“Why in hell should Joe be here?”
“Joe shouldn’t be in hell,” Kate answered instantly—making as much sense, Walworth thought, as anything else she had said so far. She appeared to stop to think. “I don’t know why he should be in this place, then,” she went on. “But he was here.”
“My God.” Walworth was speaking to himself again. “I think it really is Kate. Then there must have been someone who looked just like her in the morgue—someone they found in that rooming house—I don’t know. God, what a day and evening this is turning out to be.”
Kate nodded at him, a wise-old-woman sort of nod that made her look crazier than ever. “You speak of God a lot, don’t you? They can, too, you know. It’s not really like it is in the stories. They can handle holy things. They’re no worse than we are, really.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” Suddenly Walworth remembered leaving the phone off its cradle, back in the other room. Immediately he felt pleased with himself for having his head on so straight now that he remembered that. “Excuse me one second,” he said, and left the kitchen.
Sure enough, there was the loose phone; score one for the consistency of the world and dependability of his brain. He hung it up, not bothering to find out if there was someone on the other end of the line now or not. He could call back later for help if it was necessary, but right now it looked like maybe he was going to fly home from this trip on his own.
On his way back to the kitchen he hoped fiercely that his visitor was still going to be there. She was, he saw with considerable relief, and she still looked like Kate. But a Kate still really out of it, staring now with great apparent interest at the icemaker on his refrigerator door—
Some trick of angles—
Going up to the girl, Walworth quietly touched her on the elbow. She started, not at all the way a phantom ought to behave, and turned her quietly wild gaze on him.
Those eyes of hers made him shaky. “Kate, d’you know what? Everyone thinks you’re dead. Hey, now, don’t start flying around outside the window, or do anything silly like that, hey?” He could hear the real pleading in his own voice, and it disgusted him.
She looked at him with a total lack of intelligence. “What?”
“I’m just telling you, don’t do anything silly until I have the chance to show the world that you’re still alive and in one piece. That’s going to get me off one hook, anyway. Now you
“I’m here. Of course I am.”
“Great. What brings you to my place tonight, anyway? Not that I mind.” His hand, falling back to his side, brushed the butt of the gun still stuck in his belt, and he wondered if it would be smarter now to put the weapon away. He decided to carry it with him a little longer, just in case . . . in case of what, he didn’t exactly know.
“I must find Joe.” Kate’s fine forehead creased in puzzlement. “I went to his apartment tonight, right after sunset, but he’s not there. He’s been
She raised both hands to her head. “Oh, those people drugged me, that night when I was here . . . maybe you . . . but you’re not one of them.”
“No, no I’m not.”
Kate let her hands drop to her sides, and her speech fell back into its earlier lifeless tone. “I think I left something here . . . I didn’t have any money with me when I wanted to go shopping.”
“Shopping. Sure.” Walworth stared at her for a little while. “My God, they really dosed you good, didn’t they? Well, welcome to the club. I knew they were giving you something good that night . . . how many days ago was that? Almost a week, I bet, and you’re still wandering. I hope it’s not the same thing they gave me. God.”
She looked at him as if she were trying hard to understand.
“So, what do I do with you now, Katie? Just call up the cops, I suppose. No, my lawyer first. Then the cops. Tell ‘em you’re here. Say you just wandered in. I know you slightly.”
He decided to take a look around the apartment first, because there were probably a few things he’d rather the cops didn’t see. He had better put the gun away, to begin with—suddenly recalling something else, Walworth turned his back on Kate and walked out of the kitchen again. When he reached his bedroom, the little shot-to- splinters table was lying just as he remembered it, on its side against the wall, dusted with a little plaster from the cratered wall above.
So, the shooting incident had been real enough—except of course he must have been shooting at a drug- induced hallucination. Carol herself had doubtless been long gone before things started to get dangerous. Her idea in drugging him must have been that he would eliminate himself with his own crazed violence—an unreliable method, it would seem, of getting someone out of the way. And why should she want him out of the way anyhow? Maybe this was only her idea fun. He himself, he knew, had some ideas on how to have a good time that would seem far out, to put it mildly, to most people. But Carol and her pal the ape-man must be completely crazy. . . .
He righted the little table. Still, there was no way that the damage wouldn’t be noticed if anyone came into the bedroom. I was cleaning my gun this afternoon, officer, and it just . . . they must hear that pretty often. But still the gun had nothing to do with Kate, or with her brother’s kidnapping. So that would be all right. What he had to do now was show the world that Kate Southerland was still alive. After that, there ought to be lawyers around sharp enough to demonstrate to the world that whatever had been happening to Kate lately was not Craig Walworth’s fault.
But this time, when he got back to the cheerful kitchen, his chronic fear was realized. Kate was gone. No trace of her. And the back door was still locked and bolted from the inside.
Partial relief came with the realization that she must have wandered off somewhere, and still be in the apartment. He found his front door still chained up, too, when his hopeful search for Kate took him that far. He stood in the living room and called her name a few times, tentatively. He was completely certain that that image of Carol, with a hole shot in her dress but not the pink skin of her belly, had been a picture projected out of his own doped mind. That had to be. Tonight’s Kate, though, had looked worn and almost sick, and despite that—or maybe because of it—she had been very real.
Of course Carol, now that he thought about it, never looked all that real anyway. Beautiful, God yes, but . . .
So he went through the whole place once more, calling Kate’s name softly, peering into closets as he went and even under the beds. Doing this made him feel no sillier than anything else he could think of doing.
Once the gun in his belt pinched his belly when he bent over to look under a bed, and he had a sudden almost overpowering impulse to draw it out and put the muzzle to his head and pull the trigger. Would death be a drug- delusion too, an unreal sleep? Was Kate really dead and was he sharing the ultimate bad trip with her? When people got up from the morgue and walked . . .
His doorchime sounded distantly. Someone at the front. The lobby desk should have called up—or had he missed hearing the intercom?
This time he didn’t even bother looking through the viewer first. He just undid the fastenings of the door and opened up, ready to take whatever came.
It was Kate again, standing there dumbly, looking just as she had before.
“How do you do that?” Irritably he reached out and grabbed her by the solid, real jacket sleeve and pulled her into the apartment. “Now stay put, will you, and let me think? I got a head full of shit and I got to try to think. Baby, I’ve got to be sure you’re real before I call the cops to try to show you off.”
“He’s coming after me,” said Kate, in her dazed voice that assigned nothing any gradations of importance.
“He? Who?”
“I went downstairs just now, and there he was, coming along the walk. He wants me to go back with him. Give me orders, put me out of the way somewhere, that’s what he wants. But I’ve got to keep looking for Joe —”
Reality was suddenly as unmistakable as an onrushing truck. “Winter’s coming? Up here?”
“—and he won’t let me go on looking.”
It was quiet enough now that Walworth could hear one of the front elevators running.
