Bill Pronzini - Fever

“Then you wheeled her into the garage and put her into the freezer.”

“No. I went back inside and washed the blood off the knife. I don’t know why I did that. Blood all over the floor, but the knife, on the counter… I don’t know why, I just did.” She blew smoke in a ragged stream. “That’s when I got the idea. While I was washing the blood off the knife.”

“Moving in here, using her money to gamble with.”

“She didn’t need it anymore, did she? She was dead and I’m alive and I… why shouldn’t I use it? Use her house, too, the goddamn bed where she fucked my husband.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She had her purse with her, she was going out somewhere after she finished ragging on me. I looked in her wallet. Credit cards… my God, she had a dozen! Big credit limits on every one, I checked later to make sure. So much money. Why shouldn’t I spend it?”

“And that’s when you put her into the freezer.”

“I had to empty all the frozen stuff out first, so she’d fit. It wasn’t easy getting her in there. A dead person weighs a lot.”

Yeah. “How long did you plan on leaving her there? Until you gambled away all of her money?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. One day at a time, that’s the way I’ve always lived. Thinking too much makes you crazy.”

“Why didn’t you clean up the kitchen before you came over here? The blood smears on the floor.”

“Didn’t I? Jesus, I must’ve been too distracted. And Mitch found them and called you. That’s why you’re here.”

“I’ve been looking for you since Wednesday.”

She waved that away. “Anyhow,” she said, “I needed action real bad. The fever was eating me up. And I knew Rebecca had a computer… if she didn’t have a password to log on, it’d be easy to use it. She didn’t and it was.”

“And you’ve been here ever since.”

Jerky nod. Her cancer stick was almost down to the filter; she lit another one off the burning coal. “Except once when I ran out of cigarettes. I took her car, late, and went out and bought a couple of cartons and some more Scotch. Nobody in the neighborhood saw me. All alone here the rest of the time. Nice and quiet except when the phone rang or somebody rang the doorbell. My God, it was heaven! All that money, play as long as I wanted, shoot the pickle whenever I felt like it. I was ahead fifteen thousand at one point. Did I tell you that?”

“You told me.”

“Fifteen thousand.” The half-hysterical laugh again. “Top of the world, Ma.”

“Only then you fell off.”

“I’d’ve hit another winning streak if you hadn’t showed up,” she said. “I would have, I know it. Only a matter of time.”

I didn’t say anything.

She said, as if the thought had just come to her, “Does Mitch know?”

“Not yet.”

“He’ll be ecstatic when he finds out. No more worries for him.”

“About you? Don’t be so sure.”

“He doesn’t care about me,” she said. “He never did. All he cares about is money and pussy.” With sudden vehemence: “It isn’t fair! He’ll divorce me now and take everything and I’ll get nothing.”

I said, “That’s not the way it works,” and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.

“It isn’t? Why isn’t it?”

Too late now. She’d find out soon enough anyway. “Committing a felony or a series of felonies doesn’t invalidate the no-fault statute,” I said. “It probably should but it doesn’t.”

She stared at me. A long ash fell off the end of the burning weed; she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t brush it off her lap.

“You mean I can still divorce him and get my half?” she said. “Half of everything-the house, the bank accounts?”

“You’ll need it for a good lawyer.”

“But not all of it.” A slow, ghastly smile formed around the cigarette stub. “There’ll be some left. Even if I have to go to prison, there’ll be some left when I get out.”

I lifted myself off the chair. The smoke in the room was making me sick. She was making me sick. Time, past time, to let the law have her.

“Maybe,” I said, “but you won’t keep it for long. Horses, slots, poker… not for long.”

“That’s what you think,” she said. “I’m overdue for a real winning streak. I’ve got a big one coming to me, big and long. You wait and see. Top of the world and this time I won’t fall off.”

She believed it. Sitting there ravaged by her addiction, with another woman’s blood on her hands, and chasing the high and beating the odds was all she cared about, all she believed in. In a way, that made Janice Krochek more unfathomable, more terrible to me than anything else she’d done.

Mitchell Krochek took the news hard. The main reason, of course, was that no matter what kind of legal strategies his lawyer indulged in, he would lose half of his assets in a divorce settlement. And be forced to make restitution for the debts his wife had run up on Rebecca Weaver’s credit cards, and to shoulder responsibility for any civil claims that might be brought by her estate. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d have to suffer the negative publicity the murder trial would bring. Yet I had the sense that under his selfish, rutting-male exterior, he genuinely cared for Janice Stanley Krochek-even now, after all she’d done and was about to do to him. Love’s a funny thing. Sometimes, no matter how much two people beat the living hell out of it, it never quite dies.

It was late Friday evening that I talked to him. He called me at home, after the Oakland police finally contacted him. He seemed to need to talk. Kept thanking me for helping him, for “getting to the bottom of things”-saving his ass, he meant. Volunteered the information that he intended to put the house on the market right away because he “couldn’t stand to live there now, after what she did to Becky in the kitchen. I’d have nightmares every goddamn night.” He’d move in with Deanne, he said, until the house was sold and the trial was over and he could start living a normal life again. After that, well, maybe he’d marry Deanne. She loved him and she wasn’t crazy like Janice and his first wife-“first woman I’ve ever been with who wasn’t batshit in one way or another.”

I liked Deanne Goldman and I wished her well, so I hoped he was right about her mental health. If so, she not only wouldn’t marry him, she’d throw him out and change all the locks on her doors.

O n Saturday morning, early, I called Tamara at home to fill her in on Friday’s events. She had a few questions; when I’d answered them, she said, “Some Friday. For you and for Jake, too. Our first pro bono and it turned out crazy, blew up in a murder-suicide.”

“The hell it did. What happened? He didn’t get caught up in it, did he?”

“Found the bodies, that’s all,” she said, and provided details. “Weird, huh?”

“Very. Sometimes I think this agency is cursed. We get the damnedest cases.”

“Always come out okay, though, don’t we?”

“So far,” I said. “One thing for sure after yesterday: I’ve had it up to here with gamblers and gambling. If there’s even a hint of either one in a future inquiry, we turn the case down flat. In fact, do me a favor and don’t even mention gambling to me anymore.”

She let me hear one of her saucy little chuckles. “I won’t,” she said. “You can bet the house on it.”

S unday night, in bed, Kerry said, “I’ve made a decision.”

“Good for you. About what?”

“The way I look.”

“You look fine. Kind of sexy tonight, as a matter of fact. Is that a new nightie?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”