“Ten minutes, Eladio. Gracias.” I broke the connection, tossed Runyon’s cell back to him, and headed for the door. If he hesitated in following, it was for no more than a couple of seconds.
In the car, rolling, he said, “I don’t like this, Bill.”
“You don’t have to like it. My decision.”
“I know that. But it’s a hell of a big risk. What if Balfour booby-trapped the shed door so it’ll detonate when it’s opened?”
As strung out as I was, the possibility hadn’t occurred to me before. I thought about it as we cut down toward the valley road. “I don’t see it, Jake. He wouldn’t have expected anybody to open the storage unit today, a holiday—the construction work’s finished, Perez wouldn’t have any reason to use his key. And Balfour wasn’t an explosives expert. Anybody can rig a gas-leak explosion—anybody can slap up a bunch of plastic explosive and wire detonators to a timer. That has to be what he did, all he did.”
“You can’t be sure. A timer, yeah, but set to blow this afternoon when the picnic’s in full swing and the grounds are jammed with people. There’s still time to do this the right way, the safe way.”
“Maybe, but that’s something we can’t be sure of, either. Suppose it’s set to go off this morning? Suppose he miscalculated or the timer malfunctions?”
Runyon didn’t say anything.
“And Kerry could be badly hurt. Sick, drugged … God knows. There can’t be much air in that box. And it’ll be damn hot pretty soon.”
Still keeping his own counsel. I couldn’t read the stoic set of his face, but I knew what he was thinking. Not that I blamed him; if our places were reversed, I’d be having doubts now, too. But I still had none: Kerry was alive.
“Don’t try to change my mind, Jake. Go along when we get there, or back off and let me do it alone—I won’t hold it against you.”
The three miles to Six Pines seemed like thirty. There was traffic on the valley road, people heading in early for the holiday festivities, taking their time, clogging the road. Runyon drove as fast as he could, passing whenever he could without endangering anybody. I sat on the edge of the passenger seat, leaning forward with my hands braced against the dash, an image of that metal storage unit fire-bright behind my eyes.
People and parade vehicles were already starting to assemble at the high school—band members, one of the VFD fire trucks, horses and horse-drawn buggies, some kind of float draped with American flags. Parade started here at eleven, finished at the fairgrounds at one. If it started and finished at all.
They hadn’t yet blocked off the main drag through town, but DETOUR and NO PARKING signs had been set out. Not too many people on the sidewalks yet, or down around the fairgrounds; I didn’t see any sheriff’s department cruisers. Runyon swung right on the street that paralleled the north side of the fairgrounds, then left along the western perimeter. That street was lined with trees and a handful of widely spaced houses. After dark, it’d be mostly deserted. Balfour’s route last night, I thought—less risk of being seen going in and coming back out through the west gate.
Eladio Perez was waiting for us, standing alongside the old pickup we’d seen parked at the construction site yesterday. Runyon looped into the short driveway and braked nose up to the gate. Through the mesh I could see that it opened into the long parking area adjacent to the picnic grounds; blacktops branched off at an intersection not far inside.
I jumped out, ran over to Perez. He backed up a step, and I saw his eyes widen—probably a reaction to how I looked. “The keys, Eladio.”
Wordlessly, he handed them over: three small padlock keys on a three-inch bead chain.
I said, “Quickest way to where you were working, left road or right?”
“Left.”
“Okay. We’ll get the keys back to you.”
“Señor Balfour—”
“Don’t worry about him. Go on home, thanks for your help.”
I ran to the gate. The key with “West Gate” written on a piece of adhesive opened the padlock, but tension had made me clumsy-fingered, and it took three tries to get it slotted and turned. I shoved the gate inward, let Runyon push it out of the way with the Ford’s bumper. Jerked the passenger door open, slid back in beside him saying, “Left at the intersection.”
Shade trees flanked the blacktop in that direction, separating the parking area from the picnic grounds. Be dark along here at night, but you could drive it without lights if you knew the grounds as well as Balfour had. Where the row of trees ended, the road hooked right and intersected with the main road that led in from the front gates. Runyon cut to the right along the periphery of the grandstand and track.
After fifty yards, I could see the storage box squatting back between the concession booths and the restrooms. Sunlight shone on the metal roof and sides, giving it a glowing look like something being slowly heated in a forge. The image tied more knots in my stomach. I could feel sweat running down my back and sides.
Runyon pulled up under the tree where we’d parked yesterday. I was out of the car before it rocked to a complete stop, staggering a little on my run to the shed. He came up just as I reached the padlocked door, and when he pushed in next to me, I saw that he was carrying his flashlight.
I reached for the padlock, lost my grip on it; it clanged harshly off the metal. Runyon said, “Better let me do it.”
“You don’t have to be here—”
“The hell with that. Give me the keys.”
I let him take them in exchange for the flashlight. From far off in the still morning, incongruous given what we were facing, I could hear the high school band warming up with “America the Beautiful.”
Runyon got the padlock open, slid the staple out and let it drop on the ground with the key still in the slot. My heart had begun to race. I sucked in a breath as he eased the door open a crack.
Nothing happened.
The breath hissed out between my teeth. Jake was still holding the door in the same position, with maybe half an inch between its edge and the jamb. Carefully, he took the flashlight back with his other hand, switched it on, then put one eye close to the crack and squinted inside while he ran the beam up and down along the opening.
“Nothing that looks like a tripwire,” he said.
He widened the crack another half inch, played the light again. When I moved closer to the opening, my nostrils dilated at the mingled odors from inside. Sawdust, machine oil—and that same sickening sourness that had come out of Balfour’s camper.
“She’s in there, Jake. Kerry’s in there.”
He gave me a sideways look, then a jerky nod. “Door’s clear.”
“Go!”
Again he widened the gap. But after a couple of inches, it bound up at the bottom. Grimacing, he yanked upward on the handle. That popped the bottom edge loose and the door wobbled open all the way. He swept the flash beam through the murky interior.
It was like looking into a chamber of horrors.
Half a dozen or more blocks of plastic explosive stuck to the inside of the door and to all three walls. Detonators poked into them, trailing wires that connected to a black-boxed timing device on the floor … glowing-red numerals showed it set for one-thirty, half an hour after the end of the parade when the fairgrounds would be packed with people. Other things embedded in the plastic—nails, screws. More of the same strewn over the floor, along with sharp-toothed saw blades and other stuff intended as shrapnel.
But I registered all of that only peripherally. The small, still figure encased in duct tape, lying supine on the floor surrounded by all that death, was all I really saw or needed to see.
I started to lunge inside, an animal noise rumbling in my throat. Runyon stopped me with an iron-fingered grip. “Pull the detonators first, all of them.” I struggled, thinking Kerry, Kerry! He hung onto me, saying again, “Detonators, the detonators,” and finally the sense of the words got through. I bobbed my head, pulled free, reached up to jerk the nearest metal cap out of
the explosive.
We tore all of them loose, stepping carefully around Kerry, and threw them down; they were useless by themselves. Then I went to one knee beside her. That crazy son of a bitch Balfour had mummy-wrapped her from ankles to shoulders, with her hands and arms flat against her sides so she couldn’t move. Strips of duct tape covered her eyes and mouth; what I could see of her face was ghostly pale. I touched the side of her neck … cold, so cold … and probed for an artery, a pulse that I couldn’t feel.
Oh, please God, no!
Runyon had the light on her. “Is she…?”
“I don’t know, I can’t tell. Help me get her out of here.”
His shoes crunched on the shrapnel as he bent to take hold of her legs. I shoved upright, got my hands under her shoulders; my mind seemed to have gone blank. We carried her outside and over into the shade next to one of the concession booths, laid her down gently in the grass.
I dropped down beside her, felt again for a pulse. Had to be one, had to! But I still couldn’t find it. So faint only a doctor could detect it …
Runyon had backed off a couple of steps with his cell phone out, and I heard him making a 911 call as I hooked a fingernail under an edge of the tape over Kerry’s eyes, eased it off. Both eyes shut tight, not even a twitch on the lids. As gently as I could I stripped the tape from her mouth. Her lips were cracked and smeared with dried blood. When I laid my cheek down close to them, I couldn’t feel even the faintest whisper of a breath. With my thumb I raised one of the closed eyelids.
Vacant, blood-flecked stare.
Sick with anguish, I fumbled my pocket knife out. Opened it with fingers that shook so much now I had to steady my right hand with my left. Had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes as I sawed slowly through the tape, trying not to cut her. Her left arm was free when Runyon finished his call. He dropped down on the other side and began freeing her right arm with a Swiss Army blade. Together, we sliced and stripped as much of the tape off her arms and legs as we dared.
Still no movement, no sign of life.
God, what that bastard had done to her! Finger and fingernail marks on her throat where she’d been grabbed and choked. Bruise on one cheekbone that had blackened the eye above. A scabbed-over wound above her left ear that had bled into her hair … but not much, not enough for it to be anything but superficial. Welts and lesions on her bare arms and legs from the tape. Blouse and shorts in place, but torn, soiled.
Balfour had died too easy, too easy, too easy—
Runyon was pressing fingers against the artery in her neck. He made a sudden low grunting sound, and when I looked up at him, I saw the tight grimace he wore smooth off.
“Pulse,” he said.
I said something, I don’t remember what, and caught up Kerry’s hand and held my thumb on the wrist. Pulse, yes! I could feel it now—thin, thready, but discernible without putting on too much pressure.
Heartbeats. Life beats.
And all at once, the emotional dam inside me burst wide open. I’d cried before in my life, but never in public and never with such unashamed intensity as I did holding onto Kerry the way a drowning man holds onto a lifeline. Dimly, I saw Runyon stand, felt his hand on my shoulder before he moved away.
In the distance, there was the sound of sirens.
30
KERRY
Awake again, aware again.
Eyes opening to slits, bright light lancing in to painfully dilate the pupils. She squeezed the lids shut, but the light remained like a pressing weight against the outer skin. Slowly, she raised them again, squinting. The same dazzle, but it faded quickly this time … and she was looking at white walls, white composition ceiling, TV set on a wall stand, a window covered with partly open blinds.
Sounds intruded, a low steady mechanical beeping. She was aware, too, of a clean antiseptic odor. And of something clipped to the index finger of her left hand. She turned her head. Wires, tubes, lights flashing on some kind of monitor, an IV bag on a stand. Hospital room.
She rolled her head the other way. And saw Bill sitting in a chair alongside her bed, his eyes closed, his big hands lying palms up on his lap.
Didn’t believe it at first. Hallucination, wishful thinking. Her thoughts were fuzzy, disoriented … but it wasn’t the same kind of body and mind disconnect as before. This was almost peacefully dreamlike. She raised her head slightly and blinked once, twice, three times.
The hospital room was still there. Bill was still there.
Acceptance came slowly, and with it, a kind of wonder. The last thing she remembered, and that only vaguely, was Balfour’s hands on her, dragging her out of the camper, lifting and carrying her into a dark place. No, that wasn’t quite the last thing. She seemed to recall a random thought, what might have been her last thought, the beginning of a childhood prayer: If I should die before I wake …
She tried to say Bill’s name, but her mouth and throat were too clogged to form it coherently; it came out as a kind of mewling noise. Immediately, his eyes popped open; he hadn’t been asleep, just resting. He came up out of the chair, emotions rippling like neon across his drawn, craggy face, smile on, smile off, smile on. He took her hand in both of his, leaned down to kiss her gently on the forehead.
“About time you woke up.” Trying to keep his voice light, but it cracked on the last two words. “How do you feel?”
She managed a word this time. “Weak.”
“You’ve been out for a while. But you’re going to be okay.”
“… Fuzzy.”
“Drugs. Antibiotics, painkillers.”
Pain? Yes, she was aware of that, too, now. Her body, her arms and legs, seemed riddled with small, stinging hurts. One arm lay outside the bedclothes, gauze-bandaged. Her lips hurt; she licked at them with the tip of her tongue, winced at the deep splits and the taste of medicine.
“Thirsty,” she said.
Bill lifted a cup from an aluminum table, held it so she could sip through a flex straw. The water was lukewarm, and she had some trouble swallowing, but it took away the dryness and let her speak more easily.
“What … hospital is this?”
“Marshall. Placerville.”
“How long—?”
“Two days.”
Two days unconscious. “I … must be in bad shape.”
“Not so bad. Not anymore.” But the muscle that jumped alongside his mouth, the moist shine in his eyes told her otherwise. She’d come close to dying. And maybe she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Curiously, neither thought frightened her. Hospital. Bill. No, she wasn’t afraid anymore.
“You found me?”
“With Jake Runyon’s help. He deserves most of the credit.”
“Where? How?”
“Long story. We’ll talk about all that when you’re up to it.”
“Balfour?”
“He’s dead.”
“You didn’t…”
“No. Wasn’t me. Or Jake.”
Good, she thought. Good that it wasn’t you or Jake, good that he’s dead. I’d have killed him myself if I could, I really would have. But she didn’t put the thought into words. Her secret.
Instead, she said, “He didn’t rape me.”
“I know. The doctors…”
“Just … tied me up, kept me prisoner. Don’t know why.”
“Later. Getting you well is what’s important now.”
Her eyelids had begun to feel heavy. So damn weak …
Bill said, “I’d better get the nurse. Said to call her when you woke up.” He released her hand, started to turn away from the bed.
“Bill?”
He turned back.
“I knew you’d find me. I never lost hope.”
Kerry wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not, but it was what he needed to hear. And what she needed to believe.
“NAMELESS DETECTIVE” MYSTERIES BY BILL PRONZINI
Camouflage
Betrayers
Schemers
Fever
>
Savages
Mourners
Nightcrawlers
Scenarios (collection)
Spook
Bleeders
Crazybone
Boobytrap
Illusions
Sentinels
Spadework (collection)
Hardcase
Demons
Epitaphs
Quarry
Breakdown
Jackpot
Shackles
Deadfall
Bones
Double (with Marcia Muller)
Nightshades
Quicksilver
Casefile (collection)
Bindlestiff
Dragonfire
Scattershot
Hoodwink
Labyrinth
Twospot (with Collin Wilcox)
Blowback
Undercurrent
The Vanished
The Snatch
About the Author
Bill Pronzini’s novel Snowbound received the Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière. In addition to six Edgar Award nominations, Pronzini has received three Shamus Awards—two for best novel—and the PWA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, the Mystery Writers of America named him Grand Master. He lives in Northern California with his wife, the crime novelist Marcia Muller.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HELLBOX
Copyright © 2012 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust
All rights reserved.
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Pronzini, Bill.
Hellbox / Bill Pronzini.—1st ed.
Hellbox (Nameless Detective) Page 21
