The Lighthouse: A Novel of Terror

by Bill Pronzini, Marcia Muller

  “Dark-green?”

  “There were green paint scrapings on the bicycle. Whoever ran Mandy Barnett down did so in a green vehicle headed toward the lighthouse, not away from it.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Physical evidence—tire marks, for one thing.”

  Sinclair’s news relieved her in one way. Their station wagon was brown—the final piece of evidence, if she really needed it, to prove that Jan hadn’t been responsible for Mandy’s death.

  And then she thought of the first time she’d seen Mandy: smoking grass on the headland with a young man several years older, her “connection for dope.” The car they’d been leaning against had been green.

  She said as much to Sinclair. And he said, “Yes, we know. His name is Mike Wilson and we’ve already questioned him. His car is the wrong green, and undamaged, and he also has an alibi for the approximate time of the girl’s death.”

  “Oh,” she said, and paused, and then said, “May I ask you one more question? A . . . favor, actually.”

  “What sort of favor?”

  “Can you give my husband some sort of protection while he’s staying alone at the lighthouse?”

  Sinclair hesitated. When he spoke, his tone was softened, almost apologetic. “No, Mrs. Ryerson, I’m sorry I can’t.”

  She’d expected as much, but still she said, “Why not? It would only be for a couple of days. I think he’ll make up his mind to leave by then.”

  “My office is working on two homicide investigations,” Sinclair said patiently, “as well as a number of other cases. We’re understaffed. I can’t spare anyone without at least some evidence that your husband’s life is in danger. And I can’t request a patrol officer for the job for the same reason.”

  “You’re saying my fears are groundless?”

  “Not exactly. I’ll do this for you: I’ll have one more talk with Novotny, just to strengthen the suggestion I made to him. That’s all I can do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You could try the sheriff’s department,” Sinclair said, “but I’m afraid they’ll tell you the same thing I have. The only way to insure your husband’s safety is to convince him to leave Cap Des Peres.”

  And she couldn’t seem to do that, she thought as she ended the conversation. At least not yet. Nor was she convinced, despite Sinclair’s reassurances, that Jan was in no danger from Mitch Novotny.

  She considered calling her father. Matthew Kingsley would know what to do in a situation like this. He had connections everywhere, including Oregon; he could bring pressure to bear on the state police. After all, he’d always told her that when you don’t receive satisfaction at one level, you should go higher with your demands—to the top, if necessary.

  The idea of picking up the phone and calling the familiar number in Palo Alto was a tempting one. But it was also a thoroughly bad one, she decided. For one thing, Jan would never forgive her for bringing her father into what he considered a personal problem; such an action would probably provide the severing blow to the thread that bound their marriage. And what if Matthew behaved with his characteristic bluster, chartered a plane, and showed up here demanding action? That would not only enrage and alienate Jan, but would further strain matters in Hilliard.

  No, it was better for both her and Jan if they weathered this particular crisis alone. Jan had claimed he would be all right, had wanted her to trust him. And trust him she would, even if it involved a terrible risk.

  Mitch Novotny

  Mitch was surprised when he saw the state police car come up the hill, park next to Hod’s old Rambler, and the plainclothes homicide detective, Sinclair, get out of it. What the hell was he doing here, half an hour before Mandy’s funeral? Unless he had some news about Ryerson . . . maybe that was it. Maybe he’d come to tell Hod and Della that the law’d finally quit diddling around after two days and arrested the psycho.

  Mitch had been helping Marie unload food from the trunk of their car—potato salad, cold cuts, deviled eggs—for the funeral supper. He handed her the last covered dish as Sinclair approached. “You manage that all right, hon?”

  “I can manage.” She seemed to want to hang around, to see what Sinclair wanted, but he shooed her away. She waddled when she walked now, like a damn duck. Still a couple of months before she was due, and already she was big as a house.

  Sinclair stopped and took off his hat. Behind those thick glasses of his, his eyes flicked over Mitch, over Hod’s trailer, over the handful of villagers who’d already showed up to pay their respects to the bereaved. He looked a little uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t realized they were getting ready to have the funeral.

  Mitch said, “Hod’s inside getting dressed, if you’re looking for him.”

  “Actually, I came to see you, Mr. Novotny.”

  “About what?”

  “Jan Ryerson and his wife.”

  “What about them? You finally arrest Ryerson?”

  “No.” Sinclair ran a finger over one side of his mustache. “We have no cause to arrest him, I told you that before.”

  “No cause. Christ. Just let him keep running around loose, murdering young girls, is that it?”

  “There’s no evidence Mr. Ryerson murdered anyone,” Sinclair said. “This is the United States of America, Mr. Novotny. A man is innocent until proven guilty. That goes for Jan Ryerson, and it also goes for you.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means.”

  Mitch felt himself getting hot inside his Sunday suit; little trickles of sweat had started to ooze down his sides. “That why you’re here? That crap again? How many times I have to tell you I didn’t have nothing to do with what’s been happening out at the lighthouse?”

  “Mr. Ryerson thinks you did.”

  “I don’t give a damn what he thinks,” Mitch said. He was really hot now; it was all he could do to keep himself from shaking. “He make some other complaint against me? That why you’re here, hassling me right before poor Mandy’s funeral?”

  “I didn’t know the funeral was today; if I had I would have waited until tomorrow to talk to you again.”

  “Yeah, sure you would. You didn’t answer me about Ryerson. He make another complaint?”

  “No. There’s been no complaint.”

  “Then why’re you here? Tell me again to stay away from the Ryersons?”

  “Do I need to tell you that, Mr. Novotny?”

  “No,” Mitch said, and then he remembered something and all at once he knew what this was all about. This time he did start to shake. He could feel the blood all hot and pounding in his head. “Now I got it,” he said. “His wife’s old man is a politician, right? She went crying to papa and he made some calls and now you’re here.”

  “That’s not it at all—”

  “Sure it is. That’s why you haven’t put Ryerson in jail where he belongs. Man’s got the right connections, he can get away with anything in this lousy country.”

  Sinclair was mad, too, now. His chubby face was pinched and his eyes looked dark and swollen behind his thick glasses. But he had himself under control just the same. He said, “Nobody gets away with any crime if I can help it. Not murder, not malicious harassment either. Just remember that, Mr. Novotny. ”

  He turned on his heel, walked back to his car. You fucking Gestapo, Mitch thought, and he wanted to shout the words aloud; but he didn’t do it. He just stood there shaking, glaring, as Sinclair got back into his car and made a U-turn and drove on down the hill out of sight.

  “Christ, Mitch, what was that all about?”

  Adam Reese had come up beside him, with Seth Bonner at his heels; they’d been over by the trailer getting an eyeful. Mitch couldn’t talk for a minute, he was so worked up. When he finally started to calm down he told them what it had all been about.

  “It ain’t right,” Adam said. You could see it festering on him, too, making him fidget from one foot to the other. “It just ain’t
right.”

  “Somebody’s got to do something,” Bonner said. “He’s crazy, that Ryerson. I told you all along, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”

  “Cops,” Adam said, and spat on the ground. “What the hell good are they?”

  “No good, that’s what. No damn good at all.”

  Mitch was barely listening to them. His head hurt now; he wished he had a drink, and not just a Henry’s either. You can only take so much, he was thinking. Goddamn it, a man can only take so much!

  Jan

  He was on his way across the yard to the pumphouse to see what he could do about purifying the well when the loneliness overcame him.

  It was cold—a raw misty afternoon, with the wind blade-edged and cutting against his bare skin. He wasn’t thinking about anything at first. Just walking slowly, hunched over against the pull of the wind. And then the random thought came that the only people he’d talked to since Alix left two days ago were the man at the supply house in Coos Bay who’d taken his telephone order for the chemicals, and the truck driver who’d delivered them this morning. That thought gave birth to another: He’d expected the homicide inspector, Sinclair, to come back with more questions, but Sinclair hadn’t come. Why? It must be because he really did believe in the innocence of Jan Ryerson, believed that a man like Jan Ryerson could never, never hurt two young girls no matter what sort of state he was in. Alix believed it, didn’t she? And Jan Ryerson did too.

  I couldn’t, I didn’t . . .

  Could I? Did I?

  No, I couldn’t.

  No, I didn’t.

  And then he thought: I’m going to be blind pretty soon. And the loneliness struck him—a wave of it sudden and fierce, making him feel almost agoraphobic. All at once the sky and the sea seemed immense, the sense of desolation greater than he’d ever imagined it, the voices of the wheeling gulls like shrieks of despair. Cape Despair. A place of lost hopes and hollow desires. The edge of nowhere. One short step from the abyss, the consuming darkness.

  He turned, feeling dizzy, and went back to the house, sat down in the living room. His head ached, but it was not another of the bulging headaches—he hadn’t had another of those. But he’d had more frequent spells of failing vision, distortion of the form and size of objects, a narrowing of his visual field. Happening fast now. How much time did he have left?

  Fear gnawed at him, but it was a different kind of fear than the one he’d been living with the past two days, even the past few months. Not fear of the unknown—fear of the alone. This lighthouse, the stand he’d made against Mitch Novotny and the other people of Hilliard . . . none of that meant anything, really, not even as a symbol. Staying here like this was not only foolish, it was meaningless. Polishing the lenses, rebuilding the diaphone, painting the catwalk, trying to do something about the well, all the frantic activity of the past couple of days . . . meaningless.

  The room, the entire lighthouse, felt strange to him now—a vast echoing chamber of loneliness. Why had he sent Alix away? Why had he thought he needed some time alone? Being alone was the thing that frightened him most, the thing that had kept him from confiding in her. The ordeal of telling her the truth, facing the consequences, couldn’t be any greater than the ordeal of the past two days, the past two weeks.

  You can’t put it off any longer, he thought, and he was standing beside the phone, reaching down for the receiver, when he realized that he didn’t want to put it off; that no matter what Alix’s response, the truth was something he could no longer deal with alone.

  Alix

  The afternoon was thick with fog—not the unleavened gray mist that often hung over the coastline, but an opaque white curtain that shifted and billowed before a strong Pacific wind. The offshore rocks were shrouded, as were the hills to the east. The broken lines centering Highway 1 seemed to leap up suddenly, giving little or no warning of curves, and the edges of the pavement bled off into nothingness. When she came to the first exit for Hilliard she turned automatically, even though the route would take her through the village; it was shorter than continuing down the highway and then doubling back on the county road, and she was eager to get to the lighthouse, to see Jan and hear what it was he had to say to her.

  The trailer park on its little hill to her left as she entered Hilliard was a blurred scattering of lonely ill-assorted shapes. It made her feel cold in spite of the warmth inside the station wagon. She thought of how depressing life must be inside one of those boxes, with only the thin walls as protection against the elements. And then, with a twinge of pain, she thought of the Bametts, Della and Hod and their other children, alone with their loss; and of Mandy, who would never return to even that poor shelter.

  The cannery loomed on her right, pinpoints of light shining along the clumsy line of its roof. Then the road curved, and she was on the main street. The fluorescent interior of the marine supply glowed through the fog, making the windows look like giant TV screens. The green neon sign of the Seafood Grotto was muted and hazed. The street was empty of pedestrians, and most of the buildings had a closed-up, deserted look.

  Just past the general store, however, a line of cars was moving slowly, some of their taillights flashing left-turn signals onto the sidestreet that climbed the hillside toward the church. Alix put her foot on the brake to keep from overtaking them. The lead car made the turn across the road, its headlamps probing the mist and quickly becoming dissipated in whiteness. It was a large boxy vehicle, black with ornate chrome trim; shirred white curtains masked the windows of its elongated rear compartment.

  It was a hearse. She’d come up behind Mandy Barnett’s funeral cortege.

  Other cars followed the hearse, their headlights making the same slow arc: a ten-year-old Cadillac sedan, presumably belonging to the undertaker and containing the bereaved family; a beat-up Volkswagen van; an equally battered pickup truck; three old cars of nondescript make. It was a poor showing, undoubtedly a poor funeral—as poor as the brief life of Mandy Barnett. Again Alix felt a wrench of pity for the girl, and blinked at the wetness that came to her eyes.

  She remembered the day Mandy had come to the light with her “business proposition,” the way she’d spoken of Hilliard: “I hate it! It’s ugly and cold, and everybody’s poor.” And the way she’d spoken of California: “Nobody goes to Hollywood and gets rich and famous anymore; that’s a lot of shit. But I figure I could get by down there, and at least it’s sunny and warm.” Mandy hadn’t had much in life; hadn’t wanted all that much, either. And this bleak good-bye was to be all she ever got.

  Alix wondered if Mandy had even owned a decent dress to be buried in. Probably not. Perhaps they had laid her out in her bright blue-and-white poncho. In a way, she hoped so: it and the matching beaded headband seemed to have been the girl’s favorite outfit.

  Once more she pictured Mandy—that day in the laundromat, angry at her mother and stamping her foot, her red curls bouncing and the beaded ends of the headband clicking together. And then—unbidden and unwelcome—came the image of the girl’s body lying broken on the pine-needled ground, her blood-flecked eyes hideously staring. . . .

  She shuddered, trying to banish the ugly vision. For a moment, as the last car ahead made the turn and began climbing the hill, she contemplated following and paying her last respects. But she knew it would be a self-indulgent gesture, perhaps even a dangerous one; the Barnetts and their friends would be certain to resent her presence—an outsider, the wife of the man some of them were saying was Mandy’s murderer. No, there was no place for her at the cemetery beside the run-down little village church.

  She watched the taillights as they wound up the road, disappearing into the wall of mist. Then she drove on to Cape Despair, the lighthouse, and Jan.

  Hod Barnett

  The funeral was a blur: Della crying, the boys crying, Reverend Olsen up on his pulpit saying Mandy was a good girl and God in His mercy had already welcomed her into His Kingdom for all eternity (What mercy? Hod remembered thinking. What kind of me
rcy is this?), then all of them leaving the church, entering the fog-wrapped graveyard, and the pallbearers—Mitch and Adam and Barney Nevers and Les Cummins and Seth Bonner and Mike Carstairs—lowering her coffin into the hole in the ground, clods of earth falling on it, “ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” and Della on her knees wailing, “My baby, my baby!” and him just standing there because he couldn’t do anything else, couldn’t even cry.

  The ride home and the funeral supper was a blur too. All the people telling him how sorry they were, Lillian Hilliard saying, “If you need anything, Hod, you just let me know, your credit’s good with me from now on,” as if he gave a damn about groceries at a time like this, and Della all of a sudden red-faced and smiling, acting like they were having a party, running around with plates of food and saying, “Have something more to eat, won’t you have something more to eat?” He couldn’t stand it after a while, too many people and too much noise, and he went out and walked around, he didn’t even remember where, and then he was back at the trailer and Mitch put a drink in his hand—whiskey and some ice—and he drank it, didn’t taste it, drank it like it was water, and Mitch gave him another one, and he drank that, and pretty soon he knew he was drunk but he didn’t feel drunk. Somebody tried to get him to go back inside, eat something, but he couldn’t make himself do it. Then Adam said, “Let’s go up to my trailer, I got another bottle up there,” and he went. Anything to get away from all those people, all that noise.

  Mitch and Seth Bonner went, too. And they sat around and drank more whiskey. And then he cried. It came over him all at once, like something breaking, spilling over inside him. He put his head down on the table and cried and cried for his dead daughter until there weren’t any more tears in him. Then he sat up and wiped his face, and he was all right. For the first time in three days he could feel again. For the first time since they’d walked into Adam’s trailer he could pay attention to what was being said, take part in the conversation.