Bill Pronzini - Acts of Mercy

Continuing his vigil, Justice had moved past the dark tennis courts, come back through the fruit trees that grew in even rows between the rear of the guest cottages and the security fence. The two northernmost cottages had been dark, but lights still shone inside the third; he had walked up alongside it, as he had done earlier, and glanced through the side window: Frank Tanaguchi still seated at the desk in the front room, working over a stack of papers, listening to classical music on a portable radio.

Justice had turned away immediately, gone past the fourth and fifth cottages, both of which were dark, and approached the sixth, the one occupied by Maxwell Harper. The bright rectangle of light that was the side window drew him again. He looked inside.

And went rigid.

And stared with sick fascination at Harper’s body lying on the floor and the President standing in the doorway beyond, holding onto the jamb and gazing fixedly at his right hand.

Oh my God I knew it, it’s my fault, I should have found a way to prevent it The President, what is the President doing here?

Augustine looked ghastly; his face had a gray ravaged appearance, like decaying wood. Shock, that was it. He had come to talk to Harper for some reason and found him like this. But then why was he staring at his hand that way? It was almost as if No.

Chills on Justice’s body, nausea in his stomach.

The President?

No! Potential victim, he couldn’t be the psychopath! Augustine pulled his hand down from the doorjamb, shoved it behind him. Then his expression changed all at once to one of panic and his head came up and he was looking straight across at the window. His body tensed, and Justice thought: he sees me, he’ll beckon me inside now, he The President spun and ran.

Justice was stunned. It couldn’t be Augustine-but when someone ran from the scene of a crime, ran from the presence of an officer of the law, it was almost always because of guilt. The President had no reason to run from his bodyguard unless he was guilty. But he couldn’t be guilty.

Then why did he run?

Justice shook himself, and the policeman in him took command and sent him racing around to the front of the cottage. He slowed near the door, scanned the moonlit grounds with quick jerks of his head. At first he did not see Augustine; then there was a flash of movement to the south, in the shadows cast by a line of four-foot high cinquefoil shrubs. A second later the President appeared as a silhouette against the bright moonglow, running southeast in long lurching strides.

Justice sprinted in that direction, leaving the paths where they meandered around trees and shrubs and flowers so that he could maintain a straight-ahead course in Augustine’s wake. He lost sight of him in the small copse of evergreens planted as a windbreak near the garage barns. Plunged through the trees and saw him again seventy yards away, heading across open ground toward the rear of the barns. Except for the two of them, the night seemed desertednothing moving anywhere. And Justice was thankful for that: he did not want anyone to see the President running, he did not want anyone else to catch him.

Catch him, he thought, catch the President.

Draw his gun and shout at him to halt, as he would have done with any homicide suspect? Hold him at bay, spread him out and search him? Question him, demand to know why he had run? A feeling of surreality came over Justice. That was the President up there, he was chasing the Chief Executive of the United States across the grounds of his own estate. There was a psychopath loose at The Hollows and he was running after the President and the President was not the one, he was not the one.

Ahead, Augustine had vanished again behind the first of the barns. Justice fought to lengthen his strides, reached the corner, turned past it. The President was midway along the rear wall of the second barn, running with his head down and his arms pumping like cylinder valves. The distance between them was still at least seventy-five yards.

When Augustine was beyond the second barn he veered at an angle to the west. Justice, coming out along there moments later, saw him heading toward the far side of the stable, and clenched his teeth in frustration because the gap that separated them seemed to have increased: the President was maintaining the frenzied pace of someone half his age.

The stable loomed blackly; the fence rails enclosing the corral and the paddock were like black bars drawn on a yellow-white backdrop. Augustine went past the building, along the paddock fence-but there was nothing beyond the end of it except another copse of evergreens and then the security fence. Where is he going? Justice thought. Where is he running to?

Why is he running?

Why am I running? Augustine thought.

But it was fragmented, submerged with other thought shards in the raw fluid of panic. Blood on my hand, but it isn’t blood. Get away, get away from Justice, don’t let him catch you. Ashtray on the floor, blood on that too, bludgeoned Maxwell to death with an ashtray. Get away. I couldn’t do a thing like that. He was in love with Claire but I couldn’t do a thing like that. Psychopath. Three murders, I should have listened to Justice. Christopher, I didn’t do it. Run. Help me, I don’t know what’s happening to me. Run!

And his brain continued to give motor commands and his body continued to respond: flight, escape. The exertion constricted his chest, formed a stitch in his left side; he could not get enough air into his lungs. Sweat streamed into his eyes, made perception of his surroundings an aqueous blur, as though he were running at great speed underwater.

He did not quite know where he was until his foot stubbed against something and he staggered off-balance, nearly fell, then caught blindly onto a round vertical object and held himself upright. The familiar rough-wood feel of the object transmitted to his mind and became the words fence post, and when he dragged an arm up to clear his eyes he saw he was at the far corner of the paddock. Run. I didn’t do anything. Justice is after you, run!

The horses.

Yes, yes, the horses. Not even Justice can run as fast as a horse.

Augustine shoved away from the fence post and ran along the far side of the paddock. He reached the stable without seeing Justice, his breath coming now in small explosive grunts. The door to the tack room was on that side of the building, closed now but never locked, and it opened under his hand. He went inside, shut the door after him.

Familiar odors: manure from the adjacent stalls, good oiled leather, liniment and hay and the gamy effluvium of horses. Without pausing-he knew the tack room even in darkness-he went to the door that led to the stalls, swung it open. Turned back, took a bridle off its wall peg, dragged one of the heavy saddles down and struggled with it into the stalls.

Some of the horses had begun to move restlessly; one of them made a soft blowing sound. Casey Jones was in the third stall, where he was always kept, and Augustine went there and opened the half-door and took the saddle inside. Casey nickered but stood still: obedient and trusting, a fine old engineer. Augustine threw the saddle on the animal’s back, cinched the straps, hooked the bridle on. Hurry, Justice is outside-and he caught the reins and led Casey Jones out of the stall, across to the double doors in the west wall. I didn’t do it-and he mounted the bay and then leaned down to unlatch the doors.

I don’t know why I’m doing this-and he shoved the doors wide and heard himself say “Run!” and dug his heels into Casey Jones’s flanks.

Justice was in the trees beyond the paddock, searching frantically for the President, when the night erupted in sound: a sharp wooden clattering, what might have been a cry, the unexpected pound of a horse’s hooves.