Zigzag (25 page)

It was not much of an idea, a product of weariness, frustration, and a compulsive need to confront Erskine, but I could not talk myself out of it. When the Atherton exit came up, I turned off and let the disembodied voice guide me through a series of curves and turns to the Erskine property.

No lights showed at the front of the house, but the gates at the foot of the drive were wide open. Funny. Whether he was home or not, why hadn't he bothered to close them?

I turned in between them for a better view. Amber-colored ground lanterns illuminated the driveway; more of the same glowed like stationary fireflies all across the grounds. I couldn't tell from here whether or not there were any lit windows at the sides or rear of the house. Except for the night-lights, the darkness was thick with restless shadows. Overhead, fast-moving clouds driven by high-altitude winds hid the stars and the sickle moon except for brief breaks in the leaden canopy.

Well?

Well, I'd come this far. Go on up and ring the bell and let's see what happens.

I drove through the gates and up the drive. Halfway along, where the shrubbery thinned out, I could see part of the lantern-lit path that led to the summerhouse, a darkened hulk against the screen of evergreens. A faint yellowish sheen lay over a portion of the side terrace: drapes open in the sunroom, one or more lights burning inside.

A light-colored Corvette drawn up on the white-pebble parking area confirmed that at least Erskine was here. I rolled up next to it, doused the headlamps. When I got out, I stepped over to the Corvette and laid a hand on its hood. Warm. Wherever he'd been tonight, he hadn't been home long.

I crossed slowly to the porch. The night's silence was broken only by wind-rattle in trees and shrubbery; there were no sounds that I could make out inside the house. If Vinson was here with him, they were somewhere at the rear—in bed together, like as not.

I put my finger on the bell, but I didn't push it. There was tension in me all of a sudden; the skin across my neck and shoulders had begun to pull and prickle. Another of those sixth-sense feelings of wrongness, sudden this time, setting off the silent danger alarm inside my head.

For some seconds I stood still, listening, looking around. Still quiet inside the house, nothing visibly or aurally changed out here. But the feeling remained strong just the same. Strong enough to prod me off the porch, over onto a lit path that led around on the terraced side.

I hadn't gone more than a few steps when the woman screamed.

The cry came from outside the house, toward the rear—a high-pitched shriek that shattered the stillness and brought me up short, raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Confusion of sounds then: garbled yells, scrapings and scufflings, a sharp metallic clatter as of a wrought-iron table or chair knocked over onto the terrace bricks. The woman screeched again, terrified words this time that carried distinctly on the wind.

“Peter, who … oh, God, this can't be happening!”

Another scraping noise, the pop of shattering glass.

The woman: “What're you doing? Why are you—? No!
No, don't—!
”

Running footfalls. And then the sudden crack of a gun, a large-caliber weapon that sent echoes hammering through the darkness.

I had taken a couple of steps toward the corner; the report twisted me around, sent me running back to the car. Only a damn fool rushes unarmed into an unknown, firearms-deadly situation. I dragged the car door open, leaned in to release the hidden compartment under the dash, yanked out the snub-nosed Colt Bodyguard I keep in there for emergencies, and ran back toward the far side of the house.

More sounds battered the night, a male voice now, yelling something I couldn't understand.

Near the corner I slowed, holding the .38 up next to my ear, drawing in close to the sweet-smelling shrubbery that grew there; charge out into the open and you're a target even on a dark night. Before I could get my head around for a clear look, the yelling morphed into a kind of panicked wail. Other cries followed it, diminishing. Man on the run, howling like a banshee.

I stepped out away from the shrubbery with the revolver leveled. A rent in the cloud cover opened just then, letting enough starlight and moonshine leak through to bathe the yard in faint luminescence. In the two or three beats before the tear closed, I had a glimpse of what seemed to be two figures stumbling up the steps into the summerhouse, one clinging to the other from behind. False impression, my old eyes playing tricks. Only one figure had fused into the black-dark inside—Erskine, still emitting that half-crazed wail.

The night was shadow haunted again as I ran in a crouch toward the side terrace. I did not see the woman until I was only a few feet from where she lay in a dip in the lawn beyond the bricks, facedown with both arms outflung.

I veered that way, dropped to one knee beside her—and my stomach churned even though I was braced for the worst. The slug from the shot I'd heard had opened up the back of her head just above the neck; spatters of blood and bone and brain matter matted her black hair. Melanie Vinson. I did not need to touch her to verify it.

Over in the summerhouse, the wailing stopped and Erskine's voice bellowed, “You can't force me this time, I won't let you! Go back where you came from, go to hell!” Then the gun banged loud again.

I ducked instinctively, but the round hadn't been directed my way. Almost immediately, there was another outburst from Erskine in the summerhouse darkness, rising above the noises made by the wind. “Not me, goddamn you, not me, not me!”

The cries were soaked in such visceral terror they drove me up onto my feet, sideways to the path that led over there. Erskine spewed something else, but the wind gusted just then and tore away the sense of it. The wildly flailing tree branches and running clouds created a gyrating dance of shadows, surreal, like images in a madman's dream.

The gun went off a third time.

I was looking straight at the summerhouse and I saw the muzzle flash, saw the shape of him as he went down. An instant later, I saw something else, or thought I did—a different kind of flare, so brief it was like a subliminal image of a comet's tail streaking across the night sky. Gone in an eyeblink, if it had ever been there in the first place.

I stepped farther away from the path, to keep out of the amber glow from the lanterns. But nothing else happened. Silence, now, inside the summerhouse. The only sounds anywhere were the whistles and moans of the wind and the rattling tree branches.

I kept on going, slow, getting the pencil flash out of my pocket with my left hand as I went. At the summerhouse steps I paused again to listen—still nothing to hear—and then climbed them carefully with the .38 extended.

Needless precaution. What was left of Peter Erskine lay on the floor next to one of the chaise lounges, his head as much a bloody mess as Melanie Vinson's, the weapon he'd used, a .357 Magnum, clutched in one hand. The pencil light showed something else, too: scratches on his neck and back, rips in his shirt in half a dozen places.

And no one else was there.

 

17

The official police verdict, based on what I'd witnessed that night and on the evidence corroborating my suspicions about Marian Erskine's fatal coronary, was murder-suicide. Of course.

That was my verdict, too. Of course.

Peter Erskine had had a psychotic break, brought on by factors that could only be guessed at: fear of punishment for the murder of his wife, uncontrollable rage against his co-conspirator, an unstable psychological makeup. He'd killed Melanie Vinson because she wanted more money, or had threatened him in some way, or for no rational reason at all—love and lust flaring into sudden hatred, sudden violence. Then he'd cracked up completely, run screaming to the summerhouse, and blown himself away on the second try.

He'd been the only one in there, all three bullets fired had come from his Magnum, and the only fingerprints found on the weapon were his. It was inconceivable that another person could have been on the property, chased him after he shot the woman, dodged the first bullet, taken the weapon away and used it on Erskine, then escaped without my seeing any sign of him. The figure that had seemed to be clinging to Erskine was simply a distortion of shadows created by the scudding clouds and the wind-tossed evergreens. The torn shirt and the scratches on his back and neck had been done by Melanie Vinson during the struggle I'd heard on the terrace. The first shot from inside the summerhouse had been aimed at himself, only he'd been in such a state he'd missed completely; that slug had been found lodged in one of the support posts. And the words I'd heard him shouting were nothing more than deranged babblings.

The other explanation that crawled into my head, the supernatural one, I dismissed immediately as absurd. And did not mention to anybody, not even Tamara and Jake Runyon. Antanas Vok's spirit had returned after all to exact vengeance by means of assault and demonic possession? Erskine's blatant, contemptuous mockery of the powers of darkness had provoked sufficient wrath to permit it to happen? No.
Hell,
no. The only demons at work that night were the ones that existed inside Peter Erskine's psyche.

Never mind that a ruthless control freak who had put together a murder plan requiring cold, steel-nerved calculation is about as unlikely a candidate for mental breakdown and willful self-destruction as there is. Never mind that he believed he'd gotten away with it, and therefore had fifteen million reasons to maintain his emotional balance and to go on living. Never mind that the bullet in the support post had been at belt level, opposite where he'd been standing, as if he had fired not at himself but at someone or something in front of him. Never mind that neither skin nor blood had been found under Melanie Vinson's fingernails. And never mind the subliminal flare I thought I'd seen just after the second shot in the summerhouse; it was either my imagination or a retinal anomaly, an afterimage of the gun flash. There are always inconsistencies, unanswerable questions in cases like this. People go off the deep end all the time, for no clear-cut reasons. I'd seen it happen before, on more than one occasion.

Murder-suicide, period.

Because I can't, I won't, believe the dead can harm the living in any way for any purpose.

Because there is no such thing as a revenant.

 

“NAMELESS DETECTIVE” MYSTERIES BY
BILL PRONZINI

Zigzag
(collection)

Vixen

Strangers

Nemesis

Hellbox

Camouflage

Betrayers

Schemers

Fever

Savages

Mourners

Nightcrawlers

Scenarios
(collection)

Spook

Bleeders

Crazybone

Boobytrap

Illusions

Sentinels

Spadework
(collection)

Hardcase

Demons

Epitaphs

Quarry

Breakdown

Jackpot

Shackles

Deadfall

Bones

Double
(with Marcia Muller)

Nightshades

Quicksilver

Case File
(collection)

Bindlestiff

Dragonfire

Scattershot

Hoodwink

Labyrinth

Twospot
(with Collin Wilcox)

Blowback

Undercurrent

The Vanished

The Snatch

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bill Pronzini
has been nominated for, or won, every prize offered to crime-fiction writers, including the 2008 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. It is no wonder, then, that the
Detroit Free Press
wrote of him: “It's always nice to see masters at work. Pronzini's clear style seamlessly weaves [story lines] together, turning them into a quick, compelling read.” He lives and writes in California with his wife, the crime novelist Marcia Muller. You can sign up for email updates
here
.

 

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