'And I'm sorry to have bothered you,' Chase said.
He hung up without telling Wallace about the calls that he had received from the killer, though he had intended to spill it all. A twenty-four-hour guard on the girl. They would do the same to him, if they knew that he'd been contacted.
The walls seemed to sway, alternately closing in like the jaws of an immense vise and swinging away from him as if they were flat gray gates. The floor rose and fell — or seemed to.
A sense of extreme instability overcame him, a sense that the world was not a solid place but as fluid as a shimmering mirage: the very thing that had landed him in the hospital and had eventually led to his seventy-five- percent disability pension. He could not let it grip him again, and he knew that the best way to fight it was to constrict the perimeters of his world, take solace from solitude. He got another drink.
The telephone woke him from his nap just as the dead men touched him with soft, white, corrupted hands. He sat straight up in bed and cried out, his arms held before him to ward off their cold touch.
When he saw where he was and that he was alone, he sank back, exhausted, and listened to the phone. After thirty rings, he had no choice but to pick it up.
'Yes.'
'I was about to come check on you,' Mrs. Fielding said. 'Are you all right?'
'I'm okay,'
'It took you so long to answer.'
'I was asleep.'
She hesitated, as if framing what she was about to say. 'I'm having Swiss steak, mushrooms, baked corn, and mashed potatoes for supper. Would you like to come down? There's more than I can use.'
'I don't think-'
'A strapping boy like you needs his regular meals.'
'I've already eaten.'
She was silent. Then she said, 'All right. But I wish you'd waited, 'cause I got all this food.'
'I'm sorry, but I'm stuffed,' he said.
'Tomorrow night, maybe.'
'Maybe,' he said. He rang off before she could suggest a late-night snack together.
The ice melted in his glass, diluting what whiskey he had not drunk. He emptied the watered booze into the bathroom sink, got new ice and a new shot of liquor. It tasted as sour as a bite of lemon rind. He drank it anyway. The cupboard and refrigerator contained nothing else but a bag of Winesap apples.
He turned on the small black-and-white television again and slowly cycled through all the local channels. Nothing but news, news, news, and a cartoon program. He watched the cartoons.
None was amusing.
After the cartoons, he watched an old movie.
Except for the telephone call he'd been told to expect at six o'clock, he had the whole evening ahead of him.
At six o'clock on the nose, the phone rang.
'Hello?'
'Good evening, Chase,' the killer said. His voice was still rough.
Chase sat on the bed.
'How are you tonight?' the killer asked.
'Okay. '
'You know what I've been up to all day?'
'Research.'
'That's right.'
'Tell me what you found,' Chase said, as if it would be news to him even though he was the subject. And maybe it would be.
'First, you were born here a little over twenty-four years ago on June eleventh, 1947, in Mercy Hospital. Your parents died in an auto accident a couple of years ago. You went to school at State and graduated in a three-year accelerated program, having majored in business administration. You did well in all subjects except a few required courses, chiefly Basic Physical Sciences, Biology One and Two, Chemistry One, and Basic Composition.' The killer whispered on for two or three minutes, reciting biographical facts that Chase had thought private. Courthouse records, college files, newspaper morgues, and half a dozen other sources had provided the killer with far more information about Chase's life than could have been gleaned merely from the recent articles in the Press- Dispatch.
'I think I've been on the line too long,' the killer said. 'It's time I went to another booth. Is your phone tapped, Chase?'
'No.'
'Just the same, I'll hang up now and call you back in a few minutes.' The line went dead.
Five minutes later the killer called again.
'What I gave you before was just so much dry grass, Chase. But let me add a few more things and do some speculating. Let's see if I can add a match to it.'
'Whatever you have to do.'
'For one thing,' the man said, 'you inherited a lot of money, but you haven't spent much of it.'
'Not a lot.'
'Forty thousand after taxes, but you live frugally.'
'How would you know that?'
'I drove by your house today and discovered that you live in a furnished apartment on the third floor. When I saw you coming home, it was apparent that you don't spend much on clothes. Until that pretty new Mustang, you didn't have a car. It follows, then, that you must have a great deal of your inheritance left, what with the monthly disability pension from the government to pay most or all of your bills.'
'I want you to stop checking on me.'
The man laughed. 'Can't stop. Remember the necessity to evaluate your moral content before passing judgment, Mr. Chase.'
Chase hung up this time. Having taken the initiative cheered him a little. When the phone began to ring again, he summoned the will not to answer it. After thirty rings, it stopped.
When the ringing began again, ten minutes later, he finally picked it up and said hello.
The killer was furious, straining his damaged throat to the limit. 'If you ever do that to me again, then I'll make sure it isn't a quick, clean kill. I'll see to that. You understand me?'
Chase was silent.
'Mr. Chase?' A beat. 'What's wrong with you?'
'Wish I knew,' Chase said.
The stranger decided to let his anger go, and he fell into his previous tone of forced irony: 'That 'wounded in action' bit excites me, Mr. Chase. That part of your biography. Because you don't appear disabled enough to deserve a pension, and you more than held your own in our fight. That gives me ideas, makes me think your most serious wounds aren't physical at all.'
'Whose are?'
'I think you had psychological problems that put you in that army hospital and got you a discharge.'
Chase said nothing.
'And you tell me that I need counseling. I'll have to take more time to check in to this. Very interesting. Well, rest easy tonight, Mr. Chase. You're not scheduled to die yet.'
'Wait.'
'Yes?'
'I have to have a name for you. I can't go on thinking of you in totally impersonal terms like 'the man' and 'the stranger' and 'the killer.' Do you see how that is?'
'Yes,' the man admitted.
'A name?'
He considered. Then he said, 'You can call me Judge.'
