Bill Pronzini - Fever

I went in there, still walking soft and at an angle until I was parallel with the desk and within the range of her vision. She didn’t notice me; she was in a kind of trancelike zone, as if the images on the monitor had hypnotized her.

“Hello, Mrs. Krochek,” I said.

I had to say the words again before they registered. Her head jerked sideways, but even when the brown eyes focused on me, there was no other physical reaction except a tightening of the muscles around her mouth. “Oh, it’s you,” she said with no discernible emotion. As if it was perfectly natural for me to be there. As if I were no more than a small, annoying interruption, like a buzzing fly.

The look of her was chilling. Hair wildly tangled, no makeup, skin sallow and moist, eyes bagged and feverish with excitement. Clothes wrinkled and soiled. Soiled body, too; the room stank of sweat and unwashed flesh mixed with the stale odors of booze and tobacco smoke. If she’d slept at all in the past three-plus days, it had been for no more than a few minutes at a time. If she’d eaten, it hadn’t been enough to dirty more than the two plates and two cups that sat on the low table in front of the couch. Existing the whole time on Scotch and cigarettes and adrenaline.

Her eyes flicked away, drawn magnetically back to the screen. She stared at it for a few seconds, moved the mouse, moved it again. “Shit,” she said then, still without any inflection. “Another loser. I should’ve kept on playing the twenty-line slots, let this damn site cool off a while longer.”

She was playing seven-card stud now, I saw when I moved a little closer. She clicked on the ante for a new hand, or “posted the blind” as it’s called, looked at her hole cards-king of diamonds, ten of clubs-and made a bet: $50. Reckless and foolish, without a pair in the hole.

“I had a hot streak going for a while,” she said, “shooting the pickle and winning two out of three hands. At one time I was ahead fifteen thousand. Can you believe it? Fifteen thousand! I couldn’t lose.”

“But then you did.”

“Yeah. My luck never holds for-Shit!” She’d lost another hand.

“How much are you down now?”

“I don’t know. Twenty K, maybe. It doesn’t matter.”

“No? Why not?”

“Plenty more where that came from.”

“Rebecca Weaver’s money.”

She didn’t deny it; she was still in the fever zone. “I’ll win it back,” she said. “All of it. My luck’s starting to change again. I can feel it.”

“Credit cards? Or did you tap into her bank account, too?”

She didn’t answer. Her eyes were fixed on the screen.

“Is that why you killed her? To get your hands on her money?”

“… What?”

“I found her body,” I said. “In the freezer in your garage.”

Nothing until the hand being played was finished and she’d lost again. Then, as she posted the blind for a new one, “I didn’t do it on purpose. It wasn’t my fault.”

“What happened?”

“… What?”

“What happened with Rebecca, Mrs. Krochek?”

“She came over to my house. She said she wanted to see if I was all right but it wasn’t me she was worried about, it was Mitch. She… Yeah, baby, that’s it, that’s it! Wired aces!”

The bet she made on the aces was $250. I didn’t try to talk to her until the hand played out; she wouldn’t have heard me. She lost that one, too-lost another $1200 of Rebecca Weaver’s money on a single hand.

It was the amount of the loss that made me step forward and do what I should have done sooner: flip the switch on the workstation’s power strip. She let out a yell when the screen and the desk lamp went dark. Sudden rage brought her up out of the chair, sent her flying at me with her hands hooked into claws and her nails digging at my eyes. I couldn’t control her; in her fury she had a man’s strength. The sharp nails got in under my guard and opened burning furrows down the left side of my face. I had no choice then but to clip her. It didn’t hurt her much, but it knocked her down and drove the fight out of her. When I was sure that she wasn’t going to come at me again, I hauled her up by the arms and pushed her down on the couch.

She said, dully now, “You son of a bitch.”

There was a ceiling globe; I switched it on. In the stronger light, she made a pathetic, wasted figure slumped down on the cushions. The excitement had gone cold in her eyes. They were bleak, bloodshot, reflecting the light with the same empty glassiness of an animal’s.

I pulled the chair out from the workstation, straddled it in front of her. My cheek stung like the devil; when I touched the ragged furrows, my fingers came away bloody. I shook out my handkerchief, held it against the wounds. Sometimes it pays to be old-fashioned enough to carry a handkerchief.

“Why did you kill Rebecca Weaver?” I asked her.

“I didn’t mean to.” Her voice wasn’t much louder now than a hoarse whisper. “She made me do it.”

“How did she do that?”

“Real sweet at first, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But then she started ragging on me about hurting Mitch. I told her to shut up, go away, but she wouldn’t. Just kept ragging, calling me names, bitch, gambling slut. You know what she told me then? Take a guess.”

“That she had an affair with your husband six months ago.”

“That’s right. You know about that?”

“I know. But you didn’t until she told you.”

“Stupid. I should’ve known. Right next door, always looking at him like he was a piece of candy. She was the bitch, not me. Dirty little bitch.”

“So you killed her.”

“No, it wasn’t like that. She… I was hung over, sick, and she kept ragging and ragging, saying how much better she was for him than me or that cunt he’s sleeping with now. I told her she could have him, welcome to him, but that didn’t stop her. Kept screaming at me, breaking my eardrums, and then she grabbed my arm and I… I don’t know, I must’ve picked up a knife that was on the sink…” She shook herself, the way a dog does when it comes out of water. “I don’t remember stabbing her. I don’t. She was just… lying there on the floor, blood all over her, eyes wide open. Dead. She… I was sick, shaking so bad I couldn’t think… I don’t know, I don’t remember”

“What did you do then?”

“Had a drink, a big one. Wouldn’t you?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I would’ve called nine-eleven if she hadn’t been dead. I would have. I thought about doing it anyway. But the police… I couldn’t face them. I was scared… real scared… You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know what you mean.”

“I sat in the living room with another Scotch and tried to calm down. I don’t know how long it took… a long time.”

“And then?”

She licked chapped lips. “I need a cigarette. Give me one, will you?”

There was an open pack next to the computer. I got up to fetch it and a booklet of matches and the overstuffed ashtray. The smoke in there was bothering my chest, but I could stand it for the few minutes it would take to get the rest of the story out of her. Her hands trembled as she lit one of the cancer sticks; it bobbed between her lips, sending up smoke in erratic patterns around her head.

“All I could think about was getting her out of there. You know? No idea what I’d do with her, not then, but I wanted her out of my house. I… dragged her into the laundry room and out through the back door. The gardener, he’d left a wheelbarrow on the lawn. I wheeled it over and lifted her into it. Like a sack.” She laughed, a sudden bleating sound that showed how close to the edge she was. “Like a big bloody dead sack.”