Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

“He doesn’t want me anymore. All he wants is for me to suffer.”

“Why two months of silence? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes it does. It’s his way of torturing me. He won’t do anything right away. There’ll be more notes, phone calls, God knows what else.” Her voice had begun to rise. “Oh God, I can’t go through all that again, I can’t!”

Cassie gathered her close, murmured to her and stroked her hair. All the while she looked at Hollis over the top of her head, a steady, unreadable look.

He sat with his hands between his knees. Limp, useless lumps of flesh — like what was left of his manhood hanging higher up. Voices muttered in his head. One said, “It’s not Eric, he loves Angela, he’d never do anything to hurt her.” Another said, “You don’t know him or what he’s capable of, you’ve never really known him.” A third, the loudest, said, “You’re not the only target now... Angela, maybe Cassie... it’s just like it was when Rakubian was alive.”

Cassie, with little help from him, calmed Angela down; tried to convince her to spend the night there, let Hollis go pick up Kenny. She wouldn’t agree to it. She kept saving, “I feel like such a little girl, always running home — I have to stop being a little girl.” Cassie finally talked her into a partial compromise: the two of them would fetch Kenny together. Hollis understood that she wanted some time alone with Angela, and that was all right with him. He needed to be by himself for a while.

When they were gone he sat in his study, staring blankly at the architectural prints on the walls while he tried to order his thoughts, shape them as he would one of his designs into a logical, substantive pattern. He hated the feeling of impotence; it was the way Pop had made him feel as a kid, weak, ineffectual, and until now he’d refused to let himself be crippled that way as an adult. He had dealt with all the other crises in his life, he’d dealt with Rakubian, or tried to, the best way he knew how. All right, he’d deal with this new crisis, too.

One thing for sure: He could no longer afford to wait for something else to happen. He had to act, and quickly. And he had to stop shouldering the entire burden himself, no matter who was responsible for those notes or why.

In the kitchen later, picking at a cold dinner neither he nor Cassie wanted:

“I wish you’d been able to talk her into staying with us tonight,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of her and Kenny alone in that apartment.”

“I don’t think they’ll be alone.”

“What do you— Oh. Pierce.”

“She said she was going to call him.”

“I suppose he spends a lot of nights over there now.”

“Some, probably.”

“Terrific.”

“He wants to marry her again,” Cassie said.

Hollis frowned. He hadn’t told her about Pierce’s visit yesterday. “She tell you that?”

“Yes.”

“So he’s already asked her.”

“Not in so many words. But he’s made it plain enough that he intends to.”

“She’s not going to say yes?”

“She says she isn’t ready for another commitment.”

“She has some sense left, then. If she means it.”

“Anyhow,” Cassie said, “it’s a good thing she’s letting him stay there, isn’t it? Now?”

“You think so? My guess is he’d run at the first sign of trouble.”

“You’re wrong. Ryan’s not like that anymore.”

“Right, the big change. Now he’s got you believing it.”

“I have eyes. You’d see it, too, if you opened yours.”

He let that pass. “It’s not just her safety that’s worrying me. It’s her mental state.”

“She’ll be okay. She was when I left her. I wanted to stay until Ryan came, but she’d had enough mothering.”

“For tonight. What about tomorrow and the days after that? Suppose there’s another note? She’s liable to take it into her head to run away again.”

“I asked her about that. She said no, it’d take a lot more than a note or two to send her back into hiding. But she’s been through so much... I doubt she can stand much more.”

I doubt any of us can .

“If she does decide to take Kenny someplace safe, I can’t honestly blame her. I don’t think you can, either.”

“Not if Rakubian really is back,” he said.

“Why do you keep saying ‘if’? I don’t see who or why anyone else would send a note like that.”

“Neither do I. I want it to be somebody else, that’s all. A crank, somebody harmless.”

“We have to be realistic,” Cassie said.

“Two months, don’t forget that. I just can’t see Rakubian staying away and keeping silent that long.”

“He’s crazy and unpredictable. After all the things he’s done already, I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

Except resurrection from the dead, he thought.

Bitterly he said, “Rakubian or whoever, if there’s any real danger, running away isn’t going to keep her and Kenny safe. Neither is Pierce, if she stays. And neither am I with this goddamn cancer.”

“Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself. You’re not Superdad, and nobody expects you to be but you. The job isn’t yours or mine or Ryan’s anyway, it’s the police’s.”

“What the hell can they do? They couldn’t find a trace of Rakubian in two months. The note isn’t conclusive proof she’s in danger from him or anybody else — it could be the work of a crank. If we go to the cops they’ll make sympathetic noises and tell us not to worry. No. That’s not the answer.”

“Neither is doing nothing. Maybe we should hire a private investigator.”

“To do what, act as a bodyguard? Camp on Angela’s doorstep, follow her around wherever she goes?”

“I didn’t mean as a bodyguard. I meant to try to track down Rakubian.”

“If the police couldn’t find him, how is a private detective going to manage it after two months? They’re not miracle workers, that’s a lot of fictional crap.”

Strained silence.

At length Cassie said, “This isn’t doing either of us any good.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I’d give anything if he’d stayed missing, if he really was dead. In my mind I had him dead and buried somewhere for good. Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Hollis said. “Dead and buried for good.”

Saturday Morning

Eric said, “Oh, it’s you, Dad. Jeez, you woke me up.” He sounded sleep-fogged and grumpy; he’d never been much of a morning person. “You know what time it is?”

“Seven-fifteen,” Hollis said. “I wanted to be sure to catch you home. I tried to call twice last night.”

“Date I told you about. I left straight from work, got home late. I didn’t get much sleep.” A woman’s voice rose querulously in the background, close by. “That’s why. And she’s not what I thought she might be. Ms., not missus—”

“I need to see you.”

“See me? When?”

“Right away. We have to talk.”

“About what?’

“When I see you, not on the phone.”

“Something wrong?” Eric sounded more awake.

“Yes. I want you to fly up to SFO this afternoon.”

The line hummed.

“I called United,” Hollis said. “There’s a flight out of Santa Barbara at one-twenty, gets in at two-thirty. I’ll pick you up at Arrivals. Reservation’s already made in your name and paid for. Round-trip — you can fly back tonight at five-fifty.”

Again the line hummed emptily for a few seconds. Hollis tried to imagine the expression on his son’s face, what might be going through his mind. And couldn’t.

“Okay, if it’s that urgent.” Calm acceptance, in a voice that betrayed nothing of his feelings. “You sure you want to drive all the way to the airport? I can rent a car, come up there...”