Bill Pronzini - Fever

I let the bell play its tune again. Same result.

Well, hell.

There was a flagstone path that wound through the fronting cactus garden. I went along there onto the Krocheks’ property, following the route Rebecca Weaver had taken the day I’d met her. The front gate was closed but not locked. I went across the inner patio and pushed the bell there. Normal chimes, and as expected, no response.

It took me about fifteen seconds to decide to exercise a certain tacit right accorded me as Mitchell Krochek’s representative. The Krocheks’ spare key was still under the decorative urn at the front wall; I dug it out and used it on the door.

The coolness inside was faintly musty, the way houses get when they haven’t been aired out in a while. All the drapes were closed tight, making it too dim to find my way around without turning on some lights. The telephone and answering machine were in an arched alcove off the formal living room. The blinking light on the machine indicated that there were two messages. The first was from one of the friends Krochek had contacted about his wife, asking if everything was okay; the second was a familiar male voice saying curtly, “Carl Lassiter, Mrs. Krochek. Call me.” That one had come in at 2:45 yesterday afternoon, before my meeting with him.

I went into the kitchen. The dried blood smears were still there on the tile; Krochek had followed my advice on that score, at least. He hadn’t touched anything else in there, either; the dirty dishes still jammed the sink, giving off the sour odor of decay.

Nothing had changed in the rest of the house, as far as I could tell. The empty Scotch bottle and overflowing ashtray and strewn clothing still cluttered the spare bedroom. The bed in there was unmade, the sheet pulled loose at the bottom corners-testimony to a couple of long, sleepless nights for Krochek before he moved in with Deanne Goldman.

Back to the kitchen and into the laundry room. A quick look around there told me nothing. I turned the deadbolt on the outside door and stepped into the backyard.

The narrow half-moon gouge in the lawn caught my eye again. I got down on one knee to look at it this time. Half-inch or so deep, which meant that it had been made by something heavy; the grass that hadn’t been ground down into the dirt was brown and dead.

Wheelbarrow?

Could be. The width of the furrow was the right size for a barrow tire. And a wheelbarrow was a convenient way to move a body from one point to another. To a car, say, backed into the garage or up close to the garage door.

There was no sign of a wheelbarrow out here, but I thought I remembered seeing one among the other garden implements when I’d looked into the garage last time. I headed over that way. What stopped me before I’d taken a dozen steps was a smell carried on a gust of the cold wind. Rank, noxious-

Rotting meat.

The hair on my neck stood up like quills. When the wind gusted again, bringing me another whiff, I followed the odor to a fenced-in section between the garage and the gate that led out front. Another gate opened into a narrow enclosure where the garbage cans were kept. Garbage smell, that was all. Except that it was too strong here, too distinct.

I eased the lid up on one of the cans. The stench that poured out was bad enough to make me recoil, start me breathing through my mouth. The can was stuffed with paper-wrapped packages and freezer bags, all of them showing bloodstains. At first glance I thought: God Almighty, he killed her and cut her up. But when I took a closer look, swallowing bile, I saw that it wasn’t human remains the packages and bags contained, but steaks, chops, roasts, hamburger.

The second can was filled with more of the same. Plus brand-name bags of fruit, vegetables, fried potatoes; TV dinners and other kinds of quick meals. The sort of items you buy in the freezer sections of supermarkets.

Discarded and long-thawed frozen goods, all of it.

As if somebody had emptied out a freezer.

I slammed the lid down, backed out of the enclosure, and opened the side door to the garage. Dark, empty, the only odors those of oil and dust. I found a light switch and two rows of hanging fluorescents came on. The wheelbarrow sat against the near side wall, next to a propping of shovels, rakes, and brooms. Its metal interior was scored and dirt-streaked, but there were other, darker stains on the sides. I scratched a fingernail through one of them, held a fleck up for a closer look. Dried blood, all right.

At the far end was a loft supported by beams and heavy chains. Most of the storage space looked to be empty. Below it, at the back wall, a plywood partition had been erected to create a small separate room. The sound of my steps on the concrete floor seemed loud and hollow as I walked back there, stepped through the doorless opening in the partition.

Storage boxes piled on one side, and on the other, set between the plywood and the back wall, a big floor-model freezer.

I knew what I was going to find even before I opened it. I took a couple of deep breaths before I lifted the lid. Through the icy vapor that wafted up I had a clear look at the dead woman inside.

She had been wedged in there at an awkward angle, knees drawn up, one arm twisted under her and the other down against her abdomen. Her eyes were open, staring; the coating of frost gave them and the death rictus of her mouth an even more repellent look. She wore jeans and a white blouse, the blouse splotched across the chest and stomach with frozen blood. The frost and the blood made it impossible for me to tell what had caused the wound or wounds that had killed her.

All of that was bad enough. But the biggest shock was her identity.

It wasn’t Janice Krochek I was looking at.

It was Rebecca Weaver.

I lowered the freezer lid, quit the garage, and went back through the house and out the way I’d come in. Following a cold, prickly little hunch now. Nothing lost if it didn’t pan out; another few minutes wouldn’t make any difference to the law or Mitchell Krochek or the dead woman in the freezer.

I crossed the strip of lawn that separated the Krochek property from Rebecca Weaver’s. All three of the homes here had the same general layout. The gate in the narrow fenced area next to the garage, where her garbage cans were kept, was unlocked. So was the second gate that gave access to her backyard. And so was the side door into the garage. I opened that one and looked inside. The car in there was a Pontiac Firebird, low-slung and sporty and either new or close to it.

All right. I went through the yard to the back door: also unlocked. Easy, so far. But if the rest of my hunch proved out, it would stop being easy pretty damn quick.

I eased the door open partway, leaned in to listen. Faint sounds somewhere inside, unidentifiable from here. I stepped through onto a utility porch similar to the Krocheks’, then across the kitchen. The sounds were louder now-a familiar and discordant series of electronic beeps, clangs, and bongs. They stopped abruptly as I passed through the kitchen; I stopped, too. The new silence was heavy and unbroken.

The dining room, formal living room, and family room were empty. I made my way down a hallway that bisected the full width of the house, walking soft. Four doors opened off of it; the last one on the west side was open. I edged forward until I had a clear look inside.

It was like looking into some sort of surreal three-dimensional exhibit. Motionless shapes, shadows, one halo of stationary light, and one bright rectangle of shifting colored images in an otherwise darkened room. And all of it wrapped in a hush that put a strain on my eardrums, tweaked at nerve ends.

Spare bedroom turned into an in-home office-desk, chairs, couch, bookshelves, computer workstation. Blinds drawn, the only illumination coming from a halogen desk lamp and the computer screen. She sat hunched forward in front of the screen, her back to me and her body stiff with tension; the only part of her that moved, now and then, were the fingers of her right hand as they manipulated the mouse. The back of her neck and the ends of her hair were wet with sweat. A half-smoked Newport burned in a full ashtray on her left; ash littered the desk around it and the air was thick with smoke. An empty glass, a bottle of Scotch, a woman’s wallet, and a scatter of credit cards were on her right. I didn’t need to see the silent monitor to know what was going on.