Deadfall nd-15

by Bill Pronzini

  Just as she had Leonard.

  That was the key to the whole thing, not Danny Martinez. Once you realized that Leonard had to have also been one of her conquests, you understood everything else that had followed. Seduction was not only a weapon with her, not only a means to an end, it was a motivating force in her life. All men were fair game-all men. And homosexuals were right up there at the top of the list because they presented the greatest challenge. She’d tried to seduce Alex Ozimas, hadn’t she? Ozimas: Not that I’m irresistible, of course; it was merely that she considered seducing a man of my tastes a stimulating challenge. Sure. So why not her husband’s brother, too?

  Confirmed homosexuals couldn’t be seduced by a woman, of course. But Leonard hadn’t been quite as gay as everyone, including poor Tom Washburn, believed him to be. He had not only been married once, he’d been sleeping with his ex-wife now and then during the year prior to Kenneth’s death. Claudia Mitchell on the phone last Saturday, talking about her sister: If I told her once after the divorce I told her a hundred times-good riddance. I warned her. Once bitten, twice shy, but she never listens to me. Ruth Mitchell had confirmed it when I’d contacted her earlier this afternoon. She had gone to his office one day to ask his advice on a legal matter, there had still been a spark of attraction between them, one thing led to another-mostly, I gathered, at her instigation. The right (or wrong) woman could still get Leonard into bed, if she knew how to play her cards right. And Alicia Purcell was a grand master when it came to playing cards of that sort.

  So Leonard, good old secretive, duplicitous Leonard, had been screwing Alicia too, right under his brother’s nose, right under Washburn’s. And they had succeeded in keeping their affair secret until the night of the party last May. That night, not much past nine-thirty, they had been alone in the library; Mrs. Purcell had admitted as much. They must also have been indiscreet in some way-discussed the affair, maybe even engaged in a little stand-up passion play; she was the type who’d find that kind of dangerous activity exciting. And they’d got caught: Kenneth had overheard them or walked in on them. There hadn’t been any big scene at that point, even though Kenneth was drunk; he knew what kind of woman his wife was, they’d had an open marriage, so it wasn’t likely he’d have assumed the role of the outraged husband. He had probably been more stunned than anything else. At any rate he’d stalked out of the house, passing Lina in the kitchen, and gone straight to the cliffs to be alone, to come to terms with what he’d just found out.

  Pure speculation on the rest of it: Leonard had followed belatedly, using another exit from the house or going through the kitchen himself while Lina was out distributing canapes to the guests-his intention being to talk to Kenneth, apologize, beg forgiveness… something like that. Alicia either went with him or had followed soon afterward. There had been a confrontation out there in the darkness high above the sea, and it had turned violent. Kenneth was drunk and he’d had time to nurture his anger; maybe he’d attacked Leonard, maybe they’d struggled, maybe Leonard had given him a shove and over he’d gone.

  I was sure of this much: Leonard was either directly responsible for his brother’s death, or had blamed himself for causing it.

  Guilt and remorse and grief might have cracked him up then and there if it hadn’t been for Alicia. She’d calmed him down, convinced him to cover up their part in Kenneth’s death and to keep their affair a secret. Not because she cared about Leonard; she was looking out for herself. She didn’t want to be implicated in her husband’s death, not in any way. An unquestioned fatal accident guaranteed her inheritance, insured a hassle-free future — or so she must have thought at the time. She’d coached Leonard in what to do and what to say to the party guests, to the authorities when they came; and because he was weak, and riddled with guilt, he had gone along with her. He’d played his part well enough; even his tears when the body was discovered had been genuine. But he’d been crying as much for himself, I thought, as for his dead brother.

  Before they returned to the house, Alicia had done one other thing: she’d picked up the Hainelin snuff box, which must have fallen to the ground when Kenneth’s coat pocket was torn during the struggle. That was the real reason she’d kept it hidden from the police, and later sold it to Summerhayes on the QT: she hadn’t wanted anybody asking how it had come into her possession that night.

  The two of them alibiing each other had fooled everybody into believing she was in the clear-me included. No one suspected Leonard, the devoted brother, of having had anything to do with Kenneth’s death; if he said he was with Alicia, then that cleared her, too. Nobody had seen either of them leave the house or return to it, so there was nobody to dispute her word or his. Nobody, that is, except Danny Martinez.

  Martinez had just finished making his delivery when Kenneth was killed. Either he’d been drawn out to the cliffs for some reason and had seen it happen, or more likely, he’d been near the house when Alicia and Leonard came back and had overheard an exchange of dialogue that told him what had happened. But they hadn’t seen or heard him. And for his own reasons he hadn’t come forward to tell what he knew. Alicia, at least, must have felt that she and Leonard had got away clean.

  But then, after nearly six months, Martinez’s life had come apart and he’d decided to use his knowledge for financial gain. He’d called Leonard, only to mistakenly talk to Washburn instead. Martinez, as quoted by Washburn: Your brother didn’t fall off the cliff that night, Mr. Purcell. He was pushed. And I know who pushed him. Washburn thought Martinez was trying to sell Leonard the name of his brother’s killer, and so had I; but that hadn’t been it at all. The purpose of Martinez’s call had been blackmail, not extortion. And when he finally had reached Leonard with his demands, Leonard had paid off to the tune of two thousand dollars. That had apparently not been enough for Martinez; he’d made the fatal mistake of trying the same blackmail scam on Alicia. And she’d paid him off with death.

  Thursday night, two weeks ago. Not more than a couple of days after she had killed and buried Martinez. Leonard must have talked to her about the blackmail business; he was scared, he was still guilt-ridden, maybe he’d even threatened to make a clean breast of everything to the police. She couldn’t have that, not after the drastic steps she’d already taken to protect herself. She arranged to see Leonard at his house, alone, while Washburn was out for the evening. With the intention of murdering Leonard, too, to keep him quiet? Possibly; she’d gone in the back way and she’d brought a gun with her-the same gun she’d used on Martinez, probably. Still, you’d think a woman as shrewd as she was would have picked a safer, more isolated place to commit premeditated homicide. It could be she’d brought the gun as a precaution or a threat or a last resort; it could be they’d had words, and she let slip what she’d done to Martinez, and Leonard threatened again to go to the police. In any case she shot him.

  Leonard, dying: Deadfall… so sorry… fall, how could you… Only that wasn’t quite right. He’d been delirious, mumbling, blood in his throat obscuring the words, and I had misheard one of them. He hadn’t said fall, how could you. He’d said Al, how could you.

  Al. Love, Al. Love, Alicia.

  Ray Dunston, quoting the Bible far more aptly than he’d ever know: Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to his neighbor’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.

  Another week had passed, and Tom Washburn had brought me into it. I’d asked Mrs. Purcell some probing questions, so probing that she had lied about having tried to seduce Ozimas because she was afraid I might connect her sexually to Leonard. And then I’d found out from Lina about Danny Martinez. Either Alicia had asked the housekeeper what she’d said to me, or Lina had volunteered the information; whichever it was, she learned that I was on to Martinez. To find out just how much I knew or had guessed, she’d tried to use her favorite weapon-seduction-on me too. Then, later, I’d discovered that the Hain
elin box had been in her possession and that she’d sold it to Summerhayes, and had confronted her with the knowledge on Sunday afternoon. I was definitely getting too close for comfort. Sex wasn’t going to work on me, so she’d used Dessault again (he might even have been with her when I called; she could easily be the reason for his two-day absence from Mission Creek)-this time to arrange a beating to force me off the case.

  Love, Al.

  That was the bulk of it. Some of the smaller pieces were still missing, others figured to be somewhat different than I had postulated them, but I was sure all the essentials were right. The full story would have to come from her. Not that the details were vital. Even if she didn’t confess, even if she tried to bluff it through, there should be enough hard evidence to convict her. The fingernail in the barn, for one thing. Dessault, for another; he was the type to sell out his own mother if he thought it would save his ass. She might still have the gun, too. In the end there’d be enough.

  It was warm in the car now, too warm: I was sweating again. I turned the heat down halfway. Outside, dusk was settling. It was already dark among the trees; their shadows, and those thrown by the barn and the house, crept out toward me across the yard. Time to go, I thought, and I put the car in gear and swung it into a U-turn that made the weak right side tremble. Time to get the rest of it done.

  Time to face the black widow in her nest.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Night had fallen when I turned off South Lake Street, onto the private drive that led up to the Purcell home. The road surface wasn’t as bad here as on the one coming into the Martinez farm, but the car’s front end was substantially looser now; I thought it might go at any time. I drove up the hillside at a crawl.

  The parking area at the end of the drive was dark: the half-dozen night lanterns atop the garden wall hadn’t been put on. There were three cars sitting there-the dusty BMW I’d seen on my first visit, Richie Dessault’s white Trans-Am, and a sixties-vintage MG roadster that I didn’t recognize. Through the filigreed gate I could see that the garden was also dark but that light showed at the front of the house, made blurry by the mist that swirled in raggedly from the sea.

  I put my car next to the BMW and sat there for a few seconds, listening to a voice inside my head that said, Dessault’s here, that’s all right, but she’s got other company. What’s the sense in bracing her now? What’s the sense in bracing her at all? Let it go, for Christ’s sake. You don’t need any more of this. Then I stopped listening to the voice and got out of the car, into a blustery wind thick with the smells of salt and the offshore kelp beds.

  The gate wasn’t shut all the way, so I didn’t have to bother with the bell or the intercom system. I shouldered through the open half, followed the crushed-shell path between the rows of rosebushes. The light at the front of the house was coming through a window and also through a wedge between the door and the jamb. I stopped, looking at the open door. From inside, distantly, there was the sound of music-something classical, something with a lot of stringed instruments. No other sounds filtered out to where I stood.

  Frowning, I put the tips of my fingers against the door panel and pushed it inward. Went past its far edge by a couple of steps, into the empty front hall. Nobody in the formal living room that opened off of it, nobody on the carpeted staircase to my right or up on the second-floor landing. I thought about calling out, announcing myself, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t do anything except stand still, listening to the music: it was coming from upstairs, over on the south side.

  Something wrong here, I thought.

  Something bad here.

  After a time I crossed to the staircase and climbed it, slowly, reluctantly. A central hallway went both ways upstairs; I turned left, to the south. Four doors gave on it in that direction, two open, two closed. The open ones showed me a bathroom and what looked to be a spare bedroom; I didn’t pause at either one. At the far end, on the right, a strip of light showed under the bottom of the second closed door; the music seemed to be coming from in there. Bedroom? Her bedroom? I kept moving, and I was only a few feet away when the familiar smell registered on my olfactory nerve.

  Cordite. Burnt gunpowder.

  My chest got tight and my head began to ache again. I quit walking and leaned against the wall; the palms of my hands were suddenly as wet as if I’d dunked them in water. No more, I thought, I can’t look at any more death today. But I was not the kind of man who could walk away from something like this without knowing. The curse of my existence: the constant, compulsive need to know.

  I tried to take a deep breath, to steady myself; the pain in my side turned it into a shallow grunt. I shoved off the wall, a little rubber-legged now, and went ahead to the door. It was shut all the way. Inside, the classical orchestra was playing something sweet and gentle. Violins. Mood music. Music for lovers.

  I opened the door and went in.

  Bedroom, all right. Death, all right. I felt the impact of it in my stomach, the same sickening pain as when one of the sluggers had kicked me on Sunday night. White room: white walls, white furry carpet, white canopied bed trimmed in white lace. Red room now: red on the sheets, red on the headboard and the canopy and the lace trim, red on the furry carpet. Spent shells on the carpet, too, four of them, ejected from an automatic weapon. Stereo record-changer in one corner playing the violin music. And the acrid smell of cordite strong in here, overpowering the faint musky scent of perfume.

  They were both naked, both spattered with blood-both dead, I thought at first. Dessault was lying half on and half off the bed, head down and arms outflung to the carpet, one bare foot hooked around a canopy post; he had been shot twice, once in the small of the back and once under the right shoulder blade. The two bullets that had entered Alicia Purcell’s body, one in the area of the sternum, the other through the upper curve of her right breast, had driven her back against the headboard. She was leaning sideways against it with her legs spread wide-a position made all the more obscene by the torn flesh and the ribbons of blood.

  Broken glass on the hardwood floor, broken china plates and cups and saucers, blue-and-white patterned stuff with some of the shards speckled with crimson. And Leonard Purcell crawling away, one hand clawing at the wood, the other crooked under him in a vain effort to stem the flow of bright arterial blood Dragging sounds, crunching sounds: trying to crawl away from death.

  Ending as it began for me, in a welter of blood, in a strange house with me looking at the end products of human corruption: wrong place at the wrong time. The same helplessness, the same futility. The same pity. The same pain.

  Why? I thought. Why this way?

  And I was pretty sure I knew.

  There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and the door to the adjoining bath was open, letting me see that it was empty. White drapes were only half drawn across a picture window in the back wall; beyond the glass were trees half-obscured by darkness and fog. I looked out at them until my stomach settled and I felt I could move again without being sick.

  Dessault was the closest to me, but I didn’t go to him. There was no way he could still be alive; the one bullet had shattered his spine. Whosoever toucheth her, I thought. I went around on the near side of the bed, still with that rubbery sensation in my legs, and took hold of Alicia Purcell’s wrist, felt for a pulse. Just a formality, an automatic gesture… but it wasn’t. She was alive. Faint pulse, weak and fluttery. Up close this way, I could see that blood was still leaking out of her wounds. She’d lost a lot of it in the few minutes since the shooting; if she lost much more she would be dead.

  There was nothing I could do for her, nothing I dared do for her; I was no damn good with first aid and if I tried to move her, to staunch the flow of blood, I was liable to do more harm than good. A door on that side of the room opened on a walk-in closet; I found a blanket inside, shook it out. The position she was in made it difficult to cover her. I did the best I could and then backed off, looking for a telephone.

  No ph
one in there. I went out and down the hall, down the stairs, hurrying in spite of the hurt in my side. No phone in the living room, either, where did they keep the goddamn telephones? Out of the living room, down the hall toward the rear… the kitchen. I turned in there, looking left and right, and on one wall was one of those antique wooden things, the kind with the two exposed bells and the fake crank. I went to it, caught up the bell-shaped receiver, heard the dial tone.

  Heard a voice say behind me, “Put it down. Don’t call anybody, I don’t want you to call anybody.”

  It was as if a door had been opened and the cold wind let in from outside: the words put a tremor on my neck, freckled my skin with goosebumps under its layer of sweat. I took the receiver away from my ear, slowly, and replaced it on the wall unit. Put my arms out away from my body and turned, slowly, to face her.

  She was standing just inside the kitchen doorway; she must have been somewhere at the back of the house, hiding, waiting. The gun in her hand was an automatic, what looked to be a. 38 Smith amp; Wesson wadcutter-not a big gun but big in her tiny hands. She was holding it in both of them, to keep it steady; the muzzle was about on a level with my chest. But it wasn’t the gun itself that frightened me. It was those vulpine eyes of hers. They were bright, glassy, on the wild side so that the cocked one seemed even more erratic. It was not just emotion that had made them that way. She was on something-coke, probably. And cocaine made a person’s behavior unpredictable, volatile if that person was worked up to begin with.