The Dark Half

   'Do wha — ' Rick began, turning his key, and the door exploded in a flash of light and smoke and sound. The cop whose instincts had triggered just an instant too late was recognizable to his relatives; Rick Cowley was nearly vaporized. The other cop, who had been standing a little farther back and who had instinctively shielded his face when his partner cried out, was treated for burns, concussion, and internal injuries. Mercifully — almost magically — the shrapnel from the door and the wall flew around him in a cloud but never touched him. He would never work for the N.Y.P.D. again, however; the blast struck him stone deaf in an instant.

  Inside Rick's apartment, the two technicians from Communications who had come to cook the phones lay dead on the living-room rug. Tacked to the forehead of one with a push-pin was this note:

THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN.

Tacked to the forehead of the other was a second message:

MORE FOOL'S STUFFING. TELL THAD.

PART 2

STARK TAKES CHARGE

'Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls,' Machine told Jack Halstead. 'Did you know that?'

Jack began to laugh. The look Machine turned on him made him think better of it.

   'Wipe that asshole grin off your face and pay attention to me,' Machine said. 'I am giving you instruction here. Are you paying attention?'

'Yes, Mr Machine.'

  'Then hear this, and never forget it. Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls, but it takes a hero to keep on squeezing. I'll tell you something else, while I'm at it: only heroes and quitters walk away, Jack. No one else. And I am no quitter.'

— Machine's Way by George Stark

Fifteen

Stark Disbelief

1

Thad and Liz sat encased in shock so deep and blue it felt like ice, listening as Alan Pangborn told them how the early morning hours had gone in New York City. Mike Donaldson, slashed and beaten to death in the hallway of his apartment building; Phyllis Myers and two policemen gunned down at her West Side condo. The night doorman at Myers's building had been hit with something heavy, and had suffered a fractured skull. The doctors held out odds slightly better than even that he would wake up on the mortal side of heaven. The doorman at Donaldson's building was dead. The wet-work had been carried out gangland-style in all cases, with the hitter simply walking up to his victims and starting in.

  As Alan talked, he referred to the killer repeatedly as Stark.

  He's calling him by his right name without even thinking about it, Thad mused. Then he shook his head, a little impatient with himself. You had to call him something, he supposed, and Stark was maybe a little better than 'the perp' or 'Mr X.' It would be a mistake at this point to think Pangborn was using the name in any way other than as a convenient handle.

  'What about Rick)' he asked when Alan had finished and he was finally able to unlock his tongue.

    'Mr Cowley is alive and well and under police protection.' It was quarter of ten in the morning; the explosion which would kill Rick and one of his guardians was still almost two hours away.

   'Phyllis Myers was under police protection, too,' Liz said. In the big playpen, Wendy was fast asleep and William was nodding out. His head would go down on his chest, his eyes would close . . . then he would jerk his head up again. To Alan he looked comically like a sentry trying not to fall asleep on duty. But each head—jerk was a little weaker. Watching the twins, his notebook now closed and in his lap, Alan noticed an interesting thing: every time William jerked his head up in an effort to stay awake, Wendy twitched in her sleep.

Have the parents noticed that? he wondered, and then thought, Of course they have.

    'That's true, Liz. He surprised them. Police are as prone to surprise as anyone else, you know; they're just supposed to react to it better. On the floor where Phyllis Myers lived, several people along the hall opened their doors and looked out after the shots were fired, and we've got a pretty good idea of what went down from their statements and what the police found at the crime scene. Stark pretended to be a blind man. He hadn't changed his clothes following the murders of Miriam Cowley and Michael Donaldson, which were . . . forgive me, both of you, but they were messy. He comes out of the elevator, wearing dark glasses he probably bought in Times Square or from a pushcart vendor and waving a white cane covered with blood. God knows where he got the cane, but N.Y.P.D. thinks he also used it to bash the doormen.'

    'He stole it from a real blind man, of course,' Thad said calmly. 'This guy is not Sir Galahad, Alan.'

  'Obviously not. He was probably yelling that he'd been mugged, or maybe that he had been attacked by burglars in his apartment. Either way, he came on to them so fast they didn't have much time to react. They were, after all, a couple of prowl-car cops who were hauled off their beat and stuck in front of this woman's door without much warning.'

    'But surely they knew that Donaldson had been murdered, too?' Liz protested. 'If something like that couldn't alert them to the fact the man was dangerous — '

    'They also knew Donaldson's police protection had arrived after the man had been murdered,' Thad said. 'They were overconfident.'

  'Maybe they were, a little,' Alan conceded. 'I have no way of knowing. But the guys with Cowley know that this man is daring and quite clever as well as homicidal. Their eyes are open. No, Thad — your agent is safe. You can count on it.'

  'You said there were witnesses,' Thad said.

   'Oh yeah. Lots of witnesses. At the Cowley woman's place, at Donaldson's. at Myers's. He didn't seem to give a shit.' He looked at Liz and said, 'Excuse me.'

  She smiled briefly. 'I've heard that one a time or two before, Alan.'

  He nodded, gave her a little smile, and turned back to Thad.

  'The description I gave you?'

    'It checks out all down the line,' Alan said. 'He's big, blonde, got a pretty good tan. So tell me who he is, Thad. Give me a name. I've got a lot more than Homer Gamache to worry about now. I've got the goddam Police Commissioner of New York City leaning on me. Sheila Brigham — that's my chief dispatcher — thinks I'm going to be a media star, but it's still Homer I care about. Even more than the two dead police officers who were trying to protect Phyllis Myers, I care about Homer. So give me a name.'

  'I already have,' Thad said.

  There was a long silence — perhaps ten seconds. Then, very softly, Alan said, 'What?'

  'His name is George Stark.' Thad was surprised to hear how calm he sounded, even more surprised to find that he felt calm . . . unless deep shock and calm felt the same. But the relief of actually saying that — You have his name, his name is George Stark — was inexpressible.

  'I don't think I understand you,' Alan said after another long pause.

   'Of course you do, Alan,' Liz said. Thad looked at her, startled by the crisp, no-nonsense tone of her voice. 'What my husband is saying is that his pseudonym has somehow come to life. The tombstone in the picture . . . what it says on that tombstone where there should be a homily or a little verse is something Thad said to the wire-service reporter who originally broke the story. NOT A VERY NICE GUY. Do you recall that?'

   'Yes, but Liz — ' He was looking at them both with a kind of helpless surprise, as if realizing for the first time that he had been holding a conversation with people who had lost their minds.

  'Save your buts,' she said in the same brisk tone. 'You'll have plenty of time for buts and rebuttals. You and everyone else. For the time being, just listen to me. Thad wasn't kidding when he said George Stark wasn't a very nice guy. He may have thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. I knew it even if he didn't. Not only was George Stark not a very nice guy, he was in fact a horrible guy. He made me more nervous with each of the four books he wrote, and when Thad finally decided to kill him, I went upstairs to our bedroom and cried with relief.' She looked at Thad, who was staring at her. She measured him with her gaze before nodding.

  'That's right. I cried. I