Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

Dix had left the engine running. She said, “Don't you want to come in for a few minutes? We can both use a drink.”

“I don't think so. I wouldn't be very good company right now.”

“That doesn't matter. Neither will I.”

He shook his head. “I just thought of something we can do that St. John can't object to.”

“What?”

“Make some calls, find out where Tom, Sid, Jerry, Owen, and George were yesterday afternoon and evening. It's at least a six-hour round-trip between here and Blue Lake, and it had to have been made between, say, three and nine o'clock. Anyone who can account for that time is cleared. Anyone who can't …”

“We can't just come right out and ask.”

“No. Do it as obliquely as possible. You could ask Beth about Tom, Laura about George, Helen about Sid.”

“All right.”

“I'll talk to Owen and Jerry,” he said. “I'll call you later and we'll compare notes.”

“I hope to God all of them have alibis. I still don't want to believe it's one of them.”

“Neither do I.”

She felt an impulse to lean over and kiss him, just briefly; put her arms around him, just briefly. But she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. A thin little smile was all she had to give him before she got out of the car.

There was a strangeness about the house, too. She felt it again as soon as she let herself in. Burglary victims used the word “violated,” and now she knew exactly what they meant. The tormentor had walked here, touched her things and Amy's things … how many times? Touched their things while he thought of ways to kill them both …

She shut the door, harder than she'd intended, and double-locked it. Amy was in the living room, curled up on the couch with a book open on her lap, listening to a Billy Idol CD turned up too loud. She looked pale and withdrawn; she hadn't slept much either last night. Bobby Harrell had been her age, they'd grown up together, they'd been friends. But never anything more than that, thankfully, or Amy would be taking his death even harder than she was.

When Cecca entered the room, Amy used the CD remote to lower the volume. “There were a couple of calls.”

“From?”

“Mrs. Garstein. Message on the machine.”

“She didn't have any news?”

“No, there's nothing new.”

“Who else? Owen, I'll bet.”

“Yeah. I talked to him.”

“What did he want this time?”

“Oh, you know, he's worried about us. He wanted to come over.”

“You didn't tell him he could?”

“No. I said we didn't want company tonight.”

Owen. Calling up, hanging around, fussing … part of the plan to torment her? And I let him into my bed, she thought, I let him into my body.…

“Mom? You okay?”

“Yes. Does it seem cold in here to you?”

“Not really. Where did you and Dix go?”

Cecca hesitated. “The police station.”

“Why? What's going on? If it's something real bad, I have a right to know what it is.”

Yes, you do, Cecca thought. She couldn't keep it from her, couldn't protect her that way. It was time Amy knew exactly what they were up against. “All right, baby,” she said. “Let me make myself a drink and then we'll talk.”

While she was in the kitchen, Amy shut off the CD player. The new silence beat against her eardrums, creating the same kind of pressure as the rock music. She sat on the couch with her drink, rested her free hand on Amy's arm.

And as she told her, looking into her daughter's wan face, she was aware of a small, mean emotion that seemed to have crawled out of the core of her. A mixture of relief and gratitude that made her hate herself because of what it revealed about Francesca Bellini.

She was relieved, grateful, that it was Ted and Bobby and Kevin Harrell who had been killed and burned, Eileen who lay shattered in the Lakeport hospital—them and not Amy, not her.

FIFTEEN

The first day of the fall semester was an ordeal.

In the past he had always enjoyed it—all the activity on campus, the new faces, the fresh challenge of trying to cram familiar historical material into young minds that might, in a scant few cases, find it as exciting as he did. The prospect of facing this one had almost led him to call in sick that morning. But the need to occupy his time and his mind had been greater than his reluctance, and so he'd driven up to the university just as if this were another normal fall opening. He didn't regret the decision as the day unfolded. But getting through each segment was still a trial.

Department faculty meeting first thing, at nine o'clock. Not much point to it, except that it allowed everybody to “get their game faces on,” as Elliot liked to put it. It also allowed Elliot to deliver, for the benefit of new faculty members—an associate professor of medieval studies this year—and any administration spies, his “department chair's motivational speech.” It was the same every semester; Dix could have recited parts of it verbatim: “History is holistic, involving humanity in all of its dimensions, interests, and activities, from the economic and political to the psychological and cultural. Therefore we're not only teaching our students history but encouraging them to reflect upon and analyze the interrelationship of ideas and material circumstances and of individual and group behavior as revealed in a wide range of human institutions and activities.” And so on, mining the same vein of bullshit.

The meeting ended at nine-forty. Elliot caught up with him in the hall outside the lounge. “We've got time before your ten o'clock,” he said. “Let's have a quick chat in my office.”

Elliot's office was as cluttered as his living room at home. Two shelves in his bookcase were devoted to extra copies of his own books, particularly the Fremont Older biography, in case any of his students or an enterprising faculty member wanted to purchase one for purposes of edification and/or brown-nosing. Once they were inside he shut the door, leaned a hip against a corner of his desk, and ran a hand through his shaggy hair.

“I wasn't sure you'd be here today,” he said.

“Why wouldn't I be here?”

“What happened to the Harrell family at Blue Lake. Close friends of yours, weren't they?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“I knew Ted Harrell. He mentioned you a couple of times. Hell of a thing, a freak accident like that. He seemed like a decent guy.”

“He was,” Dix said. “I didn't know you knew him.”

“Not socially. He was my dentist.”

Dix nodded. He couldn't think of anything to say.

Elliot said, “I was watching you in the lounge. You holding up all right?”

“More or less. Do I look that bad?”

“Not bad, just off balance. Anybody would be under the circumstances. First your wife, then one of your best friends and his family … Christ, you've had a summer.”

“If you're worried about my ability to teach, you needn't be. Teaching, hard work, is still what I need right now.”

“Oh, hell, that isn't it. It's you I'm concerned about.”

“I'm coping, Elliot, really.”

Elliot fished a package of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket, set fire to one, and blew smoke toward the open window beside the desk. “How about those calls? Any more since we talked?”

“Calls? Oh … no.”

“Changing your number took care of it, then.”

“I guess it must have.”

“The asshole hasn't harassed you in any other way?”

Dix felt edgy, uncomfortable. He had no desire to talk about this, any of this—to Elliot or to anyone except Cecca and St. John. He said, “No. None.”

“Well, at least that's one cross you don't have to keep bearing.” Elliot blew more smoke, coughed, scowled at the cigarette. “I hate these things,” he said, and crushed it out in his overflowing ashtray. “You think the patch works?”