Bill Pronzini - Labyrinth

The muscles in my stomach and groin contracted; I could feel heat come into my cheeks and a shaking start up inside. This was the second time in eighteen hours that a gun had been pointed at me, that I had tasted sudden fear and come up against sudden death. It had been bad enough with Greene, but this was worse because I was sick and exhausted and because it meant coping all over again, trying to beat the odds twice in a row.

I still had hold of the door and I considered throwing it shut, diving out of the way. But I would have had to step back to do that, to get the door in front of my body and my reflexes were shaky and not to be trusted. She had already moved forward to the threshold, too, and her finger was tight against the trigger. Too risky. Stay calm, I told myself, find another way. Don’t do anything to make her shoot.

“Back up and let me in,” she said. “Somebody might come.”

I let go of the door, retreated in slow careful steps. She came inside and pushed the door almost shut behind her with her free hand. Her face was so pale that I could see the fine tracery of veins beneath the skin, but there was nothing in her expression or in the wide amber eyes to indicate how unbalanced she was. She looked normal, in full control of herself, and that scared me even more than if she’d been wild-eyed and gibbering. She could errupt into violence at any second, on the slightest provocation-the way she must have when she destroyed my office.

She said, “You got my letter,” and I realized I still had it and the envelope and the rest of the mail in my left hand.

“Yes. I got it.”

“I shouldn’t have sent it. I shouldn’t have sent any of the letters to that Webster bitch either. They didn’t do any good. Nothing does any good. Except this.” She raised the gun slightly and looked at it as if it were a new-found friend, an ally. “This is the only way.”

“You don’t want to shoot me, Karen,” I said.

“Yes I do. I have to. You won’t leave me alone. I thought if I went to your office last week and talked to you… but you weren’t there, and I thought if I went in and did things to it, it would hurt you enough to make you go away. But you didn’t, you just kept on and on. When you asked me about Bobbie on Saturday night I knew what I had to do. I knew this was the only way. I waited for you all afternoon and all evening. And all day today. Why didn’t you come home?”

Without moving my head much I looked left, right-but I was standing in the middle of the carpet and there was nothing in a five-foot radius that I could use to disarm her. The nearest piece of furniture was the couch, three paces to my right. And nothing on it except the overcoat, a pulp magazine, a couple of throw pillows.

“Karen, listen to me-”

“No. I don’t want to listen. I just want to do what I have to before it’s too late.”

Throw pillows. Throw pillow?

“It’s already too late,” I said. “The police know the truth.”

Her forehead puckered; she bit her lip. “I don’t believe you.”

Long odds. Even if I could get over to the couch, pick up one of the pillows, it would take a perfect toss to hit the gun before she fired, throw her off-balance long enough for me to rush her. But what other choice did I have? It seemed to be either that or try to jump her cold.

I said, “It’s true, Karen. The police have been out to your house today, they’ve matched the typing on the letters with the typewriter in your living room; they know you wrote them to Christine.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said again.

“Why would I lie to you?”

“Because you want to hurt me. Along with my mother and that Webster bitch. Won’t go away, won’t stop hurting me…”

Her jaw trembled a little and her eyes were brighter; you could see the violence rippling like a dark current just beneath the surface of her face. The knotted feeling in my groin intensified. Keep her talking, for God’s sake, I thought. But don’t say anything to provoke her.

“I never wanted to hurt you, Karen. I only wanted to help your uncle.”

“No. You were working for Webster all along.”

“But I wasn’t,” I said, and took a careful sidestep toward the couch. The gun did not move in her hand. “Christine never contacted me. I never met her or talked to her.”

“You’re lying again. She had your business card. And she told me she’d hired you, just before I did it to her.”

That did not surprise me. The reason why Christine had lied was obvious: she had been trying desperately to save her life. And the lie explained how Karen had known I was a detective when I arrived at her house on Wednesday morning. I had only given her my name at the door, not my occupation, and by their own testimony Laura Nichols had not told her daughter of her plans to hire an investigator. Yet the first thing Karen had said to me was, “You’re that private detective.”

“Working for Webster,” she said now, “and then right away going to work for my mother. Don’t you think I know the real reason she hired you?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Your mother hired me to watch over your uncle.”

“That was just a lie for my benefit. She hired you to investigate me.

“Why would she do that?”

“She hates me, that’s why. She suspected I was gay. She suspected I was in love with Bobbie and wanted to hurt the bitch who killed her. She hired you so you could both work against me.”

Paranoid psychosis, I thought. Everybody out to harm her, including her mother. Especially her mother. She was the one with all the hatred, not Laura Nichols; and those feelings had to be at the root of her persecution complex and her need to strike back.

I took another step toward the couch. My nose was running again, dripping down over my upper lip; I sniffled and just let it drip. No use pressing my luck by reaching into the back pocket where my handkerchief was.

“Your mother didn’t tell me about you and Bobbie,” I said. “She doesn’t know you’re gay.”

“She must have told you. You weren’t surprised when I said it just now. You already knew.”

“Yes. But I found out another way-”

“ She told you. Stop lying to me.”

Easy, I thought, drop it right there. Because the truth was provocative: it was Karen herself who had told me. On the phone Thursday night she’d said she and some friends had spent the day at Civic Center and I remembered noticing in Friday’s paper that at Civic Center on Thursday there had been a big Gay Rights rally. And when I had talked to her Saturday night from Bodega Bay and asked if she knew Bobbie Reid, she’d said, “No. Who’s she?” Yet Bobbie, or Bobby, is a far more common male name than a female name; the assumption almost everybody makes the first time they hear it is that it’s short for Robert, not Roberta or Barbara. Which indicated Karen had known Bobbie Reid. Add those facts together, along with Eberhardt’s news that Bobbie had worked for Arthur Brown, the Nichols’ family attorney, and Steve Farmer’s admission that Bobbie was gay, and the truth became clear enough.

“Well?” she said. “My mother told you, didn’t the?”

“Yes.”

“And you think being gay is terrible, don’t you. Just like she does.”

“No, I don’t think it’s terrible.”

“Are you lying to me again?”

“No. I think every person has the right to be what he wants to be. As long as he doesn’t harm anyone else.”

“Webster harmed Bobbie. Killed her, the bitch.”

“How did she do that?”

“With words. Words. Bobbie never told anyone about us; she was confused about being gay. But Webster got it out of her. She told Bobbie it was evil and she was sick and needed help. Kept telling her again and again. Bobbie couldn’t take it. She was a sensitive person and she just… she couldn’t take it. She took those pills, and she called me afterward to say she was sorry, she had to do it, she couldn’t cope anymore after what Webster had been telling her. I told her how much I loved her, I begged her not to do it, but she said it was too late. I called the emergency hospital, I drove over there myself, and it was. It was too late… ”