The Dark Half

be.'

    'In a situation like this, I guess it's easy to underestimate,' Thad said. 'I told you the truth — at least, the truth as I understand it for a simple reason. If it is Stark, I think a lot of people are going to underestimate him before this is over.'

  Alan looked from Thad to Liz and back again. After a long time during which there was no sound except for Thad's police guard talking together outside the front door (there was another around back), Alan said: 'The bitch of it is, you guys really believe this, don't you?'

  Thad nodded. 'I do, anyway.'

  'I don't,' Liz said, and they both looked at her, startled. 'I don't believe. I know.'

    Alan sighed and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets. 'There's one thing I'd like to know,' he said. 'If this is what you say it is . . . I don't believe it, can't believe it, I suppose you'd say . . . but if it is, what the hell does this guy want? Just revenge?'

   'Not at all,' Thad said. 'He wants the same thing you or I would want if we were in his position. He wants not to be dead anymore. That's all he wants. Not to be dead anymore. I'm the only one who might be able to make that happen. And if I can't, or won't . . . well . . . he can at least make sure he isn't lonely.

Sixteen

George Stark Calling

1

Alan had left to talk to Dr Hume and the FBI agents were just wrapping up their interrogation — if that was the right word for something which seemed so oddly exhausted and desultory — when George Stark rang. The call came less than five minutes after the state police technicians (who called themselves 'wiremen') finally pronounced themselves satisfied with the accessories they had attached to the Beaumont telephones.

   They had been disgusted but apparently not very surprised to find that, beneath the state-of-theart exterior of the Beaumonts' Merlin phones, they were stuck with the town of Ludlow's horseand-buggy rotary-dial system.

   'Man, this is hard to believe,' the wireman whose name was Wes said (in a tone of voice which suggested he really would have expected nothing else out here in East Overshoe).

    The other wireman, Dave, trudged out to the panel truck to find the proper adapters and any other equipment they might need to put the Beaumonts' telephones in line with law—enforcement as it exists in the latter years of the twentieth century. Wes rolled his eyes and then looked at Thad, as if Thad should have informed him at once that he was still living in the telephone's pioneer era.

   Neither wireman spared so much as a glance for the FBI men who had flown up to Bangor from the Boston branch office and then driven heroically through the dangerous wolf- and bear- infested wilderness between Bangor and Ludlow. The FBI men might have existed in an entirely different light- spectrum which state police wiremen could see no more than infrared or X-rays.

   'All the phones in town are this way,' Thad said humbly. He was developing a nasty case of acid indigestion. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have made him grouchy and hard to live with. Today, however, he only felt tired and vulnerable and terribly sad.

    His thoughts kept turning to Rick's father, who lived in Tucson, and Miriam's parents, who lived in San Luis Obispo. What was old Mr Cowley thinking about right now? What were the Penningtons thinking? How, exactly, would these people, often mentioned in conversation but never actually met, be managing? How did one cope, not just with the death of one's child, but with the unexpected death of one's adult child? How did one cope with the simple, irrational fact of murder?

  Thad realized he was thinking of the survivors instead of the victims for one simple, gloomy reason: he felt responsible for everything. Why not? If he was not to blame for George Stark, who was? Bobcat Goldthwaite? Alexander Haig? The fact that the outdated rotary-dial system still in use here made his phones unexpectedly difficult to tap was just something else to feel guilty about.

    'I think that's everything, Mr Beaumont,' one of the FBI men said. He had been reviewing his notes, apparently as oblivious of Wes and Dave as the two wiremen were of him. Now the agent, whose name was Malone, flipped his notebook closed. It was leather-bound, with his initials discreetly stamped in silver on the lower left-hand corner of the cover. He was dressed in a conservative gray suit, and his hair was parted ruler-straight on the left. 'Have you got anything else, Bill?'

  Bill, aka Agent Prebble, flipped his own notebook — also leatherbound, but sans initials — closed and shook his head. 'Nope. I think that about does it.' Agent Prebble was dressed in a conservative brown suit. His hair was also parted ruler- straight on the left. 'We may have a few more questions later on in the investigation, but we've got what we need for the time being. We'd like to thank you both for your cooperation.' He gave them a big smile, disclosing teeth which were either capped or so perfect they were eerie, and Thad mused: If we were five, I believe he'd give each of us a TODAY WAS A HAPPY-FACE DAY! certificate to take home and show Mommy.

  'Not at all,' Liz said in a slow, distracted voice. She was gently massaging her left temple with the tips of her fingers, as if she were experiencing the onset of a really bad headache.

  Probably, Thad thought, she is.

    He glanced at the clock on the mantel and saw it was just past two-thirty. Was this the longest afternoon of his life? He didn't like to rush to such judgments, but he suspected it was.

  Liz stood. 'I think I'm going to put my feet up for awhile, if that's okay. I don't feel very chipper.'

   'That's a good — ' Idea was of course how he meant to finish, but before he could, the telephone rang.

    All of them looked at it, and Thad felt a pulse begin to triphammer in his neck. A fresh bubble of acid, hot and burning, rose slowly in his chest and then seemed to spread out in the back of his throat.

'Good deal,' Wes said, pleased. 'We won't have to send someone out to make a test call.'

   Thad suddenly felt as if he were encased in an envelope of chilly air. It moved with him as he walked toward the telephone, which was now sharing its table with a gadget that looked like a Lucite brick with lights embedded in its side. One of the lights was pulsing in sync with the ringing of the telephone.

   Where are the birds? I should be hearing the birds. But there were none; the only sound was the Merlin phone's demanding warble.

   Wes was kneeling by the fireplace and putting tools back into a black case which, with its oversized chrome latches, resembled a workman's dinner- bucket. Dave was leaning in the doorway between the living room and the dining room. He had asked Liz if he could have a banana from the bowl on the table, and was now peeling it thoughtfully, pausing every now and then to examine his work with the critical eye of an artist in the throes of creation.

   'Get the circuit-tester, why don'tcha?' he said to Wes. 'If we need some line clarification we can do it while we're right here. Might save a trip back.'

    'Good idea,' Wes said, and plucked something with a pistol grip out of the over-sized dinnerbucket.

  Both men looked mildly expectant and no more. Agents Malone and Prebble were standing, replacing notebooks, shaking out the knife-edge creases in the legs of their pants, and generally confirming Thad's original opinion: these men seemed more like H & R Block tax consultants than gun-toting G-men. Malone and Prebble seemed totally unaware the phone was ringing at all.

  But Liz knew. She had stopped rubbing her temple and was looking at Thad with the wide, haunted eyes of an animal which has been brought to bay. Prebble was thanking her for the coffee and Danish she had supplied, and seemed as unaware of her failure to answer him as he was of the ringing telephone.

   What is the matter with you people? Thad suddenly felt like screaming. What in the hell did you set up all this equipment for in the first place?

    Unfair, of course. For the man they were after to be the first person to phone the Beaumonts after the tap-and-trace equipment had been set up, a bare five minutes after installation was complete, in fact, was just too fortuitous . . . or so they would have said if anyone had bothered to ask them. Things don't happen that way in the wonderful world of law enforcement as it exists in the latter years of the twentieth century, they would have said. It's another writer calling you up for a nice fresh plot idea, Thad, or maybe someone who wants to know if your wife could spare a cup of sugar. But the guy who thinks he's your alter ego? No way, Jose. Too soon, too lucky.

   Except it was Stark. Thad could smell him. And, looking at his wife, he knew that Liz could, too.

    Now Wes was looking at him, no doubt wondering why Thad didn't answer his freshly rigged phone.

Don't worry, Thad thought. Don't worry, he'll wait. He knows we're home, you see.