Hellbox (Nameless Detective) (27 page)

But I registered all of that only peripherally. The small, still figure encased in duct tape, lying supine on the floor surrounded by all that death, was all I really saw or needed to see.

I started to lunge inside, an animal noise rumbling in my throat. Runyon stopped me with an iron-fingered grip. “Pull the detonators first, all of them.” I struggled, thinking
Kerry, Kerry!
He hung onto me, saying again, “Detonators, the detonators,” and finally the sense of the words got through. I bobbed my head, pulled free, reached up to jerk the nearest metal cap out of the explosive.

We tore all of them loose, stepping carefully around Kerry, and threw them down; they were useless by themselves. Then I went to one knee beside her. That crazy son of a bitch Balfour had mummy-wrapped her from ankles to shoulders, with her hands and arms flat against her sides so she couldn’t move. Strips of duct tape covered her eyes and mouth; what I could see of her face was ghostly pale. I touched the side of her neck … cold, so cold … and probed for an artery, a pulse that I couldn’t feel.

Oh, please God, no!

Runyon had the light on her. “Is she…?”

“I don’t know, I can’t tell. Help me get her out of here.”

His shoes crunched on the shrapnel as he bent to take hold of her legs. I shoved upright, got my hands under her shoulders; my mind seemed to have gone blank. We carried her outside and over into the shade next to one of the concession booths, laid her down gently in the grass.

I dropped down beside her, felt again for a pulse. Had to be one, had to! But I still couldn’t find it. So faint only a doctor could detect it …

Runyon had backed off a couple of steps with his cell phone out, and I heard him making a 911 call as I hooked a fingernail under an edge of the tape over Kerry’s eyes, eased it off. Both eyes shut tight, not even a twitch on the lids. As gently as I could I stripped the tape from her mouth. Her lips were cracked and smeared with dried blood. When I laid my cheek down close to them, I couldn’t feel even the faintest whisper of a breath. With my thumb I raised one of the closed eyelids.

Vacant, blood-flecked stare.

Sick with anguish, I fumbled my pocket knife out. Opened it with fingers that shook so much now I had to steady my right hand with my left. Had to keep wiping sweat out of my eyes as I sawed slowly through the tape, trying not to cut her. Her left arm was free when Runyon finished his call. He dropped down on the other side and began freeing her right arm with a Swiss Army blade. Together, we sliced and stripped as much of the tape off her arms and legs as we dared.

Still no movement, no sign of life.

God, what that bastard had done to her! Finger and fingernail marks on her throat where she’d been grabbed and choked. Bruise on one cheekbone that had blackened the eye above. A scabbed-over wound above her left ear that had bled into her hair … but not much, not enough for it to be anything but superficial. Welts and lesions on her bare arms and legs from the tape. Blouse and shorts in place, but torn, soiled.

Balfour had died too easy, too easy, too easy—

Runyon was pressing fingers against the artery in her neck. He made a sudden low grunting sound, and when I looked up at him, I saw the tight grimace he wore smooth off.

“Pulse,” he said.

I said something, I don’t remember what, and caught up Kerry’s hand and held my thumb on the wrist. Pulse, yes! I could feel it now—thin, thready, but discernible without putting on too much pressure.

Heartbeats. Life beats.

And all at once, the emotional dam inside me burst wide open. I’d cried before in my life, but never in public and never with such unashamed intensity as I did holding onto Kerry the way a drowning man holds onto a lifeline. Dimly, I saw Runyon stand, felt his hand on my shoulder before he moved away.

In the distance, there was the sound of sirens.

30

KERRY

Awake again, aware again.

Eyes opening to slits, bright light lancing in to painfully dilate the pupils. She squeezed the lids shut, but the light remained like a pressing weight against the outer skin. Slowly, she raised them again, squinting. The same dazzle, but it faded quickly this time … and she was looking at white walls, white composition ceiling, TV set on a wall stand, a window covered with partly open blinds.

Sounds intruded, a low steady mechanical beeping. She was aware, too, of a clean antiseptic odor. And of something clipped to the index finger of her left hand. She turned her head. Wires, tubes, lights flashing on some kind of monitor, an IV bag on a stand. Hospital room.

She rolled her head the other way. And saw Bill sitting in a chair alongside her bed, his eyes closed, his big hands lying palms up on his lap.

Didn’t believe it at first. Hallucination, wishful thinking. Her thoughts were fuzzy, disoriented … but it wasn’t the same kind of body and mind disconnect as before. This was almost peacefully dreamlike. She raised her head slightly and blinked once, twice, three times.

The hospital room was still there. Bill was still there.

Acceptance came slowly, and with it, a kind of wonder. The last thing she remembered, and that only vaguely, was Balfour’s hands on her, dragging her out of the camper, lifting and carrying her into a dark place. No, that wasn’t quite the last thing. She seemed to recall a random thought, what might have been her last thought, the beginning of a childhood prayer:
If I should die before I wake …

She tried to say Bill’s name, but her mouth and throat were too clogged to form it coherently; it came out as a kind of mewling noise. Immediately, his eyes popped open; he hadn’t been asleep, just resting. He came up out of the chair, emotions rippling like neon across his drawn, craggy face, smile on, smile off, smile on. He took her hand in both of his, leaned down to kiss her gently on the forehead.

“About time you woke up.” Trying to keep his voice light, but it cracked on the last two words. “How do you feel?”

She managed a word this time. “Weak.”

“You’ve been out for a while. But you’re going to be okay.”

“… Fuzzy.”

“Drugs. Antibiotics, painkillers.”

Pain? Yes, she was aware of that, too, now. Her body, her arms and legs, seemed riddled with small, stinging hurts. One arm lay outside the bedclothes, gauze-bandaged. Her lips hurt; she licked at them with the tip of her tongue, winced at the deep splits and the taste of medicine.

“Thirsty,” she said.

Bill lifted a cup from an aluminum table, held it so she could sip through a flex straw. The water was lukewarm, and she had some trouble swallowing, but it took away the dryness and let her speak more easily.

“What … hospital is this?”

“Marshall. Placerville.”

“How long—?”

“Two days.”

Two days unconscious. “I … must be in bad shape.”

“Not so bad. Not anymore.” But the muscle that jumped alongside his mouth, the moist shine in his eyes told her otherwise. She’d come close to dying. And maybe she wasn’t out of the woods yet. Curiously, neither thought frightened her. Hospital. Bill. No, she wasn’t afraid anymore.

“You found me?”

“With Jake Runyon’s help. He deserves most of the credit.”

“Where? How?”

“Long story. We’ll talk about all that when you’re up to it.”

“Balfour?”

“He’s dead.”

“You didn’t…”

“No. Wasn’t me. Or Jake.”

Good, she thought. Good that it wasn’t you or Jake, good that he’s dead. I’d have killed him myself if I could, I really would have. But she didn’t put the thought into words. Her secret.

Instead, she said, “He didn’t rape me.”

“I know. The doctors…”

“Just … tied me up, kept me prisoner. Don’t know why.”

“Later. Getting you well is what’s important now.”

Her eyelids had begun to feel heavy. So damn weak …

Bill said, “I’d better get the nurse. Said to call her when you woke up.” He released her hand, started to turn away from the bed.

“Bill?”

He turned back.

“I knew you’d find me. I never lost hope.”

Kerry wasn’t sure if that was the truth or not, but it was what he needed to hear. And what she needed to believe.

“NAMELESS DETECTIVE” MYSTERIES BY BILL PRONZINI

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

Casefile
(collection)

Bindlestiff

Dragonfire

Scattershot

Hoodwink

Labyrinth

Twospot
(with Collin Wilcox)

Blowback

Undercurrent

The Vanished

The Snatch

About the Author

Bill Pronzini’s novel
Snowbound
received the
Grand Prix de la Littérature Policière
. In addition to six Edgar Award nominations, Pronzini has received three Shamus Awards—two for best novel—and the PWA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, the Mystery Writers of America named him Grand Master. He lives in Northern California with his wife, the crime novelist Marcia Muller.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

HELLBOX

Copyright © 2012 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

All rights reserved.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge
®
is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Pronzini, Bill.

Hellbox / Bill Pronzini.—1st ed.

      p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 978-0-7653-2565-5 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4299-4723-7 (e-book)

 1.  Nameless Detective (Fictitious character)—Fiction.   2.  Private investigators—Fiction.   I.  Title.

PS3566.R67H45 2012

813'.54—dc23

2012011650

eISBN 9781429947237

First Edition: July 2012