Mystery Walk

of town. The fire's fast, and it's . . . it's so hot I can feel the heat on my own face. I can hear the fire engines coming. But the roof collapses, and I . . . can see people jumping out of the windows. It's going to happen, Billy. I know it is.'

'But do you know where this building is?'

'No, but I think it's here, in Chicago. All the other dreams I've had came true within a hundred miles or so of where I was. Dr Hillburn thinks I'm like . . . like a radar or something. My range is limited,' she said, with a frightened little smile. 'Cappy says they're going to die if I can't help them. He says it's going to start in the wires, and it's going to be fast. He keeps saying something that sounds like 'spines,' but I can't figure out what he means.'

'You need to let Dr Hillburn know,' Billy told her. 'Tomorrow morning. Maybe she can help you.'

She nodded vaguely. 'Maybe. But I don't think so. I'm so tired of being responsible, Billy. Why did it have to be me. Why?' When she looked up at him, there were tears glimmering in her eyes.

'I don't know,' he said, and he reached out to take her hand as the rain flailed against the windows. For a long time they sat together, listening to the storm, and when the rain stopped Bonnie let out a soft, despairing whisper.

51

As Billy sat with Bonnie Hailey at the Hillburn Institute, the telephone was ringing at the Hodges's house in Fayette. George Hodges stirred, feeling his wife's back pressed against his own, and fumbled for the receiver.

It was Albert Vance, an attorney he'd met at a business conference in Fort Lauderdale the year before, calling from New York City. Hodges told him to stay on the line, nudged Rhonda, and asked her to hang up when he yelled from downstairs. He went down to the study, rubbing sleep from his eyes, and took the call. 'Okay!' he shouted, and the upstairs phone clicked down.

He didn't want Rhonda overhearing. His heart was pounding as he listened to what Vance had to say.

'I had to go through red tape like you wouldn't believe,' Vance said, in a northern accent abrasive to Hodges's eat 'Ten High owns a few companies here in New York, and on the surface they're as clean as polished glass. No IRS trouble, no union problems, no bankruptcies. They're real Boy Scouts.'

'So what does that mean?'

'It means I had to dig five thousand dollars deeper, and I had to cover my tracks. That's why I'm calling so late. I don't want anyone in my office to know what I found out about Ten High . . . just in case.'

'I don't understand.'

'You will. Ten High may or may not be connected.'

'Connected? With what?'

'The organized boys. Got the picture? I said may or may not be. They've insulated themselves pretty damned well. But the word I get is that Ten High has sunken its claws into the West Coast porno business, the garment trade, owns a sizable slice of Vegas action, and controls most of the Mexican illegal-alien flow. Ten High is strong, prospering, and lethal.'

'Oh . . . Jesus. . . .' Hodges's hand clenched around the receiver Wayne and Henry Bragg were still out there! Wayne had missed a television taping, and now the Houston date had passed and still Wayne showed no intent of coming back to Fayette! God only knew what hold Krespin had on him! He said weakly, 'I . . . Al, what can I do?'

'You want my advice? I'll give you a fifty-buck warning for free: keep your ass away from those people! Whatever's going on between them and your client, it's not worth being made into dog food over. Right?'

Hodges's mouth was numb. He said in a whisper, 'Yes.'

'Okay, that's it. Send me the money and a case of Jack Daniel's, I'll call it even. But listen to me, and I'm serious about this: you never called me to check into Ten High. I never heard of Ten High before. Got it? Those guys have very long arms. Okay?'

'Al, I appreciate your help. Thank you.'

'Sleep tight,' Vance said, and the telephone was hung up in New York City.

George Hodges slowly returned the receiver to it cradle. He was shaking, and couldn't find the strength to rise from his desk.

For all intents and purposes, the Falconer Crusade—the foundation, the scholarship fund, everything!—was in the grip of Augustus Krepsin, chairman of the board of the Ten High Corporation. Surely Henry Bragg could see what was happening! Couldn't he?

No, he thought bitterly. Henry was too busy lying around that pool and meeting the young girls Niles introduced him to. Palm Springs was all the things Henry had ever fantasized about, and he was hooked as deeply as Wayne!

Hodges reached for the phone again, and dialed 0. When the operator answered, he said, 'I'd like to make a long-distance call please. To Birmingham, to the Federal Bureau of . . .' And then he tasted ashes in his mouth, because what could he say? What could he do? Wayne wanted to be out there. Wayne felt safe in that stone tomb, hidden from his responsibilities.

Those guys have very long arms, Al Vance had said.

'Yes sir?' the operator asked.

Hodges thought of Rhonda, and of Larry in his freshman year at Auburn. Long arms. He'd seen Niles's eyes: the eyes of a killer. His gut lurched, and he hung up.

Things had been coming loose at the seams ever since J.J.'s death. Now the whole package was coming apart. Hodges feared what might be at its dark center.

But he had his family, his stocks and bonds. His house and money. He was alive.

Hodges rose wearily from his desk, and as he started across the room he thought he saw, through the picture window, a red glow in the sky when wind whipped through the trees. A fire? he wondered. In that direction lay Hawthorne. What could be burning?

Still, it couldn't be a very large fire. And it was several miles away. It would be put out. He'd find out what it was in the morning.

'God help me,' he said quietly, and hoped he would be heard. Then he turned off the lights and climbed the stairs. He felt as if his soul had been scorched to a cinder.

52

'I'll be perfectly honest with you, Billy,' Mary Hillburn said. She put on her reading glasses and opened a file folder that lay before her atop the desk. 'I have all your test results right here, everything from Zener cards to biofeedback. You checked out just fine on your physical, incidentally.'

'That's good to know.' It had been several days since Billy's talk with Bonnie Hailey, and just yesterday morning he'd finished the last of the tests Dr Hillburn had planned for him. It had been a long hypnosis session conducted by Dr Lansing, and Billy had felt as if he were floating in a dark pool as the therapist tried to take him to different levels of consciousness. From the disappointment on Lansing's face, Billy could tell it had been a dismal failure.

'Oh,' Billy said quietly. All that work for nothing? he thought. 'Then . . . you don't think I can do what I say I can, is that right?'

'Take on pain from the dead? I really don't know. As I say, the tests—'

'They're not the right tests,' Billy said.

She pondered that for a moment. 'Perhaps you're right. But then, what would the proper test be, young man? Can you come up with one? You see, parapsychology—and death survival research in particular—is a very, very tricky enterprise. It's a fledgling science—a new frontier; we make up the tests as we go along, but even our tests have to be tested. We have to prove ourselves as being serious every day, and most scientists won't even listen to our findings.' She closed his file. 'Unfortunately, we have proven nothing. No proof of death survival, no proof of an afterlife . . . nothing. But still people come to us with sightings of discarnates. They come to us with precognitive dreams, with the ability to suddenly speak in different languages, or to play musical instruments that they had no prior experience with. I've seen individuals go into trancelike states