Bill Pronzini - Acts of Mercy

At nightfall, beneath another full moon and a sky heavy with stars, Justice prowled here and there, back and forth-and a voice in his mind kept repeating: If it’s going to happen it will happen tonight; the killer will go after his third victim in the next few hours.

He could not get rid of the feeling. Every nerve in his body was sensitive with it. But where would it happen? Who was the intended target this time? Could it actually be the President, for some reason connected to his stunningly tragic withdrawal statement this morning? Justice had no intuitive answers; there was no way he could begin to fathom the workings of a deranged mind. He felt only that someone else was scheduled to die. Tonight.

Tonight.

And he could not be everywhere at once. He was only one man, one man alone. He wanted desperately to spend the night inside the manor house, at the President’s side; to talk to him again, try to make him accept the danger. But when he had gone there just before dusk, the housekeeper, Mrs. Peterson, had told him the President was not seeing anyone and had adamantly refused to carry a message to him. On impulse Justice had asked for an audience with the First Lady, and had been told that she was not seeing anyone either.

There had been nothing for him to do then except either to barge into the house-which might have angered and upset the President enough to make him not only refuse to listen but to have Justice confined to quarters-or to go on patrol. So he had gone on patrol, concentrating his vigil on the manor house, the guest cottages, the security and staff quarters. Whenever he encountered another agent on duty, or any of The Hollows’ private security police, he stopped and suggested carefully that they be extra watchful tonight; the President’s bombshell at the press conference might bring out part of the lunatic fringe, he said, you never knew how people would react to news like that. That was as far as he could go, and it did nothing at all to ease the fear and tension inside him.

He moved now through the gardens behind the manor house. The lights in the President’s study were on, he saw, and the idea came to him to hail Augustine from outside, get in to talk to him that way. Justice crossed to the window, stood close to it and then called out, “Mr. President? It’s Christopher Justice, sir. I’d like to speak with you.”

No response.

“Mr. President?”

No response.

Justice listened. There was a faint electric whirring from within: Augustine’s toy train outfit. So the President was inside; at least he knew that much. Amusing himself with his toy trains and not responding even out of curiosity to summonses from outside.

Just stay there, sir, Justice thought. Don’t leave the house or respond to any other summonses.

Grimly, he turned away.

Inside the study Augustine sat in front of the train board and stared at a 1927 Ives locomotive dragging a string of tankers and coal gondolas around the tracks. I should have gone into railroading instead of politics, he thought. I should have become a highballing engineer on the last of the steam locomotives on the Southern Pacific or the AT amp;SF. The smell of cinders and burning coal and hot cylinder oil; the pound of the 2-10-4s and the 4-6-2s and 2-8-0s; the roundhouses and the freight yards, the high mountain runs and the desert crossings, the close-knit fraternity of railroaders. To hell with trying to shape the destiny of the world. To hell with the thankless futile eviscerating world of politics. Give me anonymity and freedom and dignity. Give me a little joy.

The toy locomotive was just entering the tunnel cut into a green-painted “mountain” on the left side of the board. Augustine reached out a hand, ran fingertips over the rough papier-mache surface-and the throbbing melody of “John Henry” began to play again inside his head.

John Henry was hammerin’ on the mountain

And his hammer it was strikin’ fire;

He drove so hard till he broke his poor heart,

And he laid down his hammer and he died,

Lawd, Lawd, he laid down his hammer and he died.

Well they took John Henry to the graveyard,

And they buried him in the sand,

And ev‘ry locomotive that comes roarin’ by,

Says, “There lies a steel-drivin’ man,

Lawd, Lawd,” says, “There lies a steel-drivin’ man.”

Outside the window a voice called out abruptly, “Mr. President? It’s Christopher Justice, sir. I’d like to speak with you.”

Augustine raised his head and looked over at the drawn curtains. But he did not say anything; he had no desire to talk to Justice tonight. More nonsense about a homicidal maniac, probably. He had enough things preying on his mind as it was, not the least of which was Maxwell Harper.

“Mr. President?”

No, the only person he wanted to talk to was Claire, and he had been putting it off since five o’clock. But what was the point in continuing to put it off? He would have to discuss it with her sooner or later; he might as well get it over with. She was innocent of any wrongdoing, after all; there was no doubt of that. How could there be any doubt of that?

Augustine got to his feet and went out of the study without bothering to shut off the train board. Most of the lights were on, but the house was quiet except for the faint creeks and groans of settling timbers. Almost like the White House, he thought. Almost as if there were ghosts here too-the ghosts of his father and all the years of his life, whispering to him unintelligibly in the night.

Claire was not in the master bedroom, not in the library or the parlor. He heard crackling noises in the family room, and when he entered he saw her bending before the hearth, feeding pine logs heavy with pitch into a blazing fire.

She straightened around as she heard the sound of his footsteps, the orange firelight dancing on her face. She had changed clothes since he’d last seen her: wearing a blue sheath dress now, blonde hair combed out and brushed into waves that clung to her shoulders. When he came up to her he saw that her eyes were solemn-and the illusion that he could plunge into them, become absorbed by them, came over him again. But it was neither an uneasy sensation nor a sexual one this time; it was one of longing, because in absorption there would be escape.

He said, “That’s a nice fire,” but he was only making words.

A wan smile. “Yes. Are you hungry, Nicholas? I can have Mrs. Peterson fix you something-”

“No,” Augustine said. He had skipped dinner because he had no appetite and because he hadn’t wanted to talk to her; he still had no appetite, the thought of food made him ill. “I want to ask you something, Claire.”

“All right.”

He took a breath. “I saw you with Maxwell this afternoon,” he said. “The two of you in the south garden.”

Her face paled. “You… saw us?” in a whisper.

“Yes. I came out for a little air and I saw him touching you, I saw you run away from him. I want to know what happened out there.”

Moistness glistened in her eyes. Tears? She didn’t speak. “Tell me what happened, Claire. Why was he touching you? What did he say to you?”

“He said… Nicholas, I don’t want to-”

“Tell me!”

“He said he had deeper feelings than any of us imagined, that he was a human being and not a machine.” Her throat worked. “He acted… strange, different; it frightened me and I ran.”

Dully Augustine said, “There’s more to it than that.”

“No…”

“Yes. Yes there is. He said something else, didn’t he.”

“All right. All right. He said he… he said he was in love with me.”

Augustine flinched. Betrayal-again and again and again. Even Maxwell Harper, of all people. Even him. But there was no anger in him; he was beyond the capacity for any emotion as intense as rage. “I see,” he said. “Was that the first time he told you how he felt?”