Bill Pronzini - Betrayers

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Arletta Madison said. “Didn’t you think I had a right to know?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Didn’t want to worry me. You bastard, you were so worried you went out and got drunk and tried to get yourself laid.”

“I wasn’t trying to get laid. I was upset, I wanted a couple of drinks to calm down. I shouldn’t have done it, I shouldn’t have called you from that bar-I should’ve come straight home.”

“Bloody well right you should.”

“All right, I’m sorry. But why didn’t you stay in the house instead of going out alone in the dark?”

“Don’t start in, Coy. I’m in no mood for it.”

Madison waved an agitated hand. “Troy… sure. He must’ve been over there watching the house, waiting for his chance. If you hadn’t gone out, he might’ve broken in. But you made it easy for him. How many times have I warned you it’s not safe to go traipsing around this neighborhood at night? You just won’t listen.”

“I said don’t start in. It’s as much your fault as mine.”

“Oh sure, blame it all on me. Twist everything around so you don’t have to take responsibility.”

Her arm was hurting her and the pain made her vicious. She bared her teeth at him. “What’re you doing home anyway? Where’s the bimbo you claimed you picked up?”

“I brushed her off. I started thinking about you here alone-”

“Sure, right. You were drunk; now you’re sober. If there was any brushing off, she’s the one who did it.”

“Arletta…”

“What’s the matter with your face? She give you some kind of rash?”

“My face? There’s nothing wrong with my face-”

“It looks like a rash. It better not be contagious.”

“Goddamn it, Arletta-”

Runyon had had enough of this. The bickering, the hatred, the cold deception-everything about the two of them. He said in a flat, hard voice, “All right, both of you shut up.”

They stared at him. Arletta Madison said, “You can’t talk to me like that in my own home-”

“Keep your mouth closed and your ears open for five minutes and you’ll learn something. Your husband and I will do the talking.”

Madison said, glowering, “I don’t have anything more to say to you.”

“Yeah, you do. A lot more.”

“Why’d you come here tonight anyway? I’m glad you showed up in time to chase Troy off, but if you’d done your job and found him before-”

“I have found him,” Runyon said.

“What?”

“I know where he is.”

“… Where?”

“The rental house in San Bruno. Where you hid him out.”

“Where I hid him? Man, you’re crazy.”

His wife said, “Coy, what-”

“Shut up,” he said without looking at her. He wasn’t looking at Runyon, either. His gaze seemed fixed on the hand he kept waving loosely in the air. “If that’s where my brother is, he went there on his own. I had nothing to do with it.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me about the rental property?”

“I don’t know; it never occurred to me.”

“You didn’t want me to know about Bud Linkhauser, either. Afraid he’d tell me enough so I’d figure out you engineered the whole thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. Troy jumping bail wasn’t his idea, or the Piper woman’s. It was yours. You talked him into it.”

“Why would I want him to jump bail, for Chrissake?”

“Same reason you arranged his bail in the first place. To get him out of jail, then make a fugitive out of him.”

“Bullshit. What reason would I have to do a crazy thing like that? Didn’t I tell you how violent he can be, all the threats he made?”

“You told me a lot of things, most of them lies. The truth is, you’re the violent one, not Troy.”

Madison was so worked up now he kept shifting from one foot to another, like a kid who needed to go to the toilet. “No! He used to beat me up when we were kids-”

“Not according to Bud Linkhauser. He says you were the aggressor.”

“What the hell does Linkhauser know about the way things are now? Maybe I had some control over Troy once, but that all changed when he got into drugs. He threatened us, goddamn it! He threatened to kill Arletta and me!”

“So you keep saying, emphasizing. All part of your plan.”

“Plan? What plan?”

“To murder your wife and frame your brother for it.”

Him: hissing intake of breath.

Her: strangled bleating noise.

“He’s the one who shot you tonight, Mrs. Madison. Not a mugger, not Troy-your husband. The only reason you’re alive is that he doesn’t know enough about firearms to shoot straight in the dark.”

Him: “That’s a fucking lie!”

Her, to Runyon in a ground-glass voice: “Coy? How can you know it was Coy?”

“You told me he was drunk when he called you earlier. He wasn’t, he was faking it. Nobody can sober up that fast in an hour, not when he’s standing here now without any smell of alcohol on his breath. The call was designed to do just what it did, drive you out of the house.”

Madison took a step forward, changed his mind. He still wouldn’t meet Runyon’s gaze, or his wife’s. He wore the guilty man’s look now-sick and self-pitying.

Runyon said, “I had a pretty good look at the shooter as he was running away. Tall-and your husband’s tall, but his brother’s four inches shorter. Walked and ran splayfooted, like a duck-the way he walks. Then there’re those blotches on his face. Look at them close-up and you can see they’re not a rash. He’s got the kind of skin that takes and holds imprints from fabric, doesn’t he? Wakes up in the morning with pillow and blanket marks on his face? The ones he’s got now are from the ribbing of that ski mask.”

“You son of a bitch!” she said to Madison. “You dirty son of a bitch!”

She came up off the couch and went for him with nails flashing. Runyon got in her way, grabbed hold of her; her injured arm stopped her from struggling with him. Then Madison tried to make a run for it. Runyon let go of her, chased him, and caught him at the head of the stairs. When Madison tried to kick him, Runyon knocked him flat on his skinny ass.

With perfect timing, the doorbell rang. And it wasn’t just the EMTs; the law had also arrived.

Coy Madison was as stupid as they come. The weapon he’d used, a Saturday night special, and the ski mask were both in the trunk of his car.

Once he was confronted with the evidence, he broke down and spewed out a confession. It was all pretty much as Runyon had figured it, right down to the motive. Madison hated his wife, was jealous of her success, wanted control of her money and their joint property. No feelings for his brother, either, other than contempt for Troy’s drugged-out lifestyle, so the idea had been to get rid of both of them together. Kill her, then drive down to the rental house in San Bruno and plant the gun and ski mask on Troy, then phone in an anonymous tip to the police, and when Troy told them the bail-jump was his brother’s idea deny the hell out of it. The word of an allegedly honest citizen against that of an addict, dealer, and fugitive. Which of them would be believed?

Foolproof plan, in Coy’s view. Stupid plan, in Runyon’s. A rookie cop with a couple of ounces of imagination could have seen through it, even if Madison hadn’t screwed it up with lies of commission and omission, a bumbling murder attempt, and a too-quick return home to find out how badly his wife was wounded. He didn’t realize yet how lucky he was that he hadn’t fired a killing shot. As it was, the charges would be attempted murder and aiding and abetting a fugitive; if he stayed lucky, he might still be relatively young when he got out of prison.