Hornets and Others

Two days, it said. You'll see her in two days.

He awoke, covered in sweat, with the moon higher than his window and the night suddenly chilly, and for a moment he thought he saw something that looked like Ginny lying on the bed next to him, something which turned to writhing tiny balls of dust and then vanished.

He sat up in bed breathing heavily, drenched in cold sweat, eyes wide with fear, and then he lay down again, and the room grew warm, and he slept again, dreamless.

The next day he sat in front of his screen again, oblivious, until a sound, a tiny insistent buzzing, made him look up.

He already had outlines for two more Sam Hain stories, and was in the middle of a third. Groggily, he glanced up at his window and saw a hornet buzz by outside the screen.

He went back to work, but the tiny insistent buzzing remained. It was like an itch at the back of his mind.

If anything, the weather had grown even hotter. The radio, which he had listened to briefly while making coffee, mentioned a record-breaker of eighty-two degrees for this date, October 30th. The leaves on the front lawn were wilting, turning dry and crackly like they normally did in deep winter. The Meyer kids, he barely noticed, were now all in shorts and short-sleeve shirts.

As he worked, the faint buzz remained, but he tuned it out, and kept tapping at the keys.

Sometime in early afternoon, after ignoring two phone calls, he hit a lull and reached blindly for the phone when it rang again.

'Yes?' he said curtly.

There was a slight pause, and then a voice said: 'Mr. Kerlan? This is Detective Grant.'

For a moment that meant nothing to him, but then he focused on the name.

'Are you there, Mr. Kerlan?' the detective asked.

'Yes, I'm here.'

'I was wondering if you've heard from your wife.'

He remembered the dream from the night before. 'Have you heard from her?' he said with hope.

Again a pause. 'No, I haven't. Frankly, I don't see why I would. I'm just checking in to see if by any chance she made contact with you, or anyone else you know.'

'I haven't heard from her.'

'That's too bad.' Another pause, which Kerlan waited patiently through.

'Mr. Kerlan, do you mind if I ask you a few more questions?' Peter's attention now was on everything Grant said. His hands left the keyboard reluctantly. 'Sure, go ahead.'

'Thank you. I was.. .wondering if perhaps your wife had gone to.. . someone other than a family member?'

'Like who?'

'Someone...perhaps she was...' Grant laughed with slight embarrassment. 'I don't know quite how to say this, except to just say it.' Peter waited.

'Mr. Kerlan, was your wife having an affair?'

He instantly thought of Revell.

'Who told you that?'

'Well.. .1 shouldn't say this, but one of her relatives told me that there had been some. . . friction between your wife and yourself lately over the question of her, perhaps, seeing someone else...'

A kind of relief flooded through him; he'd thought perhaps the detective had dug up facts when, in fact, he had obviously been talking to Ginny's big mouthed sister, who would have known about their problems.

'Did Ginny's sister Anna tell you that?'

Grant said, 'Well...'

'If she did, there's nothing to it. I had a fit of jealousy but there was nothing behind it.'

'That's what your agent said when I talked to him, but you never know with these things. People try to.. .keep things quiet sometimes...'

'Revell.'

'Yes, William Revell. So as far as you know your wife wasn't having an affair with Mr. Revell?'

'Absolutely not.'

'But you did think she was, for a time.'

'For a brief time, yes. I was wrong.'

'Jealousy, you said...' Grant replied, and Peter could picture the man consulting his cursed note pad, flipping pages...

'Is there anything else, detective? I'm busy—'

'Just a few more questions. Unless you'd like me to drop by later...'

Peter sighed. 'That's all right. I'll answer whatever you want now.'

'Thank you for taking the time, Mr. Kerlan. Now...'

Peter could hear the rustling of notebook pages. He waited.

Grant finally said, 'Ah. What I wanted to know was, if it's possible, I mean, could it be possible, that your wife is not missing, but has been murdered?'

Peter's vision went black for a moment. 'What?'

'What I mean is,' Grant said, in the same casual tone, 'do you think it's possible?'

'Murdered? By whom?'

'That's the question, isn't it? But what we've got here, Mr. Kerlan, is a woman who threatened to run away, who may have had an affair, and, when she did finally leave, did not go anywhere logical, to family or friend, or even to the man with whom she may have been having an affair—'

'I told you, there was no affair. You talked with Revell, didn't you say?'

'Oh, yes, he was very helpful. Told me just what you're telling me now. But what I'm thinking is that, if there was the perception of an affair, even for a time...^'

'Detective Grant, I may be dense but I'm not that dense. Are you telling me you think I killed my wife?'

'Not at all!' Grant gave a falsely hearty laugh. 'Did I say that?'

'Not in so many words. But the way you're talking...'

Another pause. 'Let me put it this way, Mr. Kerlan. Usually when we have this kind of situation, a missing person the way we have here, a few logical possibilities present themselves. The most logical in this case is that your wife left, and went to someone close to her. That hasn't happened. Another logical possibility is that she took off on a whim, and went to a faraway place, on an airplane, perhaps, or a train or bus. Since she didn't take her car, this is the way we think. We've checked on this end as far as we could, and that doesn't seem to have happened. And if it had, usually after two or three days she would have contacted you, or one of the other people close to her, to talk or just to let someone know she was all right. This is the kind of logic we use. After those two scenarios are excluded, there's another which often presents itself. That is, of course, that she never left at all. That she was...'

'Murdered. By me.'

'Or someone else, Mr. Kerlan. Is there anyone else we should be looking at?'

'Could it have been a random thing, a serial killer—'

He had the feeling Grant almost laughed, but instead the detective said, 'That's not a logical scenario at the moment, Mr. Kerlan. Like I said, is there anyone else. . .

'No. Nobody I can think of.'

'Then if you were me, and thinking logically...'

'You think I killed her. You think I went into a jealous rage, and murdered her, and hid her body, chopped it up with an ax, put it in a blender...'

Grant wasn't laughing on the other end of the line, and Kerlan suddenly realized the man might take him literally.

'I write horror fiction for a living, detective.'