‘Okay. Go on.’
‘My second thought was that somebody set him up. Someone with bad blood, or a grudge.’
‘Yes, that occurred to me.’
‘Matt says he has no enemies. I believe him.’
‘Everybody has enemies.’
‘There are degrees. Don’t forget the most important thing-there’s a dead man wrapped up in this mess. If someone was out to get Matt, then someone must have murdered Mike Ryerson to do it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the whole song and dance doesn’t make much sense without a body. And yet, according to Matt’s story, he met Mike purely by chance. No one led him to Dell’s last Thursday night. There was no anonymous call, no note, no nothing. The coincidence of the meeting was enough to rule out a setup.’
‘What does that leave for rational explanations?’
‘That Matt dreamed the sounds of the window going up, the laugh, and the sucking sounds. That Mike died of some natural but unknown causes.’
‘You don’t believe that, either.’
‘I don’t believe that he dreamed hearing the window go up. It was open. And the outside screen was lying on the lawn. I noticed it and Parkins Gillespie noticed it. And I noticed something else. Matt has latch-type screens on his house-they lock on the outside, not the inside. You can’t get them off from the inside unless you pry them off with a screw driver or a paint scraper. Even then it would be tough. It would leave marks. I didn’t see any marks. And here’s another thing: The ground below that window was relatively soft. If you wanted to take off a second- floor screen, you’d need to use a ladder, and that would leave marks. There weren’t any. That’s what bothers me the most. A second-floor screen removed from the outside and no ladder marks beneath.’
They looked at each other somberly.
He resumed: ‘I was running this through my head this morning. The more I thought about it, the better Matt’s story looked. So I took a chance. I took the
‘It doesn’t,’ she said unhappily. ‘It makes it worse. He had just finished telling me about Mike Ryerson. He said he heard someone upstairs. He was scared, but he went.’ She folded her hands in her lap and was now holding them tightly, as if they might fly away. ‘Nothing else happened for a little while… and then Matt called out, something like he was revoking his invitation. Then… well, I don’t really know how to… ’
‘Go on. Don’t agonize over it.’
‘I think someone-someone else-made a kind of hissing noise. There was a bump, as if something had fallen.’ She looked at him bleakly. ‘And then I heard a voice say:
She took the ring out of her blouse pocket and dropped it into his hand.
Ben turned it over, then tilted it toward the window to let the light pick out the initials. ‘MCR. Mike Ryerson?’
‘Mike Corey Ryerson. I dropped it and then made myself pick it up again-I thought you or Matt would want to see it. You keep it. I don’t want it back.’
‘It makes you feel-?’
‘Bad. Very bad.’ She raised her head defiantly. But all rational thought goes against this, Ben. I’d rather believe that Matt somehow murdered Mike Ryerson and invented that crazy vampire story for reasons of his own. Rigged the screen to fall off. Did a ventriloquist act in that guest room while I was downstairs, planted Mike’s ring-’
‘And gave himself a heart attack to make it all seem more real,’ Ben said dryly. ‘I haven’t given up hope of rational explanations, Susan. I’m hoping for one. Almost praying for one. Monsters in the movies are sort of fun, but the thought of them actually prowling through the night isn’t fun at all. I’ll even grant you that the screen could have been rigged-a simple rope sling anchored on the roof would do the trick. Let’s go further. Matt is something of a scholar. I suppose there are poisons that would cause the symptoms that Mike had-maybe undetectable poisons. Of course, the idea of poison is a little hard to believe because Mike ate so little-’
‘You only have Matt’s word for that,’ she pointed out.
‘He wouldn’t lie, because he would know that an examination of the victim’s stomach is an important part of any autopsy. And a hypo would leave tracks. But for the sake of argument, let’s say it could be done. And a man like Matt could surely take something that would fake a heart attack. But where is the motive?’
She shook her head helplessly.
‘Even granting some motive we don’t suspect, why would he go to such Byzantine lengths, or invent such a wild cover story? I suppose Ellery Queen could explain it somehow, but life isn’t an Ellery Queen plot.’
‘But this… this other is lunacy, Ben.’
‘Yes, like Hiroshima.’
‘Will you stop doing that’ she whipcracked at him suddenly. ‘Don’t go playing the phony intellectual! It doesn’t fit you! We’re talking about wives’ tales, bad dreams, psychosis, anything you want to call it-’
‘That’s shit,’ he said. ‘Make connections. The world is coming down around our ears and you’re sticking at a few vampires.’
'Salem’s Lot is my town,’ she said stubbornly. ‘If something is happening there, it’s real. Not philosophy.’
‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ he said, and touched the bandage on his head with a rueful finger. ‘And your ex packs a hell of a right.’
‘I’m sorry. That’s a side of Floyd I never saw. I can’t understand it.’
