999 (45 page)

Anyone with any common sense was safe inside his own home as soon as it got dark. The only people out and about at this hour were dangerous people who deserved to die if they were going to bother decent people, like Martin, who wanted nothing but to be left alone.

He’d shoot if he had to.

He hadn’t heard the news lately, but he was sure there must have been numerous deaths—murders and accidental deaths—since the celebrations began. One more death in a city this size wasn’t even going to be noticed. Not when the police had so many other things to take care of.

Still, Martin didn’t dare to call out, much less go to the door.

Instead, he walked to the wall opposite the front door and, leaning back against the closed closet door—one of the few remaining inside the house—slid slowly down into a sitting position on the floor with his shotgun poised and aimed at the front door.

The knocking continued unabated, the blows coming more rapidly now, the heavy thumping booming louder and louder. Martin was convinced that, before long, the door would be smashed to splinters. In spite of the cold night, thin trickles of sweat ran down his face. His eyes felt like they were bugging from their sockets as he watched … and waited … wishing that the knocking would stop and the person would go away and leave him alone.

But that didn’t happen, and Martin couldn’t stop wondering who it might be. He kept tossing possible scenarios over in his mind until he thought of something that made his pulse skip a beat. He felt suddenly light-headed with anxiety.

What if it was his father, come home after all these years?

Could that be possible?

Martin had lived his whole life in this house with his mother, so if, by some extraordinary circumstance, his father was still alive, he would naturally come back here first, if only to see if his family still lived here.

Martin’s forefinger brushed lightly against the trigger of the shotgun. He grit his teeth so hard he could hear low grinding noises deep inside his head. His vision pulsed and swirled in front of him, creating a vortex of darkness spinning within deeper darkness.

The pounding on the door was so loud now that it seemed to be as much inside his head as outside. Blow after blow rained down against the wood, and each blow resonated inside Martin’s skull until he was trembling like a man wracked with fever.

Go away!
he thought but didn’t dare say out loud.

Go away!

Leave me alone!

And still the knocking continued, keeping time with the painful beating of his heart, which thundered in his ears so hard it made his neck ache.

Please … For the love of God … Just go away!

But the knocking didn’t let up. It grew louder and louder until—finally—Martin realized that he was going to have to go to the door and confront whomever it was.

His body was rigid and throbbing with pain as he rose slowly to his feet. He maintained such a tight grip on his shotgun that, for a moment or two, his fingers were paralyzed, unable to move.

Martin told himself to stay in control, that he had to deal with this now or it would only get worse. He would be in serious trouble if he opened the door and the person—whoever was out there—saw even a hint of fear or hesitation on his part.

His feet dragged heavily on the wooden floor, making loud rasping sounds, but not loud enough to drown out the incessant hammering on the door.

Martin licked his lips and took a shuddering breath that made his chest feel like it was constricted by thick iron bands. The sour pressure in his stomach grew painfully intense, and he had to concentrate to make his arms move as he raised the shotgun and pointed it at the door.

Go away! Now! Before you regret it
, Martin wanted to call out, but horrible images of his dead mother and the father he had never known filled his mind.

Could it be both of them out there on the stoop?

He felt curiously weighed down as he moved toward the door. It was like being trapped in a dream. No matter how many steps he took, the front door seemed to withdraw from him, getting farther away rather than closer.

Martin shook his head and slapped himself on the cheek, trying to convince himself that he was awake. This was real. It was really happening.

And all the while, the heavy pounding on the door continued without letting up.

Watching like a dissociated observer, Martin raised his hand and reached out for the door lock. The other hand held the shotgun at chest level, his forefinger on the trigger and already starting to squeeze.

A prickling wave of pain rolled up his arm to his shoulder as he slowly withdrew the metal clasp of the chain lock and let it drop. It made a rough, grating noise as it swung back and forth like a pendulum against the door, bouncing every time the knocking from the other side vibrated the door.

Holding his breath so long it hurt, Martin grasped the dead bolt and turned it slowly to the right. Every nerve in his body was sizzling like overloaded wires as he waited for the lock to click open.

He was swept up in a flood of vertigo and was afraid that he would pass out before he could get the door open and confront whomever was out there on his doorstep. They must have heard him undo the lock, he thought, so they would have plenty of time to run away before he got the door open.

Martin jumped when the lock clicked, sounding as sharp as the snap of a whip. He reached quickly for the doorknob, gave it a savage twist, and pulled back to throw the door open.

But the doorknob slipped from his hand as if it were greased.

Momentarily confused, Martin stood back. He was breathing so heavily his throat made a dull roaring sound. Sweat tickled his ribs as it ran down the inside of his shirt. The sound of the knocking continued, so loud now it made his vision jump in time with it.

The gun felt suddenly heavy in his hand, and he placed it on the floor, leaning it against the wall within easy reach. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants legs before taking hold of the doorknob again and giving it another violent turn.

He heard the cylinder mechanism click. This time when he pulled back, he kept his grip, but—still—the door wouldn’t open.

Martin muttered a curse under his breath, but he could barely hear his own voice above the constant pounding on the door. He could feel the deep vibration in the palm of his hand, like a wasp sting, but he ignored it as he twisted the doorknob back and forth several times, all the while pulling back with all his strength.

Still, the door wouldn’t open.

It wouldn’t even budge.

This isn’t possible
, Martin thought, sure that whoever was out there still knocking was holding the door shut with the other hand so he couldn’t open it.

Panting heavily, Martin moved to the left. Bending low, he peered out the side window. The night was dense and black except for the distant glow of fire on the horizon. As far as he could see, there was no one out there.

The doorstep was empty.

A sudden gust of wind blew a flurry of snow from the edge of the porch roof. The ice crystals glittered like diamond dust in the flickering orange glow before drifting down into the darkness. For just an instant, Martin imagined that the shower of snow had assumed a vague human form. He cleared his throat, preparing to call out, but his voice was locked up inside his chest.

The knocking continued without stopping.

Martin jumped and let out a startled yelp when he saw an alley cat leap from the trash cans to the top of the fence that bordered his property. But even if the sound had stopped, he knew that the cat couldn’t have been the one doing it.

Shivering wildly, he moved back to the door. After making sure the dead bolt and chain lock were unlocked, he grasped the doorknob again with both hands. The muscles in his wrists and forearms knotted like twisted wire as shivering vibrations ran up his arms to his shoulders and neck.

A pathetic whimper escaped Martin as he ratcheted the doorknob quickly back and forth. The door couldn’t have been shut tighter if it had been nailed shut. Bracing one foot against the doorjamb, he leaned back and pulled with all his strength, but the door still wouldn’t budge.

Who’s out there?
Martin wanted to call out.
Why are you doing this?
But his throat felt flayed and raw.

His heart was thumping heavily in his ears as the knocking grew steadily louder, thundering through the dark house, keeping time with his hammering pulse.

Every muscle in Martin’s body tensed as he leaned back as far as he could, struggling to open the door. He sucked in shallow gulps of air that felt like he was sipping fire. Finally, in a high, broken voice, he forced out a whisper.

“Mother?”

The instant those words left his mouth, the knocking ceased. Leaden silence merged with the darkness and filled the air.

The silence stretched.

Then, from every door still in the house, from the hall closet, the basement, the kitchen pantry, came knocking.

Martin screamed. Waves of rising panic swept through him. He raised his arm above his head and brought it down hard against the front door.

“Let me out!”

Tears stung his eyes as he brought his fist down repeatedly against the door, knocking so hard that it wasn’t long before his hands were bruised and bloodied.

“Let … me … out!” he said between wrenching sobs. “Let me … out!”

He collapsed forward, pressing his forehead against the cold, unyielding wood as he continued to pound with both fists. His body was wrung out, burning with exhaustion. Tears gushed from his eyes.

The only sound that filled the house now was the weakening blows he made against the door.

He didn’t even hear himself ask as he continued to knock, “Who’s … there … ?”

David Morrell

RIO GRANDE GOTHIC

Yes, David Morrell wrote
First Blood
and created the famous character John Rambo. Yes, he’s the best-selling author of such novels as
Brotherhood of the Rose
and
Double Image.
He’s also a heck of a nice fellow, a gentleman in person, and probably pats dogs on the head when he passes them in the street. He also writes stories as good as his novels, such as the one you’re about to read
.

The protagonist of “Rio Grande Gothic” is a classic Morrell hero, a man forced by circumstances to change roles from the hunter to the hunted. Like much of Morrell’s best work, the pace is fast and the action nearly continuous
.

And this time, it’s also creepy as hell
.

W
hen Romero finally noticed the shoes on the road, he realized that he had actually been seeing them for several days. Driving into town along Old Pecos Trail, passing the adobe-walled Santa Fe Woman’s Club on the left, approaching the pueblo-style Baptist church on the right, he reached the crest of the hill, saw the jogging shoes on the yellow median line, and steered his police car onto the dirt shoulder of the road.

Frowning, he got out and hitched his thumbs onto his heavy gun belt, oblivious to the roar of passing traffic, focusing on the jogging shoes. They were laced together, a Nike label on the back. One was on its side, showing how worn its tread was. But they hadn’t been in the middle of the road yesterday, Romero thought. No, yesterday, it had been a pair of leather sandals. He remembered having been vaguely aware of them. And the day before yesterday? Had it been a pair of women’s high heels? His recollection wasn’t clear, but there had been
some
kind of shoes—of that he was certain. What the … ?

After waiting for a break in traffic, Romero crossed to the median and stared down at the jogging shoes as if straining to decipher a riddle. A pickup truck crested the hill too fast to see him and slow down, the wind it created ruffling his blue uniform. He barely paid attention, preoccupied by the shoes. But when a second truck sped over the hill, he realized that he had better get off the road. He withdrew his nightstick from his gun belt, thrust it under the tied laces, and lifted. Feeling the weight of the shoes dangling from the nightstick, he waited for a minivan to speed past, then returned to his police car, unlocked its trunk, and dropped the shoes into it. Probably that was what had happened to the other shoes, he decided. A sanitation truck or someone working for the city must have stopped and cleared what looked like garbage. This was the middle of May. The tourist season would soon be in full swing. It wasn’t good to have visitors seeing junk on the road. I’ll toss these shoes in the trash when I get back to the station, he decided.

The next pickup that rocketed over the hill was doing at least fifty. Romero scrambled into his cruiser, flicked on his siren, and stopped the truck just after it ran a red light at Cordova.

He was forty-two. He had been a Santa Fe policeman for fifteen years, but the thirty thousand dollars he earned each year wasn’t enough for him to afford a house in Santa Fe’s high-priced real estate market, so he lived in the neighboring town of Pecos, twenty miles northeast, where his parents and grandparents had lived before him. Indeed, he lived in the same house that his parents had owned before a drunk driver, speeding the wrong way on the Interstate, had hit their car head-on and killed them. The modest structure had once been in a quiet neighborhood, but six months earlier a supermarket had been built a block away, the resultant traffic noise and congestion blighting the area. Romero had married when he was twenty. His wife worked for an Allstate Insurance agent in Pecos. Their twenty-two-year-old son lived at home and wasn’t employed. Each morning, Romero argued with him about looking for work. That was followed by a different argument in which Romero’s wife complained that he was being too hard on the boy. Typically, he and his wife left the house not speaking to each other. Once trim and athletic, the star of his high school football team, Romero was puffy in his face and stomach from too much takeout food and too much time spent behind a steering wheel. This morning, he had noticed that his sideburns were turning gray.

*  *  *

By the time he finished with the speeding pickup truck, a house burglary he was sent to investigate, and a purse snatcher he managed to catch, Romero had forgotten about the shoes. A fight between two feuding neighbors who happened to cross paths with each other in a restaurant parking lot further distracted him. He completed his paperwork at the police station, attended an after-shift debriefing, and didn’t need much convincing to go out for a beer with a fellow officer rather than muster the resolve to make the twenty-mile drive to the tensions of his home. He got in at ten, long after his wife and son had eaten. His son was out with friends. His wife was in bed. He ate leftover fajitas while watching a rerun of a situation comedy that hadn’t been funny the first time.

The next morning, as he crested the hill by the Baptist church, he came to attention at the sight of a pair of loafers scattered along the median. After steering sharply onto the shoulder, he opened the door and held up his hands for traffic to stop while he went over, picked up the loafers, returned to the cruiser, and set them in the trunk beside the jogging shoes.

“Shoes?” his sergeant asked back at the station. “What are you talking about?”

“Over on Old Pecos Trail. Every morning, there’s a pair of shoes,” Romero said.

“They must have fallen off a garbage truck.”

“Every morning? And only shoes, nothing else? Besides, the ones I found this morning were almost new.”

“Maybe somebody was moving and they fell off the back of a pickup truck.”

“Every morning?” Romero repeated. “These were Cole Hahns. Expensive loafers like that don’t get thrown on top of a load of stuff in a pickup truck.”

“What difference does it make? It’s only shoes. Maybe somebody’s kidding around.”

“Sure,” Romero said. “Somebody’s kidding around.”

“A practical joke,” the sergeant said. “So people will wonder why the shoes are on the road. Hey,
you
wondered. The joke’s working.”

“Yeah,” Romero said. “A practical joke.”

*  *  *

The next morning, it was a battered pair of Timberland work boots. As Romero crested the hill by the Baptist church, he wasn’t surprised to see them. In fact, the only thing he had been uncertain about was what type of footwear they would be.

If this is a practical joke, it’s certainly working, he thought. Whoever’s doing it is awfully persistent. Who …

The problem nagged at him all day. Between investigating a hit-and-run on St. Francis Drive and a break-in at an art gallery on Canyon Road, he returned to the crest of the hill on Old Pecos Trail several times, making sure that other shoes hadn’t appeared. For all he knew, the joker was dumping the shoes during the daytime. If so, the plan Romero was thinking about would be worthless. But after the eighth time he returned and still didn’t see more shoes, he told himself he had a chance.

The plan had the merit of simplicity. All it required was determination, and of that he had plenty. Besides, it would be a good reason to postpone going home. So after getting a Quarter Pounder and fries, a Coke and two large containers of coffee from McDonald’s, he headed toward Old Pecos Trail as dusk thickened. He used his private car, a five-year-old, dark blue Jeep Cherokee—no sense in being conspicuous. He considered establishing his stakeout in the Baptist church’s parking lot. That would give him a great view of Old Pecos Trail. But at night, with his car the only one in the lot, he’d be conspicuous. Across from the church, though, East Lupita Road intersected with Old Pecos Trail. It was a quiet residential area, and if he parked there, he couldn’t be seen by anyone driving along Old Pecos. In contrast, he himself would have a good view of passing traffic.

It can work, he thought. There were streetlights on Old Pecos Trail but not on East Lupita. Sitting in darkness, munching on his Quarter Pounder and fries, using the caffeine in the Coke and the two coffees to keep himself alert, he concentrated on the illuminated crest of the hill. For a while, the headlights of passing cars were frequent and distracting. After each vehicle passed, he stared toward the area of the road that interested him, but no sooner did he focus on that spot than more headlights sped past, and he had to stare harder to see if anything had been dropped. He had his right hand ready to turn the ignition key and yank the gearshift into forward, his right foot primed to stomp the accelerator. To relax, he turned on the radio for fifteen-minute stretches, careful that he didn’t weaken the battery. Then traffic became sporadic, making it easy to watch the road. But after an eleven o’clock news report in which the main item was about a fire in a store at the De Vargas mall, he realized the flaw in his plan. All that caffeine. The tension of straining to watch the road.

He had to go to the bathroom.

But I went when I picked up the food.

That was then. Those were two large coffees you drank.

Hey, I had to keep awake.

He squirmed. He tensed his abdominal muscles. He would have relieved himself into one of the beverage containers, but he had crumbled all three of them when he stuffed them into the bag that the Quarter Pounder and fries came in. His bladder ached. Headlights passed. No shoes were dropped. He pressed his thighs together. More headlights. No shoes. He turned his ignition key, switched on his headlights, and hurried toward the nearest public rest room, which was on St. Michael’s Drive at an all-night gas station because at eleven-thirty most restaurants and takeout places were closed.

When he got back, two cowboy boots were on the road.

“It’s almost one in the morning. Why are you coming home so late?”

Romero told his wife about the shoes.

“Shoes? Are you crazy?”

“Haven’t you ever been curious about something?”

“Yeah, right now I’m curious why you think I’m stupid enough to believe you’re coming home so late because of some old shoes you found on the road. Have you got a girlfriend, is that it?”

“You don’t look so good,” his sergeant said.

Romero shrugged despondently.

“You been out all night, partying?” the sergeant joked.

“Don’t I wish.”

The sergeant became serious. “What is it? More trouble at home?”

Romero almost told him the whole story, but remembering the sergeant’s indifference when he’d earlier been told about the shoes, Romero knew he wouldn’t get much sympathy. Maybe the opposite. “Yeah, more trouble at home.”

After all, what he’d done last night was, he had to admit, a little strange. Using his free time to sit in a car for three hours, waiting for … If a practical joker wanted to keep tossing shoes on the road, so what? Let the guy waste his time. Why waste my own time trying to catch him? There were too many real crimes to be investigated. What am I going to charge the guy with? Littering?

Throughout his shift, Romero made a determined effort not to go near Old Pecos Trail. A couple of times during a busy day of interviewing witnesses about an assault, a break-in, another purse snatching, and a near-fatal car accident on Paseo de Peralta, he was close enough to have swung past Old Pecos Trail on his way from one incident to another, but he deliberately chose an alternate route. Time to change patterns, he told himself. Time to concentrate on what’s important.

At the end of his shift, his lack of sleep the previous night caught up to him. He left work exhausted. Hoping for a quiet evening at home, he followed congested traffic through the dust of the eternal construction project on Cerrillos Road, reached Interstate 25, and headed north. Sunset on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains tinted them the blood color for which the early Spanish colonists had named them. In a half hour, I’ll have my feet up and be drinking a beer, he thought. He passed the exit to St. Francis Drive. A sign told him that the next exit, the one for Old Pecos Trail, was two miles ahead. He blocked it from his mind, continued to admire the sunset, imagined the beer he was going to drink, and turned on the radio. A weather report told him that the high for the day had been seventy-five, typical for mid-May, but that a cold front was coming in and that the night temperature could drop as much as forty degrees, with a threat of frost in low-lying areas. The announcer suggested covering any recently purchased tender plants. The average frost-free day was May 15, but …