Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini

  I couldn’t tell what it had been. She’d tossed in the last piece as I approached and the fire had already curled it into black char. She knelt there staring at the flames as if mesmerized by them. She didn’t realize I was there until I stepped onto the bricks, half-shouted her name to make myself heard above that damn music. Her body jerked, her head swiveled my way. The alcohol had slackened the muscles in her round face, gave it the look of bread dough stained with red dye. Her eyes were like holes poked in the dough. What hid in them was pain—the base emotional kind—and a dull terror.

  “Mrs. Chehalis? What’s going on here?”

  “Who’re you? Go ’way, leave me alone. . . .”

  “I’m the man who called you earlier, the detective.”

  I had to say it again, and add my name, before it penetrated the gin fog. Her face screwed up like a child’s; she said, “Oh, God,” and began to cry.

  I got down on one knee, took her shoulders and shook her, gently and then not so gently, until the sobbing cut off and the eyes homed in on me again. “What happened, Mrs. Chehalis?”

  “... Happened?”

  “To make you drink so much. What were you burning?”

  “Burning?”

  “The fire there. What did you burn?”

  “Oh God,” she said again, and for a moment I thought she would be sick. Another word slid out of her like a moan: “Scrapbook.”

  “You burned a scrapbook?”

  “Found it . . . garage . . . knew he had something . . .”

  “What kind of scrapbook?”

  “Stephen . . . no, couldn’t be ...”

  “Couldn’t be what?”

  “No . . . no.”

  “Why did you burn the scrapbook?”

  “Had to, it . . . what if somebody else . . . oh God . . .”

  “What was in it? What made you burn it?”

  Liquid noise in her throat, and then she did get sick. I managed to twist backward in time to avoid the sudden eruption, then stood up while she finished. The flames were dying down now inside the incinerator; the glowing ashes gave off a burnt-paper, burnt-cardboard smell. I pushed the door shut, flipped down the lever that locked it.

  Sally Chehalis was crying again, mixing tears with the vomit stains around her mouth. In different circumstances I would have felt disgust; I do not deal well with puking drunks. As it was, her pain was what I responded to—the horror of whatever she’d seen in that scrapbook, what it must have meant to her. I wished to Christ she hadn’t destroyed it, but I understood why she had.

  I took hold of her under both arms, lifted her upright. She didn’t resist; she was a deadweight against me, so I had to hold her up with one arm. A hundred-and-forty-pound deadweight. It was a struggle getting her to the back door, then inside through a kitchen and a dining room and finally into the front parlor.

  I eased her down on a floral-patterned sofa. She mumbled something but didn’t move or try to get up. Her eyes stayed open and blank for about five seconds; then they closed and almost instantly her body relaxed. Out cold. Wake her up, try to question her some more? As drunk as she was, I wouldn’t get any more out of her than I had outside. I turned her on her side—if she vomited again that would prevent her from suffocating on it—and then covered her with an afghan that was draped over one of the chairs.

  Upstreet the rap music cut off abruptly, stayed off. Small mercies. In the new silence Sally Chehalis began to make snoring sounds. Or maybe she’d been making them all along and the percussion had drowned them out.

  I left her and took a quick turn through the house. Neat, nondescript except for dried-flower arrangements that looked homemade in every room, and empty of anything that held my attention. I backtracked through the kitchen, outside again into shadows that were long and chilly now. Nightfall wasn’t far off.

  On the way to the garage, I changed my mind and detoured to the incinerator. Prowled over the bricks and grass and wood chips that surrounded it. Nothing. I expanded my search area to the yew trees that lined the rear fence. And at the base of one of them—

  It was a yellowing piece of newsprint about an inch long, its edges scissor-cut but torn down across the middle in a long diagonal. I squinted at it up close. The upper portion of a news story, with a partial headline—WALNUT GROVE WOMAN BR—and a couple of numbers written above it in ink. But my eyes aren’t what they used to be, and in the dusky light I couldn’t quite read the small print that made up the body of the story. I put the scrap in my pocket, headed again to the garage.

  It had a rear door that had been left standing open. I went in, felt around on the wall until I located a light switch. The enclosure was large enough to hold two cars, but there was room for only one. Boxes, tools, a lawn mower, an old refrigerator, rolled-up rugs, cans of paint, bulging plastic bags, a hundred other items crowded the left half. At this end was a workbench with tall cabinets strung along the wall above it. The door to one of the cabinets was open, and below it, on the floor at the base of the bench, were the remnants of two broken jars and a scatter of wood screws and finishing nails.

  Careful of the glass shards, I moved to where I could see into the cabinet. The hasp that had been screwed to its frame had an open padlock hooked through it; a key protruded from the lock. None of the other cabinets had locks of any kind. Inside this one were three shelves, the lower two containing an assortment of small power tools. On the top shelf was a shoe box and an empty space about the right size for a scrapbook.

  I lifted the shoe box down, slid off the rubber bands that secured the lid. Photographs. Dozens of them, most in color, and all pornographic. Not your garden-variety dirty pictures; these made my gorge rise, put a crawly feeling on my neck. S&M stuff of the most vicious sort, full of whips and cat-o’-nine-tails and autoerotic torture devices and women with their eyes bulging and their mouths open wide in frozen screams. The kind that de Sade and Gilles de Rais would have been proud to own.

  I dropped them back into the box, rebanded the lid, replaced the box in the cabinet, and scrubbed my hands along the sides of my pants. They still felt unclean.

  Chehalis was more than just violent; his hatred for women had warped into sexual perversion. Had his wife known that much about him? Probably not. Hadn’t been aware of the photographs—and had overlooked the shoe box this afternoon, or she’d have burned its contents too. But she’d suspected he kept something strange and unpleasant in that locked cabinet; and she’d known or guessed where he kept the padlock key. Until today she’d either respected his privacy, or more likely been afraid to pry for fear of what she’d find. My phone call had driven her to it. And when she’d examined that scrapbook, it had so devastated her that she’d left the cabinet wide open, the key in the padlock, and knocked two jars to the floor in her rush to get out of here and inside to the gin.

  Only one kind of scrapbook could do what Chehalis’s had done to her. Only one kind that would be kept by a violent sex offender who collected sadistic pornography. Only one kind . . .

  I left things as I’d found them, but on my way out I shut the garage door. It was dark now and a sharp wind had kicked up; I walked fast to my car. Inside I put on the dome light and tried again to read the newspaper fragment. Even that light wasn’t strong enough. I needed to have my eyes checked, maybe get myself a pair of reading glasses. A wonder I’d lasted this long without them. I unclipped the flashlight from under the dash, turned its beam on the clipping.

  News story. From the top corner of a page in the Sacramento Bee, because the running head was present. The inked numbers appeared to be a date: 7/10. No year. The rest of the fragment read:

  WALNUT GROVE WOMAN BR

  A 27-year-old woman wa

  beaten, and raped Tuesday nigh

  of her Walnut Grove home, while h

  lay crying a few feet away. Po

  neither confirm nor deny that

  described by his victim as fa

  middle-aged, and wearing a sk

  same man
suspected of th

  assaults in the Sacram

  two years.

  The woman, whose husb

  had been out to dinner

  up her son at his baby-sit

  the attack. She had jus

  and set down a carrier

  infant when the assai

  unlocked door. Wa

  gator Robert Arl

  chose her at r

  possibly fro

  with her fr

  The v

  Memoria

  I read it over twice with my scalp crawling again. Words and phrases kept jumping out at me: beaten and raped, middle-aged, same man suspected.

  Only one kind of scrapbook. Souvenirs of violence and rape: newspaper accounts and God only knew what else. God and now Sally Chehalis.

  Stephen Chehalis was raping women again, just as he had when he was young. Maybe he’d never stopped—that was a far more chilling possibility.

  What if he’d been committing brutal rapes without getting caught for twenty years or more?

  I SAT THERE TRYING to make up my mind what to do.

  Hunch and guesswork—no proof. Without hard evidence, I couldn’t go to the police; as it was, I didn’t even have enough proof to satisfy myself beyond any reasonable doubt that I was right. If Sally Chehalis hadn’t burned that scrapbook . . . but she had. The clipping fragment meant nothing by itself, and neither did the shoe box full of photos. Lots of men keep dirty pictures, some depicting sexual acts more perverted than the S&M combos Chehalis favored.

  Sally Chehalis was the key here. How would she feel when she sobered up? Victimized herself, sickened and full of enough hate and spite to want him punished? Or too afraid—of him, of the stigma and shame—to turn him in and testify against him? No way of predicting: I barely knew the woman. But the fact that she’d burned the scrapbook argued in favor of the second choice.

  I considered going back inside, feeding her coffee, walking her around until she was coherent enough to answer questions. But I discarded the notion. She’d be sick and confused, maybe uncooperative, maybe resentful enough to turn on me. Technically I had no right to invade her home; she would be within her rights to have me arrested. I needed more ammunition before I could openly confront her with an accusation as monstrous as the one I was building against her husband.

  Let her sleep it off tonight. Call her tomorrow first thing, get an idea of her intentions. And if she was going to wallow in denial, effectively cover up for him, then find out what I could on my own that might change her mind.

  One thing was certain. If Stephen Chehalis was as dirty as I suspected, even half as dirty, I would bring him down.

  No matter what or how long it took, I would bring him down hard.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “WHAT SCRAPBOOK?” SHE SAID. “I don’t know anything about any scrapbook.”

  “That isn’t what you told me last night, Mrs. Chehalis.”

  “You must have misunderstood. I was . . . I drank too much and I didn’t know what I was saying and you misunderstood.”

  “What did you burn in the incinerator?”

  “Some old papers, that’s all. Old papers.”

  “Why did you get drunk?”

  “I don’t know, I ... it’s your fault. Calling me, bothering me, trying to make me believe . . . Why don’t you just leave me alone?”

  The hell I will, I thought.

  “I’m sick,” she said. No lie in that: she sounded hoarse, shaky, pain-racked. But sober this morning, at least for the time being. “Can’t you have a little compassion—”

  “Can’t you?”

  “What does that . . . what are you trying to say?”

  “I know what was in that scrapbook.”

  “You don’t . . . you don’t know anything.”

  “We both know. What was in it and what it means.”

  “There wasn’t any scrapbook. How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “He has to be stopped. We both know that too.”

  “No . . .”

  “You have to help me stop him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’ll have to admit it sooner or later. You can’t keep his secret, Mrs. Chehalis. Not a secret like this.”

  “He isn’t that kind of man!” she said with sudden vehemence. “He’s my husband—I’ve shared his bed and his life for seventeen years! I know him, I know him, he couldn’t!”

  “He could and he has and he will again.”

  “No!” And she hung up on me.

  THE SAN FRANCISCO LIBRARY’S main branch at Civic Center has complete microfilm files of all of California’s major daily newspapers. I was down there waiting when the staff opened for business. Judging from the look and feel of the clipping fragment I’d found, its age was between five and ten years old. So I started with the July 10, 1984 issue of the Sacramento Bee and scanned each page of the news sections. Not that year. And not ’85, ’86, or ’87. But on page three of the main news section for 7/10/88—

  WALNUT GROVE WOMAN BRUTALLY ATTACKED

  A 27-year old woman was brutally choked,

  beaten, and raped Tuesday night in the kitchen

  of her Walnut Grove home, while her infant son

  lay crying a few feet away. Police would

  neither confirm nor deny that the attacker,

  described by his victim as fat, probably

  middle-aged, and wearing a ski mask, is the

  same man suspected of three other vicious

  assaults in the Sacramento area over the past two years.

  CHOKED, BEATEN, AND RAPED. Jody Everson had been choked too: those big hands of Chehalis’s. And he was overweight and he had qualified as middle-aged six years ago.

  The woman, whose husband works nights,

  had been out to dinner with friends and picked

  up her son at his baby-sitter’s shortly before

  the attack. She had just entered the house

  and set down a carrier seat containing the

  infant when the assailant burst through the

  unlocked door. Walnut Grove police investigator

  Robert Arliss surmised that the man

  chose her at random and followed her home,

  possibly from the restaurant where she’d eaten

  with her friends.

  The victim was taken to Walnut Grove

  Memorial Hospital, where she was treated for

  severe throat lacerations, a broken jaw, and

  other injuries. Her condition is listed as

  serious but stable.

  Each of the women in the three previous

  cases was assaulted in similar violent fashion

  by a ski-masked man thought to be in his

  forties. One, a Carmichael attorney, described

  her attacker as being overweight. Another, a

  pregnant Sacramento nurse who lost her

  baby as a result of an attack in a medical clinic

  parking lot on January 15, stated that her assailant

  was a big man with large hands. None of the

  three was violated inside her own home, which is

  one reason authorities in Walnut Grove, Carmichael,

  and Sacramento are reluctant to attribute Tuesday

  night’s incident to the same individual.

  “If we do have a serial rapist on our hands,”

  Sergeant Arliss said, “he’s extremely dangerous.

  I advise any woman out alone at night to be extra

  cautious, even when entering her own home.

  EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. And not just a brutal rapist: a murderer too. Of an unborn child at the very least.

  THE REST OF THE MORNING I spent at the office, working the phone.

  My first call, after I’d consulted a couple of the California city and county telephone directories I keep on hand, was to the Mountain Valley Convalescent Hospital in Susanville. A woman in the administrator’s
office told me that a Mr. Kent was in charge of purchasing medical supplies, that they were bought from an outfit in San Francisco, and that the hospital had never had any dealings with the Med-Equip company in San Jose. Then I called Med-Equip and spoke to a Ms. Holloway in sales. I said I was Mr. Kent, with the Mountain Valley Convalescent Hospital in Susanville, that I was interested in speaking in person with a representative of their line of sick-room supplies, and that a friend in Sacramento had mentioned having cordial relations with Stephen Chehalis. Did Mr. Chehalis’s territory include Susanville?

  Ms. Holloway said yes, Mr. Chehalis covered Susanville and would be glad to see me as soon as his schedule permitted. She would have him contact me when he returned from his current trip. I said that wasn’t necessary, a few days before he expected to be in Susanville would be soon enough. I gave her Mountain Valley’s address and phone number, then asked casually, “Mr. Chehalis has accounts all over the northern part of the state, is that right?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ms. Holloway said. “Chico, Redding, Eureka, as well as the Sacramento area.”

  “Does he travel in Oregon too?”

  “As far as Portland.”

  “Really? Medford, Eugene, Salem, all those places?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He must be a very good sales rep.”

  “He certainly is. One of our best.”

  “How long has he been covering such a wide territory?”

  “Oh, a long time. More than ten years now.”

  I cut it off there, to avoid arousing her suspicions. My next call went to the Chronicle for Joe DeFalco, but he wasn’t in and wasn’t expected until after lunch. I left a message for him to contact me as soon as he came in.

  Harry Fletcher at the DMV provided a full rundown on Chehalis’s driving record—three moving violations in the early seventies, not so much as a parking ticket since—and the name of his and his wife’s insurance carrier. The carrier was one of the large firms and I had a contact there; he told me the name of the Chehalises’ medical insurer. He also told me that his company carried a small husband-and-wife life insurance policy on them, and that Sally Chehalis had a sister, Alice Goldman, who was listed as alternate beneficiary. I made a note of the Goldman name and address. I didn’t know anybody at the health-care outfit, but that wouldn’t prevent me from getting at the Chehalis claims file. Take a little maneuvering, was all. The claims file would tell me if Stephen Chehalis had ever had an injury or disease claim that might possibly be related to an act of violent assault.