Bill Pronzini: Spook

Hate. Rage.

They’d lived in him for as long as he could remember, like parasites. He’d had them under control until the past year or so. Then they’d begun to feed on all the crap that’d happened to him — feed, grow, become stronger. Now they were bloated things that screamed in his head, burned in his belly, boiled and bubbled in his blood. He slept with them at night, woke with them in the morning, carried them heavy inside him all day, every day. He feared and fought them. Wanted them, clung to them, and knew that someday he’d give in to them.

Here, tonight, they were wild. Howling, hurling themselves at the walls of his mind like a pair of animals in a cage rioting for escape.

Hungry animals, demanding to be fed.

Demanding blood.

Almost there, almost feeding time. Three A.M. by the dashboard clock. Wet, empty city streets. Trash everywhere. Filth. This was where that hunk of human garbage had ended up. Mind rotted until he was little more than a drooling idiot dressed in rags, stumbling through filth during the day and sleeping in an alley doorway at night. But that wasn’t enough punishment for what that bastard had done. He’d gotten away with it too long, left too much wreckage behind. Been free too long. Lived too long.

But there’d be justice tonight, by God. Justice! Then both the dead and the living would finally have some peace.

Red light, blinking. He stopped the car and peered at a street sign through the slash of windshield wipers, the thin drizzle. Mariposa Street. The light changed; he turned west, went half a block until he was able to make out the black mouth of the alley. No other headlights on the street, nothing moving anywhere except wind-flung litter. He drove into the lightless tunnel between old buildings.

The reach of his headlamps showed him emptiness, shadow-shapes at the edges and beyond. A little farther, at a crawl now. And the beams outlined the recessed doorway ahead on the right, the huddled mound lying there.

His lips peeled back from his teeth. His head felt huge, as if it were being pumped full of air. But outwardly he was cool and calm. Hands steady, breathing normal, senses sharp as spikes. Like when he was on a hunting trip.

He braked, shut off the headlights but left the engine running. Blackness outside, pulsing red inside. He opened the glove box, took out the six-cell flashlight first, then the Colt Delta.

The gun, clean, oiled, loaded with a full clip, felt cold-hot in his hand; felt good, felt right. His Bushmaster assault rifle, his Micro Uzi, his shotguns were all wrong for the job — too large, made too much noise. His collection of sidearms hadn’t included a Colt .41, so he’d gone out and bought one special. The hollow-point ammo, too. Perfect, fitting. Hell, how could he even have thought of using any other kind of weapon?

He stepped free of the car. Wind lashed his face, blew wetness into his eyes as he moved around to the front; he barely felt any of it. Pause to listen. Windsound. Rainsound. Nightstill. He put the flash beam on long enough to get his bearings, then groped blind to the building wall and shouldered along it ten paces to the doorway. He flicked the torch on again, angling it upward to splash white light against the metal door. In the downspill, the mound inside the tattered, grimy sleeping bag lay motionless. He let the beam slide slowly down the door, centered it on the huddled form. Piece of garbage still didn’t move.

He kicked yielding flesh. Did it again, harder. Grunt, moan; the body flopped over and the head popped out like a turtle’s, the face turned up blind toward him. He’d seen from a distance what time had done to that face, but up close in the flashlight’s glare the sight lashed his hate to a frenzy. Ravished, shrunken, blotched and scabbed and wrinkled, but still the same fucking face.

Sounds came out of the gap-toothed mouth, words that weren’t words. Then, clear enough, “Who’s that? Dot? Who’s there, Dottie?”

Dot, Dottie!

He went to one knee, put his face close to the hated face, held the beam to one side so the vague rheumy eyes could see him in the sideglow. “Look at me, you son of a bitch. You know who I am?”

“No, no, Mr. Snow! Oh, oh, Mr. Snow!”

“Not Snow, damn you. Look at me!”

“Luke? Luke?”

He straightened again, kicked the bastard savagely. The screech of pain was like music, high and hot.

“Look at me! Who am I?”

Blank stare. “Don’t know don’t care don’t know. You, Luke? You? Never believed you’d do this to me. Oh Dot, oh Luke, oh oh Mr. Snow. Forgive me, Dottie. Give you something bright and pretty. Forgive me? Love me forever?”

He couldn’t stand it anymore. Luke, Dot, Mr. Snow... he couldn’t stand it another second.

He bent, moving the Colt into the dazzle of white.

The hated face stared at it. Saw it or didn’t see it, he couldn’t tell. Then the face turned down away from him, hid itself in the crossed fold of scrawny arms.

He laid the muzzle close above the right ear and lulled through the trigger.

The recoil threw him up straight again, the light beam dancing crazily within the doorway. He brought the beam back down, steadied it, and when he saw the blood, saw what the hollow point had done to the hated face, it was if taut-strung wires had been released inside his head.

Dead. Finally dead. Finally justice.

He wanted to shout, to laugh. He felt the way he did when he made a quick clean kill in the woods. Killing a man, a hated enemy, a piece of human garbage was no different than putting a bullet in a deer or an elk or a rabbit. Yeah, and so much more satisfying. Justice! Justified!

He located the ejected cartridge case, slipped it into his pocket. Shut off the flash, went back to the car wrapped in wet black. Weapon and six-cell into the glove box. Light up the deserted alley, drive on through and away.

Done, finished. Mission accomplished.

Except for one thing he hadn’t counted on. One thing that quickly ate away the pleasure, left him without peace. Scared him.

He was satisfied, but the hate and rage weren’t.

Inside they still burned, still boiled and bubbled, still screamed like caged animals.

As if they were still hungry. As if they wanted more.

He was the fourth applicant Tamara and I interviewed for the field operative’s job. On paper he had all the necessary qualifications and experience, but he didn’t make a very good first impression. Not much charisma, for one thing. And he had personal problems.

His name was Runyon, Jake Runyon. Native of Washington state, grew up in Spokane where his father had risen to the rank of police sergeant, lived most of his adult life in the Seattle area. Fourteen years with the Seattle PD, the first seven as a uniformed officer, the last seven working plainclothes on the robbery and then homicide details. Voluntary retirement with a partial disability pension five years ago, reason not set down in his resume. Since then, until six weeks ago, he’d worked as an operative for Caldwell & Associates, a solidly respectable Seattle investigative agency.

Plentiful professional credentials, but pretty sketchy on the personal side. Except for vital statistics — age 42, height 6’1, weight 190 — Runyon hadn’t supplied much information. Moved to San Francisco five weeks ago, in early November; current residence was an apartment on Ortega Street. Evidently he lived alone, since the only family reference he’d included was a terse “no dependents.” Shortly after establishing residence, he’d applied for a California investigator’s license and had been issued a temporary on the basis of his Washington state license. And that was all.