Hellbox (Nameless Detective) (17 page)

“You pretty much covered all the locals in the vicinity. Maybe a tourist roaming around? We could try canvassing the motels, the B and Bs, that campground out in the valley.”

“Long shot. I worked the campground yesterday … nothing. But okay. I don’t see any other option.”

Runyon reached for the ignition key, but he didn’t start the engine. He said, “One just occurred to me. There’s one person out on those hillside roads every weekday—the man or woman who delivers the mail.”

“Right, good thought.”

“If his route puts him in the area afternoons.”

“We’ll find out.”

The post office was housed in an old brick building down one of the side streets. The local postmaster was a woman in her fifties who’d “heard about the missing tourist lady” and was both sympathetic and cooperative when I told her who I was. Frank Ramsey was the mail delivery person for that part of the valley, she said, and yes, his route generally put him in the vicinity of Skyview Drive in the afternoon. He was usually finished and back between four-thirty and a quarter to five.

Ten minutes shy of four o’clock now. The better part of an hour to kill—not enough time to start canvassing the tourist accomodations.

We went back to the air-conditioned pizzeria. The sign in front gave me another idea, slim but worth checking while we waited to talk to Frank Ramsey. Below the
Free Wi-Fi
was another line that said
Free Delivery
. Inside, I asked the kid taking orders if any pizza deliveries had been made in the Skyview Drive area on Monday afternoon. No. They didn’t deliver until after five o’clock. He was willing to let us look at their copy of the local phone directory, so we sat with another Coke each and looked through the Yellow Page listings for other Six Pines’ businesses that offered delivery service of one kind or another. There were only a handful. Runyon called each one, asked the same question and got the same answer. No Monday afternoon deliveries.

Almost time to head back to the post office. We sat clock-watching in silence; there was nothing to say until after we talked to Frank Ramsey. I’d been thirsty enough to get most of the first Coke down earlier, but one swallow of this one had been all I could manage. Gaggingly sweet. What I’d really wanted was a cold beer, but in my keyed-up state, it would have been a bad idea.

At four-twenty, we were back at the P.O. The postmistress told us we could wait for Ramsey on the rear dock, and described him so we’d know him when he came in. Four-thirty. Four-thirty-five. Four-forty. Come on, Ramsey, come on. Four-forty-five … six … seven …

A postal van finally turned into the yard, rolled to a stop alongside half a dozen others. The man who hopped out was tall, skinny, knobby-kneed in a pair of uniform shorts—Ramsey. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. We told him our names and asked our questions, and he was as cooperative as the postmistress. Only he had nothing to tell us.

“Sure, I know that old logging road,” he said. “I’m usually up around there about two, two-thirty. Delivered mail to the Verrikers that afternoon. I guess you heard about their house blowing up, terrible thing, poor Alice. But I don’t remember seeing any cars on the logging road that day or any other day. I mean, I pass a lot of vehicles coming and going on my route every day, and I don’t pay much attention unless folks I know honk or wave at me.…”

Another bust.

So now it was the motels and bed and breakfasts and campground, and if we didn’t get anything out of them, either, then what?

18

KERRY

She couldn’t pick the lock.

The twisted-together tacks weren’t strong enough to hold and snap the tumblers, she didn’t have the necessary skill, and her fingers and wrists became too crabbed from the effort to maintain pressure. All of that, and the debilitating heat forced her to quit after … what, one, two, three hours? Her sense of time had become nonexistent. She could no longer even remember how long she’d been imprisoned.

All that work with the chair and the TV set and the tacks, all for nothing. Futile time-passers. False hope. Even if she’d been able to spring the deadbolt, she wouldn’t have gotten away. She accepted that now. The pit bull would have torn her apart the instant she tried to slip through the door. The sounds she’d made with her makeshift picks had alerted the animal again, started it barking, brought it close. Very close. When the racket ceased, she’d heard the dog just beyond the door, snuffling and growling. That convinced her its lead reached all the way to the shed. And of just how vicious it must be.

Now, she sat limp with her back against the door, her legs splayed out. She knew she should try to put the room back in order before Balfour came again, right the armchair, somehow get the television back up onto the bench, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Didn’t have the strength or the will. Apathy had set in. In a little while, maybe she’d be able to overcome it. And maybe not.

The near-darkness coiled around her, sticky, stifling. She had shut off the lights before she started work on the lock. Didn’t need light for that kind of chore; it had to be done by feel.

Done, she thought dully. But not the chore—her. All done.

She would never get out of here. Never be rescued—if Bill were going to track her down, he’d have done it by now. Completely at Balfour’s mercy, and he would show her none. His acts of cruelty so far proved that. Sooner or later, one way or another, in this shed or somewhere else, he was going to kill her.

Dying had never particularly frightened her. She’d had too much experience with the concept—the deaths of her father and Emily’s birth parents, the times Bill’s life had nearly been lost, the cancerous cells in her breast. Death was natural and inevitable, you couldn’t escape it. But the way your life ended … that was what terrified her. The cancer had been bad enough, the thought of wasting away in a sick room, dying by degrees the way Jake Runyon’s wife had. But this was worse. This was the ultimate horror. Suffering death at the hands of a madman. Alone, with loved ones far away and no knowledge of her fate, facing years of not knowing in the event her body was never found.

Bill, Emily, Cybil. Their faces swam dimly across through her consciousness. She wouldn’t see any of them, hold any of them in her arms again. Gone from her. And she gone from them. Alone.

Emotion overwhelmed her. Not fear, she was beyond fear, but a kind of terrible grief. She didn’t try to fight it, simply gave in to it. Dry, wracking sobs shook her body; she heard herself mewling like a child. The breakdown lasted a long time, or seemed to, finally ending in a series of heaving hiccoughs that left her drained and exhausted. Gradually, then, her mind shut down and let her escape into a sleep so deep it was unbroken by nightmares.

*   *   *

It was late in the day when she awoke. Not dark yet—fragments of daylight still filtered in through the chinks in the wall boards—but late enough so that her prison wasn’t quite as suffocatingly hot. A sharp breeze had begun to blow; she could hear it whistling, flapping a loose shingle on the roof.

She sat listening for a little time. The dog, wherever it was, was quiet, and there were no other identifiable sounds.

The sleep had had a cleansing effect on her mind. More alert now, more in control of her feelings. But her body was a mass of grinding aches, her throat so dry her tongue seemed fused with the roof of her mouth. Water … the last of the water. She rolled onto one hip, then onto her side, groaning at the pain from stiffened muscles, and used the doorknob to lift herself upright. Slitted her eyes and switched the lights on. Held herself braced against the door until she was sure she was steady enough to walk, then moved slowly to the bench.

With one hand on its edge for support, she leaned down to pick up the dog dish with the water in it, straightened slowly, and used both hands to raise it to her mouth. A crack in her chapped lower lip broke open and began to bleed when she pressed her mouth against the metal rim. The water was as warm as bathwater; she couldn’t swallow the first sip, moved it around in her mouth until it dissolved some of the dry cake and freed her tongue. Then, when she tilted her head back, her throat muscles unlocked and let the wetness trickle down.

Three more sips, swirled and swallowed the same as the first, and the dish was empty. Kerry set it on the bench, turned to survey the room. Put things back together or not? Yes. The apathy was mostly gone now; she was
not
going to just sit and wait passively to die.

She moved across to the armchair, struggled to shove it into an upright position. A piece of the torn cloth showed along one edge; she toed it out of sight. Now the television. Foolish to try to pick it up and carry it to the bench. Push it over there, close, and then summon enough strength to lift it up—

Outside, the pit bull resumed its barking. The sounds had a different cadence than before, the loud rumbles interspersed with little yips. Eager sounds. Welcoming sounds.

Balfour was out there in the yard.

She knew it even before she heard him call out the animal’s name, tell it to shut the hell up.

Panic spiraled in her. He might not have been able to tell at a distance that the lights were on, there was still time to turn them off. But when he opened the door, he’d put them on himself, he’d see the TV set, he’d see her—

Eyes, his
eyes
!

The panic gave way to fury. She staggered ahead to the door. The twisted-together tacks were on the floor where she’d dropped them, their sharp points gleaming faintly in the glare. She snatched them up, then flipped off the lights. Stood with her arms raised, one slender piece like a miniature dagger in each clenched fist.

He was at the door now. His key scraped in the lock.

As soon as he opened it, she’d hurl herself at him, plunge the tacks into his eyes. Even if the dog tore her apart afterward, dying in agony would be worth it because he’d be dead, too.

19

JAKE RUNYON

There were four motels and six B&Bs in and around Six Pines. He and Bill divvied them up to save time, agreed to rendezvous at the campground if neither of them found out anything worth a summoning phone call. Tiny hope at best, but it was all they had left.

Until a few minutes past seven o’clock. And then they didn’t have it anymore.

All of the accommodations were booked solid. The method in a canvass like this was to talk to clerks, managers, hostesses first to find out which guests had been staying since Sunday night, then take those individuals room by room. There weren’t many in the places on Runyon’s list; most of the visitors were late arrivals, in town for the Independence Day weekend. Some of the doors he knocked on stayed shut, the occupants out somewhere. The people who were in, most obliging, a few not, had nothing to tell him: either they hadn’t been driving in the valley hills, or if they had, they didn’t know anything about an old logging road, and they’d never seen the woman in the photograph Bill had given him. The silent cell phone in his shirt pocket said Bill was getting the same negative responses.

Runyon had been at the campground for fifteen minutes and had already spoken to several of the campers when Bill showed up. Together, they covered the rest, with the same lack of results.

Bill wanted to go back and start over, to see if any of the tourists they missed had returned to their rooms, but Runyon talked him out of it. The man was in no shape to do any more interviewing—a couple of the campers had reacted warily to his disheveled and hollow-eyed appearance, and they might not have been the first to shy away. He knew it, too; he didn’t put up an argument when Runyon offered to go back into town and make the rounds again by himself.

“All right,” he said. “The rental house isn’t far from here. Follow me up there first so you’ll know where it is.”

Bill’s driving was a little erratic, another sign of how strung out he was. Runyon followed at a safe distance, memorizing the route from the valley road. He’d packed an overnight bag before leaving the city; he got it out of the trunk while Bill opened up the house, took it into the spare bedroom he was pointed to.

When he came out again, Bill was sprawled on the couch in the living room with a piece of notepaper in his hand. Wordlessly, he extended it to Runyon. List of motels and B&Bs, names, room numbers; all but three of the names had lines through them. A similar list in Runyon’s pocket contained four names left to check. Seven altogether. Chances a couple of points above zero.

“One other thing,” Bill said. “The mailman, Ramsey.”

“What about him?”

“He looked familiar and I just remembered where I’d seen him before. Sunday, Green Valley Café, while Kerry and I were in there having lunch. He and two other guys were in the booth behind us—I think one of them was Ned Verriker. They got into a verbal wrangle with another customer, an ugly little guy they called the mayor.”

“What was the wrangle about?”

“That mayor name. Little guy seemed offended by it, made some noise and stomped out.”

“Why was he offended?”

“No idea. Some sort of local joke.”

“Anybody say his name?”

“Yeah. Balmer, Baldor, something like that … I just can’t remember for sure. First name Pete.”

“You think he noticed you and Kerry?”

“Can’t say. He looked around, but the place was crowded.”

“Talk to him or see him since?”

“No. But the connection to Verriker … worth checking him out.”

“I’ll try to find him,” Runyon said. “Don’t know when I’ll be back. Might be quite a while.”

“Call me if you get even a whisper.”

“You know I will. Try to get some rest.”

“Yeah.”

“Something to eat, too. Food in the house?”

“Enough. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay.”

Runyon left him, drove down to the valley road and back into Six Pines. Four of the seven remaining tourist possibles were in their rooms; three had nothing to tell him, the fourth wouldn’t even talk to him through the door. Three to go. Chances now one point above zero.