Bill Pronzini - Savages

The larger barn’s cavernous interior was spotted with farm equipment, a stack of lumber, odds and ends. At the far end were a pair of doors, one open and the other closed. The closed one would lead to the stable where he’d heard the horse earlier. The open one.. tack room, probably. He moved in that direction, playing the light in front of him, his right hand on the butt of his weapon.

When he neared the door he pulled up short, listening. Faint sound from somewhere close by. It took him a few seconds to identify it: a kind of slow, rhythmic creaking. The tack room? He went ahead again, heel and toe until he reached the tack room door. It opened inward; he shoved it wide, at the same time swinging the flash beam inside. What it picked out of the darkness froze him, made him blink and stare.

In the middle of the room a man hung suspended from a rope looped over a thick crossbeam.

Runyon had seen a lot of death in his time, all kinds, but none quite like this. The unexpectedness, the incongruity, threw him off balance. The hanged man was Latino, slight, fortyish, wearing Levi’s and a khaki workshirt. His lined face was the color of blackened liver, tongue showing at one mouth corner, eyes popped and reflecting the glare like rounds of glass. Wound on the side of his head, black with drying blood. The rope, a thick hemp stretched taut and tied off around a ring in the wall, bit so deeply into his flesh that it was only partially visible below the chin. A vagrant breeze through an open sidewall window stirred the body just enough to cause the creaking.

He swept the light off the dead man, around the narrow room, down across the floor. No signs of a struggle, nothing disturbed. But it wasn’t a suicide; there was nothing in the vicinity that the man could have stepped or jumped off of. He’d been strung up. Murdered.

Runyon entered the room long enough to touch the back of one dangling hand. Still warm. Not dead long. Then he backed out of the doorway, fanning the beam back through the barn until it picked out the open entrance doors. He held it there and followed the long lighted path, getting his cell phone out to call 911 as he went.

As he neared the doors, his ears picked up a rumbling motor noise. Car coming on the farm road. He quickened his pace. The sidespill from the oncoming headlights brightened the darkness out there; he switched off the torch as he came into the opening.

Movement behind him. He sensed rather than heard it, and his reaction was instinctive and immediate. He started to turn, started to duck away, started to drop both the flash and the cell so he could defend himself. But there wasn’t enough time for any of it.

Something whipped out of the darkness, exploded against the side of his head, and knocked him cockeyed.

JAKE RUNYON

He was down on all fours, crawling around in the dirt, trying to get up. At first he didn’t know where he was or what had happened. Then he did, in a disjointed, urgent way, but he couldn’t do anything about it because he couldn’t stand up. His legs and arms felt like bloated things made of rubber. Pain pulsed and hammered through his skull. He couldn’t see straight, couldn’t make his thoughts connect. He kept on trying to stand up and each time he fell down again.

His ears worked all right-they were the only part of him that seemed to be functioning. Sounds all around him, engulfing him. Footsteps running away, car engine, raised voices, footsteps running toward him. He fumbled for the Magnum, couldn’t find it. Tried to get up and fell down. He stayed down on all fours this time, shaking his head like a dog. His eyes were open, but all he could see was blurred images and flashes of light mixed with dark. Nausea boiled in his stomach. He never puked, he hated to puke-he leaned forward on his elbows and puked.

More voices, or the same voices, close by. Sudden stabbing light in his eyes, blinding him. He twisted his head away from it, and the motion brought a new eruption of pain. He flopped over on his side. Wetness ran along his cheek, trickled into the corner of his mouth. Blood.

“Who is he?”

“Never saw him before.”

“Oh, my Lord, look at his head!”

“Somebody must’ve hit him… board there’s got blood on it.”

“… Jerry?”

“His car’s not here.”

Words clogged in Runyon’s throat; he spit out some of them like gobs of phlegm. “… Dead man… police…”

“What’s he saying?”

“Can’t understand him.”

“John, look there, under his coat… he has a gun!”

“Christ! Here, hold the flashlight.”

Hands on him, fumbling at his waist. First rule of law enforcement: Never let anybody take your weapon. He fought the hands, or tried to. Too strong. His numb fingers scrabbled over the empty holster. Brains scrambled, unarmed, helpless.

“What’s he doing here? What happened to him?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Don’t snap at me, John.”

More words came out of Runyon’s throat. “… Dead man… hanging…”

“Did you hear that? ‘Dead man’! Oh, my God-Jerry!”

“Jerry’s not here. You didn’t see his car, did you?”

“… Tack room…”

“John?”

“I heard it. Listen, he needs a doctor. You go in the house, call nine-eleven, tell them to send deputies and an ambulance. I’ll check the tack room.”

“You be careful.”

“Go on, Dora; hurry.”

The light went away. So did running steps in two directions. Runyon pulled one knee under him. The bloated, rubbery feeling was starting to go away. Tingling sensation in his hands now. He reached up to swab at the wetness on his cheek, probe along the side of his head. Soft spot on the temple, blood-wet. Puffed ear. All of that registered without meaning or implication.

He lifted his head and shook it again. When the bright pain subsided this time, he could see a little more clearly. Shapes swam through his vision, settled, and he was looking at one of the open barn doors. He crawled toward it, got both hands on the edge, found the strength to lift himself along the door edge until he was upright. He clung there, blinking, looking into the barn, waiting for the light to come back.

Whoever had blindsided him had been hiding near the doors, behind the stack of lumber. Long gone now. Whose voices? John and Dora-the Belsizes, Jerry’s parents, returned home. He could remember and reason that much. He tried to put more of it together. Nothing else would come. Pain pulsed up sharp again; his head felt like a firebox.

The flash beam reappeared, came bobbing toward him. Picked him out and held on him from a short distance away. He shut his eyes tight against the glare.

“You just stand there, mister. I still got that gun of yours.” Then, angrily, “Who did that to Manuel? You?”

He tried to say no. All that came out was a grunt.

“Who, then? Same one busted your head?”

Another grunt. Affirmative.

“Manuel… God Almighty, he never harmed nobody in his life. Who’d want to do a thing like that to him? It don’t make sense.”

Grunt. Grunt. Like a goddamn Neanderthal.

“Who are you, mister? What’re you doing on my farm?”

Runyon worked spit through his mouth, struggling to concentrate. He formed words in his mind, pushed one of them out. “Pocket.”

“What?”

And then the rest: “Inside… jacket… pocket.”

A hand reached through the light, fumbled with his jacket. Found his ID case, yanked it out, flipped it open.

“Private investigator? What the hell?”

He wanted to say “subpoena,” but he couldn’t get his mouth around the word. He grunted again instead.

“Crazy,” Belsize said. “Just plain crazy. First the fires, now this. Chrissake, what’s going on around here?”