Bill Pronzini: Deadfall

No phone in there. I went out and down the hall, down the stairs, hurrying in spite of the hurt in my side. No phone in the living room, either, where did they keep the goddamn telephones? Out of the living room, down the hall toward the rear… the kitchen. I turned in there, looking left and right, and on one wall was one of those antique wooden things, the kind with the two exposed bells and the fake crank. I went to it, caught up the bell-shaped receiver, heard the dial tone.

Heard a voice say behind me, “Put it down. Don’t call anybody, I don’t want you to call anybody.”

It was as if a door had been opened and the cold wind let in from outside: the words put a tremor on my neck, freckled my skin with goosebumps under its layer of sweat. I took the receiver away from my ear, slowly, and replaced it on the wall unit. Put my arms out away from my body and turned, slowly, to face her.

She was standing just inside the kitchen doorway; she must have been somewhere at the back of the house, hiding, waiting. The gun in her hand was an automatic, what looked to be a. 38 Smith amp; Wesson wadcutter-not a big gun but big in her tiny hands. She was holding it in both of them, to keep it steady; the muzzle was about on a level with my chest. But it wasn’t the gun itself that frightened me. It was those vulpine eyes of hers. They were bright, glassy, on the wild side so that the cocked one seemed even more erratic. It was not just emotion that had made them that way. She was on something-coke, probably. And cocaine made a person’s behavior unpredictable, volatile if that person was worked up to begin with.

“You saw them, didn’t you,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “They’re dead, both of them. I shot them.”

“Your stepmother’s still alive, Melanie.”

“Is she? I thought she was dead. Richie’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God,” she said, and I thought she was going to cry. She’d been crying before: her acne-blotched cheeks were stained with drying tears. But then she shook her head and her mouth firmed and she said, “No, I’m glad he’s dead. He deserved to die.”

“She’ll die too if I don’t call a doctor pretty soon.”

“I don’t care. I want her to die.” Her nose was running; she took her left hand away from the. 38 and swiped at it. “You know what they were doing when I walked in on them? You want me to tell you what they were doing?”

“No,” I said.

“They weren’t just fucking, oh no, they were… they…” She broke off, as if she couldn’t articulate the thing she’d witnessed. “I loved him,” she said. “I loved him and he was doing that with her. With her!”

I didn’t say anything this time. She was still holding the gun with just the one hand, still pawing at her runny nose with the other.

“I knew he was seeing somebody,” she said. “Staying out all night, five nights in three weeks, lying to me, I knew he was getting it on with somebody else. I asked him and he said no, he wasn’t… lies, lies. I had to know who it was. You understand? I had to know. That’s why I followed him this afternoon. I couldn’t believe it when he came here. I thought, it’s not her, it can’t be her, he’s here for some other reason. I waited out in the car. I waited and waited, but he didn’t come out so I went in and I heard them, they were laughing, God they were laughing and she said, ‘Come on, Richie,’ she said, ‘Do it just like I tell you, Richie,’ she said… I couldn’t listen anymore. I wanted to hurt them, I hated them both, I wanted to kill them… this is my father’s gun, did you know that? He taught me how to shoot, did you know that?”

I stood unmoving, silent, watching the gun, watching her finger slide back and forth over the surface of the trigger.

“He always kept it in his study,” she said, “in a box in the bookcase. It was still there, she hadn’t moved it. I got it and I went up there to her bedroom and they were naked… they were… it made me sick and I shot him and she screamed and I shot her I shot them both I killed them…”

Her face was screwed up and there was wetness leaking out of those bright, glassy eyes again; she looked old and gnomish, as if she had fallen prey to some rapid aging disease-a pathetic, tragic figure, an ugly duckling torn apart by love and hate. But I couldn’t feel anything for her, not yet, not while she had that gun in her hand.

“Melanie,” I said gently, “you’re not going to shoot me, too?”

“What?”

“Do you want to shoot me, too?”

“No,” she said. “Not if you leave me alone.”

“If I promise to leave you alone, will you put the gun down?”

“No. Promises are lies. I don’t want to hear any more lies.”

“I won’t lie to you, Melanie.”

“Yes you will. Everybody lies to me. All my life, lies, lies and bullshit. Don’t you think I know what I am? Don’t you think I look in mirrors and see what I am?”

“Melanie, please put the gun down.”

“No. I’ve got to get out of here, I don’t want to stay here any more. I hate this house. You won’t let me go if I put the gun down.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. Just away from here.”

“You’ll have to talk to the police sooner or later. Wouldn’t it be better to do it now?”

“Fuck the police. You think I’m afraid of them?”

“You don’t have to be afraid of them.”

“Well I’m not. I don’t care what they do to me. I don’t care about anything anymore.”

“Not even who killed your father and your uncle?”

“No.”

“I’ll tell you anyway. Leonard was responsible for your father’s death. Alicia helped him cover it up. She’s the one who shot Leonard. She killed Danny Martinez, too.”

It was too much for her to comprehend all at once. She shook her head, said, “What?” and shook her head another time. The gun wavered a little in her hand-a little but not enough.

“It’s true, Melanie,” I said. “She murdered two people in cold blood. And she got Richie to help her cover up what she did to Martinez. Don’t you want to know the full story? Why she did all those things?”

“Kenneth? She killed him?”

“No. It was Leonard.”

“Why would Leonard do that?”

“Put the gun down and we’ll talk about it.”

“No. You said Richie helped her.”

“Helped her cover up the Martinez murder. But he didn’t know it was a murder.”

Another headshake. Another swipe at her runny nose. The longer she stayed confused, the better my chances were of talking that gun out of her hand. “Your face,” she said, “Richie did that. He beat you up.”

“He arranged for it, yes.”

“He made me call you,” she said. “He said they were only going to scare you, make you leave us alone. More lies. I didn’t know they were going to beat you.”

“It’s all right, Melanie.”

“It’s not all right. He did it for her, didn’t he.”

“Yes.”

“Did everything for her, killed my father…”

“No, it was Leonard who did that. Richie didn’t kill anyone; he didn’t know Alicia had killed anyone. He just made it look like Danny Martinez had run away-”

“I don’t know anybody named Danny Martinez. What are you talking about?”

“Martinez delivered groceries here, the night your father was killed. I told you about that at Blanche’s, remember?”

“No.” Her headshake was violent this time. “You’re confusing me,” she said. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Why don’t we sit down at the table over there? I’ll explain it all to you from the beginning-”

“No! Shut up, why don’t you just shut up?”

I shut up. The automatic wasn’t steady in her hand, but her finger was tight now on the trigger.