Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

No, it was better for both her and Jan if they weathered this particular crisis alone. Jan had claimed he would be all right, had wanted her to trust him. And trust him she would, even if it involved a terrible risk.

Mitch was surprised when he saw the state police car come up the hill, park next to Hod’s old Rambler, and the plainclothes homicide detective, Sinclair, get out of it. What the hell was he doing here, half an hour before Mandy’s funeral? Unless he had some news about Ryerson… maybe that was it. Maybe he’d come to tell Hod and Della that the law’d finally quit diddling around after two days and arrested the psycho.

Mitch had been helping Marie unload food from the trunk of their car-potato salad, cold cuts, deviled eggs-for the funeral supper. He handed her the last covered dish as Sinclair approached. “You manage that all right, hon?”

“I can manage.” She seemed to want to hang around, to see what Sinclair wanted, but he shooed her away. She waddled when she walked now, like a damn duck. Still a couple of months before she was due, and already she was big as a house.

Sinclair stopped and took off his hat. Behind those thick glasses of his, his eyes flicked over Mitch, over Hod’s trailer, over the handful of villagers who’d already showed up to pay their respects to the bereaved. He looked a little uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t realized they were getting ready to have the funeral.

Mitch said, “Hod’s inside getting dressed, if you’re looking for him.”

“Actually, I came to see you, Mr. Novotny.”

“About what?”

“Jan Ryerson and his wife.”

“What about them? You finally arrest Ryerson?”

“No.” Sinclair ran a finger over one side of his mustache. “We have no cause to arrest him, I told you that before.”

“No cause. Christ. Just let him keep running around loose, murdering young girls, is that it?”

“There’s no evidence Mr. Ryerson murdered anyone,” Sinclair said. “This is the United States of America, Mr. Novotny. A man is innocent until proven guilty. That goes for Jan Ryerson, and it also goes for you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means.”

Mitch felt himself getting hot inside his Sunday suit; little trickles of sweat had started to ooze down his sides. “That why you’re here? That crap again? How many times I have to tell you I didn’t have nothing to do with what’s been happening out at the lighthouse?”

“Mr. Ryerson thinks you did.”

“I don’t give a damn what he thinks,” Mitch said. He was really hot now; it was all he could do to keep himself from shaking. “He make some other complaint against me? That why you’re here, hassling me right before poor Mandy’s funeral?”

“I didn’t know the funeral was today; if I had I would have waited until tomorrow to talk to you again.”

“Yeah, sure you would. You didn’t answer me about Ryerson. He make another complaint?”

“No. There’s been no complaint.”

“Then why’re you here? Tell me again to stay away from the Ryersons?”

“Do I need to tell you that, Mr. Novotny?”

“No,” Mitch said, and then he remembered something and all at once he knew what this was all about. This time he did start to shake. He could feel the blood all hot and pounding in his head. “Now I got it,” he said. “His wife’s old man is a politician, right? She went crying to papa and he made some calls and now you’re here.”

“That’s not it at all—”

“Sure it is. That’s why you haven’t put Ryerson in jail where he belongs. Man’s got the right connections, he can get away with anything in this lousy country.”

Sinclair was mad, too, now. His chubby face was pinched and his eyes looked dark and swollen behind his thick glasses. But he had himself under control just the same. He said, “Nobody gets away with any crime if I can help it. Not murder, not malicious harassment either. Just remember that, Mr. Novotny. ”

He turned on his heel, walked back to his car. You fucking Gestapo, Mitch thought, and he wanted to shout the words aloud; but he didn’t do it. He just stood there shaking, glaring, as Sinclair got back into his car and made a U-turn and drove on down the hill out of sight.

“Christ, Mitch, what was that all about?”

Adam Reese had come up beside him, with Seth Bonner at his heels; they’d been over by the trailer getting an eyeful. Mitch couldn’t talk for a minute, he was so worked up. When he finally started to calm down he told them what it had all been about.

“It ain’t right,” Adam said. You could see it festering on him, too, making him fidget from one foot to the other. “It just ain’t right.”

“Somebody’s got to do something,” Bonner said. “He’s crazy, that Ryerson. I told you all along, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

“Cops,” Adam said, and spat on the ground. “What the hell good are they?”

“No good, that’s what. No damn good at all.”

Mitch was barely listening to them. His head hurt now; he wished he had a drink, and not just a Henry’s either. You can only take so much, he was thinking. Goddamn it, a man can only take so much!

He was on his way across the yard to the pumphouse to see what he could do about purifying the well when the loneliness overcame him.

It was cold-a raw misty afternoon, with the wind blade-edged and cutting against his bare skin. He wasn’t thinking about anything at first. Just walking slowly, hunched over against the pull of the wind. And then the random thought came that the only people he’d talked to since Alix left two days ago were the man at the supply house in Coos Bay who’d taken his telephone order for the chemicals, and the truck driver who’d delivered them this morning. That thought gave birth to another: He’d expected the homicide inspector, Sinclair, to come back with more questions, but Sinclair hadn’t come. Why? It must be because he really did believe in the innocence of Jan Ryerson, believed that a man like Jan Ryerson could never, never hurt two young girls no matter what sort of state he was in. Alix believed it, didn’t she? And Jan Ryerson did too.

I couldn’t, I didn’t…

Could I? Did I?

No, I couldn’t.

No, I didn’t.

And then he thought: I’m going to be blind pretty soon. And the loneliness struck him-a wave of it sudden and fierce, making him feel almost agoraphobic. All at once the sky and the sea seemed immense, the sense of desolation greater than he’d ever imagined it, the voices of the wheeling gulls like shrieks of despair. Cape Despair. A place of lost hopes and hollow desires. The edge of nowhere. One short step from the abyss, the consuming darkness.

He turned, feeling dizzy, and went back to the house, sat down in the living room. His head ached, but it was not another of the bulging headaches-he hadn’t had another of those. But he’d had more frequent spells of failing vision, distortion of the form and size of objects, a narrowing of his visual field. Happening fast now. How much time did he have left?

Fear gnawed at him, but it was a different kind of fear than the one he’d been living with the past two days, even the past few months. Not fear of the unknown-fear of the alone. This lighthouse, the stand he’d made against Mitch Novotny and the other people of Hilliard… none of that meant anything, really, not even as a symbol. Staying here like this was not only foolish, it was meaningless. Polishing the lenses, rebuilding the diaphone, painting the catwalk, trying to do something about the well, all the frantic activity of the past couple of days… meaningless.

The room, the entire lighthouse, felt strange to him now-a vast echoing chamber of loneliness. Why had he sent Alix away? Why had he thought he needed some time alone? Being alone was the thing that frightened him most, the thing that had kept him from confiding in her. The ordeal of telling her the truth, facing the consequences, couldn’t be any greater than the ordeal of the past two days, the past two weeks.