Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

It was warm in the house, smoky from a blazing wood fire. The old man said his name was Delaney, Martin Delaney, and invited them to sit down.

Dix said, “We can't stay, Mr. Delaney. We'd just like to know about Gordon Cotter, if he still owns the house across the road.”

“Not anymore. Family named Elroy owns it now. Baptists, holy rollers. You friends of his?”

“Cotter's? No. We have business with him.”

“What kind of business?”

“It's personal.”

“None of my business, eh?” Delaney laughed; his false teeth made a clacking sound. “You know what happened to his family?”

“Yes, we know.”

“His fault. Driving too fast in the rain, didn't have his headlights on. He always did drive too fast and loose. But he wouldn't admit it.”

“Wouldn't admit the accident was his fault?”

“That's right. Talked to him once, after he come home from the hospital. He said it was the people in the other car's fault, the one that pulled out from the restaurant.”

Dix glanced at Cecca. She moved closer to him, either for warmth or support.

“Oh, he took it hard,” Delaney said. “Real hard. One thing you can say for Cotter, he loved his wife and those two kids. Cute kids, too. My wife was alive then—she used to say they were a perfect family. Blessed, she said. Terrible thing to lose them like that, all at once. Just the opposite of blessed.”

Cecca asked, “How long ago did he sell the house, Mr. Delaney?”

“Three, four months after it happened. Sat over there all that time, didn't go to work, wouldn't hardly leave the house. Grieved longer and harder than any man I ever knew. Then one morning he was gone and the place was up for sale. Just up and left.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“No idea,” Delaney said. “Haven't seen nor heard from him since. Nobody around here has. Didn't take his furniture, wherever he went. Left it all right there in the house. Sold the house with the furniture included. Hell of a deal for the holy rollers.”

“Would you please tell us what he looks like?”

“Looks like? I thought you knew him.”

“We think we know him,” Dix said. “We need to be sure.”

“Well, I'm not too good at that sort of thing …”

“Please try.”

“Gordon Cotter, eh? Man about forty, now. Tall, good shape—played a lot of tennis and golf. Blond hair, blue eyes like mine used to be—real bright blue. Handsome. Handsome as the devil.”

Jerry.

Jerry Whittington was Gordon Cotter.

And Gordon Cotter was the tormentor.

TWENTY-FOUR

By the time they passed through Point Arena, late in the afternoon, Amy was no longer afraid of him. She'd gotten her head totally together. She felt the way she'd always imagined she would when she was a working reporter and found herself in a dangerous situation: cool, crafty, determined. You didn't get your ass out of trouble by panicking or wimping out. You used your head, waited for the right opportunity, and then did what you had to do. Whatever you had to do.

Meanwhile, she'd pretended to be scared out of her skull. Meek and obedient, too. Let him think he could do anything he wanted to her and she wouldn't fight back. Let him think she was going to be an easy victim.

She studied him out of the corner of her eye. Sitting over there all smug, his hands dirtying the wheel of her car, probably thinking he could put his hands on her if he felt like it and she'd just turn to jelly. Once he could have; once she would have. She couldn't stand to think how willing, how stupid, she'd been just a short while ago. Well, she'd learned her lesson. Hatred was all she felt for him now. The attraction was totally gone, as if it had never existed. He wasn't handsome or sexy, he was repulsive. He was Freddy Krueger with a hunk's mask on.

His eyes were steady on the road; they didn't seem to blink much anymore. He looked relaxed, not even a little tired or cramped from all the driving. Super cool or bat-shit crazy? She couldn't tell. He didn't show much of what was going on inside him—and it was probably just as well he didn't. Amy shifted position again. Her buns were sore from sitting in one place for almost three hours. They hadn't stopped once, not even for gas because she'd filled the tank that morning. Down around Fort Ross she'd tried to get him to stop at a gas station so she could use the bathroom—a trick that might give her a chance to slip away from him or at least to write a message on the mirror with her lipstick. But he hadn't fallen for it. “I really have to pee,” she'd lied, and he'd said, “You'll just have to hold it. Either that, or go ahead and wet yourself.”

That was about all he'd said to her since way back at Bodega Bay. Talk, talk, talk nonstop for half an hour—and then nothing, as if a faucet inside him, turned on for a while, had suddenly been turned off. It was all right with her. The silence was a lot easier to take.

The long ride was almost over. They were passing the turnoff for the Point Arena Light Station; that meant the one for Manchester State Beach and the Dunes was only a couple of miles farther on. He knew it, too—must have read a map or something, because he began to slow down even before she spotted the half-hidden sign for Stoneboro Road. He didn't come close to missing the turn either, something even she'd done once.

Stoneboro Road wound in for more than a mile, through open fields and cattle graze, before you could see the sand dunes and the abandoned development. At that point you could also see miles and miles of the curving beach, and inland across a long valley dotted with dairy ranches to the mountains of the Coast Range. It was lonesome and windswept and beautiful. Even today, with him beside her, she was aware of its beauty.

The weather was pretty good, windy and mostly sunny, and there were a half dozen cars parked at the entrance to the beach. None of the people was in sight though. He turned off on the road that ran through what was left of the development. Narrow, carpeted in blown sand, it paralleled the outer sweep of the dunes and took them past signs and paved streets that led nowhere: Barnegat Drive, Duxbury Road, Coventry Lane. No cars here, just sawgrass and gorse and cypress and scrub pine. And the high dunes covered with thick tufts of tule grass that had always made her think of a vast herd of hairy creatures watching the sea with hidden eyes.

Another mile … and when they came around a bend in the road, the Dunes appeared. Gray, salt-weathered, set seventy or eighty yards off the road on high ground, built on pilings so that blowing sand could drift underneath. The unpaved lane that led up to it was half gravel and half weeds, so it was barely visible until you were right on top of it, but he seemed to know where it was. He turned, and they jounced along and finally stopped on the flat-topped rise, behind the cottage. He shut off the engine, but he didn't move to get out right away. He rolled down the window a little and sniffed the air with a little smile on his mouth.

“Nice here,” he said. “I love the coast, the ocean.”

Amy didn't say anything.

“It reminds me of where I used to live.”

Pelican Bay, I'll bet, she thought. She almost said it, caught herself in time. If she made a slip like that and he had lived in Pelican Bay, he'd know they were on to him, that that was where Mom and Dix must have gone. There was no telling what he might do then.

“You've been a good girl,” he said. “Keep on being good and everything will be fine.”

“I will,” she said.

“I'm going to get out now. You sit there until I come around and open your door. When you get out, don't try to run away. If you do, I'll shoot you. I won't like doing it, but I will.”