Jackpot (Nameless Dectective)

by Bill Pronzini

  Now what?

  I was in no mood to murder any more time, aimlessly. Canvass the neighbors, then, see if any of them knew where I could find Wendy? That was a long shot, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do.

  There were a dozen other trailers in relatively close proximity. Nobody was home at half of them. Three women and one man told me they didn’t know Wendy or her boyfriend. Another woman said Wendy was “a bitch, she tried to put the moves on my husband once,” and slammed the door in my face. A second, elderly man said he knew Wendy and Scott to talk to, not that he talked to them much; he didn’t know where she might be but Scott—whose last name was McKee—worked part-time at a boat place out at Pope Beach called Adams & Conley Marine.

  Bust.

  I considered driving to Pope Beach, but the information I was after I wasn’t likely to get from Scott McKee. So? There was only one other thing I could think of to do. More wasted time, maybe, but it was better than wandering around or staking out the trailer.

  I drove to Fallen Leaf Lake, to see if anything had changed at the Polhemus cabin.

  SOME THINGS HAD CHANGED, all right. For one, the dark red Cougar was gone.

  I turned onto the empty parking platform. Got out and went to the far railing and peered downslope at the cabin and deck and dock beyond. From this angle, it all looked as it had on Tuesday —deserted. But I couldn’t see the front entrance because of the wall and the trees.

  I picked my way down to the deck. Then I could see the door, and it was shut as I had left it. No sounds from inside; and no answer when I rapped on the panel. I knocked again, with more authority. Then I tried the knob, turning it with my palm and the inside of my thumb.

  That was the second thing that had changed: now the door was locked.

  After a few seconds I went around onto the part of the deck that overlooked the lake. The facing windows and sliding glass door were tightly shielded by the rattan blinds inside; there wasn’t even a chink for me to peer through.

  Back at the door, I twisted and pulled on the knob while I squinted at the lock. Not much of a lock—the old-fashioned spring type. And the door didn’t fit tightly in the jamb. Any burglar in the state could have had it open in less than a minute. It took me forty seconds, using one of the blades in my penknife. Breaking and entering, this time, not just a simple trespass. But it did not seem to matter as much as it would have once, not so long ago. I was a different man than I had been before last winter, whether I liked the idea or not: not as cautious, not as scrupulous. Among all the other things my kidnapper and jailer had done was to put a bend in the straight arrow.

  Thick shadows inside; the familiar smells of dust and careless human habitation. I went in by a couple of paces, eased the door shut with my shoulder, and reached back to knuckle the light switch.

  Nothing different here. The spatters of dried blood were still on the floor; the scuff-and-drag marks in the dust hadn’t been altered in any way. No one had removed the roach butts from the ashtray, nor the remaining snapshots from the fireplace mantel.

  I stood for a few seconds to get the feel of the place. No aura of wrongness this time; all it felt was empty. I crossed into the kitchen. Ants had gotten into the open packages of bologna and cheese; there was mold on the hardened crusts of bread. I kept on going, looked into the bathroom first. The bloodstains still darkened the sink and floor underneath. I moved on into the larger of the two bedrooms.

  That was where I found the last of the changes: Jerry Polhemus’s two suitcases and duffel bag were missing.

  I looked in the closet, got down to peer under the bed. Nothing but dust. Back in the living room, I took one more look around without touching anything. Then I reset the lock on the door and went out and shut it behind me.

  On my way up to the parking platform I thought: Either Polhemus came back and got his luggage and car himself or somebody else did. Makes more sense if it was Polhemus. It’s his cabin; if he was in a hurry, distracted, he wouldn’t have bothered to clean up the bloodstains. Somebody else, covering up a crime against Polhemus, would have cleaned things up.

  That was how it figured, anyway. But it didn’t have to be as cut-and-dried as that, depending on who and why and what had happened here two days ago.

  Whose blood, dammit?

  And was somebody dead or not?

  SOME IDIOT piloting one of those oversize, cumbersome RV road hogs had misjudged the turn into the campground off Fallen Leaf Lake Road and tipped the damned thing over onto its side in such a way that it completely blocked the road. The accident must have happened within the past few minutes, but already cars were starting to string out in both directions. A bunch of people, citizens and a park ranger, were standing next to the overturned RV, gesturing and making angry conversation.

  Christ.

  I stopped the car and shut off the engine. Wait here or back in town—what difference did it make? Or so I told myself. But this kind of enforced waiting is the worst there is, because it has no purpose and you’re at the whim and mercy of too many others.

  A pair of tow trucks and two county sheriff’s cruisers showed up within twenty minutes. But then another twenty minutes got used up in discussion and strategy and preparation. And it took close to half an hour to maneuver the toppled RV out of the way and then to get the lines of traffic moving again. By the time I crawled out onto Highway 89 and turned back toward South Lake Tahoe, it was four-thirty and I was twitchy and wilted and out of patience. What I wanted was a cold beer in a quiet, uncrowded room. What I did was drive straight to Tata Lane to find out if Wendy Oliver had finally come home.

  She had: the banged-up Tercel was angled in under the carport. There was no sign of Scott McKee’s Porsche, which meant that she was probably alone. About time something went right, I thought. I walked up the drive and onto the porch and raised my hand to knock on the door.

  Sounds inside froze me, put a clutch of tension across my shoulders: a groaning, a whimpering, as of somebody hurt and in pain.

  I smacked the door with the heel of my hand, hard, and called out, “Wendy!”

  Another groan. A garbled cry that I couldn’t make out.

  “Wendy!”

  Another cry, the words faint, liquidy, but discernible this time. “Help ... oh, God, help me ...”

  I caught the doorknob, twisted it. Locked. But the lock wasn’t any better than the one at the Polhemus cabin. When I threw my hip and shoulder into the door, the spring catch snapped free and the door flew inward so suddenly that I almost fell into the trailer; the flimsy metal walls and floor shimmied from the impact. I caught my balance, straightened. Kitchen. She wasn’t in here; the sounds were coming from a room beyond an archway. I plunged through the opening.

  Living room. Overturned coffee table, smashed table lamp, other things upended and in disarray. And Wendy Oliver down on the floor, trying to drag herself onto the couch, sobbing through a bruised and bloody mouth. There was blood all over her face, spattered on her hands and torn blouse and white shorts and bare legs.

  Somebody had beat the hell out of her. Not more than fifteen minutes ago, while I was driving away from the scene of that frigging accident.

  Chapter 18

  I RUSHED OVER TO HER, sidestepping the remains of the lamp and some kind of potted plant, and batted the table out of the way and then lifted her up onto the couch. Most of the blood seemed to have come from a gash above her left eye. That eye was swollen half shut and ringed by a nasty purpling bruise. Her blouse had been torn half off, so that both of her breasts were exposed; she wasn’t wearing a bra. An afghan was draped over the back of one of the room’s chairs, and I got that and shook it out and covered her to keep her warm.

  She was in shock. Her one good eye stared up at me with glazed terror and no recognition. She kept saying, “Oh, God,” over and over between little hiccoughing breaths, like a plea for mercy.

  I left her and ran down a short hallway that bisected the rear half of the trailer leng
thwise. The bathroom opened off that—little more than a cubicle with a toilet, sink, and stall shower. I ran cold water, tossed a hand towel in under the stream. No medicine cabinet in there, but under the sink I found a plastic tray that contained some first-aid supplies. I wrung the towel out, took that and the tray back to where Wendy was.

  She lay trembling now, as if with a bad chill, the afghan pulled up under her chin. She looked small and very young and very badly used. If it hadn’t been for that idiot driver and his RV ... no. This was not my fault; it had nothing to do with me. Things happen, that’s all. Everywhere you go, every second of your life, things happen over which you have no control.

  I knelt beside Wendy, making soothing sounds, and used the wet towel to cleanse the blood off her face. She didn’t resist, just lay there whimpering like a hurt puppy. The gash above her eye didn’t look deep enough to require stitching. A cut on her upper lip was even shallower. She’d been knocked around quite a bit, but not enough to need hospitalization. It was the kind of beating abusive men inflict on their mates, not a professional job. When a hired slugger works somebody over, the victim needs hospital care—no question.

  I daubed Mercurochrome on a piece of gauze and pressed it gently over her eye cut. She flinched and cried out at the sting, but I kept talking to her, telling her she was going to be all right, and she responded by lying still and letting me apply pressure to the wound until that and the antiseptic slowed the bleeding. Some of the shock had worn off by then and she was no longer trembling. She was aware of who was ministering to her; I could see it in her good eye.

  She said thickly, as if her voice had been bruised too, “How bad is it? My face?”

  “Not so bad. Just lie still.”

  “Will I have scars? Did he scar me?”

  “I don’t think so. But I’ll call a doctor—”

  “No! Not unless I have to have stitches. Do I have to have stitches?”

  “I’m not a doctor, Wendy.”

  “I hate doctors,” she said. It hurt her to speak through her cut and bruised lips; she winced each time she spoke, and the words came out low and clogged, so that I had to lean close to hear them. “They’ll make trouble, they’ll call the cops ... please don’t let anybody else see me like this, please ...”

  “Ssh. Lie quiet.”

  I saturated a fresh piece of gauze with Mercurochrome, tore off a couple of strips of adhesive from a roll, and taped a makeshift bandage over the eye gash. The cut on her lip wasn’t bleeding much now, but I swabbed it anyway. I couldn’t bandage it because of the location.

  When I was done she said, “I’ll be okay. This isn’t the first time he hurt me. But he’d better not do it again. I’ll fix him if he hits me again, I swear to God I will. I’ll fix the dirty son of a bitch.”

  “Scott?”

  “Who else. God, I hate him. I should have left him a long time ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, as if the fact puzzled her.

  “Why did he beat you like this?”

  She started to answer, then grimaced and shook her head.

  “Did it have anything to do with you and David Burnett?”

  “Why do you ... no. No.”

  “Don’t lie any more, Wendy. I know most of it anyway.”

  “... What do you know?”

  “Burnett didn’t win a Megabucks jackpot,” I said. “It was Mob money. They found out he had it—that’s why he killed himself. And that’s why you and Janine lost your jobs and Polhemus is running scared.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. She turned her head and closed her eyes and began to cry softly.

  I blotted the tears with a clean comer of the towel. “I’m not one of them, Wendy. I don’t work for people like that. I’m on your side.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “It’s the truth. I don’t want to get you into any more trouble. All I want is for you to be truthful with me.”

  Nothing from her this time.

  “Why did Scott beat you?”

  Silence.

  “Why, Wendy?”

  “... Janine,” she said, and her eyes popped open and she stared at me as if I had somehow forcibly extracted the word. She wet her lips, swallowed, wet her lips again. “She told him about Dave and me ... the four of us ...”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know why. Maybe she didn’t mean to ... he said she was crying on the phone ... he went crazy when I came home and started calling me names, accusing me of going back up to Fallen Leaf and screwing Jerry ... I tried to tell him but he wouldn’t listen, he just started hitting me ...”

  She was becoming agitated again. I soothed her with the towel and meaningless words until her body stilled.

  “My mouth,” she said, “it’s so dry ...”

  “I’ll get you some water. Don’t move.”

  I went into the kitchen. It seemed unnaturally warm in the trailer; I was oiled with sweat. I could smell myself along with the sour odors of dirty laundry and garbage and yesterday’s fried food. There was a roll of paper towels on the drainboard; I tore off a couple of sections and wiped my face. Then I found a reasonably clean glass, filled it, drained it to relieve the dryness in my own throat, and refilled it for Wendy.

  She tried to sit up and take the glass. I pushed her down, tilted it up to her mouth so she could drink. The afghan had fallen away to reexpose one of her breasts; she didn’t seem to notice or to care if she did, but a little modesty was all she had left right now. I drew the rough material back up under her chin.

  “We’ll go slow now,” I said, “nice and slow. You said Scott accused you of going back up to Fallen Leaf Lake. What did you mean?”

  “I was up there Monday night. Last Monday.”

  “To see Polhemus?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He called and asked you to come up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell me about you ... detective that had been hassling him about Dave and the money. He wanted company too. He didn’t want to stay there alone.”

  “You mean he asked you to sleep with him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought he and Janine were lovers.”

  “He didn’t know where Janine was. They hadn’t been in touch since all the shit hit the fan.”

  “So he came on to you. Nice guy.”

  “Wasn’t like it was the first time,” she said.

  “The first time he came on to you?”

  “First time we got it on. The four of us switched off a couple of times.”

  “You and Jerry, Janine and Dave?”

  “Just for grins. It was no big deal.”

  Yeah, I thought, no big deal. Just like AIDS and herpes are no big deal. Just like fidelity is no big deal.

  I said, keeping my voice neutral, “Did you sleep with Polhemus Monday night?”

  “No. I couldn’t on account of Scott.” She shivered. “Jesus, if I had ...”

  “If you had—what?”

  “He would’ve caught us. He was there.”

  “Scott was? At the cabin?”

  “He followed me. He didn’t come in, but he would have if I’d stayed any longer ... he said so.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “That night. After he got back.”

  “Let me get this straight. Scott followed you to the cabin—why?”

  “He’s so goddamn jealous. He was outside when Jerry called but he was listening, I should have known he’d listen. He heard enough so he knew I wasn’t going to a job interview like I told him.”

  “How long were you with Polhemus?”

  “About half an hour.”

  “You came straight back here afterward?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Scott follow you back?”

  “No, not right away.”

  “How long was it before he showed up?”

  “
I dunno ... a while.”

  “More than fifteen minutes?”

  “Half an hour, I guess.”

  “He say what he’d been doing during that time?”

  “No. Just started in on me about Jerry, what a slut I am, the same old crap.”

  “He hit you that night?”

  “I thought he was going to but he didn’t. He just warned me. One more time, he said, and he’d scar me for life. That’s what he said—scar me for life.” She grimaced, coughed, swallowed. “Can I have some more water?”

  I held the glass up to her mouth and she drained it. Then I asked, “Did Scott know who Polhemus was before then?”

  “No. I told him Jerry was a friend of Janine’s and I was trying to get them back together and that’s why I went up to his cabin. He didn’t believe it but it was the truth. The last thing I said to Jerry before I left, I told him where Janine was living and he should call her and get back together with her.” Wendy’s lower lip began to tremble. “I did that for Janine and look what she did for me. Damn her, why’d she have to call tonight? Why’d she have to tell Scott about the four of us?”

  “Why did she call? You have any idea?”

  “No. Oh, God, my mouth hurts, my head hurts ... I’m gonna be in bed three days this time, it’ll be a week before I can go out and look for a job ...”

  I let her spew out self-pity until the little wellspring ran dry. “Do you know if Jerry got in touch with Janine?”

  “No. I don’t care if he did.”

  “You haven’t talked to him since?”

  “No.”

  “Or Janine?”

  “No.”

  “Where’s she living, Wendy?”

  “Paradise Flat.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Up past Emerald Bay.”

  “Alone or with someone?”

  “Alone. She’s house-sitting for some people that went to Europe for the summer. Year-rounders she met someplace.”