Bill Pronzini: Deadfall

Went to sleep again.

It was an odd sleep-deep and dreamless for a long while, then shallow and restless and heavy with more dreams, and finally not quite sleep at all, just that kind of drifting doze where you’re poised on the edge of wakefulness and dreams and reality intermingle.

Photographs, I thought or dreamed.

Love, Al.

His name is Roberto, he’s a nice little boy.

Photographs.

Deadfall.

So sorry.

Fall how could you…

Love, Al.

Photographs.

Danny Martinez.

Crucifixes.

Roberto.

Lumber, remember the lumber?

I woke up. Sat up so fast that pain ripped through my side and I had to jam my teeth together to keep from crying out. I was soaked in sweat, panting as if I had run a long distance-and in a way, that was just what I’d done.

I had it now… some of it, maybe even most of it. And I knew where to look for the rest. Bad, worse than I’d thought, uglier than I’d thought. Simpler than I’d thought, too. That was why it had taken me this long to figure it out. Too many complications, and most of them false trails, miscalculations, red herrings. The forest for the trees.

What time was it? I looked at the clock, and the hands read 1:03. I stared at them; I had slept another five hours, slept away half of the day. Thursday-another Thursday. Everything of any magnitude on this case seemed to happen on Thursday, including its beginning and now maybe its ending.

I got out of bed, stripped off my pajamas in the bathroom-they smelled medicinal and sweaty, and so did I-and took a careful shower. Then I got dressed, went back to the bedroom. My notebook was on the dresser; Kerry had rescued it from what was left of the suit jacket I’d been wearing Sunday night. My car keys were there too, thanks to her and Eberhardt having retrieved the car. When I checked through the notebook I found that I hadn’t copied down Claudia Mitchell’s telephone number. I could call the office, get it from Eberhardt if he was in, but I did not want to talk to Eberhardt right now. So I dialed 411 instead. There was only one Claudia Mitchell listed-the right one, as it turned out.

Her sister wasn’t there, but she gave me a number where Ruth Mitchell could be reached. The former Mrs. Leonard Purcell did not want to talk to me at first, not about anything so personal as what I was asking; but I convinced her it was important, that it would help bring Leonard’s murderer to justice. She answered my questions finally. And they were the right answers, the ones I had expected to hear.

One more thing to check out, one very important thing. I did not have to go do it myself, I did not want to go do it myself; it would require work, the kind I was in no shape for-hard work, bad work. Call Ben Klein, I thought, lay it out for him, let him take it from here. But I couldn’t do that. It was my case now, mine to finish unraveling, mine to put an end to one way or another. Personally.

You sound like Mike Hammer, for Christ’s sake, I thought. What’s the matter with you?

I watched a man die, I thought, I felt him die. And they beat me up, they hurt me bad. That’s what’s the matter with me.

I got the car keys off the dresser, put on my old tweed overcoat to guard against a chill, and went out. Wishing I owned a gun to take with me, and damned glad I didn’t.

The car didn’t handle right. When the trap car rammed it on Sunday night the impact had done more than just cave in part of the right front fender; it had screwed up the steering gear somehow, so that that side felt loose on turns and shimmied badly at speeds above thirty-five. I didn’t like driving it this way, but at the moment I had no choice. I held my speed down and put blind trust in the thing hanging together for another sixty miles or so.

I drove straight down the coast on Highway 1, taking it very slow through the bad snaky stretch at Devil’s Slide. The weather had turned poor again-heavily overcast, gusty winds, mist sailing in ragged streamers along the edge of the sea. There was not much traffic. I kept my mind blank as I drove; I did not want to think about what lay ahead. Time enough for thinking when I finished what I was on my way to do.

When I got to Moss Beach it was a little after three. I turned inland through the village, went out Sunshine Valley Road, picked up Elm Street a little while later. And a little while after that I was again looking at the deserted expanse of the Martinez farm.

I parked where I had the first time, in the middle of the dusty yard, and got out in slow, careful movements. Driving hadn’t bothered me too much, except for the jouncing of the car as I crawled over the rutted access lane; that had made my side and my head hurt. My joints ached, too, as I stepped away from the car. Old, I thought. Old and badly used.

The wind blew hard and cold here, made pained moaning noises in the surrounding woods, fiapped a loose shutter at one of the house windows, spun a rowel on a rusty weathervane atop the barn; I was glad I had thought to put on the overcoat. I stood looking around for a time. Everything seemed as it had been nearly a week ago. But looks can be deceiving; I ought to have remembered that little homily before, saved myself a lot of grief. They might have been here in the interim, one or the other or both of them. It depended on how secure they felt… no, on how secure she felt.

Without thinking about where I was going I crossed to the house, climbed the porch stairs. Delaying tactic, but so what? The front door was still closed, as I had left it last Friday. I turned the knob and it opened and I went inside.

Nothing different about the front parlor; the dark-wood crucifix was still there on one wall. I moved through the kitchen, the dining area, the child’s room, into the bedroom Danny Martinez had shared with his common-law wife. Nothing different there either. The bronze, silver-trimmed crucifix still hung above the bed. And the photo of young, laughing Roberto Martinez was still wedged between the frame and the glass of the oval mirror.

Crucifixes.

Photographs.

Man packs up all his belongings, clothes and things, crap from the bathroom medicine cabinet, loads up his old pickup truck and clears out for Mexico-that’s the way it’s supposed to look. But he’s a religious man; why would he leave the crucifixes behind, particularly the one in here? Even if the break-up of his family had soured him on his faith, this crucifix was an expensive piece of craftsmanship and he had been a poor man all his life. No reason for him to leave it behind, none at all.

No reason for him not to have taken the photo of his son, either. You could understand a man not taking the other photo, the one of the three of them: he might not want to keep anything with the woman’s image on it. But two different people had told me Danny Martinez doted on Roberto. And the photograph there on the mirror was a fine one, little boy laughing, nobody in it but him-the kind of photo no loving father could bear to leave behind.

Photographs and crucifixes. And I was a damned poor detective for not having realized these things before.

Back through the house, down the stairs, over to the car. I leaned inside, unclipped the flashlight from under the dash. And then hesitated, feeling tired and sore and a little sick to my stomach. The wind slapped at me, and I shivered-but it was more than just the cold that put the tremor on my body. Get it over with, I thought. But it was another minute or so before I could make myself move toward the barn.

The one door was still open, canted at an angle on its weak hinges. I went through the opening. The sour odor was the same — or maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was stronger. I breathed through my mouth so I wouldn’t have to smell it. The shadows in the corners, under the hayloft, up around the eaves seemed denser today because of the heavy overcast outside. I switched on the flashlight and played its powerful beam over the stack of lumber, the carpentering tools scattered nearby. Then, slowly, I made my way toward the rear, to where the horse stalls were.