Bill Pronzini - Hellbox

After fifty yards, I could see the storage box squatting back between the concession booths and the restrooms. Sunlight shone on the metal roof and sides, giving it a glowing look like something being slowly heated in a forge. The image tied more knots in my stomach. I could feel sweat running down my back and sides.

Runyon pulled up under the tree where we’d parked yesterday. I was out of the car before it rocked to a complete stop, staggering a little on my run to the shed. He came up just as I reached the padlocked door, and when he pushed in next to me, I saw that he was carrying his flashlight.

I reached for the padlock, lost my grip on it; it clanged harshly off the metal. Runyon said, “Better let me do it.”

“You don’t have to be here-”

“The hell with that. Give me the keys.”

I let him take them in exchange for the flashlight. From far off in the still morning, incongruous given what we were facing, I could hear the high school band warming up with “America the Beautiful.”

Runyon got the padlock open, slid the staple out and let it drop on the ground with the key still in the slot. My heart had begun to race. I sucked in a breath as he eased the door open a crack.

Nothing happened.

The breath hissed out between my teeth. Jake was still holding the door in the same position, with maybe half an inch between its edge and the jamb. Carefully, he took the flashlight back with his other hand, switched it on, then put one eye close to the crack and squinted inside while he ran the beam up and down along the opening.

“Nothing that looks like a tripwire,” he said.

He widened the crack another half inch, played the light again. When I moved closer to the opening, my nostrils dilated at the mingled odors from inside. Sawdust, machine oil-and that same sickening sourness that had come out of Balfour’s camper.

“She’s in there, Jake. Kerry’s in there.”

He gave me a sideways look, then a jerky nod. “Door’s clear.”

“Go!”

Again he widened the gap. But after a couple of inches, it bound up at the bottom. Grimacing, he yanked upward on the handle. That popped the bottom edge loose and the door wobbled open all the way. He swept the flash beam through the murky interior.

It was like looking into a chamber of horrors.

Half a dozen or more blocks of plastic explosive stuck to the inside of the door and to all three walls. Detonators poked into them, trailing wires that connected to a black-boxed timing device on the floor… glowing-red numerals showed it set for one-thirty, half an hour after the end of the parade when the fairgrounds would be packed with people. Other things embedded in the plastic-nails, screws. More of the same strewn over the floor, along with sharp-toothed saw blades and other stuff intended as shrapnel.

But I registered all of that only peripherally. The small, still figure encased in duct tape, lying supine on the floor surrounded by all that death, was all I really saw or needed to see.

I started to lunge inside, an animal noise rumbling in my throat. Runyon stopped me with an iron-fingered grip. “Pull the detonators first, all of them.” I struggled, thinking Kerry, Kerry! He hung onto me, saying again, “Detonators, the detonators,” and finally the sense of the words got through. I bobbed my head, pulled free, reached up to jerk the nearest metal cap out of the explosive.

We tore all of them loose, stepping carefully around Kerry, and threw them down; they were useless by themselves. Then I went to one knee beside her. That crazy son of a bitch Balfour had mummy-wrapped her from ankles to shoulders, with her hands and arms flat against her sides so she couldn’t move. Strips of duct tape covered her eyes and mouth; what I could see of her face was ghostly pale. I touched the side of her neck… cold, so cold… and probed for an artery, a pulse that I couldn’t feel.

Oh, please God, no!

Runyon had the light on her. “Is she…?”

“I don’t know, I can’t tell. Help me get her out of here.”

His shoes crunched on the shrapnel as he bent to take hold of her legs. I shoved upright, got my hands under her shoulders; my mind seemed to have gone blank. We carried her outside and over into the shade next to one of the concession booths, laid her down gently in the grass.

I dropped down beside her, felt again for a pulse. Had to be one, had to! But I still couldn’t find it. So faint only a doctor could detect it…

Runyon had backed off a couple of steps with his cell phone out, and I heard him making a 911 call as I hooked a fingernail under an edge of the tape over Kerry’s eyes, eased it off. Both eyes shut tight, not even a twitch on the lids. As gently as I could I stripped the tape from her mouth. Her lips were cracked and smeared with dried blood. When I laid my cheek down close to them, I couldn’t feel even the faintest whisper of a breath. With my thumb I raised one of the closed eyelids.

Vacant, blood-flecked stare.

Sick with anguish, I fumbled my pocket knife out. Opened it with fingers that shook so much now I had to steady my right hand with my left. Had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes as I sawed slowly through the tape, trying not to cut her. Her left arm was free when Runyon finished his call. He dropped down on the other side and began freeing her right arm with a Swiss Army blade. Together, we sliced and stripped as much of the tape off her arms and legs as we dared.

Still no movement, no sign of life.

God, what that bastard had done to her! Finger and fingernail marks on her throat where she’d been grabbed and choked. Bruise on one cheekbone that had blackened the eye above. A scabbed-over wound above her left ear that had bled into her hair… but not much, not enough for it to be anything but superficial. Welts and lesions on her bare arms and legs from the tape. Blouse and shorts in place, but torn, soiled.

Balfour had died too easy, too easy, too easy Runyon was pressing fingers against the artery in her neck. He made a sudden low grunting sound, and when I looked up at him, I saw the tight grimace he wore smooth off.

“Pulse,” he said.

I said something, I don’t remember what, and caught up Kerry’s hand and held my thumb on the wrist. Pulse, yes! I could feel it now-thin, thready, but discernible without putting on too much pressure.

Heartbeats. Life beats.

And all at once, the emotional dam inside me burst wide open. I’d cried before in my life, but never in public and never with such unashamed intensity as I did holding onto Kerry the way a drowning man holds onto a lifeline. Dimly, I saw Runyon stand, felt his hand on my shoulder before he moved away.

In the distance, there was the sound of sirens.

KERRY

Awake again, aware again.

Eyes opening to slits, bright light lancing in to painfully dilate the pupils. She squeezed the lids shut, but the light remained like a pressing weight against the outer skin. Slowly, she raised them again, squinting. The same dazzle, but it faded quickly this time… and she was looking at white walls, white composition ceiling, TV set on a wall stand, a window covered with partly open blinds.

Sounds intruded, a low steady mechanical beeping. She was aware, too, of a clean antiseptic odor. And of something clipped to the index finger of her left hand. She turned her head. Wires, tubes, lights flashing on some kind of monitor, an IV bag on a stand. Hospital room.

She rolled her head the other way. And saw Bill sitting in a chair alongside her bed, his eyes closed, his big hands lying palms up on his lap.

Didn’t believe it at first. Hallucination, wishful thinking. Her thoughts were fuzzy, disoriented… but it wasn’t the same kind of body and mind disconnect as before. This was almost peacefully dreamlike. She raised her head slightly and blinked once, twice, three times.