Bill Pronzini: Blowback

Gone, long gone.

Who, damn it? Who?

Anger seeped into me, a good sharp purging fury that enabled me to move, to function. I got to my feet, swaying, but I was going to be able to walk all right, I would not fall down again. I went down the slope, feeding on the rage, using it to pull my thoughts into logical patterns. The sunlight faded, disappeared altogether for a moment as I crossed the flat in a stumbling run; the clouds I had seen massing above the high peaks had started to flow westward.

I dragged the car door open, slid onto the sun-heated Naugahyde. And sat there fidgeting, going over it, going over it, while I stared sightlessly through the windshield. It began to come together, as I had known inside the mine it would-slowly at first and then rapidly, all of it clicking into place like bits of colored tile in a mosaic.

I knew who he was then.

Oh God yes, I Knew who he was.

The back of my neck prickled; urgency made me reach out immediately to twist the key in the ignition. Into The Pines to call Cloudman? No, it had to be the camp, I had to know if he was there now. And if he was, I had to get Harry to help me put him under citizen's arrest. Not because it had become a personal thing, I could not let myself think that way; because he had killed two men and almost made me number three, and he was capable of anything at any minute-any damned thing at all. There was just no time to waste taking myself out of it and letting the authorities handle him.

I jammed the gear lever into drive, not looking at myself in the rear-view mirror, because I did not want to see what I looked like just yet, and spun the car into a turn and took it bouncing down the wagon trail to the county road.

The need for urgency made me drive too fast, and my arms began to ache from fighting the wheel in and out of turns. I did not have much strength left. Far back in my mind was the thought that once I stopped functioning on tension, all the little hurts and the weakened condition of my lungs might lead to a serious collapse; but I held it away, kept my attention hard on the road and on what lay ahead.

When I came finally out of the trees on the last long incline, to where I had a clear look at the gravel circle, I saw that all the cars were parked within it- all of them. There was something else drawn up there too, off on one side: a covered U-Haul trailer. So that's how he planned to get the Daghestan out, I thought. Wait until the time was right, make sure there was nobody around, and then carry it from its hiding place to the U-Haul…

Somebody was walking along the beach toward the pier-Harry, it looked like-and he broke into a trot as soon as he saw me. I brought the car skidding into the circle, jerked on the emergency brake, and swung out before it quit rocking. Harry came running up; he stopped abruptly when he got a good look at me. His eyes widened into an incredulous stare.

“Good God,” he said, “what happened to you?”

“Never mind that now. Where's Jerrold?”

“But you look-”

“Come on, Harry, where the hell is Jerrold?”

“I don't know. At his cabin, maybe. He just came back twenty minutes ago with that U-Haul trailer, and I've been on edge ever since; he looked in pretty bad shape-”

“He's in bad shape, all right,” I said grimly. “He's killed two people in the past three days.”

“What!”

“You heard me. Jerrold is the one who murdered Terzian, and he did for Bascomb the same way.”

Harry looked numb; his face had lost some of its color. “Bascomb's dead?”

“Yeah. Listen, we've got to find him and put him under wraps-quick. He's a dangerous lunatic, there's no telling what he might do next.”

“You sure of all this?”

“Dead sure.”

“Oh my God,” he said, “I never thought…”

“It'll take the two of us,” I said. “We'll get one of the others to go in and call Cloudman. I don't like it, but it's got to be that way. You with me?”

He passed a hand across his face. His eyes had the kind of sick, pained look that comes with the acceptance of an ugly truth. “Yeah,” he said, “I'm with you.”

“All right. We'd better be armed when we brace him.”

“Rifles in my cabin,” he said.

We ran across to it and up onto the porch and inside. Harry dragged the. 22 rifle down, handed it to me, and then took the Marlin lever-action for himself. There was ammunition in a drawer at the bottom of the rack; we stood there feeding shells into the guns. The. 22 felt awkward and alien in my hands; I had not handled firearms much since quitting the cops, and I had never cared for the things anyway because I had seen too often and too graphically what they were capable of doing to the human body.

I said, “If Mrs. Jerrold is with him, we get her out of the way first. Same goes for anybody else that might be around. We carry the weapons muzzle down, we don't do or say a thing until he's alone and vulnerable. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And no shooing if it can be avoided. There's been enough killing around here.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

“Let me handle it. You follow my lead.”

He nodded jerkily, snapped and locked the Marlin.

Outside again, we went along the lakefront at a fast walk. The clouds had blanketed the sky now, and the afternoon light had a bright grayish, metallic tint. The air smelled of ozone; that, too, seemed faintly metallic. The stillness had a breathless quality; you could not even hear the cry of a bird.

When we came up through the woods near the Jerrolds' cabin, I led Harry off the path and through the trees to where we had a screened look at the front of it. The door was open and two packed suitcases were sitting side by side at the top of the porch steps, but there was nobody in sight.

Harry said, “What now?”

“One of us goes over to see if he's there, or if she is. Jerrold thinks I'm dead-never mind why for now-so if he sees me too soon, he might panic. It had better be you, then; I'll cover you from here.”

“What do I do?”

“Get him out and down off the porch. Alone and unarmed. Tell him you want to talk to him about the loan, something like that.”

A quick dip of his head, and he made his way out of the woods and crossed toward the front of the cabin. I moved closer to the perimeter, to where I could lean against the bole of a spruce and get a clear angle on the entire width of the place. Tension made taut ropes of the muscles in my shoulders and back; the taste in my mouth was metallic-it felt the way the sky looked and the air smelled.

I watched Harry climb slowly onto the porch, holding his Marlin vertically at his side. He hesitated, and then peered in. Seconds later he turned and came down the steps and moved briefly around to the rear. Then he hurried back toward where I was, motioning for me to come out.

He said as I joined him, “Nobody there.”

“Any idea where he could have gone?”

He shook his head.

“What about Mrs. Jerrold?”

“No. She was down by the lake a little earlier.”

“Was anybody else there?”

“Cody, I think.”

“Did Jerrold see them together?”

“I don't know, he might have. You don't think-”

“He's a madman, Harry, you bet that's what I'm thinking.”

We ran back to the path and up through the trees past Cabin Four. When we came out in front of Five, Knox and Talesco were piling their gear at the foot of the steps, making preparations to leave. As soon as they saw us-the rifles, the condition I was in-they both came hurrying over.

Knox said, “What's going on?”

I said, “Ray Jerrold-you see him in the past few minutes?”

“Yeah, not long ago,” Talesco said. “Looked like he was going hunting.”