled along; crawled along because the drivers up front were still rubbernecking. I had to resist a sharp impulse to lean on the horn, stick my head out the window, and howl at them to hurry the hell up.

Up over the hill at last, and then the line moved a little faster to the intersection with Ridge Hill Road. That was where they’d set up the roadblock: flares and another deputy, this one a woman, directing traffic from in front of her cruiser. Ridge Hill had become a parade route, only the big-eyed watchers were inside the passing cars. It took a couple more minutes before I was past the cruiser and able to turn northbound, but the driver of the car in front of me wouldn’t go over twenty-five despite a couple of horn taps from close behind. By the time I got to the Murray property driveway, I was soaked in sweat and the blood beat in my ears was like an extended jazz drum riff.

I slid the car into the parking area, spewing gravel, and ran up onto the front deck. Empty. I yanked open the screen door, twisted the knob. Locked, as I’d left it.

Kerry was still missing.

PETE BALFOUR

Nothing ever seemed to go right for him, nothing important anyways. He had no damn luck at all. Sometimes it seemed like the gods or whoever had had it in for him even before he come squalling out of the old lady. Ugly face, head like moss growing on a fuckin’ rock, no decent woman, no money except for what he could scrounge up by using his brains along with his muscles. And to top it off, Verriker’s Mayor of Asshole Valley tag. Wasn’t fair, dammit. Neither was what’d happened today. You couldn’t get anymore unfair than that.

First the woman showing up where she had no business being, fooling around his pickup, and then calling him Mr. Balfour. Maybe he shouldn’t of cut loose and choked her the way he had, but he couldn’t just let her walk away knowing who he was. Yeah, and how the hell had she known? He’d never seen her before in his life.

And then, just as bad, finding out Verriker was still alive.

Oh, that bitch Alice had got hers, all right, but she didn’t matter half as much. Verriker had plenty of luck, that was for sure. Always quit work right at five-thirty, always got home before Alice did, but no, not tonight. Tonight of all nights, he’d had to get stuck working late at Builders Supply on account of a shipment of PVC pipe coming in delayed and needing to be unloaded. How could you plan against something like that happening? Something like the woman happening? You couldn’t, nobody could. Just plain lousy luck.

Such a sweet plan, too. He couldn’t of had it worked out any better.

He knew the Verriker place well enough because he’d done some repair work out there a couple of years ago. No other homes close by, the woods running up along the hill on one side, the old logging road that nobody hardly ever used in the daytime. And no worries about the house being empty in the afternoon. Verriker and Alice both worked in town, her in the beauty shop, which was a laugh with a horse face like hers. No kids, no live-in relatives.

Easy as pie getting down there with his toolkit, then getting inside through the side door under the carport. Door opened straight into the kitchen, a wall switch just inside that turned on the kitchen light. He’d rigged the switch first, so it’d be sure to arc, then exposed the wires in the ceiling light fixture for good measure. Then he’d loosened the gas line connection behind the stove just enough to let the gas bleed out slow. That was all there was to it. In and out in less than fifteen minutes. Figuring Verriker might hit the switch right away even though it’d still be daylight when he got home, but if he didn’t, well, him or Alice would do it once it got on toward dark. Figuring either way, Verriker would be dead before nightfall.