Bill Pronzini: Schemers

“Dryer sheets?” his wife said.

“That’s it. All the odors were so strong it was almost… I don’t know, I was in so much pain…”

What kind of man washes himself, shampoos his hair, and puts on clean clothes to break into a garage in the middle of the night? Somebody with OCD, maybe. Compulsive hand washer, cleanliness freak. That might explain the wet ground under the cemetery water tap, too.

Runyon said as much and then asked, “Do you know anyone who fits that description? Obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness?”

“I can’t… no, I don’t think so.”

“Mrs. Henderson?”

“No. No one.”

“Just a few more questions. Did you have an impression of the man’s age?”

“… Well, youngish, I think. From the sound of his voice.”

“Twenties? Thirties?”

“I’m not sure-twenties, I guess.”

“Anything distinctive about the voice?”

“Not that I can remember. The pain… it was right after he clubbed me.”

“Any idea of what he was doing in your garage?”

Henderson was tiring. His eyelids drooped, and when he tried to shift position, hurt twisted his mouth out of shape. “Sabotage my car again, I suppose.”

“He’d already done that once?”

“In my office parking lot, one night when I was working late. Threw acid on the tires, all four of them.”

“Was there any damage to anything in the garage?”

“No. He didn’t have time… I was out there pretty fast after I heard him break in.”

“Where did he come from when he hit you?”

“Where? I’m not… My left, over by my workbench.”

“Keep anything flammable in that area? Paint thinner, gasoline?”

“No flammable liquids, but there’s a lot of cardboard and paper-I store my old business files in the garage.”

“Near the workbench.”

“No, along the wall on the other side.”

“My God,” Mrs. Henderson said, “are you suggesting he might’ve been planning to set fire to our garage?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. Just asking questions. Would you mind if I had a look around the garage? The rest of your property?”

“The police have already been over everything…”

“I’d like to see it for myself.”

“Go ahead,” Henderson said. “Anything you need.”

“I’ll be home in an hour or so,” his wife said. “Unless you’d like to go there now…”

“No hurry. Later this afternoon is fine.”

She drew a heavy breath. “Mr. Runyon, we have a twelve-year-old son. Cliff and Tracy have two young daughters. You have to find this man, find out who he is and why he’s doing this to us, stop him before he…” The rest of it seemed to stick in her throat.

Runyon didn’t believe in offering false assurances. But these were desperate people. He said, “I’ll do everything I can,” and left them with that thin little thread of hope.

P erp possibly in his twenties, possibly with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Not much to go on, without some idea of why he’d targeted the Hendersons. A man with a real or imagined hate-on for both of the brothers, or for the Henderson family. The father had been dead for five years, so it didn’t figure to be him.

Still, the first act of aggression had been to burn Lloyd Henderson’s ashes and the words off his monument with acid. Vicious and personal act. Everything else he’d done, with the exception of the assault on Damon Henderson, and that hadn’t been planned, was mild by comparison.

Something to do with the father after all?

JAKE RUNYON

Cliff and Tracy Henderson lived on Walnut Street. Runyon looked up the location on the Los Alegres map he’d bought, found it on the west side not far from the town center. The address turned out to be an old, two-story house with a columned side porch shaded by a tulip tree. The yard on the other side was fenced. The reason for the fencing was apparent as soon as he started up the front walk: a big brown and black dog, some kind of rottweiler mix, came charging out of the back barking and growling. Good for the Hendersons. A loud and aggressive animal was the best kind of home protection they could have.

The dog kept up the racket as Runyon stood on the front porch thumbing the bell. No response. But as he came back down the steps, a dark gray SUV rolled upstreet and turned into the driveway. Tracy Henderson was at the wheel. He stood waiting as she and her passengers, two young girls, piled out.

“Oh, Mr. Runyon,” she said. “Are you looking for Cliff? He’s at a job site…”

“I’d like to talk to you, if you can spare a few minutes.”

“Of course.” The two girls came up, one on either side of her. She said, “My daughters, Shana and Rachel. I just picked them up at school.”

The thirteen-year-old, Shana, gave him her hand in a solemn, grown-up way. The younger one, Rachel, said “Hello” shyly and stayed where she was, close to her mother. They knew who he was; their solemn expressions conveyed that. Good for the Hendersons on that score, too. You couldn’t protect kids their age by trying to shield them from what was going on.

The dog was still barking. Mrs. Henderson yelled, “Thor! Quiet!” but the command didn’t have much effect. “He’s a good watchdog but once he gets started… Come inside, Mr. Runyon, we’ll talk in the living room. Just let me get the girls settled in their rooms.” She’d been calm enough in the agency offices this morning, but now she looked and acted frazzled. Worry and tension taking their toll.

She deposited him in a living room that ran most of the house’s width across the front. Heavy dark furniture and rose-patterned wallpaper gave it the look of rooms you saw in movies made in the forties. Its focal points created a culture clash: shelves crammed with books along one wall, a television set displayed in front of one draped window. The TV won the clash hands down: ultra-modern fifty-two-inch flat-screen job on a long, high table, like a shrine to a false god. Runyon, waiting, stayed on his feet even though she’d invited him to sit down.

She was back in not much more than three minutes. “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, a soda?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“I’m going to have a small scotch. You don’t mind? I don’t usually drink this early, but…”

“I understand.”

She poured the scotch neat, sipped it, made a face, sipped again as she lowered herself into one of a matching pair of overstuffed armchairs. The couch suited him; by turning sideways to face her, he had his back to the monster TV.

She said, “Are you here because you have something to tell us? Or is it more questions?”

“Questions, for now. Trying to cover all the possibilities.”

“Yes, of course.”

“I spoke to your brother-in-law in the hospital earlier.” He told her what Damon Henderson had remembered about the perp. “Do you know anyone who fits that description? Young, compulsive about cleanliness?”

“No.” Wry mouth. “Most of my students and some members of my family would fall into the opposite category.”

Runyon said, “You’re all convinced there’s nothing your husband or his brother did or were involved in that triggered the stalker’s rage. That opens up the possibility that the motive may not be directly related to them.”

“What do you mean?”

“It could be a grudge against another member of the family.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. There aren’t any other siblings. Or any close relatives except for an elderly aunt who lives in Florida.”

“The first and most brutal attack was the desecration of their father’s grave. That could be significant.”

“You think… something against Lloyd? My Lord, he’s been gone five years.”