Free With an Extreme Burning by Bill Pronzini

about was himself. “I was born with a Mother Teresa gene,” she'd said. It was as good an answer as any.
    She rang the doorbell three times without getting a response. She went to the garage; he wasn't there, but his Buick was. Out by the pool? She made her way down the side steps and around onto the rear terrace.
    She heard him before she saw him. He was in the pool, swimming laps in a kind of frenzy: head down, eyes shut, arms and legs pummeling the water into a froth. Not really swimming, she thought as she watched him; it was as though he were trying to rid himself of some inner turmoil. It added to her feeling of concern. The man struggling in the pool wasn't the Dix Mallory she knew—the gentle, controlled one. Even Katy's death hadn't altered those qualities; he'd been the same man at the funeral and downtown yesterday. What could have happened to change him so radically in twenty-four hours?
    He didn't realize she was there until she moved to the pool's edge and shouted his name. Then he stopped beating the water, caught the lip, and lifted himself out. He stood beside her, dripping, round-shouldered with fatigue, working to get his breathing under control.
    “Amy and I were out at the farm,” she said. “Didn't get home until a little while ago.”
    “Thanks for coming.”
    He reached for the towel draped over one of the outdoor chairs. Cecca could see the strained muscles rippling in his arms and legs as he dried himself. And noticed, in spite of herself, how trim he looked in his swimsuit, the flatness of his belly.
    “How long have you been in the pool?” she asked.
    “A while. Too long, probably.”
    “You look exhausted.”
    “That was the idea.”
    “Dix, what is it? What's happened?”
    “In the house. I've got something to show you.”
    He led her inside. Upstairs in the living room he said, “I'll go put on some clothes. Make yourself a drink if you want one.”
    “No. Unless you do …”
    “I'd better not.”
    Waiting for him, she prowled the room. It was the first time she'd been there since the accident, and it felt odd. Katy's house, Katy's pride and joy—a legacy now. Blue and white decor, lots of crystal and cut-glass accessories, all chosen by Katy to her tastes. Her paintings on the walls, the huge dominating one she'd called “Blue Time”: rectangles and rhomboids in various shades of blue, splotches of white, three little dollops of yellow. Abstract Expressionism. She'd thought Jackson Pollock was the greatest of all American painters. Yet her own work was more in the style of Mark Rothko, whom she'd also admired—simple, sensuous color shapes rather than explosions of color. Rothko had once said that his paintings were façades, telling little but just enough about his perception of the world and his own life. “It's the same thing with my paintings,” Katy had been fond of saying. “Façades, little snippets of the real Katy Mallory.” And when someone had asked her what the snippets were, a wink, a grin, and: “That's for you to figure out, sweetie.”
    Cecca had always liked this room, the house, but today it depressed her. Her mood, coupled with Dix's. She sat down on the blue brocade couch. She was staring out through the tall windows, watching a small plane circle for a landing at Los Alegres Airport across the valley, when Dix came down from the bedroom.
    He'd put on slacks and a pullover, run a comb through his brown hair. His shoulders still wore their burden of fatigue. His jaw was set tight; she could see ridges of muscles at the corners of his mouth. He looked grim. Worse than he had the day after the accident. He had something in one hand, but his fingers were closed tight around it and she couldn't quite tell what it was. A box of some kind?
    He said as he sat down across from her, “There's something I have to know, Cecca. I need you to tell me the truth—the complete and honest truth. Will you do that?”
    “If I can. Of course.”
    “Was Katy having