Savages: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Novels) by Bill Pronzini Page A

time.”
    “If you say so.”
    “I say so. You never met him, huh?”
    “No.”
    “Anybody else in his family?”
    “Not before last night.”
    “How about Manuel Silvera?”
    “I don’t know anybody named Manuel Silvera.”
    “Belsize’s hired hand. Man you found beaten and strung up in the barn. You did find him, right? Poking around in there where you didn’t belong. Trespassing.”
    Rinniak gave him an irritated look. The brawn had a knack for rubbing people wrong, his coworkers included. “Let him tell it, Don.”
    “Sure, sure. So tell it, Runyon.”
    He told it, leaving nothing out except for his walkthrough of the farmhouse. No point in giving Kelso something else to use against him.
    “So instead of leaving, you just started prowling around.That what you usually do when you go onto private property and nobody’s home?”
    “No. I had a feeling something was wrong.”
    “A feeling. Sure.”
    “Every cop I ever knew was sensitive that way,” Runyon said. “You walk into a situation, it doesn’t feel right, your instincts take over. Sixth sense. You don’t have it, Deputy?”
    Kelso scowled at him. Rinniak said, “So you went around back and looked through the kitchen window.”
    “That’s right. Just checking. Half-eaten dinner on the table, chairs pulled out—it looked as though the people had left in a hurry.”
    “They had a phone call. Anonymous. The caller said their son, Jerry, had been in an accident down by Orford and they better come immediately. You missed them leaving by maybe ten minutes.”
    “Lured away so Silvera could be attacked?”
    “That’s how it looks.”
    Kelso said, “This feeling got real strong then, huh? Led you straight to the tack room in the barn.”
    “Not quite. I went to my car for my weapon and a flashlight. It was dusk by then and I—”
    “Why’d you figure you needed a gun?”
    Runyon mustered patience, kept his face empty and his voice even. “I didn’t figure I’d need it. But I was a police officer in Seattle for a dozen years and I’ve been in enough bad situations not to take any chances. You know mybackground by now. You’ve got my license—you must’ve run a check on me.”
    “We ran one,” Rinniak said. “Spotless record.”
    “Yeah, spotless,” Kelso said.
    “Don, for Christ’s sake, let me handle this, will you?” He gestured to Runyon to go on.
    “I checked the hay barn first, then the big barn. No real cause to enter either one except that feeling. For all I knew somebody was hurt somewhere on the property. I was in the big barn when I heard a creaking sound. That’s what led me to the tack room and the dead man. I was on my way outside to call nine-eleven when I got clobbered.”
    “Where do you suppose the assailant was all this time?”
    “Hiding. Probably behind the stack of lumber. It was a board he hit me with, wasn’t it?”
    “Two-by-two. You didn’t have any idea he was still there?”
    “I should’ve figured he might be, but I didn’t. Window in the tack room was open and I made the wrong assumption.”
    “You didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of him before he hit you?”
    “Happened too quick.”
    “Anything that might help identify him?”
    “No. Too dark in the barn.” Runyon’s mouth was dry again. He drank from the half-full glass on the bedside table. “Can I ask you a question?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “The motive. Why string a man up like that, a hired hand? Why lure the family away to do it?”
    “No ideas that make any sense. Silvera was a family man himself, quiet, steady, no trouble to anybody that we can find—least likely candidate for premeditated homicide you can imagine.”
    “There isn’t any motive,” Kelso said. “Psycho firebugs don’t need reasons for what they do.”
    Runyon said, “Firebug?”
    “Three fires of suspicious origin in and around Gray’s Landing this summer,” Rinniak told him. “Junior high school, old Odd Fellows lodge building, abandoned barn. No