Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

Trying to make him feel better. It wasn’t enough, dammit. Not for a whole woman with half a man.

Saturday

Cassie took Angela apartment hunting, and when they returned they were all smiles. They’d looked at places in Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park, and finally found one right here in Los Alegres — on Sunnyslope, not much more than a mile away. One-bedroom, ground-floor apartment with a tiny fenced rear yard. Five hundred a month, which was pretty reasonable for a furnished apartment these days. Cassie had paid the first and last months’ rent and the security deposit — a loan Angela promised to pay back at twenty or twenty-five dollars a month. She would, too. Scrupulously.

The find pleased Hollis as well. She and Kenny would still be close by; he would not have to start missing them all over again.

Sunday

He felt pretty good, so he insisted on helping with the move. Angela had little in the way of essentials; everything fit into her Geo. Some kitchenware, sheets and towels, a few other items came from Cassie’s stock. Twenty-five years old, two marriages, a son, and all she had to show for it were a few articles of clothing for her and the boy, a box of personal items, an outdated PC, and an eight-year-old car. If she took up with Pierce again, she’d never have much more. Thinking about that prospect didn’t make him angry, it just made him sad.

And of course Pierce showed up at the apartment as they were moving her in. Kenny seemed to have accepted him completely now; called him Dad and spent as much time hanging around him as he did his granpa. I’m going to lose the boy, too, Hollis thought, and then told himself he was being selfish. He wanted them to be happy, didn’t he? Even if that meant being with Pierce?

Yes, as long as he treated her right this time. If he didn’t—

If he didn’t, what, Hollis? You and Eric will kill him and bury his body under another concrete slab?

The thought was depressing. And made him be nicer to Pierce than he’d been since the kid’s return.

Tuesday Morning

He came home from his weekly visit with Stan Otaki at eleven-thirty. During his six weeks of daily radiation doses, he’d needed someone — Cassie, Gabe, Gloria, taxis on a few occasions — to transport him to and from the hospital. Now that that ordeal was over he was able to drive himself places again, as long as he didn’t overdo it with any lengthy trips. He hated being dependent on others; the one thing he needed almost as much as his family was the ability to fend for himself. Which was another reason why the thought of surgery started him trembling inside: He’d be helpless, completely at the mercy of one casual acquaintance and a team of strangers.

The mail had already been delivered; he fished it out of the box, sifted through it as he let himself into the house. Bills, junk, a charity solicitation, two mail-order catalogs. And a white, business-size envelope, with his name and address typed or computer printed, he couldn’t tell which; first-class postage, no return address. More junk, probably. He set the other mail on the hall table, tore open the envelope, and shook out the single sheet of white paper it contained.

In the upper middle of the sheet was a single line of type, in capital letters:

It was like a blow to the head: sudden numbing shock, a few seconds of disorientation. He stared at the words until they began to shimmer and blur, as if they were breaking up on the paper.

Somebody knows .

His mind struggled against the thought. How could anyone know, even suspect? Now , almost two months after the fact? Why would anyone send a one-line note like this, more taunting than accusing?

Unless—

The police? Macatee?

Almost immediately, he rejected that. Two months... Rakubian’s disappearance shunted into an inactive file by the volume of new missing persons cases. Strong new evidence would have to practically fall into Macatee’s lap to stir up fresh interest. And there was no way that could have happened. Dammit, no way. Two months dead, two months buried. Construction on the Chesterton site moving ahead on schedule, no clues left to find there, and nothing at Rakubian’s house to connect Eric or him to the disappearance. And the bottom line: Cops don’t send anonymous messages, for any reason. They don’t operate that way; can’t afford to, the laws and judicial system being what they are. If Macatee’s suspicions had been aroused somehow, he’d have shown up with questions, if not outright accusations.

Then who?

Why?

Hollis squinted at the postmark on the envelope. North Bay, which meant it had been mailed in Paloma County or Marin County. Somebody who lived up here? Or somebody who’d driven from elsewhere to mail the note?

He was beginning to feel light-headed. He went into the living room, sank into his chair, and stared again at the single line of type. What did you do with his body? He couldn’t imagine anyone caring enough about Rakubian to resort to a thing like this, or any reason for waiting until two months after the fact. What was the motive? Revenge? Rakubian had no friends, no relatives — he’d been an egotistical loner disliked, hated by those who knew him. Money... some kind of extortion scheme? Not without proof of guilt, and there was no proof. A sick, twisted game?

That recurring dream... like a prophecy fulfilled. His formless fear had shape now, if not yet a name. The new threat wasn’t Rakubian but Rakubian’s legacy. As if it was his evil that had risen from the grave, entered a human host, and set out to wreak vengeance on the ones who’d put him there. Fantastic notion, but it made the back of Hollis’s neck crawl just the same.

Two months. That was what made the least sense of all, the time lapse. Two months, and no conceivable way anyone could have found out the truth. Only two people knew what happened that Saturday, himself and—

Eric.

Eric?

“Nonsense,” he said aloud, but the word had a hollow ring. Convulsively he was on his feet, moving, needing to move. He paced the room in plodding steps, telling himself his son couldn’t possibly be responsible. And yet...

Suppose Eric’s apparently easy adjustment was a facade? Suppose all along his conscience, like Hollis’s, had been ripping him apart to the point where he’d begun to crack up? He must suspect who had disposed of the corpse; might be afraid Hollis hadn’t done a proper job and it would eventually be found. He was a deep kid, his mind worked in convoluted patterns that were sometimes bewildering. If he was unable to admit his guilt and his fear, it was possible he’d resort to a roundabout method to force the issue. Irrational act, done in extremis. An anonymous cry for help.

Wait... the postmark. Eric wouldn’t have flown up from Santa Barbara just to mail a letter, would he?

No, but a friend could have forwarded it as a favor.

But why go to that much trouble? If he was sick, desperate, the postmark wouldn’t matter to him. Just mail the goddamn thing in Santa Barbara.

Another explanation occurred to Hollis, brought him up short. What if Eric wasn’t the perpetrator but another victim? What if he’d received a note like this as well?

What if somebody knew or suspected that he’d murdered Rakubian?

Tuesday Afternoon

Eric sounded fine on the phone, just as he had the last time they’d talked. No hesitancy in his voice, no unease. “You caught me in the shower,” he said. “Man, what a day.”

“Everything all right?”

“I’m frazzled. They had me running back and forth between here and Ojai all day.”