Bill Pronzini - The Hidden

Was he the one who’d killed Lomax? If so, then wouldn’t he also want to get the corpse off the lane? Put it into the cruiser or drag it into the woods where it wouldn’t be easily found? That would take time, and so would stopping to close the gates after he drove the cruiser through.

Hurry!

Macklin stepped out to the rain-slick driveway, eased along it several paces in the dark while he altered his grip on the torch, closing his fingers around the bulb end and splaying them over the lens. When he switched on, enough light leaked through on a downward slant to show him what lay directly ahead, let him lengthen his stride. Every few steps he glanced over his shoulder at the gates. If the cruiser’s headlights appeared before he reached the end of the driveway, he’d darken the torch and get off into the trees as fast as he could.

His breathing was still erratic; he kept expecting the chest constriction to erupt into smothering pain. But he didn’t let it slow him down. Finding Shelby was all he let himself think about.

The driveway’s looping descent had almost cleared the woods when he saw, first, the yellowish rectangle ahead to his left and at almost the same time, the brighter illumination tingeing the night above and behind him. But the cruiser’s headlamps were still outside the fence, just now swinging around to the entrance. He couldn’t make out the gates from where he was, but the buildings had begun to materialize ahead, the dark outlines of the big estate house on the edge of the bluff and the smaller, closer structure with the lamplit window.

The driveway forked; he veered onto the left fork, drawn by the light ahead.

Halfway there, he took another look beind him. Headlight glare showed through the trees … moving at first, then becoming stationary. The cruiser was inside the gates and the man had gotten out to close them. Only a matter of minutes before he’d be down here.

The small building was a rough-built cabin. Macklin stumbled and slowed as he neared it, his breath like fire in his lungs. He passed a closed door, brought up next to the unshaded window. Sleeved his eyes clear of rain and sweat and peered through the streaked glass.

Jesus!

He lunged sideways to the door, dragged it open just long enough to thrust his body inside. On the battered gray sofa Shelby’s head came up and her eyes rounded into an open-mouthed stare. She cried his name, twice, in a voice that cracked with emotion.

Relief flooded him. She wasn’t hurt, she looked all right.

“Thank God, Jay, but how did you—”

“No time now. He’s coming, he’ll be here any minute.”

“Quick then … get a knife, cut me loose.”

Macklin sidestepped the wounded deputy—recognized him, Ferguson—and stumbled into the kitchenette. Didn’t have to open drawers to find a knife; there was a wooden block of them on the sink counter. He exchanged the flashlight for a long-bladed carving knife, stumbled back out to the sofa.

His hand was shaking so badly he was afraid he might add another cut to Shelby’s already torn and bloody flesh if he tried to slice through the duct tape one-handed. He propped the shotgun against the sofa, stripped off his right glove, then held the knife in both hands to steady it as he steered the blade to the narrow gap between her wrists.

As he began sawing, she said with awe in her voice, “You came all this way on foot? Miracle you made it …”

“I’m okay.”

Damn knife blade was dull; he sawed harder. Nicked her in his haste—a line of fresh blood slithered along one wrist.

“Is he on foot or in the cruiser?”

“Cruiser.”

“Pray he doesn’t notice the shotgun’s missing, it’ll put him on alert.”

“Who the hell is he?”

“Coastline Killer. Hurry, Jay!”

One more cut and her hands were free. She took the knife from him, sliced the tape around her ankles, then reached for the pump gun. He tried to take it from her; she said, “No, let me have it, you’re in no condition,” and came up off the bed with it in her hands. She looked shaky, but not as shaky as he was.

He said, “Shell in the chamber,” and she nodded. She knew how to handle the weapon; you couldn’t do emergency work around cops for ten years without having seen a riot gun being used.

Rising sound of a car engine outside. Headlight glare slid obliquely over the front of the cabin, across the window.

Shelby said, “Get out of the way, Jay, over by the stove.”

He didn’t argue. His tank was almost empty; he’d been running on scant reserves for some time now. He shoved himself upright, made it over to an old armchair by the wood stove and leaned heavily against its back, straining to get his breathing under control.

Shelby moved past the deputy to the right side of the room, at an angle to the closed door; stood there with the shotgun leveled, her legs spread and her hands steady now. Frozen tableau for half a minute. Then the door opened and a blond man Macklin had never seen before came inside. Hadn’t noticed the pump gun was missing from the cruiser, hadn’t been put on alert, just walked right in.

The blond man saw the empty sofa, stopped abruptly at the same time Shelby said in a sharp commanding voice, “Stand still, soldier! I’ll blow your head off if you don’t do what you’re told.”

He stiffened, staring at her with surprise on his wet face; then the surprise shifted into tight-lipped anger, then into something else for a second or two, then to no expression at all. His posture seemed to turn even more rigid, into a military erectness—both arms flat against his sides with the still-burning flashlight pointed at the floor, shoulders drawn back, chin up, eyes straight ahead and unblinking.

Shelby ordered him to unbutton his coat, take it off and let it drop on the floor, then to lie facedown on the sofa, hands behind his back, feet together. “If you don’t obey orders, you’re a dead man. I mean it, Joseph.” Then she said something Macklin didn’t comprehend. “I’ve got a soldier’s courage, remember? And you know soldiers don’t make idle threats.”

“I know,” the blond man said. Just that, nothing else.

The round boyish face was still expressionless. Macklin, exhausted, not tracking too well anymore, thought that he must have misread what he’d seen there before the blankness set in.

It had seemed almost like relief.

E P I L O G U E

N E W Y E A R ’ S DAY

THIRTY-SIX HOURS NOW, every one a blur.

Shelby sat in the waiting room at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, drinking coffee to stave off fatigue and remain alert. As far as she knew Jay was still in the OR—it seemed like he’d been in there half the day. The head staff surgeon who was performing his bypass operation had been cautiously optimistic. Jay’s coronary had been relatively mild; the damage to his heart didn’t seem to be as severe as it might have been given his night prowl through the lag end of the storm. But any number of things could go wrong during major surgery, and there was always the chance they might find further blockage that hadn’t been revealed by the tests.

That kind of thinking wasn’t making the wait any easier. She made an effort to blank her mind, or at least to shift it into a state of semiawareness. No good either way. The concern for Jay kept intruding. So did the dulled memories of Wednesday night.

Some of the details of what she’d endured between the time of Jay’s heart attack and his arrival at the cabin had already begun to fade. She’d been over them so many times she’d lost count, with various law officers and the first wave of media vultures, and yet it was as if it had all happened months ago. A form of mental self-protection, she supposed. The more awful an experience, the quicker the mind sought to bury it under layers of scar tissue.