Bill Pronzini - The Hidden

Beneath the bridge and along the harborfront to the east there was a collection of restaurants, fish shops, and docks for commercial fishing boats and whale-watching and sportfishing charters. Shelby had no interest in the town or in stopping for lunch—she spoke to him in short, clipped sentences, when she spoke at all—but he drove down to the harbor anyway. Her favorite fish was wild salmon; he thought maybe a couple of fresh sockeye filets for dinner would put her in a better mood. Pathetic peace offering, but he didn’t have any other kind to make.

She waited in the car while he went into one of the fish shops. Just as well, because there was a newspaper rack in front and the Santa Rosa paper’s front-page headline jumped out at him as he went by.

SEARCH FOR COASTLINE KILLER INTENSIFIES

Long, silent ride back down Highway 1. Macklin didn’t even try to make conversation. The rain continued to hold off, but by the time they passed the mouth of the Navarro River the wind gusts were fierce and there was more black than gray in the cloud churn overhead. It wouldn’t be long before the skies opened up and the rain spilled out.

Coming from the north, he missed the Ocean Point Lane intersection and had to turn around and retrace a quarter of a mile. Mr. Inept. The first drops of rain from the bloated cloud bellies had begun to speckle the windshield as he drove through the jog in the road past the big estate. At almost the same instant he saw the vehicles parked in front of the Lomax house.

“Now what the hell’s going on?”

Shelby stirred beside him. “What?”

“Up there. Look.”

Macklin put on the wipers to clear away the rain mist. Shelby still had to lean forward, squinting, because of the sticking blade on her side. There were two cars, a dark-colored sedan angled into the entrance driveway and a sheriff’s department cruiser on the blacktop.

“You don’t suppose Lomax really hurt her this time?” he said. “Bad enough to put her in the hospital?”

Shelby’s jaw tightened; she shook her head.

“Or maybe she did something to him. If it’s bad, I hope that’s the way it was.”

“It may not be anything at all.”

Instead of turning into the cottage’s drive, he rolled on past fifty yards or so—close enough to make out a seal on the driver’s door of the parked sedan. Highway patrol.

“Two official cars parked out there like that,” he said. “It’s sure not a social visit.”

“Not an emergency, either. No flashing lights and I don’t see an ambulance.”

“Could be parked inside the fence. Or it hasn’t gotten here yet.”

She said, to herself as much as to him, “I wish I knew what happened.”

“Well, we can’t go up and ask. We’ll probably never know.”

F O U R T E E N

THEY HAD BEEN IN the cottage less than fifteen minutes and Jay was making noises about going out to the lane “to see if the law’s still up there” when the doorbell chimed. He glanced at Shelby, muttered, “What the hell?” and went to open the door on its chain lock.

She saw him stiffen slightly as he looked out. “Yes, what is it?” The quickened beat of the wind blurred the voice outside, but whatever it said convinced him to remove the chain and pull the door wide. Two men came inside, one wearing an unbuttoned overcoat over a suit and tie, the other in a deputy sheriff’s uniform. Both wore grim, tight-lipped expressions. The man in the overcoat saw Shelby, approached her with a leather ID case open in his hand.

“Mrs. Macklin?”

“Hunter,” she said automatically, looking at the badge inside the case. “Shelby Hunter.”

“I understood you and Mr. Macklin were married.”

“We are. I kept my birth name.”

“Oh, I see. Well.” He put the ID case away. “My name is Rhiannon, Lieutenant George Rhiannon. I’m an investigator with the highway patrol. This is Deputy Randall Ferguson, county sheriff’s department.”

She nodded. Jay’s eyes were on the deputy—a big, youngish man with a bristly mustache and flat green eyes, standing in a ruler-backed posture like a soldier at attention.

“You’re the officer who led us out here the other night,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Well … what can we do for you?”

“We won’t take up much of your time,” Rhiannon said. “Just a few questions, if you don’t mind.” He was in his forties, with an ovoid body on short stubby legs and a dark, pointy, long-nosed face. Like a dachshund that had acquired human features and learned how to walk on its hind legs, Shelby thought. But there was nothing comical about the man or his demeanor. His movements, his words had a sharp professional economy.

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“I understand you spent some time with your neighbors and their houseguests Sunday night.”

“Just long enough to have a drink with them. We went there to borrow matches when the power went out.”

“Everything seem to be all right with the four of them?”

“They’d been drinking pretty heavily,” Jay said. “We picked up on a lot of tension.”

“Any specific cause?”

“Not that we could tell.”

“Conflict between Eugene Decker and anyone in the party?”

“His wife. They were at each other’s throats.”

“Between Decker and the Lomaxes?”

“There was some sniping. None of them were getting along.”

“Have you seen Mr. Decker since then?”

“No.”

“Any of the others?”

“Mrs. Decker. Yesterday morning, at the store in Seacrest. She was on her way home to Santa Rosa.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Briefly.”

“She tell you why she was leaving, going home?”

Jay related the gist of the conversation.

“Any other contact with any of the four since Monday?” Rhiannon asked.

Shelby said, “I saw Mrs. Lomax—Claire. On the beach yesterday morning. We had a brief conversation.”

“About what?”

“Is that important?”

“She has some facial injuries,” Rhiannon said. “She have them then?”

“Yes.”

“Tell you how she got them?”

What Claire had told her had been in confidence; Rhiannon hadn’t given a reason for her to break it. “It wasn’t any of my business.”

“She told us she tripped and fell and her husband backs her up. But it looks more like an assault. What do you think?”

“Is she all right now?”

“No further injuries, if that’s what you mean. You haven’t answered my question, Mrs., ah, Hunter.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, does it?”

“What’s going on?” Jay said. “If Lomax and his wife are both okay, how come you’re here? Did one of them call you?”

“No, sir.”

“Decker, then?”

Ferguson said, “He can’t call anyone. He’s dead.”

Shelby blinked her surprise. Jay said, “Dead?”

“Found in his Porsche down the coast this morning.”

“An accident?”

“No, not an accident.”

“Natural causes?”

“He was shot through the head.”

“… My God. The Coastline Killer?”

“Looks that way.”

Rhiannon gave the deputy a sharp look before he said to Jay, “We don’t know anything for sure right now.”

“Except that it wasn’t suicide,” Ferguson said. “No weapon in the car.”

Shelby’s throat felt clogged, as if she’d swallowed something small and hard that wouldn’t go down. “Coastline Killer? Who’s that?”

“You don’t know?”

“No. I don’t.”

“Funny. Your husband seems to. Ask him.”

Jay wouldn’t look at her. He said to Rhiannon, “When was Decker killed?”

“Sometime yesterday. According to the Lomaxes, he decided to go on home himself and left sometime in the afternoon.”