Bill Pronzini: Deadfall

I started to lift up away from him, to go call the ambulance even though he couldn’t have more than a couple of minutes left, but the rattling in his throat stopped me. It formed a word now, a liquidly audible word.

“Deadfall,” he said.

He said it again, not quite as clearly, and kept trying to crawl out from under my hand, away from the grinning skull-face that beckoned him. And then he said, mumbling, delirious words that I had to strain to hear: “So sorry… fall, how could you…” And then he died.

I felt him die. I felt him shudder, stiffen; I felt the life force desert him all at once, as if it somehow came winging out through my hand. The sensation put racking chills on my back, drove me to my feet, and sent me stumbling back into the kitchen. I leaned against the sink, staring at my left hand, willing the shakes to go away so I could use the telephone.

Deadfall. So sorry… fall, how could you…

There was a stain of blood on my left palm, like a vestige of the life force that had passed through it.

The dead man’s name was Leonard Purcell. He lived in this house and apparently had for some time; he had been forty-four years old and unmarried; he had practiced law out of an office in Stonestown. I got all of that from a billfold-driver’s license with his picture on it, one of several embossed business cards-that had been visible in an inside pocket of the gabardine suit coat draped over the kitchen chair. I used my handkerchief to take it out; I thought it was all right to do that because I needed to know who he was before I called the police, and I also needed to know the exact address without having to go out front and try to find the house number. I did not touch anything else in the kitchen except for the telephone, and I used my handkerchief on that too.

The Ingleside Police Station was not far away, so I put the call in there. The desk sergeant told me to stand by, he’d have officers there in five minutes. He meant uniformed officers; it would take a team of homicide inspectors at least a half hour to make it out from the Hall of Justice downtown. I said I wasn’t going anywhere, and he said fine, and I put the receiver down and held my hand up in front of my face. The shaking had stopped. Outwardly, anyway. Inside I was still churning like an old dryer full of laundry.

I looked around the kitchen again. I did not want to do my waiting in here; the place had a heavy closed-in feel, for one thing, and for another I could smell the blood, all that blood in the dining room. Never mind that blood has no odor: I could smell it just the same. I considered going outside. I was still considering it when I heard the car come thrumming into the driveway.

The police already? Maybe, although black-and-whites usually pulled up on the street, even at a homicide scene. I went through the laundry porch, through the back door. A car door-just one-slammed on the side drive. I hurried over that way, around the corner. The car that had pulled in behind the Chrysler was definitely not a police cruiser. Some kind of sports car, an older model — an MG, maybe. There was no sign of the driver; he must have gone the other way, to the front of the house.

I retraced my steps, back inside. Just as I entered the kitchen, a door I took to be the front door opened and then closed again. A male voice called, “Leonard? I’m home.”

There was a passageway off the near side of the kitchen that appeared to lead up front. It took me into a big tile-floored foyer decorated with multicolored Mexican pottery jars full of pampas grass. The man standing there had his back to me, hanging up a topcoat in a narrow closet that wasn’t much more than a vertical slit in the wall. He said without turning, “What’s going on? Some of the neighbors are looking out their windows.”

I didn’t answer him.

He swung around, saying, “Leonard, I asked you-” and broke off when he saw that I wasn’t Leonard. He stiffened a little, not much, showing more surprise than anything else: he wasn’t the panicky type. “Who are you?”

I told him my name. It didn’t mean anything to him; I would have been surprised myself if it had. He was in his thirties, slight, sandy-haired, with a wispy mustache and gentle blue eyes and lashes that had been shaped and lengthened with mascara. A small circle of gold dangled from his right ear. He was wearing Levi’s, a blue pullover sweater, a pair of beaded moccasins. The way he moved, the way he held himself, the lilt of his voice-all of those suggested a woman trapped in a man’s body. Now I knew why Leonard Purcell was not married.

“Are you a friend of Leonard’s?” he asked.

“No. I’m afraid not.”

“One of his clients?”

“No. Mind telling me your name?”

“Tom Washburn, if it’s any of your business. What are you doing in my house?”

“You live here too, then?”

He made an impatient gesture. “Certainly I live here. Now what’s going on? Where’s Leonard?”

I took a breath, let it out slowly. Telling somebody about the death of a friend, a loved one, is never easy. Doesn’t matter if you know the person or not-it’s never easy. I said, “There’s been some trouble here. I’m a detective and I happened in on it. I wish I hadn’t.”

“Trouble? What do you mean, ‘trouble’?”

“Your housemate is dead, Mr. Washburn. He was shot a few minutes ago.”

Washburn stood there for a couple of seconds without moving; it took that long for the words to penetrate, to mean anything to him. Then they rocked him, as if some invisible force had struck him a sharp blow. He put a hand up to his mouth and said between the splayed fingers, “Dead? Leonard?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Somebody shot him?”

“I’ve already called the police. They’ll be here any minute-”

“Who? Who would do a thing like that?”

“I don’t know. I heard the shots and I saw the person run out of the house, but I didn’t get a good look at him.”

Washburn still had his hand over his mouth; he was swaying slightly now, with his eyes squeezed shut. I was afraid he might faint, but that didn’t happen. After a time he said in a low, tremulous voice, “Where is he? I want to see him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I want to see him. I have a right to see him.”

“Mr. Washburn, for your own sake-”

His eyes popped open and he said with sudden savagery, “Goddamn you, I want to see him! You tell me where he is! Tell me or I’ll scratch your fucking eyes out!”

He meant it. Shock and grief and confusion make people irrational. I said, “In the dining room,” and he spun away and ran through a big beam-ceilinged living room, the rear part of which was raised by three steps. I went after him; I did not want him touching anything, by accident or for any other reason. But he didn’t go into the dining room. He stopped when he got to the archway and saw what lay beyond. Stopped, and then screamed — a shrill keening cry full of anguish and horror that put goosebumps on my arms and across my shoulders. He turned blindly, stumbling, his face all twisted up. I caught his arm to keep him from falling. And he made a little whimpering noise and came in against me, threw his arms around my neck and buried his face against my chest and began to weep hysterically.

I didn’t know what to do. For a couple of seconds I just stood awkwardly, letting him hold onto me; there was a lump of something dry and bitter in my throat. Then I put an arm around him, turned him a little so that I could walk with him. He came along without resistance. I could feel the tremors racking him, paroxysm after paroxysm, so that his sobbing breaths came out like hiccups. I got him to a blocky Spanish couch set at an angle away from the arch so that you couldn’t see into the dining room from there, and sat him down on that. There was a quilted afghan draped over the back; I shook the thing open and wrapped it around his shoulders, folded it over the front of him. It didn’t stop his shaking but it seemed to take the chill away, help him get his breathing under control.