Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

The restaurant and its front and side parking lots looked the same to her as they had four years earlier. The turnout across the highway also looked the same, except that the new guardrail rimming the cliffs edge was larger, sturdier. Slowly, Dix swung in off the highway. The turnout was empty except for them, a flat expanse of rain-puddled gravel glistening blackly where the headlight beams traced over it. He pulled up near the guardrail, at an angle to it. Left the engine running and the lights on, but set the hand brake.

“I'm getting out for a minute,” he said.

“Why?”

He shook his head, as if he wasn't sure himself. Through the rain-streaked glass Cecca watched him walk to the guardrail, lean forward cautiously to peer down the cliff wall. Without making a conscious decision she opened her door and joined him. The wind was abrasively cold, the rain it flung into her face as stinging as thrown sand. She had to squint and shield her eyes to see what lay below.

The ocean seemed to be boiling. Surf lashed over huge offshore rocks coated with seaweed, over the base of the curving promontory to the south, sliming them all with white froth; inundated smaller inshore rocks and a tiny rind of beach. Jets of spray burst fifteen, twenty feet into the air when big waves surged in. The violence of it made Cecca cringe inside. She shivered and backed up a step.

Dix put his arm around her shoulders, said something that the wind tore away from her ears. She tugged at his jacket to draw him back to the car. Inside, she turned the heater up as high as it would go; sat hugging her breasts, her hands tucked inside her jacket and under her arms to try to warm them.

“You should have stayed in the car,” Dix said.

“I wish I had. What did you say out there?”

“I said it must be more than a hundred-foot drop. It's a miracle the father wasn't killed, too.”

She shivered again. “Miracle?” she said.

He was waiting when Amy came out through Hallam's rear entrance. Sitting on the passenger seat of her car: She must have forgotten to lock that door.

As soon as he saw her he got out quickly and came toward her, smiling. His car wasn't anywhere around; he must have walked over. There was nobody else in the alley, just the two of them. She almost turned back inside. Instead, she stood nibbling her lower lip, waiting for him. She was glad to see him and yet she wasn't. No matter how desperately she wanted to believe in his innocence, he scared her now almost as much as he attracted her.

“Hi,” he said. “I was beginning to think old man Hallam was working you overtime.”

“Um … overtime?”

“It's quarter past one. Half day on Saturdays, right?”

“Right. I had some things to finish up.”

“Well, now you're free for the rest of the weekend. Any plans?”

“No. No plans.”

“Not going anywhere with your mom?”

“No.”

“Where is she, anyway?”

“At home, I guess. Or at Better Lands. I don't know.”

“She isn't either place. Dix Mallory's nowhere to be found either. They go someplace together?”

“Beats me.”

“Come on now, Amy. You can tell me.”

“I really don't know.”

Which was the truth. Mom had kept her promise to call last night, but she wouldn't say much about Pelican Bay or what she and Dix had decided to do. She'd sounded distracted and in a hurry; she hadn't even mentioned the condoms. “I won't be here tomorrow”—that was all she'd said. It didn't take a genius to figure out they'd gone up to Oregon, to Pelican Bay. Amy was still pissed at being left out, but not pissed enough to do something defiant.

He said, “You've been staying with your grandparents the past few nights. Why is that, Amy?”

“They wanted me to,” she lied.

“It wasn't your mom's idea? So she could be with Dix?”

“No.”

He watched her silently. It was like the other day: She couldn't quite meet his eyes. She looked at his mouth instead. His smile had a little quirk in it and she could see the tip of his tongue in one comer.

When she started to imagine his tongue in her mouth she shook herself and said, “Well, I guess I'd better get going …”

“Are you in a hurry?”

“Um, I've got some errands to run.”

“Errands aren't urgent. How about going for a ride first?”

“A ride? With you?”

He laughed. “Of course with me.”

“Your car's not here.”

“You don't mind driving, do you?”

“No, but— Where?”

“Not far and not long. We'll be back inside of half an hour.”

She wanted to; she didn't want to. It was like being pulled from two sides at once, as if she were a rope in a tug-of-war game. She made herself say, “I'd better not.”

He touched her cheek, stroked it with his knuckles. “Come on, honey,” he said. “Just a short ride. What do you say?”

Honey . That and his touch almost made her give in. She took a breath and said, “No, I really can't,” and tried to move past him to her car.

He stopped her with his body and tight fingers on her arm. He was still smiling, but now it was just a mouth smile. His eyes … they'd changed. They'd gotten cold and hard.

Oh no, she thought, oh no!

“Give me your keys, Amy. Then get in the car on the passenger side. I'll drive.”

Sudden fear held her rooted. Behind him Water Street was still empty—there was never anybody around back there. She could hear the hum of traffic on the cross streets, somebody talking loud in one of the adjacent stores, but it was as if the two of them were alone in the middle of a wilderness.

“Let me go,” she said. “I'll scream,” she said.

“No you won't,” He unbuttoned the front of his suit coat, pulled one flap aside. “You won't scream and you won't argue.”

She stared at the gun tucked into the waistband of his slacks.

“Give me your keys and then get in the car,” he said. “Now there's a good girl.”

Pelican Bay was like most Oregon coastal towns, loaded with picturesque cottages and beachfront condos and motels and seafood restaurants and native craft shops. The inlet that gave it its name extended under an arched highway bridge, forming a sheltered harbor for a fleet of fishing boats and a handful of weathered fish-processing companies. In the height of the summer season, with the sun shining and tourists swarming around, it probably had a certain charm. Now, seen through the bleak curtain of rain, its streets empty and some of its shops already closed, it had a remote and unwelcoming aspect.

Dix pulled into a service station and spoke briefly to the attendant on duty. Pelican Bay was too small to have a library, the man said; the nearest one was in Lincoln City, down the coast a few miles. That was where the nearest newspaper was published, too—the weekly Lincoln City News Guard .

Back in the car, he relayed this information to Cecca, who sat huddled against the passenger door. Then he asked her, “Want to get some coffee before we go on? Warm up a little?”

“No. Let's just get it over with.”

The rain was easing a little when they reached Lincoln City. This was the center of the north-coast resort area, an exceptionally long, narrow town—actually a collection of tiny hamlets strung together—that spread out for several miles along Highway 101. Dix stopped at another service station there to ask directions. Driftwood Library was only a few blocks away, as it turned out. And it was open, Dix saw with relief as he pulled up in front. In these hard times you never knew about library hours.

They had a microfilm file of issues of the News Guard dating back several years. A librarian showed them to the microfilm room, brought the tapes containing the issues for June and July of 1989, and left them alone.