Bill Pronzini

  Kinsmen

  ***

  Allison Shay was traveling home from the University of Oregon with her new boyfriend, Rob Compton, when their car broke down near the tiny rural town of Creekside, California. Soon after, Allison and Rob went missing without a trace.

  Whatever happened, it felt like something bad to the Nameless Detective. Five days without a whisper of contact with the outside world. Long past the inconsiderate-kids stage; long past the silly and the harmless.

  Kinsmen takes Bill Pronzini's classic private investigator to California's northeast backwoods, where an isolated community is determined to keep a deep, dark secret: why Allison Shay and Rob Compton really vanished.

  The real question facing the Nameless Detective: are they still alive?

  Cemetery Dance, 2013. Hardcover, 185 pp.

  ***

  From Kirkus Reviews (on Sentinels (1996))

  Though the publisher maintains a demure silence on the point, this short novel is a lightly revised expansion of Pronzini's novella "Kinsmen", first published, together with long stories by Marcia Muller and Ed Gorman, in Criminal Intent 1 (1993). Here as there, the Nameless Detective (Hardcase, 1995, etc.) is on the trail of a missing University of Oregon student who vanished, together with the boyfriend she planned to bring home to her mother outside Oakland, shortly after their car broke down in that slice of God's country designated Creekside, Calif., pop. 112. Even readers new to the material should be able to guess what happened to Allison McDowell and her lover by the halfway point. Those with memories of "Kinsmen" will find more words here, but not much else that's new.

  ***

  DEDICATION

  For Marcia

  CHAPTER 1

  The northeastern corner of California, where it joins Oregon on the north and Nevada on the east, is different from other parts of the state. Not geographically; there are sparsely populated, mountainous regions spread throughout California. What sets Modoc and Lassen counties apart, first, is their remoteness. There are no large or even small cities within a radius of hundreds of miles, no major highways; it takes hours of hard driving to get there from San Francisco or Reno or one of the Oregon cities. The area has its share of scenic attractions: Modoc National Forest, South Warner Wilderness Area, Lassen National Forest, dozens of little bodies of water with quaint names like Horse Lake and Moon Lake and Big Sage Reservoir. It also has some of the best hunting and fishing anywhere on the west coast. But the effort required to get there, and a dearth of the usual tourist amenities, keeps visitors to a relative minimum even in the summer and fall.

  A hefty percentage of the residents prefer it that way. And that is the other thing that sets the Corner apart: the attitudes and mind-set of its people. They like their back water status and their privacy; they tolerate hunters, fishermen, skiers, tourists, but unlike the inhabitants of other rural areas they don’t actively cultivate outsiders. And some of them are rural-minded to the point of clannishness and hostility.

  The largest town up that way is Susanville, population 7,000, in lower Lassen County. Alturas, near the Oregon border in Modoc County, has half as many residents. The rest of the towns in the two counties are either villages or wide places along highways 395, 299, and 139-places most native Californians have never even heard of. Newell, Fort Bidwell, Lake City, Cedarville, Davis Creek, Likely, Madeline, Termo, Ravendale. And Creekside. Creekside, California, population 112.

  Until this Wednesday morning I was one of the natives who had never heard of Creekside. Now, at four-thirty in the afternoon, after nearly six long hours of driving, the last hundred miles over roads still snow-hemmed even though it was early May, here I was in the town itself. It wasn’t much by anybody’s standards. Wide place not far off Highway 395, about equidistant between Susanville and Alturas, rimmed by mountains and closely edged on all sides by pine and fir forests. Two-block main drag, winter-potholed, and some short side streets that climbed a hillside and gave access to a scattering of old frame houses and newer log structures squatting among the trees. The business establishments were few and mostly on the east side of Main. Creekside General Store. Trilby’s Hardware and Electric, “We Sell Natural Gas.” Modoc Cafe. Eagle’s Roost Bar and Card Room, “Dancing Every Saturday Nite.” Maxe’s Service and Garage. And at the far end, near the second of two access roads that took you to and from 395-Northern Comfort Cabins, Off-Season Rates, Vacancy.

  I turned in past the rustic Northern Comfort sign. The motel was not particularly inviting, even to a weary traveler who had been on the road for more than six hours. A dozen small pine board cabins, set in twin rows of six that faced each other across an unpaved courtyard like old soldiers on a rundown parade ground. The office building was bigger but just as old and not as straight-standing: seedy drill instructor fronting his motley troops. Behind the last of the cabins, where the forest edged in close, a stream ran fast and frothy-the creek, probably, that had given the hamlet its name.

  There were no other cars on the property to keep mine company, except for an old Buick with its chrome snout peeking out from behind the office. The whole place had the look of desertion, even with lights on inside the office and smoke twisting out of its chimney.

  I got out into a fast-gathering twilight. Cold up here; you could still taste winter in the air. The rush-and-hiss of the stream running was audible even at a distance of a hundred yards, swollen as it was with snow run-off. It made me think of trout, fat rainbow trout, and the feel of my old rod with its Daiwa reel, and the way a mountain stream tugs and swirls around your legs. And of how long it had been since I’d gotten away for a few days of fishing. Hell, for a few days of any kind of vacation. If things were better between Eberhardt and me…

  Wishful thinking. Things weren’t good at all between us-so strained, in fact, that not only was a fishing trip out of the question, I was worried that maybe our partnership and our long-standing friendship were in jeopardy. Problems related to his aborted wedding plans in April were one reason-maybe the main one, maybe not. He’d changed in the past year or so, become distant and broody. And I had no idea why.

  I flexed some driving kinks out of my shoulders and back, went inside the motel office. Small, rustic, dingy. On one wall was a framed, hand-stitched motto that said Praise God; on another was a brass sculpture of a cross and a pair of praying hands. There was nobody behind the narrow counter at the back, not until I bellied up to it. Then a door opened and a tall, cadaverous party came through. He moved in a slow, painful shuffle, as if he had back problems. He was about my age, late fifties, with a beak of a nose and loose skin in folds under his chin and ears and hair that poked up in thin wispy patches around his scalp. He put me in mind of a molting turkey.

  “Help you?”

  “I’d like a cabin.”

  “Sure thing. Just tonight or longer?”

  “Probably just tonight.”

  “Got your pick,” he said. “Close to the road or farther back. Cabins in back are real quiet.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “Give you number Twelve.”

  He put a key and a registration card on my side of the countertop. I laid a credit card and the photograph of Allison Shay on his side. As soon as he saw the photo, his face closed up. He looked at it for a long time, with his chin tucked down in its nest of wattles. When his head finally came up, his eyes told me nothing at all.

  He said, “Police officer?”

  “Private investigator.”

  “Girl’s family hire you or what?”

  “Her mother.”

  “I already told the county sheriff everything I know. Which ain’t nothing much.”

  “Mind telling me, Mr.-?”

  “Bartholomew,” grudgingly.

  “Mr. Bartholomew.”

  “They checked in, they spent the night, they left next morning. I never even seen him. Girl came in for the room. Otherwise-”

  “Otherwise what?”

  He shook his head.

  “Late afternoon when they checked in, wasn’t it?” I asked. “Last Friday afternoon, about this time?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which cabin did you give them?”

  “Eleven. In back, opposite the one I give you. But they didn’t leave nothing behind. My wife does the cleaning up; she’d of found it if they had.”

  “What time did they check out on Saturday?”

  “Didn’t check out. Just left the key in the cabin.”

  “Did you see them leave?”

  “No,” Bartholomew said. “I told you, I never seen the two of ’em together. Or him at all.”

  “She didn’t put his name on the registration card?”

  “No. Just hers.”

  “Didn’t mention it? Even his first name?”

  “Just said her boyfriend. Some other time I wouldn’t have rented to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did I? It’s slow time and we need the money.”

  “No, I mean why wouldn’t you have rented to her?”

  “Wasn’t married. Sharing a bed out of wedlock is a sin.”

  “Uh-huh. Any idea what time they left here on Saturday?”

  He shrugged. “Art Maxe, down at the garage, says he had their car ready at nine and that’s when they picked it up.”

  “When the girl checked in,” I said, “did she happen to mention what route they planned to take, side trips, anything like that?”

  Headshake this time. “All she said was her and her boyfriend been having trouble with their
car and they got it into Maxe’s Garage just before it quit on them. And wasn’t it lucky they was this close to a town when it happened.”

  While we’d been talking I had filled out the registration card. As I slid it over to him I said, “Mind if I take Cabin Eleven instead of Twelve?”

  “What for? I told you, there’s nothing in there that’ll tell you where them kids went.”

  “I’d still like Eleven. If you don’t mind.”

  “Why should I mind,” he said, and gave me the key to Cabin Eleven. I smiled at him before I went out. He didn’t smile back.

  CHAPTER 2

  As with Creekside itself, there wasn’t much to the cabin. Small, bare, barely functional-a wooden cell designed for those who came here to the Corner expecting to rough it. Four coarse-pine walls, unadorned except for a framed hunting print and, hanging low and off-center over the bed, a sepia-toned picture of Christ wearing a crown of thorns. Dresser, nightstand, bedframe-all of scarred pine. New, board-hard mattress covered by a cheap quilt. TV set that had been manufactured about the time of the first Super Bowl. The bathroom was a cubicle with an ancient toilet and a zinc-floored shower. In the old days one of the slang terms for toilet was “growler”; this one reminded me of why. It made noises like an angry pit bull when you flushed it.

  Cold in there, too. The only heating appliance was a space heater; I switched that on before I sat on the hard mattress. From outside I could hear the muted rush of the stream. It had an oddly lonesome sound.

  I took out the photo again, studied it. Allison Shay. Candid shot, in color, about six months old; just her, full-body, taken reasonably close so that her features were clearly defined. Slender, almost slight. Light blonde hair, worn long with a center part. Snub nose, small smiling mouth, round eyes that her mother said were blue-gray. Pretty. Intelligent; she had maintained a high B average throughout her three years at the University of Oregon. Studying architecture. Not a common field for a woman and more power to her. Activist, on and off campus: women’s issues, liberal politics, environmental causes.

  I knew a fair amount about Allison Shay, all right, but virtually nothing about the boyfriend-not even his name. Marian Shay had never met him, hadn’t even known her daughter was involved with anyone until Allison called a week ago and said she was taking a few days off from school and driving down to the Bay Area “with a friend.” She wouldn’t name the friend, just said it was someone she wanted her mother to meet. She’d sounded bubbly-Marian Shay’s word-and that, coupled with the “few days off from school,” had led Mrs. Shay to believe the friend was male, Allison was serious about him, and the purpose of the trip was to show him off. That was the way Allison was, Mrs. Shay had told me: mischievous, inclined to be mysterious when it suited her, prone to sudden decisions and deep commitments.

  Allison and her companion had left Eugene on Thursday, in her old MG; but instead of taking the direct route, straight down Highway 5, they’d veered over into the Corner to “do a little exploring” on the way down. Allison’s explanation when she’d called home again on Friday night, from here in Creekside, to tell her mother about the car breaking down. They were due into Orinda, where Marian Shay lived, on Saturday evening and Allison said she thought they could still make it “if the man at the garage gets the car fixed and it doesn’t break down again.” She’d still sounded happy and excited; no hint of any problem other than the one with the MG.

  That was the last Marian Shay had heard from or about her daughter. No sign of Allison on Saturday or on Sunday; a Sunday phone call to the motel here had gotten her the same information that Bartholomew had just given me. When she still hadn’t had word on Monday morning Mrs. Shay had notified the authorities. But the police wouldn’t list Allison as officially missing until Tuesday, when the mandatory seventy-two hours had elapsed, because of her age and the circumstances of her driving trip south. You could understand that from their point of view; kids in love were liable to do all sorts of crazy things on a whim, with little or no consideration for their parents, and the cops had been burned too many times by false alarms. From Marian Shay’s point of view, the delay was exasperating. She’d called the house in Eugene where her daughter was living and checked with her roommates; Allison hadn’t returned and none of the roommates could tell her anything about the new boyfriend. The manager of the bookshop where Allison worked part-time also had nothing to tell her. Nor did Allison’s best friend in Orinda, who usually shared confidences with her; she hadn’t heard from Allison in weeks.

  Monday dragged on through Tuesday. The preliminary police investigation failed to turn up a lead to Allison’s whereabouts, or as yet the identity of the boyfriend. This morning, frantic and frustrated, Marian Shay had come to me. And caught me with no pressing business and in the right frame of mind, thanks to the problems with Eberhardt, for a case that would take me away from the city for a few days.

  I repocketed the photograph, sat looking around the cold bare room that Allison Shay had shared with her lover last Friday night. Assume the boyfriend was a college student, too, someone of Allison’s age. How would they have felt, spending the night here? Viewed it as part of an adventure, maybe, as kids will. Backwoods interlude; snuggle up in this monastic cell, make love and their own heat, make the best of it. Or maybe it hadn’t been that innocent or idyllic. Maybe they’d had a fight of some kind, and the next day it had kindled even hotter, and then… what? He abandoned her somewhere in the backcountry, and took her car and drove himself back to Oregon? Not likely, but possible. Hell, anything was possible. The car broke down again and this time they weren’t lucky enough to be close to a town and they’d managed to get themselves lost on foot. Or they’d had an accident. Or they’d made the foolish mistake of picking up the wrong kind of hitchhiker. Or-worst-case scenario-the boyfriend hadn’t been what he’d seemed to Allison, was in fact some kind of psycho in sheep’s clothing. Nowadays, in this kinder, gentler society we live in, that sort of thing happens too damned often.

  Five days now, and not a whisper.

  Long past the inconsiderate-kids stage; long past the silly and the harmless. Whatever had happened to Allison Shay, it felt like something bad. Her mother thought so, too; it had been in Marian Shay’s pale face, in the faint stunned expression in her eyes, in the damp marks her restless fingers had left on her suede purse. Neither of us had put the fear into words, but the words had been there between us-and they were in my mind again now.

  Wherever she is, is she still alive?

  CHAPTER 3

  In the cluttered, droplit maw of his garage I found Art Maxe with his head and upper body underneath the raised hood of a Jeep Cherokee, working the accelerator linkage to race the engine. The blonde kid manning the pumps out front had told me this was where Maxe was. I walked up alongside the Jeep and waited until he quit jazzing the engine.

  “Art Maxe?”

  He said, “Yeah?” without shifting position.

  I told him who I was and why I was there. That brought him out of the Jeep’s shell. He was big and shaggy and dirty, like a bear that had been rolling around in a pile of oily refuse. There were oil streaks on his unshaven cheeks, a glob of grease caught in his unkempt black hair; his overalls looked as though they had never been washed and his hands were black-spotted with the kind of imbedded grime even industrial-strength soap can never quite get out. He gave me a long steady look out of squinty eyes that held both wariness and suspicion.

  “I already talked to the county cops,” he said.

  “Then you won’t mind talking to me. I’m trying to do the same job they are-find a couple of missing kids.”

  He shrugged. “You ask me, they took a side road somewheres and that car of theirs busted down again. Lot of wilderness around here, lot of places to get lost.”

  “You don’t think much of the car?”

  “Piece of junk. Just about ready for the dismantlers.”

  “What made it quit running last Friday?”