Reign

“Not by me,' Curt said.

Munro nodded and walked down the stairs to where Dennis and Robin waited, their faces turned away from the stage and what lay there. 'Mr. Hamilton,' Munro said. 'May I speak with you for a moment? And if the rest of you would please go out to the lobby?'

~* ~

Munro led the way to the back of the theatre, where he sat on an aisle seat. Dennis sat in the row ahead of him and turned his head to see the policeman. 'Why did you call Mr. Werton onto the stage?' Munro asked.

'I didn't.'

'I have two hundred witnesses who'll say you did.'

'I don't care if you have two thousand.' Dennis felt too weary and full of grief to argue, but tried his best. 'I didn't call Tommy on stage.'

'Miss Morrison quoted you.'

'It wasn't me. When I was going up the stairs to the booth, I heard something through the speakers, but I thought it was Curt.'

'All right,' Munro said. 'I'd like everybody to leave this area now until -'

Munro was interrupted by the entrance through the rear doors of three state policemen, a pair of orderlies with a stretcher, and a man with a black bag. He stood up, went over and talked to them for several minutes. Dennis could not hear the words, but Munro gestured toward the stage, and once toward Dennis. Then two of the policemen and the medical people walked toward the stage, and Munro brought the third trooper over to Dennis.

'Mr. Hamilton, this is Trooper Pierce. He'll want to ask you some questions,' he said, and without another word Munro joined the men on the stage.

The trooper, a tall blond man with a surprisingly gentle manner, asked Dennis to tell what he had done that evening, and Dennis did. When the trooper asked him about calling to Tommy over the speakers, Dennis once more denied it, and was permitted to rejoin his friends in the lobby, where another trooper was asking questions of a number of guests. Dennis had just seen Robin on the other side of the lobby and was moving toward her, when he felt a hand on his arm. Turning, he looked into the pale and lovely face of Ally Terrazin. She whispered something to him, but he could not quite make out what it was.

'I'm sorry, Ally. What?'

'There's something here, Dennis,' she said louder. 'I felt it. Jesus, I can still feel it.'

'Something… Ally, I'm in no mood for this sort of thing. Now what are you talking about?'

'A presence. Don't you feel it?'

'Ally dear, all I feel right now is terribly, terribly sick. What happened to Tommy, my God…”

'But that's what it's about.'

He gave a shuddering sigh. 'Ally, it was an accident, that's all – a terrible accident.'

Ally shook her head with a sharp snap. 'No accident, Dennis. It wasn't an accident.'

'What are you saying, it was murder?'

She looked puzzled for a moment. 'No… not murder. Not an accident, and not murder. Something… else.'

Dennis put a hand on her shoulder, and she recoiled at the dampness of it. He turned away from her and made his way through the crowd toward where he had seen Robin. His friends looked at him, gave sickly smiles, quick little shakes of the head, tentative pats on the back that were meant to convey sympathy, so it was a surprise when a hand gripped his shoulder firmly enough to cause a twinge of pain.

'Fucking hell,' John Steinberg breathed in his ear, 'when are these uniformed pharaohs going to let my people go? I've been entertaining the troops for half an hour now, and it's no small feat to keep people amused who have just witnessed a decapitation.'

'Have you asked the police?' Dennis said.

'I try to, but they start giving me the third degree, as if I have something to hide. Really, Dennis, I don't think this party is going to go down as one of the most successful we've ever thrown.'

For an instant a dark rage rose up in Dennis, a fury that Steinberg would treat Tommy's death no more seriously than a fly in the punch bowl. But the feeling washed over him as quickly as it had come, leaving him sad, weary, and only mildly disgusted with his manager's insensitivity. 'We'll have to inform his family.'

'Already done. I had Donna pull his file and call his parents. There are going to be enough other problems to take care of.'

Most of the time Dennis was astonished at Steinberg's efficiency. Tonight he was appalled by it. So it was with relief that he finally found Robin, who handed him a glass of scotch neat, which he downed in one searing gulp. Then they said nothing, and merely stood with their arms around each other for several minutes. At last the troopers came out the door to the auditorium, and Trooper Pierce announced that everyone was free to go. As the guests filed out, Dan Munro came up to Dennis and Robin, who had been joined by Steinberg.

'They've got just about everything they need, Mr. Hamilton,' Munro said. 'The boys took the body out the backstage door. The rope didn't break. It was released at the pin somehow. There'll have to be a hearing, but since no one else was back there at the time of the accident, they'll probably call it death by misadventure, which basically means we won't ever know what happened.' Munro cleared his throat. 'As a formality, I'd like to fingerprint anyone who wasn't in the audience at the time of the accident – that means you, your wife, and Mr. Wynn. The lab may get some latent prints from the wooden pin. Would any of you have had cause to touch it?'

'My wife and I, no. But Curt probably would have at some point. Though when people work the rail, they generally use gloves.'

'All right. I'll send Davis over to do the printing tomorrow. I'm sure you folks don't need any more of this tonight. In the morning around ten okay?' Dennis nodded. 'Thanks for your cooperation, and I'm very sorry about your friend.' Munro started toward the door and turned back. 'Oh, by the way – you can go ahead and have the stage.. . cleaned up if you like. We've got our photographs and everything else we need. Goodnight.'

'Cleaned up…” Steinberg mused. 'Lovely conceit.'

Robin whirled on him. 'Oh, John, shut up! Just shut the hell up!' She stormed off across the lobby toward the elevator to the suites above.

Steinberg blushed, just a bit. 'I'm sorry, Dennis, if I seem to be rather callous about all this. I do not like death, and therefore, I try to make fun of it as often as I can. Sometimes, I regret to say, with less than acute timing. Would you extend my apologies to your wife?'

'Sure.'

'In the meantime, I'll check with Curt and make certain the storm troops will be here to… rectify the situation on stage. No trace will remain by morning, believe me.' Steinberg folded his arms and looked down at the carpet. 'And believe me also when I say that I liked that young man very much. As much as I regret his passing. You go up to bed now. Curt and I will see to things down here.'

The lobby was almost empty. Only Steinberg, Dennis, and Curt remained. Dennis moved toward the elevator at the far end of the lobby, but instead of pushing the button, he glanced in the direction of the others. Seeing that their attention was occupied, he stepped to the door of the theatre, pushed it open, and entered.

The lights were still on, and Dennis walked gently, as if afraid of being heard, across the inner lobby until he could see the stage. The curtain had been pulled back to its former position high up in the flies, and was no longer visible, but he could see the dark stain on the stage floor, and his lips went tight with the memory of what had caused it.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something move in the shadows of the stage right wing, and felt fear bolt through him, remembering for the first time what Ally Terrazin had told him in the lobby – a presence, she had said. Dennis had never been superstitious, but Tommy's death had shaken him terribly, and he realized that his unease had made him susceptible to those vestiges of irrational fear that remained in the human mind from the dark times before history.

Susceptible.

That was the word, wasn't it? That explained it all, explained why he had seen something move where there was nothing living. He looked again, but all was still.

Just as he was about to turn around and go upstairs to bed, he saw the movement again, felt the fear like a knife, and then was embraced by blessed relief as he saw that it was only the cat, that damned bitch of a cat that