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

H
E 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 couldn’t 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 ocean’s 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 night’s 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 them—far back under the overhang, sprawled side by side on a blanket.

They didn’t 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 blanket—a flashlight. The beam stabbed out, found him and steadied on him. He shielded his eyes with his hand, but still he couldn’t 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 weren’t all they were partying with. The light wind carried the faint acrid scent of pot.

He said, “Looks like you’re planning to spend the night here.”

“So what if we are? What’s it to you?”

“No overnight camping on this beach.”

The girl giggled. “We didn’t 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 don’t 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 wasn’t 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 wasn’t the same. He got to his feet and walked back the way he’d come, stopping once to examine something that gleamed in the sand—a jagged shard of green bottle glass, sharp enough to cut somebody’s 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, didn’t 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 boy’s embrace. The boy rolled over, sat up blinking. The sleeping bag wasn’t 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 hell’s the idea?”

“You two crapping up the beach,” he said, “spoiling it for everybody else. That’s the idea.”

“Are you nuts? Get outta here!”

“No.”

The girl said in her slurry voice, “You better do what Eddie says. He’s bigger’n you, man.”

“That’s right, bigger.” The boy leaned out of the bag, caught up the chunk of driftwood again. “You don’t haul ass right now, I’ll bust your head for you.”

“I don’t 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, both—clean kill shots. He didn’t need to check to make sure they were dead.

But it didn’t 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 didn’t like messes. It was a lesson his mother had drummed into him when he was a kid, about the only good lesson he’d ever learned from her. And army discipline had reinforced it later on. Always clean up your messes. So he always did. His, and other people’s too.

He put the Glock back into his jacket pocket, picked up and pocketed the ejected shell casings. He nudged the two sprawled bodies around until they were lying side by side in the sleeping bag, pulled the flap up to their chins. Better. Tidier.

Then he began collecting the trash so he could take it with him when he climbed back up the cliffside path.

Early Fall

He sat on the hood of his car, smiling as he watched the sea lions. There were three of them, a fat graybeard and two sleek brownish-tan younger ones. When he’d first driven in along the river, the younger ones were playing in the silty brown water, zooming along on their backs, rolling over and diving and chasing each other. Fun to watch because they were having fun, like puppies or a couple of little kids in a swimming pool. Now all three were up on the sandbar near where the river flowed into the Pacific, the old one lying on his side with his belly exposed, the young ones boxing each other with their flippers.

It was late afternoon, cold and gray, fog already obscuring the river mouth and the beach and parking area where the road ended. There was nobody around except him and the sea lions.

Until the guy on the motorcycle showed up.

He heard the machine’s sputtering roar a long way off, knew by the sound of it that it was coming fast along the narrow road. It made a hell of a racket when it came barreling around a bend into sight. The rider geared down and braked hard, smoking his tires as he shot past, then pulled up a short ways ahead and sat there juicing the throttle. The sea lions didn’t like the noise any more than he did; they stirred around out on the sandbar, the older one rolling onto his belly and waggling a flipper, then edging closer to the water.

The noise finally quit. The rider, dressed in a black leather jacket and black leather leggings, shoved the kickstand down and took off his helmet; he had long straggly red hair and a matching beard. From one of the saddlebags he produced a flattish pint bottle half full of something that was probably whiskey, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swallow. Smacked and then wiped fat lips, glancing over in his direction.

“Colder’n a witch’s tit, eh?”

“Pretty cold,” he agreed.

The rider walked out onto the narrow strip of grass and rocks that separated the road from the river’s edge. Stopped halfway along, unzipped his fly and urinated onto a bush before continuing to the waterline. Stood for a few seconds looking at the sea lions, then emptied the bottle and hurled it at them. It landed short of the sandbar, making a flat splash. The man picked up a rock and threw that, missing wide; pitched a second rock that narrowly missed the graybeard. All three animals had started a confused barking.

By then he was off the hood and running through the grass. “Hey! Hey, you, don’t do that.”

A scowl and a red-eyed stare. “Do what?”

“Throw things at those sea lions. You almost hit one.”

“Too bad I didn’t. I hate those buggers. What’s it to you, anyway?”

“Plenty. It’s plenty to me.”

“Yeah? You want to make something out of it?”

“Yes,” he said, “I do.”

The cyclist took an aggressive step toward him, one arm lifting, the hand bunching into a fist.

And died that way, without enough time to even look surprised.

He shifted his gaze to the sandbar to see if the noise of the shot had frightened the sea lions.

Damn. They were already gone.

Late Fall

From the trees behind the cabin he watched the old man cutting up tree branches with a chain saw. It was a windy day, and every time there was a fresh gust the harsh whine of the saw grew louder, more shrill. The noise was like needles poking into his ears.

Past where the old man worked sat brush piles and stacks of bigger logs from the trees that had been cut down in the land crease and along the bluff top beyond. The sections were naked now except for scattered stumps like blemishes on the hard earth. Must’ve been two dozen or more taken down—old-growth pines, maybe some redwoods too like the ones back here where he was hidden. Beautiful trees, the pines heavy with cones, the redwoods thick with burls. In the wind they had a kind of swaying grace that reminded him of dancers moving to the rhythmic beat of music. Ugly music now … that damn chain saw.

The old man shut off the racket finally, laid the saw down, and stood flexing kinks out of his back and shoulders. Seventy, at least, but wiry and spry in a lumberman’s jacket and a cloth cap. Pretty soon he went over to the cabin, a small place built out of unpainted redwood, and bent to take a drink from a water tap.

Time. He moved slowly out of the woods into the clearing behind the cabin.

The old man was on the way back to the logpile by then. Jerked to a stop, bent forward a little, staring. Startled at first, then puzzled, then guarded.

“Say, where’d you come from?”

“The trees back there,” he said.

“This is private property, mister. You’re trespassing.”

“Sure, I know.”

“Well? What do you want?”

“I followed you,” he said.

“What you mean, you followed me?”

“From the store in town.”

“I ain’t been to the store today.”

“Not today. Yesterday.”

“Yesterday? You been hanging around here since then?”

“Part of the time.”

“What the devil for?”

“I heard somebody in the store say you’d been clear-cutting trees. I wanted to find out if it was true.”

The old man said, “So it’s true. So what?”

“I don’t like it when people clear-cut.”

“Don’t matter what you like, this ain’t your property.”

“Why did you do it?”

“What difference does that make?”

“I asked you why. The trees weren’t dead or diseased, were they?”

“No.”

“Healthy trees, then. Why did you cut down healthy trees?”

The old man’s seamed face had reshaped into a glower. “Well, hell. Look at that view down the declivity and across the bluff—whitewater view now. You could barely see the ocean before—”

“I thought so.”

He took the Glock from his jacket pocket.

The old man said, “Jesus Christ!” and backed up a step, wide-eyed. He hadn’t been afraid before. Now he was. “What’s that for?”

“What do you think it’s for?”

“Listen, all I got on me is twenty bucks and there’s nothing in the cabin—”

“I don’t want your money.”

“God’s sake, what then?”

“I told you, I don’t like clear-cutting.”

“You ain’t gonna shoot me—”

“Yes,” he said, “I am.”

“For cutting down trees? You can’t kill a man for that!”

“It’s not the only reason,” he said, and fired.