Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

Sid Garstein?

Inconceivable.

Dix shifted his gaze again, to where Owen was still earnestly monopolizing Cecca's time. Owen was in love with her, had been for years. The hopeless, worshipful kind of love. He might take up with Cecca's best friend for revenge or spite, but neither of those applied to the situation. And Katy's feelings for Owen had always been maternal; if she'd found him physically attractive, she'd hidden it well. Owen: reserved, puppy-doggish, old-fashioned in attitudes and tastes; loved photography to the point of obsession, loved taking portraits of kids most of all. Still waters run deep, sure, and it was possible unrequited love for Cecca had turned to hate. But there was no earthly reason for him to want to harm Katy or Dix Mallory. None.

Owen Gregory?

Inconceivable.

These are my friends , he thought. Trivial in some ways, loaded with faults like everybody else in the world, but fundamentally good, decent men. Hateful and disloyal to even consider them.

But how can you know, really, what goes on inside another human being? I didn't know what went on inside the woman I loved and lived with for seventeen years. Didn't even know what went on inside myself until this week.

It could be one of them, all right.

It could be anybody.

In spite of her earlier resolve, she told Dix about the call as soon as they were alone together. She couldn't help herself. It was like a poisonous taste in her mouth that she had to spit out.

They were getting ready to eat. Jerry had put the steaks on; the aroma of barbecuing meat was strong on the cooling air. The smell made Cecca faintly nauseated. Her mind kept trying to associate it with human flesh cooking, Katy in her burning car. Most of the others were bustling around, setting up a buffet table on the patio, helping Jerry at the Webers, brokering drinks. Owen had gone off to the bathroom, thank God. He was driving her crazy with his solicitous hovering. She saw Dix by himself and went to him and drew him quickly onto the path between the house and the garage.

He said, “Christ,” softly when she blurted out the tormentor's threat.

“That last part,” she said, “about the lessen'd anguish. It sounds like some kind of quote.”

“It is. From Romeo and Juliet , I think.”

“ Romeo and Juliet . Oh, fine.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Something about the package … did Amy and I like our presents.”

“Bastard. You did remember to switch tapes?”

“Tapes? What tapes?”

“In your answering machine. To preserve what he said.”

“It wasn't a message. I talked to him.”

“Talked to— I thought we agreed to let all calls go on tape. Why did you pick up?”

“I don't know. I was standing right there when the phone rang and I … habit, impulse, I don't know.”

“You didn't provoke him, argue with him?”

“No. I didn't say anything, I just listened.”

“You did record it?”

“I didn't have time. The cassette recorder was in my purse in the other room—”

“Cecca, what he said was the kind of evidence we need—”

“What good would it have done us? Don't you understand? He's planning to murder Amy and me. Unless we find out who he is, he'll kill us the way he killed Katy—”

“Keep your voice down, for God's sake. You're jumping to conclusions again.”

“I'm not. Not this time. And you know it.”

No answer.

“Dix, you know it. Stop pretending our lives aren't in danger!”

He ran a hand roughly over his face, pulled it down, and looked at it as if he expected to find it stained. “All right,” he said.

“We've got to do something.”

“What? What can we do?”

“Confront Louise Kanvitz, that's what.”

“Beg her to tell the truth about Katy?”

“Pay her. She'd take money.”

“Suppose she won't?”

“Force it out of her then.”

“Threaten her? Beat her up?”

“If that's what it takes, yes!”

“We're not thugs, Cecca. Besides, she could have us arrested, put in jail—”

“I don't care about that. At least we'd have his name.”

“If she really does know it.”

“She knows. I tell you, she knows—”

“Who knows what?”

Owen's voice, startling them both. Owen had come around the corner and was standing there, head cocked quizzically, half smiling at them. Damn you, Owen! she thought fiercely. Are you the one? Is that why you won't leave me alone?

“Did I interrupt something?” he asked.

Dix said, “No, we were just chatting.”

“Sounded pretty intense to me.”

“It wasn't intense,” Cecca said, “it was just a conversation. Can't I talk to somebody without you butting in?”

The words stunned him. She saw the hurt reshape his expression and didn't care; for all she knew he was the one. “Hey, I wasn't butting in,” he said. His voice had stiffened a little. “I came looking for you because Beth asked me to. She wants some help in the kitchen.”

“Tell her I'll be right there.”

Owen glanced at Dix, gave Cecca a longer, hurt look, and went away without saying anything else.

Dix said slowly, “Maybe we'd better not stay for dinner. This isn't the place for either of us tonight.”

“We can't leave now. How would it look to the rest of them?”

“You go, then. I'll make excuses—”

“No. We'll both stay. We'll get through this and then we'll go somewhere and talk, make a decision.”

He nodded. “You'll be okay?”

“I won't lose it and start hurling accusations, if that's what you mean. You go ahead. I'll be along in a minute.”

Alone on the path, she stood composing herself. She was on a ragged edge and it wasn't like her. She didn't fall apart in a crisis. Chet … yes, okay, she'd gone through a crumbly period when he walked out, but she'd still held herself and her life together, and come out of the divorce more or less whole. It was that this thing, this madness, was so foreign to anything in her experience. You couldn't adjust to it because it kept changing, shifting, so you couldn't get a grasp on any of it. The not knowing why, the gathering certainty that he was probably a man you knew well and liked and trusted … those were the things that made it so unbalancing.

But I can handle it, she thought. I am going to handle it. So is Dix. So is Amy. We'll be all right. We will.

It won't be us who ends up getting burned.

For a while Dix felt oddly detached, an almost schizoid detachment, as if only part of him were still there in Jerry's backyard. The other part … running around in a cage somewhere, rattling the bars, looking for a way out. Bits and pieces of conversation bounced off his mind without quite registering: food, baseball, taxes, local politics, jokes, old movies versus new movies, a kind of gibberish labeled the power of positive dreaming. He had no appetite, had to force down his first few bites of steak, but when dinner was over he saw with surprise that his plate was empty except for the steakbone and a few bites of pasta salad, as if somebody else had cleaned it for him when he wasn't looking. When Jerry asked him what he thought of the alder and mesquite combination, he said, “Wonderful, just wonderful,” without realizing until minutes later what the question related to.

Cecca, he noticed, ate almost nothing. Otherwise she seemed to be holding up better than he was, making more of an effort to join in. Trying too hard, but nobody noticed because they were also trying too hard—to recapture the old, easy, relaxed camaraderie of good friends enjoying each other's company. It was not he who was preventing it from happening; it was the specter of Katy. The sudden death of one of the flock was a reminder, consciously or subconsciously, of their own mortality. For all but one of them, maybe.