Authors: Bill Pronzini
T W E N T Y - S I X
H
E COULDN’T MAKE UP
his mind what to do with the woman. Or with the deputy.
So much weird shit happening all of a sudden, coming at him from different directions the way it had in that desert hellhole halfway around the world. Everything quiet, smooth-running since before the holidays, nobody bothering him so he could go on about his business unmolested, and then … bam!
Started to get weird when he found that guy dead in the Porsche down the coast—shot in the head and left on that overlook by somebody else—and had to beat it out of there quick before one of the police patrols came along. But that was nothing compared to all the heavy-duty crap that’d gone down tonight. First the deputy showing up, then the woman, then that drunken bastard up on the lane—one, two, three, out of the storm, out of nowhere, all in less than a couple of hours. It was like being ambushed by mongrel-dog snipers, the ones that came at you from doorways and basements and collapsed buildings when you least expected it.
He’d handled it all so far, the way he’d handled the snipers in Iraq. You did what you had to do to protect yourself, stay alive. You blew them away.
Except that he didn’t want to do that to the woman and the deputy. The guy up on the lane hadn’t given him any choice, ranting like a buck-wild recruit and then pulling a sidearm, for Chrissake, forcing him to use the Glock, get in the first kill shot. React or die. Justifiable self-defense. But these two weren’t armed and they weren’t his enemies. Blow them away and he’d be guilty of murder, and he wasn’t a murderer. Soldier on a mission. Preservationist. But a cold-blooded psychopath? No freaking way.
Oh, he could try to rationalize it. Threats to his safety … popping them was just another kind of self-defense. Like that afternoon in Baghdad when he and Charley Stevenson had been on patrol in what was supposed to be a secure neighborhood; were about to recon an abandoned store, watchful as always but not watchful enough because all of a sudden Charley’s head exploded. Standing right there next to him, blood and brains and bone splinters flying everywhere. He didn’t remember going into the store, just being in there and flushing the two civilians, middle-aged guy and a kid in his teens, no weapon in evidence but no question one of them had fired the burst that killed Charley, so when the pair started to run he’d burned them both. React or die, the officers drummed that into you from the get-go and you never forgot it. Only that time, in his dead-check afterward, he’d found an empty Tabuk assault rifle that made his kills righteous. Mongrel-dog snipers, two and out.
The pair of insurgent soldiers he’d shot in the firefight weeks later had been righteous kills, too. For a reason, for a purpose. Same here with the kid polluters in the sleeping bag and the drunk molesting the three sea lions and the clear-cutting caretaker and the abalone poacher. And with the loony up on the lane a few minutes ago. Justified.
The woman and the deputy wouldn’t be. Not righteous no matter how much of a spin he tried to put on it.
Still, what else could he do?
He couldn’t just leave them here trussed up and hit the road. Somebody’d find them, or the woman would find a way to work herself loose. They’d both seen his face, they could identify him. And the deputy had seen the car, could identify that, too. He wouldn’t get far even if he picked up a different set of wheels.
Besides, there was still work to be done. Not along this part of the coast anymore, he’d have to move on no matter what and that was a damn shame because he loved it here, really loved it, it was the first place that’d ever felt like a real home. But there was more pristine coastline up north—the Lost Coast, the whole length of Oregon—and just as many spoilers to be dealt with up there.
The woman was saying something to him again. He looked over at her sitting on the edge of the lumpy brown sofa in her torn raincoat, hands and face scratched and blood-marked, legs pressed together and fingers gripping her knees. She looked wet and miserable and she had to be scared, but she didn’t show her fear. He felt sorry for her. It wasn’t her fault she’d got herself snagged up in this craziness tonight, any more than it was his.
“I’m not lying to you,” she said for the second or third time. She’d started talking to him in a low, steady voice as soon as he sat her down and had kept it up ever since, saying pretty much the same things over and over—that she was from the cottage next door and she’d been out alone in the storm because her husband had had some kind of attack and she couldn’t drive out for help because a tree had blown down and was blocking the road. “If he doesn’t get medical attention soon, he could die.”
Medical attention.
Flashback. Sudden and bright white the way they always came to him, like when a rocket exploded and lit up the night sky:
Men down, soldiers and civilians dying all around him from the roadside bomb. Blood everywhere, bodies and body parts torn up like butchered meat. Medic! Medic!
The scene flared out. He rubbed his eyes, and he was seeing the woman and the room again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “there’s nothing I can do for your husband.”
“So what, then? What’re you going to do to me?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Kill me?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She was quiet again, but not for long. “How long have you been here?”
“On the coast? Six months.”
“Not living in this cabin the whole time?”
“No. The last two and a half weeks. Campgrounds, mostly, before that. But I needed a place for when the weather turned bad.”
“Whose cabin is it?”
“Caretaker. Old man who was clear-cutting trees so the owners could have whitewater views. I hate that kind of crap.”
“Where’s the caretaker now?”
“He’s dead.” And buried in the woods behind the cabin. Always clean up your messes.
“Did you kill him?”
He didn’t say anything.
“You killed the man on the lane tonight.”
“That wasn’t my fault. He was acting crazy. Waving a gun, yelling something about his wife. Didn’t leave me any choice.”
“Brian Lomax,” she said.
“Who?”
“He owned the house at the far end.”
Another neighbor. He hadn’t even known he had neighbors until tonight. Well, once he’d gone out on the platform behind the estate house and he’d seen lights in the big place up there, but he’d never seen the people. Never given them any thought. He’d spent most of the past two and a half weeks forted up right here. Pretty spot even with all the old-growth trees along the crease clear-cut down to stumps; that was why he’d decided to squat here for a while, and most of the necessary provisions had already been laid in by the old man he’d buried in the woods. He’d only left the property a few times, for long drives along Highway 1 and once to buy some stuff he needed in the store in Seacrest.
“You shot all those other people, too,” she said. “The Coastline Killer.”
“I don’t like that name. I’m not a murderer.”
“You’re going to murder me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then let me go so I can get help for my husband.”
“I can’t do that.”
On the floor the deputy twitched a little, moaned, but didn’t wake up. When he was quiet again, the woman said, “What happened with him? Why is he here?”
What happened. Come snooping around, that was what happened. Pushed his way in through the locked gates and walked down here through the rain with a flashlight and an umbrella, looking for the caretaker because somebody in Seacrest had mentioned not seeing the old man for a while. He’d claimed to be the old man’s nephew, but the deputy wouldn’t buy it. Suspicious looks, suspicious questions, then a sudden move for his sidearm. Not quick enough, though, not a well-trained soldier like he was. Easy enough to get the jump on him. He’d come close to putting a bullet in the deputy instead of cracking his head with the Glock. Why hadn’t he? The uniform, maybe—the army taught you to respect a uniform, military or civilian. He wished now that he had popped the deputy, because at the time it would’ve been justified, another case of self-defense.
Couldn’t shoot him after he was down, unconscious. Couldn’t make himself do it. Tied him up instead, then took his keys and went up to move the cruiser inside the estate gates in case somebody came along. Just got the driver’s door unlocked when he saw the woman’s light; jumped quick into the woods before she spotted him. Would’ve stayed out of sight if she hadn’t come right up to the cruiser, opened the door … he knew she was going to use the radio as soon as she got in. Couldn’t just pop her, either, so he’d catfooted up and dragged her out. More damn hassle, then—a kick in the shin and an elbow in the gut and having to chase her around in the dark before and after that asshole with the sidearm, what was his name, Lomax, showed up.
It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. All this crap blindsiding him, screwing up his life just when he thought he had it on track and running smooth for the first time ever. No control over any of it, forcing him to take the kind of action he didn’t want to take. A woman and a deputy and an armed head case. How could you guard against anything like that?
The Glock was right there on the table in front of him, three inches from his hand. The deputy’s service revolver was in his coat pocket—he’d thrown Lomax’s piece into the woods. Plenty of firepower … against a defenseless woman and an unconscious, duct-taped cop. Shit, man. Slaughter was all it would be. He might not lose too much sleep over killing the deputy, but doing the woman … that’d be the hardest thing he’d ever faced and he knew he’d hate himself for it later on. Never forget it, never forgive himself.
Maybe he should buy a little more time to come to terms with it. Bind her hands and feet, too—he hadn’t done that yet, hadn’t touched her at all—and then do what he’d intended doing before, go up and move the deputy’s cruiser inside off the lane before any more crap went down.
“You didn’t answer me about the deputy.”
“Never mind the deputy.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Why?”
“Whatever his reason for coming, he must’ve notified his dispatcher where he was headed. They’ll be looking for him when he doesn’t report in.”
“Not right away. Not on a night like this.”
“Before too long, though. And when they do they’ll find his cruiser.”
“I know that.”
“Then you also know you can’t stay here. The sooner you leave, the safer you’ll be. Why not just go now?”
“And leave both of you here alive.”
“Why not? We haven’t done anything to you. By the time we’re found, you’ll be long gone.”
“You know what I look like.”
“Like any one of ten thousand young blond men—”
“No,” he said, “I’m different. Easy to recognize, no camouflage. A soldier never jeopardizes himself or his mission if he can help it, and that’s what I’d be doing.”
“What mission are you on?”
“To keep the enemy from destroying what God made.”
“What enemy?”
“Spoilers of nature,” he said. “The ones who turn beautiful places into wastelands. They don’t deserve to live.”
“I’m not somebody like that. Neither is my husband. Or the deputy.”
He looked at the Glock, looked back at her. “I almost wish you were.”
“Why? Because that would make it easier for you?”
Smart, clever, but she wasn’t fooling him any. All her talking was calculated to distract him, her eyes flicking here and there when she thought he wasn’t looking straight at her, searching for something she could use against him, a way to get free. Wasting her time. The cabin was just two rooms, three if you counted the tiny kitchen, and there wasn’t much in it; the old caretaker had lived a pretty lean life. Only a few sticks of furniture, bare walls, bare floor. There was a hunting rifle in the bedroom closet, but he’d unloaded it when he moved in. Fire tongs on a rack next to the woodstove, but she was too far away to get her hands on them quick enough and she was smart enough to know it.
He really did feel sorry for her. Liked her, too, because he could tell she had a soldier’s kind of courage. The way she’d fought him up there on the lane, not making a sound the whole time, as hard to hang on to as a bagful of cats. And when he’d caught her down here … no screaming or crying or begging, no fuss of any kind. Just accepted the situation and was dealing with it the best way she knew how, the way a trained soldier would. Calm and cool under pressure.
He’d always admired that kind of courage in women. It was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with Georgia … main reason, maybe. Georgia wasn’t pretty, didn’t have a great body, but she’d been a hell of a soldier and she had the guts of a lion. He’d rather have her as a battle buddy than 95 percent of the men in his Third Infantry unit. They’d done some hot and heavy loving over there in her CHU, really making the bed in that trailer rock, before she lost an arm in a firefight in Fallujah and they’d shipped her back home to Fort Bliss.
A dozen times he’d e-mailed her at the VA hospital but she never answered even once, just cut him out of her life without any kind of explanation. PTSD, probably, like he and so many other combat soldiers had suffered and would go on suffering. He’d tried to find her after they gave him his medical discharge and sent him back stateside, but her relatives in Oklahoma City wouldn’t tell him where she was and he hadn’t been able to track her through anybody else he talked to. She hadn’t died, he’d’ve been able to find out that much if she had, so that was something to be thankful for. He hoped she’d rehabbed by now and was getting on with her life, wherever she was. She deserved some peace if anybody did.
He wondered if he’d’ve married Georgia if things had turned out differently in their part of the damn war. Probably not. He wasn’t husband material. Too unsettled, too much of a loner. Needed to go places by himself, see things he’d never seen before, like California and the Pacific Ocean, get as far from the heat and filth and death-stink of Iraq as he could. That was why he’d come here. Clean sea air, unspoiled beauty. Calm, peaceful. Running on tracks along the edge of the world.