With an Extreme Burning

by Bill Pronzini

  Dix pulled into a service station and spoke briefly to the attendant on duty. Pelican Bay was too small to have a library, the man said; the nearest one was in Lincoln City, down the coast a few miles. That was where the nearest newspaper was published, too—the weekly Lincoln City News Guard.

  Back in the car, he relayed this information to Cecca, who sat huddled against the passenger door. Then he asked her, “Want to get some coffee before we go on? Warm up a little?”

  “No. Let's just get it over with.”

  The rain was easing a little when they reached Lincoln City. This was the center of the north-coast resort area, an exceptionally long, narrow town—actually a collection of tiny hamlets strung together—that spread out for several miles along Highway 101. Dix stopped at another service station there to ask directions. Driftwood Library was only a few blocks away, as it turned out. And it was open, Dix saw with relief as he pulled up in front. In these hard times you never knew about library hours.

  They had a microfilm file of issues of the News Guard dating back several years. A librarian showed them to the microfilm room, brought the tapes containing the issues for June and July of 1989, and left them alone.

  Dix threaded June into the magnifier, cranked it rapidly through to the issue for Wednesday, June 25. The accident was bound to have been front-page news, but there was nothing in that issue about it. “It must have been that Wednesday night that it happened,” Cecca said. She was right. The following week's issue had the account.

  Three-column headline and photo on the lower half of the front page. The photo was of a crane lifting a wrecked and fire-ravaged van up the side of the cliff at Pelican Point; two uniformed highway patrol officers stood in the foreground, and visible in the background was a splintered section of guardrail. The headline read:

  FIERY CRASH CLAIMS 3 LIVES

  The screen on the magnifier was scratched and the newsprint on the accompanying story was small and smeary. Dix worked the focus knob to sharpen the image.

  A fiery highway accident last Wednesday evening claimed the lives of three members of a prominent Pelican Bay family. Cheryl Cotter, 36, and her two children, Angela, 5, and Donald, 6, of 289 Barksfield Road, died instantly when the van in which they were riding plunged 120 feet to the rocks at Pelican Point and burst into flames. The driver, Gordon Cotter, a tax accountant with offices in Lincoln City, was thrown clear. He suffered a broken leg and minor injuries and is listed in stable condition at North Lincoln Hospital.

  According to highway patrol officer Edmund Deane, Cotter was driving southbound on Highway 101 shortly past nightfall, at an excessive speed and without headlights. He swerved to avoid a rear-end collision with a car that had just exited the parking lot at the Crabpot restaurant, and lost control on the rain-slick highway. The driver of the other car, Kathleen Mallory, of Los Alegres, California, stated that rain and darkness prevented her from seeing the oncoming van. Several witnesses corroborated her account. She was not cited.

  There was more, continued on an inside page. Gordon Cotter was a native of McMinnville, had met and married his wife in Pelican Bay, and had lived there for nine years. He belonged to civic and social groups in Pelican Bay and Lincoln City; the head of the Lincoln City Lions Club was quoted as saying, “It's a terrible tragedy. Gordon was totally devoted to his family.” There were no photographs of any of the victims.

  A thin excitement pulsed in Dix. They were on the right track; he was convinced of it now. Cecca's expression said that she felt the same way.

  He cranked ahead to the next week's issue. One small follow-up story giving funeral information and stating that Gordon Cotter was soon to be released from the hospital. That was all.

  Cecca said, “Why didn't they publish a photo of him?”

  “Local policy, maybe.”

  “Would the McMinnville paper have run one?”

  “It's possible. We'll see if the library keeps a McMinnville file.”

  But the library didn't.

  He kept talking at her. Talking, talking. Amy didn't hear it all; she didn't want to listen. She sat slumped on the seat beside him, the seat belt tight around her—he'd made sure she put it on and kept it on—and told herself over and over to stay cool. He hadn't hurt her yet and he wasn't going to, not if she could help it.

  “… Didn't want to do it this way, Amy, I really didn't. I wanted so much for us to get to know each other first, to be close. But you're not ready and there isn't enough time to wait. I thought there'd be, but there isn't. Your mother and Dix … I wish I knew where they went. You really don't know, do you? No. I don't think they suspect me yet, but they may be getting close. Now I'll have to hurry with them, too.…”

  Him him him! All the time she'd been fooling herself; all the time it was him. Katy Mallory, Mr. Harrell, Bobby … he'd killed them. What if she'd actually let him have sex with her? She felt awful enough as it was, sick and shamed, but if she'd let him do it to her, she'd have hated herself for the rest of her life.

  How could she have thought he loved her?

  How could she have thought she loved him?

  How could she have been so stupid!

  “… Pick you up like that, with a gun in broad daylight. Somebody might have seen us together. I don't think anybody did, but what other choice did I have? I've got to finish it. That's the only thing that matters. Why couldn't you have made it easy for me? Making me use a gun … I don't like guns any more than your mom does. This one isn't mine, I'd never own a gun. It belonged to Louise Kanvitz. I didn't want to hurt her, but she forced me with her gun and her demands. Greedy bitch. Her fault, not mine. Hers and Katy's. Katy shouldn't have let it slip about us. I warned her to be careful. Didn't I warn her? They never listen, they never listen …”

  Why?

  Amy still didn't know that. He had hardly stopped talking since they'd left Hallam's ten or fifteen minutes earlier, but he hadn't said—she couldn't remember him saying—anything about why.

  “Why?” The word just popped out of her.

  At first she didn't think he'd heard. Then his head jerked toward her and he said, “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this? Why do you want to hurt Mom, me, everybody we know?”

  “Not everybody, Amy. Just the ones who deserve it.”

  “I never did anything to you. Neither did Mom.”

  “Yes, she did. She hurt me worse than you could ever know. Her and Katy and Eileen.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They killed me,” he said. “They destroyed my life.”

  “That doesn't make any sense …”

  “Never mind now. I don't want to talk about that now. We'll have a nice long talk when we get there. There'll be a little time for us to get to know each other better.”

  “Get where? Where're you taking me?”

  “Don't you know, Amy? Haven't you guessed?”

  She hadn't been paying attention to where they were. She peered through the windshield, saw that they'd left town, were traveling through rolling brown farmland. Familiar landmarks told her they were on outer Bodega Avenue. Heading west, toward the coast.

  She knew then, even before he said it.

  “Up to your dad's cottage. Up to the Dunes.”

  Barksfield Road was on the northeast side of Pelican Bay, a snaky street that extended inland through pine woods. The houses that lined it were a mix of old and new architectural styles on large lots, well built and well maintained. Number 289 turned out to be a newish ranch-style home, ell-shaped, at least four bedrooms, with a detached garage. It was nearly one o'clock and raining heavily again when Dix pulled into the driveway. No cars were visible on the property and no lights showed in any of the facing windows.

  “Nobody home,” he said.

  “Now what?”

  “We'll try the neighbors.”

  The nearest was across the road, a hundred yards away—a big frame house with firelight dancing behind its partially draped front window. Dix swu
ng the car in along a crushed-rock drive, stopped next to a deep porch. The wind was gusting, driving the rain in near-horizontal sheets; they ran from the car onto the porch.

  The man who answered the bell was in his seventies, stooped but sharp-eyed, wearing a heavy wool sweater over baggy trousers. He frowned when he saw that they were strangers, but it wasn't a frown of displeasure; if anything, he seemed glad to be having unexpected visitors. He cocked the left side of his head toward them. Behind his ear on that side was a flesh-toned hearing aid.

  “Do something for you folks?”

  “We're looking for Gordon Cotter,” Dix said.

  “Cotter, did you say?”

  “Gordon Cotter, yes. We understand that he—”

  “Wait a minute. Can't hear you with that rain rattling down. Damn hearing aid don't work good in weather like this. Come in so I can shut the door.”

  It was warm in the house, smoky from a blazing wood fire. The old man said his name was Delaney, Martin Delaney, and invited them to sit down.

  Dix said, “We can't stay, Mr. Delaney. We'd just like to know about Gordon Cotter, if he still owns the house across the road.”

  “Not anymore. Family named Elroy owns it now. Baptists, holy rollers. You friends of his?”

  “Cotter's? No. We have business with him.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “It's personal.”

  “None of my business, eh?” Delaney laughed; his false teeth made a clacking sound. “You know what happened to his family?”

  “Yes, we know.”

  “His fault. Driving too fast in the rain, didn't have his headlights on. He always did drive too fast and loose. But he wouldn't admit it.”

  “Wouldn't admit the accident was his fault?”

  “That's right. Talked to him once, after he come home from the hospital. He said it was the people in the other car's fault, the one that pulled out from the restaurant.”

  Dix glanced at Cecca. She moved closer to him, either for warmth or support.

  “Oh, he took it hard,” Delaney said. “Real hard. One thing you can say for Cotter, he loved his wife and those two kids. Cute kids, too. My wife was alive then—she used to say they were a perfect family. Blessed, she said. Terrible thing to lose them like that, all at once. Just the opposite of blessed.”

  Cecca asked, “How long ago did he sell the house, Mr. Delaney?”

  “Three, four months after it happened. Sat over there all that time, didn't go to work, wouldn't hardly leave the house. Grieved longer and harder than any man I ever knew. Then one morning he was gone and the place was up for sale. Just up and left.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No idea,” Delaney said. “Haven't seen nor heard from him since. Nobody around here has. Didn't take his furniture, wherever he went. Left it all right there in the house. Sold the house with the furniture included. Hell of a deal for the holy rollers.”

  “Would you please tell us what he looks like?”

  “Looks like? I thought you knew him.”

  “We think we know him,” Dix said. “We need to be sure.”

  “Well, I'm not too good at that sort of thing …”

  “Please try.”

  “Gordon Cotter, eh? Man about forty, now. Tall, good shape—played a lot of tennis and golf. Blond hair, blue eyes like mine used to be—real bright blue. Handsome. Handsome as the devil.”

  Jerry.

  Jerry Whittington was Gordon Cotter.

  And Gordon Cotter was the tormentor.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  By the time they passed through Point Arena, late in the afternoon, Amy was no longer afraid of him. She'd gotten her head totally together. She felt the way she'd always imagined she would when she was a working reporter and found herself in a dangerous situation: cool, crafty, determined. You didn't get your ass out of trouble by panicking or wimping out. You used your head, waited for the right opportunity, and then did what you had to do. Whatever you had to do.

  Meanwhile, she'd pretended to be scared out of her skull. Meek and obedient, too. Let him think he could do anything he wanted to her and she wouldn't fight back. Let him think she was going to be an easy victim.

  She studied him out of the corner of her eye. Sitting over there all smug, his hands dirtying the wheel of her car, probably thinking he could put his hands on her if he felt like it and she'd just turn to jelly. Once he could have; once she would have. She couldn't stand to think how willing, how stupid, she'd been just a short while ago. Well, she'd learned her lesson. Hatred was all she felt for him now. The attraction was totally gone, as if it had never existed. He wasn't handsome or sexy, he was repulsive. He was Freddy Krueger with a hunk's mask on.

  His eyes were steady on the road; they didn't seem to blink much anymore. He looked relaxed, not even a little tired or cramped from all the driving. Super cool or bat-shit crazy? She couldn't tell. He didn't show much of what was going on inside him—and it was probably just as well he didn't. Amy shifted position again. Her buns were sore from sitting in one place for almost three hours. They hadn't stopped once, not even for gas because she'd filled the tank that morning. Down around Fort Ross she'd tried to get him to stop at a gas station so she could use the bathroom—a trick that might give her a chance to slip away from him or at least to write a message on the mirror with her lipstick. But he hadn't fallen for it. “I really have to pee,” she'd lied, and he'd said, “You'll just have to hold it. Either that, or go ahead and wet yourself.”

  That was about all he'd said to her since way back at Bodega Bay. Talk, talk, talk nonstop for half an hour—and then nothing, as if a faucet inside him, turned on for a while, had suddenly been turned off. It was all right with her. The silence was a lot easier to take.

  The long ride was almost over. They were passing the turnoff for the Point Arena Light Station; that meant the one for Manchester State Beach and the Dunes was only a couple of miles farther on. He knew it, too—must have read a map or something, because he began to slow down even before she spotted the half-hidden sign for Stoneboro Road. He didn't come close to missing the turn either, something even she'd done once.

  Stoneboro Road wound in for more than a mile, through open fields and cattle graze, before you could see the sand dunes and the abandoned development. At that point you could also see miles and miles of the curving beach, and inland across a long valley dotted with dairy ranches to the mountains of the Coast Range. It was lonesome and windswept and beautiful. Even today, with him beside her, she was aware of its beauty.

  The weather was pretty good, windy and mostly sunny, and there were a half dozen cars parked at the entrance to the beach. None of the people was in sight though. He turned off on the road that ran through what was left of the development. Narrow, carpeted in blown sand, it paralleled the outer sweep of the dunes and took them past signs and paved streets that led nowhere: Barnegat Drive, Duxbury Road, Coventry Lane. No cars here, just sawgrass and gorse and cypress and scrub pine. And the high dunes covered with thick tufts of tule grass that had always made her think of a vast herd of hairy creatures watching the sea with hidden eyes.

  Another mile … and when they came around a bend in the road, the Dunes appeared. Gray, salt-weathered, set seventy or eighty yards off the road on high ground, built on pilings so that blowing sand could drift underneath. The unpaved lane that led up to it was half gravel and half weeds, so it was barely visible until you were right on top of it, but he seemed to know where it was. He turned, and they jounced along and finally stopped on the flat-topped rise, behind the cottage. He shut off the engine, but he didn't move to get out right away. He rolled down the window a little and sniffed the air with a little smile on his mouth.

  “Nice here,” he said. “I love the coast, the ocean.”

  Amy didn't say anything.

  “It reminds me of where I used to live.”

  Pelican Bay, I'll bet, she thought. She almost said it, caught herself in time. If s
he made a slip like that and he had lived in Pelican Bay, he'd know they were on to him, that that was where Mom and Dix must have gone. There was no telling what he might do then.

  “You've been a good girl,” he said. “Keep on being good and everything will be fine.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “I'm going to get out now. You sit there until I come around and open your door. When you get out, don't try to run away. If you do, I'll shoot you. I won't like doing it, but I will.”

  “I won't try to run.”

  When he opened the door, she took her time unkinking her body. He stood back a few paces, his hand on the gun in his belt. No, she wouldn't try to run. Even if he didn't shoot her, he could probably chase her down; he wasn't that old and he was in such good shape. Stay cool, she told herself. There'll be a time when he forgets to be careful.

  He made her climb the outside stairs ahead of him, one hand on her arm. His touch was no longer silky or electric; it made her skin crawl. The wind was chilly on her face, sharp with the salt tang of the ocean. It would be cold later, when the sun—already falling and starting to turn red around the edges—dropped below the horizon. How long would he keep her here? All night? She'd have to try to find out about that right away.

  On the narrow landing at the top she said, “How are we going to get in?”

  “With the key your father gave you.” He jangled her key ring, then held it out to her. “One of these. Find the right one and use it.”

  As soon as she had the door open, he took the key ring back and put it into his pants pocket. The right-hand pocket. When they were both inside, he turned the deadbolt lock, put the chain on. The only other ways out were off the balcony or through one of the windows. He knows that, too, Amy thought. He knows everything about the Dunes.

  The big front room smelled of sea-damp and old smoke from the cigarettes Megan sucked on constantly and the joints she and Dad smoked when they were alone. It was a mess, too. Papers and crap on the floor, tables littered with dirty glasses and ashtrays, even a plate with sandwich crumbs on it. If she hadn't known better, she'd think kids or homeless people had gotten in despite regular patrols by the county sheriff and the park rangers. But it was just that Dad was sloppy and Megan and that dickhead son of hers were total slobs.