Fritz Leiber 
Scream Wolf [EPUB ebook] 

“Now and then Mrs. Groener used to scream, ” the big man explained, “when she’d been drinking heavily I’d leave the bedroom. It may have been a rebuke or summons to me, or a fighting challenge to the whiskey bottle, or simply an expression of her rather dark evaluation of life. But it had never meant anything more real than that—until tonight.”