The Cemetery Man by Bill Pronzini

Author:Bill Pronzini [Pronzini, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Putting the Pieces Back

You wouldn’t think a man could change completely in four months — but when Kaprelian saw Fred DeBeque come walking into the Drop Back Inn, he had living proof that it could happen. He was so startled, in fact, that he just stood there behind the plank and stared with his mouth hanging open.

It had been a rainy off-Monday exactly like this one the last time he’d seen DeBeque, and that night the guy had been about as low as you could get and carrying a load big enough for two. Now he was dressed in a nice tailored suit, looking sober and normal as though he’d never been through any heavy personal tragedy. Kaprelian felt this funny sense of flashback come over him, like the entire last seven months hadn’t even existed.

He didn’t much care for feelings like that, and he shook it off. Then he smiled kind of sadly as DeBeque walked over and took his old stool, the one he’d sat on every night for the three months after he had come home from work late one afternoon and found his wife bludgeoned to death.

Actually, Kaprelian was glad to see the change in him. He hadn’t known DeBeque or DeBeque’s wife very well before the murder; they were just people who lived in the neighborhood and dropped in once in a while for a drink. He’d liked them both though, and he’d gotten to know Fred pretty well afterward, while he was doing that boozing. That was why the change surprised him as much as it did. He’d been sure DeBeque would turn into a Skid Row bum or a corpse, the way he put down the sauce; a man couldn’t drink like that more than maybe a year without ending up one or the other.

The thing was, DeBeque and his wife really loved each other. He’d been crazy for her, worshipped the ground she walked on — Kaprelian had never loved anybody that way, so he couldn’t really understand it. Anyhow, when she’d been murdered DeBeque had gone all to pieces. Without her, he’d told Kaprelian a few times, he didn’t want to go on living himself; but he didn’t have the courage to kill himself either. Except with the bottle.

There was another reason why he couldn’t kill himself, DeBeque said, and that was because he wanted to see the murderer punished and the police hadn’t yet caught him. They’d sniffed around DeBeque himself at first, but he had an alibi and, anyway, all his and her friends told them how much the two of them were in love. So then, even though nobody had seen any suspicious types in the neighborhood the day it happened, the cops had worked around with the theory that it was either a junkie who’d forced his way into the DeBeque apartment or a sneak thief that she’d surprised. The place had been ransacked and there was some jewelry and mad money missing. Her skull had been crushed with a lamp, and the cops figured she had tried to put up a fight.

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