Bill Pronzini - The Stalker

Wait a minute now. Well, for crying out loud, if he had moved out, if he had gone away, the telephone would be disconnected, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. That recorded voice would have come on and said, “I’m sorry, the number you have dialed is not in service at this time.” Of course, don’t be silly, Andrea, he’s just... out somewhere for the evening, that’s all, oh, but if he moved this morning or this afternoon, the telephone wouldn’t necessarily have to be disconnected yet, maybe they couldn’t get a man up to do that until tomorrow, maybe he really is gone...

Steve, she thought. Oh Steve!

She took her dime from the return slot again and slid it into the circular opening above and dialed the number of Mrs. Yarborough, the building manager. She had to know, she had to know right now. She held the receiver in both hands, as she had before, waiting, and through the wet glassed walls of the booth, across the puddled blacktop, she could see the wide-faced clock mounted on the wall above the door to the Shell station office.

The hands and the numerals, their luminosity eerily blurred by the rain-mist, designated the time as 11:10.

The rain fell heavily, in a diagonally silver cascade, on the James Lick Freeway just below Candlestick Park. The onrushing yellow headlamp eyes of the northbound traffic, the desperately flashing blood-red taillights on the southbound automobiles strung out ahead, commingled to form a kaleidoscopically distorted montage—surrealism in motion, a wild hallucinogenic excursion into the depths of a nightmare.

This is the Twilight Zone, Steve Kilduff thought inanely, detachedly; enter Rod Serling on a fade-over with his soporific voice explaining the intricacies of the plot...

Off on his left, the black moving water of the Bay stretched cold and lonely on a flat plane toward the jeweled but half-obscured lights of the East Bay. The wind blew and whistled in a kind of ghostly charivari at the slightly open wing window, the windshield wipers worked in hypnotic metronome cadence on the rain-drenched glass, and the treble voice of a disc jockey on the too-loud radio sent discordant vibrations of sound echoing through the car—all serving to heighten the sense of unreality which pervaded Kilduff’s mind.

He sat stiffly erect, with his hands clenching the wheel tightly and the muscles cording in his forearms. He had left Twin Peaks just before eleven, driving mechanically. He had been thinking only of Drexel; and what it was Drexel had found out, or had done, in Granite City; and what Drexel would say when he told him about Commac and Flagg—the two polite, soft-spoken cops who knew; and what Drexel would decide their next move to be; yes, and how he, Kilduff, would end up going along with it whatever it was.

Green and iridescent-white exit signs appeared, and then vanished, in the hazy aureoles of light from his head lamps.

GRAND AVENUE-SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO

SAN BRUNO AVENUE—SAN BRUNO

SAN FRANCISCO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

MILLBRAE AVENUE—MILLBRAE

BROADWAY—BURLINGAME

19TH AVENUE—SAN MATEO

HOLLY STREET—SAN CARLOS

WHIPPLE AVENUE—REDWOOD CITY

When would this phantasmagoria that was an all-too-real reality end? he asked himself as he sent the car hurtling along the rain-swept highway. How long would it be before the law of averages caught up with him? He was living on borrowed time, walking on eggshells, balancing one mile-high tightrope, there was no way he could possibly come out of it unscathed; there was no way, simply no way, he could ever return to the former status quo security.

The radio disc jockey announced the time just as EMBARCADERO ROAD—PALO ALTO loomed into view ahead.

It was 11:23 and thirty seconds.

13

11:28.

Larry Drexel poured himself another glass of aquardiente, his third since he had arrived home, and resumed his restless pacing of the parlor’s Navajo rug. The pallid light from a lantern-style wall lamp made his face look grotesquely demoniac, like a sculpted burlesque of an entity from Dante’s Inferno .

Goddamn it! he thought, drinking from the glass, moving with long, fluid strides the width of the darkly somber room, turning at the fieldstone fireplace, retracing his steps, turning again. Where the hell was Kilduff? Sure, he’d told him eleven-thirty, but you’d think the bastard would—

Euphonious chimes echoed through the darkened house.

Reflexively, Drexel’s hand went to the .38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver in the side pocket of his suit coat. He touched the grip, and the feel of the cold, rough metal seemed to relax him. He took a slow breath, thinking: Easy, now, it’s Kilduff and it’s about time. But he went slowly, silently, along the front hallway and drew back the tiny round cover which guarded the peephole in the arched wooden door —no use in taking chances even if it was Kilduff, especially now...

But it wasn’t Kilduff.

It was Fran Varner.

He pulled open the door, his nostrils flaring with sudden anger and splotches of crimson flecking his smooth cheeks. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought I told you I didn’t want to see you tonight.”

She took off her plastic rain hat and shook her brown hair. Her eyes probed his imperiously. “I have to tell you something, Larry,” she said softly. “And it simply can’t wait.”

“The hell it can’t! Go home, Fran...”

“No,” she said. She held the rain hat clutched tightly in both hands, twisting it between her long, slim fingers. “No, I won’t go home until I’ve talked to you.”

Drexel thought: You silly, clinging bitch. “Listen,” he said, “I can’t talk to you now. Don’t you understand that?”

“Why not, Larry?”

“I’m expecting someone.”

“Who?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Another girl?”

“Oh, Jesus!”

“Is it, Larry?”

“No, it’s not another girl. It’s business!”

“At eleven-thirty at night?”

He wanted to hit her. He wanted to lash out with his balled fist and knock her flat on her soft round little ass, teach her not to come around here bugging him like this when he was caught up in something so damned big, what the hell was the matter with these chicks? But he didn’t hit her. He didn’t hit her because Kilduff was going to arrive here any minute now and he had to get rid of her before then and he couldn’t get rid of her if she was lying on her ass on the fieldstone walk.

He said in a cold, deliberate voice, “Fran, I’m telling you, if you know what’s good for you, go home. Get out of here and go home right now. I mean it, Fran.”

There was hurt and pain deep in her amber eyes now, as if she had just fully accepted a great, sad truth—not that he gave a crap what it was; all he cared about at that moment was getting rid of her. He thought she would obey his command, expected it with that hurt and pain in her eyes, but she caught him off guard. She said, “I’m coming inside, Larry,” and before he could react she was past him and walking down the hallway into the parlor.

Rage welled up inside Drexel until the blood pounding in his ears sounded like a distorted drum-roll. He slammed the door savagely and went in after her. She had turned and was standing in front of the scrolled desk, her plastic raincoat dripping crystalline beads of water onto the rug. She waited until he had taken two steps into the parlor from the hallway, his eyes blazing, and then she said in a loud, clear voice, without preamble, “I’m pregnant, Larry. I’m going to have your baby.”

It stopped him. It stopped him cold. His mouth opened, and then closed, and he stood there staring at her.

You bitch! he thought finally. I ought to kill you, you stupid little bitch!