Bill Pronzini - The Hidden

“They tried to talk him out of it because he’d been drinking,” Ferguson said. “He should’ve listened to them.” The deputy had begun to move around the front room, looking here and there as if he were checking out a crime scene. “Were you here yesterday afternoon, Mr. Macklin?”

“Yes.”

“All afternoon?”

“Yes, all afternoon. Why?”

“We’re trying to determine the exact time Mr. Decker left,” Rhiannon said. “Neither of the Lomaxes is certain.”

“Well, I can give you a pretty good idea. We were coming up from the beach when we heard him drive by out front. It was a little before two thirty.”

“You’re sure about the time?”

“Sure enough. I glanced at my watch just after we came inside. Two thirty on the nose then.”

Rhiannon scribbled in his notebook, closed it, and slid it into his overcoat pocket. “I think that’s about all, then. Thanks for your cooperation.”

Ferguson said, “You folks wouldn’t be planning to leave right away, would you?”

“No. Not until New Year’s Day.”

“Are you going to want to talk to us again?” Shelby asked.

Rhiannon said he doubted that would be necessary.

Ferguson was still looking at Jay. “Reason I asked, there’s a bad storm coming—worse than the one Sunday. Once it hits, the highway’s liable to be pretty hazardous for the next twenty-four hours or so. Be a good idea for you to stay here until it blows through.”

“We’ll do that,” Jay said. “Right here.”

When the two men were gone, he put the chain back on the door and threw the bolt lock. He said then, “I don’t like that deputy. Did you see the way he kept looking at me with those funny eyes of his?”

Shelby kept still.

“Suspicious, just like the other night. What the hell reason does he have for being suspicious of me?”

She didn’t respond to that, either.

“Lomax, yes, sure. One look at Claire’s face and they had to know what kind of bastard he is. Make any cop suspicious. But people like us—”

“Quit trying to avoid the issue, Jay,” she said. “Who the hell is the Coastline Killer?”

His expression changed. “Ah, God,” he said.

“Who, dammit?”

For a few seconds she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then, as if the words were being dragged out of him, “Some lunatic who’s been shooting people along the coast over the past several months. They don’t have any idea who or why.”

“Shooting people. How many people?”

“Five now, maybe more.”

Five, maybe more. Lord!

“Where along the coast?”

“Different places,” he said. “The first ones … those two kids in sleeping bags, down by Fort Ross, remember? Picks his victims at random.”

“And the latest was Gene Decker.”

“You never think it can happen to somebody you know, even slightly, somebody so nearby … Christ, it gives you the willies. Poor bastard must’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Talking too fast, almost jabbering. Still not meeting her eyes. “I wonder how Paula’s taking it. Fed up with him playing around, thinking about a divorce, but still—”

Shelby said, “How long have you known about this Coastline Killer? Since before we left home?”

“No,” he said. “Only since yesterday, from the man at the service station in Seacrest.”

“And you ‘forgot’ to tell me, like you ‘forgot’ about the storm.”

“I didn’t see how it could have any effect on us. None of the shootings was in this immediate area—” Another headshake, then a small, empty gesture. “I’m sorry, I know I should’ve told you.”

“I don’t want to hear that,” she said.

“I really am sorry—”

“I said I don’t want to hear it.”

She went over and sat down at the dinette table. Outside the wind whistled and cried and rain thrummed on the roof, ticked against the seaward walls and windows like handfuls of flung pellets. Water streaked and ran on the window glass; everything out there had a smeared, indistinct appearance, like faulty underwater photography.

“I’d better go bring in some more wood,” Jay said, “before the weather gets any worse.”

She didn’t answer.

He went away and a little while later he came back. He said something to her, but she didn’t listen to it. The rain and wind sounds seemed magnified now, as if they’d somehow gotten inside her head. It wasn’t until he said her name, sharply, that she lifted her head to look at him. And when she did, it was as if he wasn’t even there, as if he had finally and completely disappeared.

“Shel? Are you all right?”

“I want a divorce,” she said.

F I F T E E N

DARK PLACE, WARM, SAFE. Sleeping.

Not sleeping anymore. Listening.

What’re those noises? Loud, weird.

Thump. Grunt, slurp, screech, squeal. Thump thump thump.

Something’s out there.

Something … terrible.

I have to find out what it is. But I don’t want to. I’m afraid.

Squeal, howl, slurp. Thump thump thump thump thump.

Oh God, what if it tries to hurt me?

Stay here, don’t move.

No, I can’t, I have to find out what it is …

… And he was through it and out of it, sweating, struggling for air. Disoriented at first—he didn’t know where he was. Not in bed; the surface under him was cold, leathery, and Shelby wasn’t beside him. Moment of panic, and then he was awake enough to remember that he’d sacked out on the living room couch under a blanket. “I don’t want to sleep with you tonight,” she’d said, and he hadn’t argued, let her have the main bedroom. He could have slept in the guest room but it was too cold back there. Cold out here now, too, nothing left of the fire but a collection of ashes and dying embers.

The dream images were still vivid. The same, always the same. And yet there was something just a little different about this one … the creature’s snarling, howling words at the end, that were somehow like whispers so he couldn’t make them out. This time they’d seemed louder, almost but not quite understandable. Ugly, terrifying words he never wanted to hear … except that at a deeper level of perception, he did because he sensed they might explain the nightmare.

He rubbed sweat off his face with a corner of the blanket, listening to the runaway pumping of his heart. It stuttered every few beats and his breathing came short and hot in his chest. One sudden savage burst of pain and it would be all over for him, no more confrontations with his night monster, no more bitter defeats, just blackness and peace. But it didn’t happen. The thudding slowed, the sensation of gripping tightness eased, his respiration gradually slowed to near normal.

They were coming more often now, the nightmare rides. Two in two nights, the first time that had ever happened. Stress-induced. Or maybe there was some sort of physiological link. He had no control over them in any case, no way to put a stop to them. Ironic in a bitter, devilish way. Asleep, in the dream, he was at the mercy of a hideous being that ripped him apart and devoured him; awake, he was at the mercy of other demons beyond his control, real ones like failure and decay, that were in literal ways ripping him apart and devouring him.

A sudden blast of wind shook the cottage, rattled the windows in their frames. It had been storming heavily when he drifted off to sleep, but the storm seemed even worse now—elemental fury out there. The rain was torrential, making a steady jackhammer sound on the roof. Wind drafts in the chimney swirled up ashes and thin sparks and blew them out across the hearth. The night seemed alive with shrieks, whistles, fluttery moans.