The Dark Half

preparations for the attack. The ghostly cries of those thousands of birds seemed to make this whole crazy thing his responsibility.

   But if Miriam died simply because he had been too panicked to dial 911, how would he ever be able to face Rick again?

  Fuck that; how would he ever be able to look at himself again in a mirror?

  Ridgewick the Down-Home Yankee Idiot was back. He gave Thad the sheriff's number, speaking each digit slowly enough for a retarded person to have taken the number down . . .but Thad made him repeat it anyway, in spite of the burning, digging urge to hurry. He was still shaken by how effortlessly he had screwed up the sheriff's office number, and what could be done once could be done again.

  'Okay,' he said. 'Thanks.'

  'Uh, Mr Beaumont? Sure would appreciate it if you'd kinda soft-pedal any stuff about how I —

    Thad hung up on him without the slightest twinge of remorse and dialed the number Ridgewick had given him. Pangborn would not answer the phone, of course; that was simply too much to hope for on The Night of the Cobwebs. And whoever did answer would tell him (after the obligatory few minutes of verbal ring-around-the-rosy, that was) that the sheriff had gone out for a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. In Laconia, New Hampshire, probably, although Phoenix was not entirely out of the question.

He uttered a wild bark of laughter, and Liz looked at him, startled. 'Thad? Are you all right?'

   He started to answer, then just flapped a hand at her to show he was, as the phone was picked up. It wasn't Pangborn; he'd had that much right, anyway. It was a little boy who sounded about ten.

  'Hello, Pangborn residence,' he piped, 'Todd Pangborn speaking.'

  'Hi,' Thad said. He was dimly aware that he was holding the phone receiver much too tightly and tried to loosen his fingers. They creaked but didn't really budge. 'My name is Thad — ' Pangborn, he almost finished, oh Jesus, that would be good, you're on top of this, all right, Thad, you missed your calling, you should have been an air traffic controller. ' — Beaumont,' he finished after the brief mid-course correction. 'Is the sheriff there?'

  No, he had to go to Lodi, California, for beer and cigarettes.

  Instead, the boy's voice moved away from the telephone mouthpiece and bugled, 'DAAAD! PHONE!' This was followed by a heavy clunk that made Thad's ear ache.

  A moment later, O praise God and all His holy Saints, the voice of Alan Pangborn said, 'Hello?'

  At the sound of that voice, some of Thad's mental buck fever melted away.

  'It's Thad Beaumont, Sheriff Pangborn. There's a lady in New York that may need help very badly right now. It has to do with the matter we were discussing Saturday night.'

    'Shoot,' Alan said crisply, just that, and the relief, oh boy. Thad felt like a picture coming back into focus.

  'The woman is Miriam Cowley, my agent's ex-wife.' Thad reflected that only a minute ago he undoubtedly would have identified Miriam as 'my ex-wife's agent.'

    'She called here. She was crying, extremely distraught. I didn't even know who she was at first. Then I heard a man's voice in the background. He said for her to tell me who she was and what was going on. She said there was a man in her apartment, threatening to hurt her. To . . .' Thad swallowed. '. . . to cut her. I'd recognized her voice by then, but the man shouted at her, told her if she didn't identify herself he'd cut her fucking head off. Those were his words. 'Do what I say or I'll cut your fucking head off.' Then she said she was Miriam and begged me . . .' He swallowed again. There was a click in his throat, as clear as the letter E sent on a Morse key. 'She begged me not to let the bad man do that. Cut her again.'

   Across from him, Liz was growing steadily whiter. Don't let her faint, Thad wished or prayed. Please don't let her faint now.

  'She was screaming. Then the line went dead. I think he cut it or pulled it out of the wall.' Except that was bullshit. He didn't think anything. He knew. The line had been cut, all right. With a straight-razor. 'I tried to get her again, but — '

  'What's her address?'

  Pangborn's voice was still crisp, still pleasant, still calm. But for the bright line of urgency and command running through it, he might have simply been batting the breeze with an old friend. It was right to call him, Thad thought. Thank God for people who know what they are doing, or at least believe they do. Thank God for people who behave like characters in pop novels. If I had to deal with a Saul Bellow person here, I believe I would lose my mind.

  Thad looked below Miriam's name in Liz's book. 'Honey, is this a three or an eight?'

  'Eight,' she said in a distant voice.

  'Good. Sit in the chair again. Put your head in your lap.'

  'Mr Beaumont? Thad?'

  'I'm sorry. My wife is very upset. She looks faint.'

   'I'm not surprised. You're both upset. It's an upsetting situation. But you're doing well. Just keep it together, Thad.'

    'Yes.' He realized dismally that if Liz fainted, he would have to leave her lying on the floor and plug along until Pangborn had enough information to make a move. Please don't faint, he thought again, and looked back at Liz's address book. 'Her address is 109 West 84th Street.'

'Phone number?'

'I tried to tell you — her phone doesn't — '

'I need the number just the same, Thad.'

   'Yes. Of course you do.' Although he didn't have the slightest idea why. 'I'm sorry.' He recited the number.

  'How long ago was this call?'

  Hours, he thought, and looked at the clock over the mantelpiece. His first thought was that it had stopped. Must have stopped.

  'Thad?'

    'I'm right here,' he said in a calm voice which seemed to be coming from someone else. 'It was approximately six minutes ago. That's when my communication with her ended. Was broken off.'

  'Okay, not much time lost. If you'd called N.Y.P.D., they might have had you on hold three times that long. I'll get back to you as quick as I can, Thad.'

   'Rick,' he said. 'Tell the police when you talk to them her ex can't know yet. If the guy's . . . you know, done something to Miriam, Rick will be next on his list.'

'You're pretty sure this is the same guy who did Homer and Clawson, aren't you?'

    'I am positive.' And the words were out and flying down the wire before he could be sure he even wanted to say them: 'I think I know who it is.'

After the briefest hesitation, Pangborn said: 'Okay. Stay by the phone. I'll want to talk to you about this when there's time.' He was gone.

  Thad looked over at Liz and saw she had slumped sideways in the chair. Her eyes were large and glassy. He got up and went to her quickly, straightened her, tapped her cheeks lightly.

  'Which one is it?' she asked him thickly from the gray world of not-quite-consciousness. 'Is it Stark or Alexis Machine? Which one, Thad?'

  And after a very long time he said, 'I don't think there's any difference. I'll make tea, Liz.'

3

He was sure they would talk about it. How could they avoid it? But they didn't. For a long time they only sat, looking at each other over the rims of their mugs, and waited for Alan to call back. And as the endless minutes dragged by, it began to seem right to Thad that they not talk — not until Alan called back and told them whether Miriam was dead or alive.

  Suppose, he thought, watching her bring her mug of tea to her mouth with both hands and sipping at his own, suppose we were sitting here one night, with books in our hands (we'd look, to an outsider, as if we were reading, and we might be, a little, but what we'd really be doing is savoring the silence as if it were some particularly fine wine, the way only parents of very young children can savor it, because they have so little of it), and further suppose that while we were doing that, a meteorite crashed through the roof and landed, smoking and glowing, on the livingroom floor. Would one of us go into the kitchen and fill up the floor-bucket with water, douse it before it could light up the carpet, and then just go on reading? No — we'd talk about it. We'd have to. The way we have to talk about this.

  Perhaps they would begin after Alan called back. Perhaps they would even talk through him, Liz listening carefully as Alan asked questions and Thad answered them. Yes — that might be how their own talking would start' Because it seemed to Thad that Alan was the catalyst. In a weird way it seemed to Thad that Alan was the one who had gotten this thing started, even though the sheriff had only been responding to what Stark had already done.