Bill Pronzini - The Hidden

T H E H I D D E N

A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE

B I L L P R O N Z I N I

For two of the best:

Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.

Georges Bataille

But how do we recognize ourselves? How can man know himself? He is a dark and hidden thing.

Friedrich Nietzsche

P R O L O G U E

M I D S U M M E R L A T E F A L L

Midsummer

HE MADE HIS WAY slowly down the steep, winding cliffside path. From there, the curved stretch of beach below looked deserted. Clean white sand studded with scattered chunks and piles of driftwood and dark wormy ribbons of kelp. But there were sheltered places under the long rocky overhang toward the bottom that you couldnt see until you were all the way down.

Clouds shifted away from the moon, and the sand and the slow-breaking waves lit up with a kind of iridescent white glow. A long yellow-white streak appeared on the oceans surface, extending out over some of the offshore rocks where the gulls nested, giving their limed surfaces a patch-painted look. He paused to take in the view. Nice night. Warmish, not much wind. The tide just beginning to come in. He liked nights like this, quiet, peaceful, empty, as if he had the sea and the scalloped shoreline all to himself.

It took him another five minutes to get to where the path dropped sharply onto the beach. He stood there for a few seconds, scanning the inland curve in both directions and as much as he could see of the bare sand reaching back under the overhang. No sign of anybody. But that was where whoever owned the battered Dodge Charger up on the parking area had to be. There were no other hidden places.

He heard them before he saw them. Sudden whoops of laughter, like rips in the nights stillness. Two people, one male, one female. Young, judging from the laughter and the raised voices that followed it.

The sounds came from the other side of a high, squared-off pile of driftwood that somebody had built into a skeletal fort, bleached pieces jutting here and there like fragments of splintered bone. He slogged in that direction. When he came around on the inshore side of the fort, he saw themfar back under the overhang, sprawled side by side on a blanket.

They didnt see him until he stepped out of the shadows into the powdery moonshine. The girl let out a little cry and raised an arm to point; the boy lifted himself to one knee. He kept moving toward them, slow, out of the light and into more shadow from the overhang. The boy snapped something up off the blanketa flashlight. The beam stabbed out, found him and steadied on him. He shielded his eyes with his hand, but still he couldnt see much of either kid behind the glare.

Hey, man. Who the hell are you? Wary, but not afraid.

Lower the light, okay? My eyes are sensitive to glare.

Nothing for a time. Then the shaft dipped some, so that it pinned him from the chest down. His night vision came back and he could see them more clearly. Young, all right, late teens or early twenties. The girl was blonde and chubby, the boy dark and lean with a stubbly growth of whiskers on his chin. On one end of the blanket was a rolled-up sleeping bag, on the other a bottle of wine and two plastic cups. A second bottle, empty, and fast-food bags, napkins, trays, wrappers, half-eaten burgers, and ketchup-smeared french fries lay strewn over the sand behind them. Slobs party. And wine and food werent all they were partying with. The light wind carried the faint acrid scent of pot.

He said, Looks like youre planning to spend the night here.

So what if we are? Whats it to you?

No overnight camping on this beach.

The girl giggled. We didnt see any signs. Stoned, her words slurred.

The boy said, None of your business anyway, man.

Maybe it is.

Yeah? You think so?

What about all that trash there?

What about it?

You going to take it away with you?

Screw the trash, the girl said, and giggled again.

Crapping up the beach, he said. I dont like that.

Who cares what you like, man.

Tell him to go away, Eddie, the girl said.

You heard her. There was a length of driftwood the size of a baseball bat on the sand next to the blanket; the boy picked it up. Go away, leave us alone. Find some other place, you want to hang down here.

He looked at them for a time, at the trash again. Then he turned and slogged back around the bone-pile fort and down to the waterline where the sand was firmer and you could walk without shuffling your feet. Thick humps of cloud had slid back over the moon again; the sea and the wet sand gleamed sleek and dark, like tar.

He walked for a ways, watching and listening to the slow-breaking rollers. The night breeze had sharpened and it was cooler here close to the water. Behind him he could hear the two kids whooping it up again, drifting snatches of sound that finally faded into silence.

Ahead, a bleached and gnarled log lay half buried in the sand. He veered over to it and sat on one haunch. Far out to sea, at the lip of the horizon, the lights of a passing ship were visible. He watched the lights until they disappeared to the north, then watched the dark sea. The night was quiet now, except for the low hiss of surf.

But it wasnt the same anymore. They had spoiled it for him by spoiling the beach.

The moon reappeared, shedding its silvery light over the sand and the water. But it just wasnt the same. He got to his feet and walked back the way hed come, stopping once to examine something that gleamed in the sanda jagged shard of green bottle glass, sharp enough to cut somebodys foot. He put it into his pocket, then left the wet sand and angled up toward the fort.

When he came around behind it, he could see and hear them back there under the overhang. They were together in the sleeping bag now, screwing; the bag moved and jerked like a live thing and the sounds they were making rolled out at him, grunts from the boy and little animal squeals from the girl. The trash was still strewn out behind them.

They were too busy to hear him approach, didnt know he was there until he walked right up beside them. The girl saw him first out of one half-closed eye; the eye popped wide and she cried out, Eddie! and twisted out of the boys embrace. The boy rolled over, sat up blinking. The sleeping bag wasnt zipped; the flap fell away from their naked torsos and the girl immediately covered her bare breasts with both hands.

Goddamn it, the boy said, you scared the shit out of us creeping up like that. What the hells the idea?

You two crapping up the beach, he said, spoiling it for everybody else. Thats the idea.

Are you nuts? Get outta here!

No.

The girl said in her slurry voice, You better do what Eddie says. Hes biggern you, man.

Thats right, bigger. The boy leaned out of the bag, caught up the chunk of driftwood again. You dont haul ass right now, Ill bust your head for you.

I dont think so, he said.

Listen, man

He drew the 9-mil Glock.

A frightened whimper came out of the girl and he shot her first. Otherwise she might have screamed and he hated to hear a woman scream. He shot the boy as he tried to scramble out of the bag. Head shots, bothclean kill shots. He didnt need to check to make sure they were dead.

But it didnt look right, the way they were lying, the boy sprawled back across the naked girl with one arm flung over her face. Messy, and he didnt like messes. It was a lesson his mother had drummed into him when he was a kid, about the only good lesson hed ever learned from her. And army discipline had reinforced it later on. Always clean up your messes. So he always did. His, and other peoples too.