Bill Pronzini - Boobytrap

The one thing that would make it sweeter still was if fat old Mike Hammer was trussed up in there next to the kid. Bothers me he’s still alive. Shotgun surprise got somebody else instead, that’s what the radio said a few minutes ago, some Plumas County cop. One less cop in the world, that’s fine with me, but it should’ve been fatso. Well, I can fix him when I come back from Indiana.

If I come back from Indiana. If I even make it to Lawler Bluffs.

Every law enforcement agency in the country is looking for me by now and they’ll double their efforts after tonight. Public Enemy No. 1. Hah! I really don’t give a shit if they get me eventually, I’ve pretty much known all along I’m living on borrowed time and I’m resigned to it now. Rip Kathryn apart with marbles and bones before that happens and I’ll die satisfied and happy. But even if I can’t give her what she deserves, I’ll have made sure Cotter and Turnbull and Dixon got theirs. I’ll see the three of them in hell, at least.

I wonder if this is the way Bonnie and Clyde felt on their bank-robbing spree? My old pal, the Unabomber, on his way to the post office with another surprise package? The guy who took out all the lawyers with the assault rifle?

Steady, heady, ready. Happy as a lark.

Man, I feel good!

Dixon was there.

He heard us coming into the vestibule; footsteps made sharp clicking sounds on the tile floor, and there he was in the archway to a darkened living room, staring at us out of eyes that even at a distance looked like those of a hunted wolfs. His lean face was haggard, showing beard shadow. The white shirt and slacks he wore were both rumpled, pulled out of shape, as if he’d been sleeping in them.

Marian said “Pat!” in a choked voice and ran to him. He folded her against him, held her, but he was looking at me over her shoulder. An angry, desperate look.

After a few seconds he eased her back and to one side, with his arm still draped around her shoulders, and said to me in a scratchy voice, “What the hell’s the matter with you? I told you to take her to the Doyles’.”

“You told me some other things, too,” I said. “That you were going to notify the state and federal agencies about the kidnapping, for one.”

“Listen…”

“No, you listen. Marian and I have a pretty good idea what’s going on in that head of yours and we’re going to sit down and talk about it, the three of us, while there’s still time.”

“What do you think you know?”

“Pat, for Christ’s sake, sacrificing yourself won’t bring Chuck back. And even if it could, you can’t make that decision alone. You can’t go through with it alone.”

“He’s right, darling,” Marian said. “It’s my choice, too. I won’t let you shut me out.”

He glared at me a little longer, but the glare lacked heat now. He stroked Marian’s hair, then turned away from her and went back into the living room.

She followed him and I followed her. Big, stucco-walled room furnished in a Spanish motif — wall hangings, tiles, pottery jars. Heavy drapes were drawn across the front window. Dixon sank onto a massive leather couch; Marian sat beside him and took his hand. I moved over to stand facing them in front of a tile-trimmed fireplace.

Nobody said anything. Up to me, I thought. Get him to admit it, that’s the first step.

“What time did Latimer call you, Pat?”

His head jerked up. But he lost the rigid posture almost immediately; his shoulders slumped and he used his free hand to maul his head in that way he had. His jaw, though, retained its stubborn jut.

“What time, Pat?”

“Tell him,” Marian said, “for heaven’s sake!”

“Few minutes before nine,” he said, as if the words were being ripped out of his throat. “Not long before you called from Judson’s.”

“Did he give you any idea where he was?”

“No. In transit, he said.”

“He let you talk to Chuck?”

“Briefly.”

Marian’s fingers dug at him. “He was all right?”

“Scared, that’s all.”

“What’d Latimer say to you?” I asked.

“He said if I wanted to see my son alive again, I’d do exactly what he told me. Exactly. He stressed the word more than once.”

“Go on. What else?”

“Don’t tell anyone that he had Chuck — no one, even Marian. Don’t talk to anyone in my office, or to the police or the FBI. Don’t leave the house until I heard from him again, some time after five o’clock. He wouldn’t call again before that.”

“Has he called since five?”

“Not yet.”

“What happens when he does?”

“He’ll tell me where to meet him. Someplace not too far away, I think.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Something he said. That it wouldn’t be long after I heard from him again that I’d be seeing Chuck.”

“And trading places with him.”

“No. That’s not what Latimer wants.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Money. Ten thousand dollars—”

“Bullshit, Pat. He wants you.”

Dead air. I imagined I could hear it crackle.

“You,” I said again. “You turn yourself over to him and he’ll release the boy unharmed — that’s his bargain, right? Your life in exchange for Chuck’s.”

A little more dead air. Then with bitterness, anger, resignation, “It’s the only way.”

“He’s a madman. You really believe he’ll release Chuck unharmed?”

“Why wouldn’t he? It’s me he’s after, you said it yourself.”

“That’s right. He wants you dead. But he also wants you to suffer, maybe more than you’re suffering right now. What better way to accomplish that than to kill your son, too?”

Marian made a pained sound. Dixon glared at me with heat again. “That’s a goddamn brutal way to put it.”

“I meant it to be brutal. Don’t tell me the prospect hasn’t occurred to you.”

It had occurred to him, all right. So had another possibility, I was certain, one that had been on my mind — and surely Marian’s — from the beginning and that none of us had spoken aloud or would for the duration. That Chuck’s life had already been snuffed out and what Latimer intended to present to Dixon was the boy’s dead body. I kept clinging to the conviction that Chuck alive was Latimer’s insurance policy, his way out in the event Dixon opted to call in the law or if anything unforeseen happened. But he was pathological — that was the bottom line. It was a crapshoot that logic or rational thought would dictate anything he did.

Dixon was still wallowing in denial. He said vehemently, “I won’t let anything happen to Chuck.”

“No? How’re you going to stop it?”

“There are ways. I’ve had training.”

“Take a hideout gun along? You wouldn’t have a chance to use it.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“Only if you catch Latimer by surprise, and you know that’s not likely to happen. He’ll figure on you being armed and he’ll be armed, too. He’s crazy but he’s not stupid.”

“I have to take the gamble, don’t you see that? I’ve been over this and over it. It’s the only way Chuck has any hope of survival. If anybody shows up except me, he’ll kill the boy right away. One whiff of the law and my son is dead. Latimer’s exact words, and I believe him. He’s an animal, he doesn’t care about a damn thing except revenge, not even his own miserable hide, and if I don’t… if I let him…” Dixon ran out of words. Things moved in his face, dark things; he mauled his hair again. The hunted eyes appealed to me, then to Marian, to please for God’s sake understand.

Across the room, the telephone rang.

It was like a siren going off in the emotion-charged confines — overloud, tearing at frayed nerve ends. We all reacted to it, Dixon the most violently. He was off the couch and racing for the phone while the echoes of the first ring were still bouncing off the stucco walls. He swept up the receiver as the second jangle started, almost knocking the base unit off its stand.