Bill Pronzini - Hellbox

The ugly little bastard was still twitching, sweat leaking out of him in oily pustules. But his shock and pain had diminished; his face was set tight again with some of the same belligerence he’d shown at the fairgrounds this morning. Only, it didn’t run deep, and I could see behind it. Coward, all right. When push came to shove, the yellow would show through like jaundice, and he’d crack wide open.

Runyon leaned down close. “Where is she, Balfour?”

“Who? I dunno what you’re talkin’ about.”

“The woman you kidnapped. Kerry Wade.”

“I never kidnapped nobody.”

“Monday afternoon, on that logging road. After you boobytrapped the Verriker house.”

“Never done that, neither. You can’t pin that on me.”

Verriker said, “Lying bastard!”

Runyon waved him to silence without looking at him. He said to Balfour, “That’s why you took her, we know that. We also know you had her locked up in a shed with the pit bull on guard.”

Balfour hadn’t expected that. Flesh rippled on his cheek, became a tick that fluttered one eye into a series of uncontrollable tics.

“There’ll be DNA evidence in the shed to prove it,” Runyon said. “You’re going down for kidnapping and attempted murder, that much for sure. Maybe the law can prove you rigged the explosion that killed Mrs. Verriker, maybe they can’t. If they can’t, all you’re facing is some jail time. But if we don’t find Mrs. Wade alive, then it’s kidnapping and murder with special circumstances-a capital offense. The death penalty for sure, Balfour.”

Spitting mouth, but nothing came out of it.

“She’s no good to you now, you can’t use her as a hostage. Tell us where she is before it’s too late.”

Silence.

I looked away. If I hadn’t, I’d’ve gone after him again. My mind crawled with vague images of dark, empty woods, Kerry all alone, sick, hurt, eyes shining in the blackness around her… animals, bears, other prowling flesh-eaters…

“One way or another, she’ll be found,” Runyon was saying. “Alive, and you stay alive. Dead, and you’re dead.”

“Bullshit.”

“Maybe you think you’ve got her hidden some place where she’ll never be found. Doesn’t matter. There’ll be enough evidence against you for a no-body murder conviction. You’ll still end up on death row.”

“Bullshit,” Balfour said again. He was looking down at his left arm, watching it jerk and flex as feeling came back. He rubbed it with his shackled right hand. There were flecks of something dark gray on his fingers, I saw then, dried mud or clay. “Go ahead, call the cops. I got nothing more to say to you.”

His cowardice should’ve started fissures showing by now, and it hadn’t. You could see the fear in his eyes, in the oozing sweat on his face, but still he kept holding out, blustering. Why? Stupidity? Psychosis? Something else going on inside his head that was stronger than the fear, some kind of dirty little secret?

I said, “This isn’t getting us anywhere, Jake. We’ll have to beat it out of him.”

The words were intended to push Balfour’s buttons, but I meant them just the same. The violence in me was hot and toxic, bubbling close to the surface with an intensity that scared me a little. I could pound this inhuman piece of waste to a bloody pulp and not turn a hair while I was doing it-an act of savagery I wouldn’t have believed I was capable of until these past few days.

His buttons didn’t push. “Go ahead,” he said. “Beat on me all you want. Won’t do you no good.”

Verriker said, “Why don’t we find out?” and started across the room.

Runyon said, “Stay put,” and then reached down and began digging through Balfour’s pockets, shoving him roughly to one side and then the other to get at the back ones. There was no resistance. Balfour sat there with that same expression on his ugly face, part fear, part defiance, part something else that I couldn’t read.

Keys on a grubby chain jangled as Runyon yanked them free. The only other item that came out of the search was a thin leather wallet. Runyon opened the wallet, fanned through it; glanced at me when he was done, and shook his head. He threw the wallet in Balfour’s lap. The keys went into his pocket before he straightened up.

“She wouldn’t be in that pickup of yours, would she, Balfour?”

The facial tic that jumped again said she might be; his sneer said she wasn’t. “Won’t find it in the dark.”

“We’ll find it.” Runyon turned to Verriker. “You stay here and keep an eye on Balfour. But don’t go near him.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

One other thing Runyon had brought in from his car was a flashlight; he went for it, and I hunted up another one Verriker said was in the kitchen. We hurried outside. The night had turned chilly, a sharp wind blowing down from the Sierras’ higher elevations. It dried the sweat on me, turned it cold and gummy.

“Jake. What happened in there-”

“Nothing happened in there. Except that Balfour wouldn’t talk.”

“All right. But we can make him talk.”

“I don’t think so. He’s scared, he’s a coward, he knows he’s finished-pressuring him should’ve been enough to break him. But he’s hiding something that’s holding him together.”

“It’s not that Kerry’s already dead. I won’t believe that.”

“No. Whatever it is, hurting him won’t make him give it up.”

Maybe not. But if we didn’t find anything out here, I’d work him over anyway. And this time, I wouldn’t let Runyon stop me.

We were at the road now. I said, “Vehicle that went by a few minutes before Balfour showed up must’ve been his pickup. Heading south first, then back to the north.”

“Right. Figures to be hidden off the road in that direction, and not too far away.”

It took us twenty minutes to find it, each of us working a side of the deserted road, and when we first uncovered it, it didn’t look like the right vehicle. Dirty white Dodge pickup, but with a bulky camper shell on it and different license plates. But it was Balfour’s, all right. He must’ve put the camper and the new plates on this morning-the reason for the open workshop on his property.

The driver’s door was locked. I held my light up against the window long enough to be sure that the cab was empty. We went around to the back. The second key Runyon tried unlocked the camper door. I dragged in a breath as he pulled it open and shined his flash beam inside. Nothing to see except jammed-in goods and weapons, and a narrow open space on the floor in the middle, but the human body odor that came rolling out had the force of a blow to the face.

My empty stomach convulsed; I spun away, gagging. It took a few seconds for the sickness to pass. I sucked in more of the cold night air, leaned a hand against the side of the pickup away from the open camper door.

Runyon was still working the camper’s interior with his light. He said in heavy tones, “Empty.”

“She was in there. Today, tonight.”

“Yeah. Unloaded her somewhere before he came here. He wouldn’t waste time doing it before he went after Verriker.”

“Take a quick look around anyway.”

We looked. All around the pickup, up and down along the road, over on the other side. The trees and ground vegetation grew thickly in the area; Balfour couldn’t have gone far carrying a heavy weight, and our lights would’ve picked up signs and there weren’t any.

Back at the truck, I said, “I’ll check the cab, you look in the camper. I can’t go in there, Jake.”

“I know. I’m on it.”

I got the driver’s door unlocked. Some of the body smell was in the cab, too; I locked my sinuses against it, breathed through my mouth. There was nothing on the seat except a light denim jacket, nothing on the floorboards. Usual papers and crap in the glove box, none of it that told me anything. I felt around under the seats, found a small box on the passenger side, and hauled it out. Cigar box with a rubber band looped around it. Inside was a lot of cash in small bills-Balfour’s run-out money. I closed it up again, stuffed it back under the seat.