Билл Пронзини - In an Evil Time

Saturday Evening

Driving aimlessly was only a little more endurable than the passive waiting. At home there’d been a few distractions; in the Lexus there were none. Drive a random route, stare around at too-familiar sights, think too much. Worry too much. Imagine and fear too much.

Back roads, side roads, motels, campgrounds, even a couple of abandoned farms. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Waiting for his cell phone to ring. Praying it would and dreading what he might hear if it did.

Time passed less slowly when you were on the move. Seven o’clock, 7:30. He came back into town to fill the gas tank, headed west again. Eight o’clock. 8:15.

8:20. He was on Roblar Road, west of the Washoe House bar and restaurant, when the phone went off.

The unit was on the seat beside him, the sudden sound like a blade slicing into a nerve. He snatched it up, flicked it on. “Cass? Is there any—”

“How does it feel, Hollis? How does it feel to really suffer?”

His heart lurched. In reflex his foot jabbed the brake and he twisted the wheel. The Lexus slid to a rocking stop at the side of the road.

“Now you know what it’s been like for me,” the voice said in his ear. Calm, steady, no hint of mania — except that the mania was there, hidden but palpable, like laughter behind the walls of an asylum. “Hurt, hurt, hurt all the time. Burning in the fires of hell.”

“Let me—” The words caught; he cleared his throat. “Let me talk to my grandson.”

“No.”

“Is he all right? You haven’t...”

“Not yet. Not yet .”

Hate and fury boiled in him. Don’t provoke her! He forced a plea through the dry cavern of his mouth. “Please don’t hurt him. He’s just a little boy.”

“I had a little boy once. He died before he was even born.”

“Do you want me to beg, Valerie?”

“Oh, so you do know who this is. Good. I want you to know.”

“All right, then I’ll beg—”

“Because it doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “You’ll never never find me in time. No one will.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“You’ll find out.” In the brief pause between those words and the next, he heard a background noise. It was quiet on the road, quiet in the car except for the purr of the engine, and the connection was clear. So was the sound — a kind of whistling. “Soon, Hollis. Very soon.”

“I’ll do anything you want,” he said. “Trade myself for the boy. You can kill me if that’s what you—”

“No. That would be too easy.”

“Tell me what isn’t too easy. Tell me what it’ll take for you not to harm my grandson.”

“You don’t understand, do you? I already have what I want and I’m going to do the only thing that’s left to do.” Another pause, and he heard the background noise again. Louder, even more distinct: a whistling and then a shrill howling. “I told your wife and now I’m telling you. You took David away from me, you and that bitch daughter of yours. You made me kill him. You destroyed my life. Well, now I’m going to take someone you love away from you. Now I’m going to destroy all your lives.”

“Wait, listen to me

“Suffer like I’m suffering!” And the line went dead.

She means it, she’ll kill Kenny, and she won’t take long to do it. Tonight, after it gets dark... Evil needs the dark .

The phone rang in his hand.

Cassie, he thought, to report Burke’s call to her. Instead of answering he turned off the unit, threw it on the other seat. He could not talk to her now; couldn’t talk to anyone now. He put the car in gear, came down hard on the accelerator, the tires squealing as he pulled away. Driving this time with urgency and purpose. Praying he’d get there in time.

He knew where they were, Kenny and that crazy woman. The freakish whistling and howling had told him; they were sounds like no other he’d ever heard, sounds high winds made in an old, warped chimney flue.

She’d taken the boy to the one place no one had thought to look: the cottage at Tomales Bay.

Saturday Night

Fifteen miles.

So close, so far away. Driving too fast and not fast enough on the two-lane country roads, doing all the road-rage things — tailgating, flashing his lights and sounding his horn — that he despised in other drivers. Kenny’s image luminous in his mind: pocket-sized, defenseless, so full of laughter and innocent mischief, saying, “I love you, Granpa,” saying, “Who’re we afraid of now?” And himself looking down into that shining little face and vowing, not once but twice, with stupid, hollow arrogance, that he wouldn’t let him or anyone else in the family be hurt.

Fifteen miles.

Valerie Burke. He hated her intensely, yet it was a different kind of hatred than he’d felt — still felt — for Rakubian. Tempered with grains of pity. She was another of that bastard’s victims, an instrument of his vengeance as well as her own — as if he really were reaching out from the grave. Sick, shattered woman, but cunning. As cunning as Rakubian. She’d picked the perfect spot to take the boy. Knew about the cottage from his conversation with Rakubian... found out exactly where it was located from public records, the same way she’d gotten his cell phone number... found out it was seldom used anymore by going there, looking around. For all he knew she’d been squatting there off and on since giving up her apartment in the city.

Fifteen miles.

A small, insistent voice kept urging him to call the FBI, the county police, or to call Cassie and have her do it. He didn’t listen, could not obey. Explanations, the grinding of official wheels — he’d be out to Tomales Bay himself before deputies or Agents Feldman and Lincoln had time to respond. And the law would go in announcing their presence, with bullhorns and drawn weapons, or else take too much time to mobilize a more stealthy approach. There was so little time. And he knew the property, the whole area, far better than anyone else.

Fifteen miles.

Time, time, time...

Two Rock Valley, the Coast Guard training station, Tomales, the narrow coiling stretch of Highway 1 leading to the bay — the last few miles a fragmented blur like the drive across San Francisco with Rakubian’s body in the trunk. Almost dusk when he saw the gleam of water off to his right, gunmetal gray flecked with gold from the last rays of the sun, the trees and rocks of Hog Island bathed in the same golden glow. Fantasy, illusion: darkness waited, eating away at the light.

He was focused again, intently aware of his surroundings, when he passed Nick’s Cove. The cottage was a half-mile beyond there. He made himself slow down, take the sharp curves along this stretch without having to brake hard and fight the wheel. Time, time! The bay was dark gray now, all the gold bled away, the sky over the hills above Inverness a fading salmon pink. Full dark in fifteen or twenty minutes.

Ahead, at long last, he saw the trees that separated the highway from the cottage. He was alone here, no other cars; he slowed even more, hunching sideways to peer through the screen of pines. First glimpse of the cottage: no lights showing, no sign of the silver BMW. But that meant nothing one way or another. There was only one window on this side, and from the highway you couldn’t tell if the shutter louvers were open or not. And the BMW could be hidden inside the garage. Burke would not have had much difficulty getting into either building. The locks on both were flimsy; there had never been a break-in here and he’d seen no reason to replace them. A kid could have smashed them open with a rock or a tire iron.

He fought off the impulse to turn into the access lane. He’d be too exposed approaching the cottage from this direction; she might be at the kitchen table, the louvers open so she could look out toward the highway. When he rolled on past he had one last, partial view of the place. Still nothing to see.