The voice seemed disembodied, a hoarse, machinelike whisper with a faint echo, but it was unm istakably right there, right in her ear. Where the hell was he? Oh my God, the phone didn’t ring: He’s here; he’s in the house. She fought back another surge of panic, the overwhelming urge to bolt back out of the house.
“Who is this? What do you want?” she said, her voice coming out in a dry croak.
That’s not your normal voice, Commander. Funny how adrenaline can do that. Are you a fraid?
She looked around the darkened room and swallowed again. If she just put the phone down and kept very quiet she could make it to the front door.
Depending on where he was. There were extension phones in the study, the kitchen, and the upstairs bedrooms. Get out of the house. Get to one of the cars, and a car phone.
Pay attention, Commander. Stop trying to figure out where I am or how to get help. I’m not here to hurt you. If I wanted to hurt you, I would have put a razor wire about neck-high between those hedges. I didn’t hurt your old dog, did I? I could have snapped his neck. But I used ether, right? So sit still. And pay attention. This is important.
“Who are you?” she asked, her voice a little stronger.
She eyed the front hall, gathering herself, and then thought about getting the door locks open, and about the distance to the garage.
I think you know who I am. The voice definitely sounded as if it was machine-generated, not human.
“Galantz?”
That’s not my name anymore. Marcus Galantz is dead, remember? But here’s the deal: You’re beginning to interfere in something that doesn’t concern you. You and your friend Lurch there.
She swallowed but said nothing.
I want you to back out. Go back to being a professional second-guesser in room 4C646 in the Pentagon. There’s a future in that. There’s nofuture in what you’ve been doing lately. None at all. Do you understand me?
Did you kill them?” she asked. “Elizabeth Walsh? Admiral Schmidt?”
No. He did. Your precious pretty boy with the golden sleeves.
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “He’s not a killer.”
Oh yes he is. You have no idea, Commander. He kills people, especially people who depend on him. He kills people who are close to him. And you are getting close to him.
Dangerous place to be, Commander. Very dangerous, in my recent experience. Others would-agree-if only they could That silenced her. She tried to think, but that whispering voice was starting to mesmerize her-the repetitive phraseology, the short chantlike bursts of speech.
The urge to bolt was diminishing. Instead, she found herself wanting to talk to him, to pay attention to the whispering sound in her ear.
You don’t believe me, do you, Karen-n-n-n?
Suddenly, the whisper was much louder as he let the final syllable of her name linger in the earpiece, the echoing voice like a prolonged hiss from a large snake. Using her name now. Focus: He’s using a machine to do this.
I do believe you. But she was thinking it, not saying it.
Karen-n-n-n. Here I come. Karen-n-n-n.
She realized then that she had stopped breathing and that she was holding the earpiece against the side of her head hard enough to hurt.
No. Don’t come. I believe you. But she was still thinking it, not saying it.
Karen-n-n-n. The volume was diminishing.
Please. Don’t come. I believe you.
He said her name again, the volume very low now, as if he had put down the phone.
And was coming. I She dropped the phone and lunged across the living room, I knocking over a table and then a lamp, caroming off an I upholstered chair before reaching the front vestibule, her hands clawing at the dead-bolt handle, the door handle, and then she was out on the front porch and flying across the driveway to the garage, its right-side door still open, thank God, to the first car, any car, and then she was inside the Mercedes, batting at the switches for the door locks.
Keys. Oh God, I don’t have my keys!
She whirled around in the seat and looked back at the open garage door.
The door transmitter was mounted to the dash. Close it? Or leave it open?
Close it and be in total darkness. Open it and he gets in, if he wants to.”Men she remembered the car phone.
She smashed down on the remote transmitter button and the big garage door started to lower behind her. She stabbed the power switch on the car phone. There was a tone, and the little screen lit up. Locked, it read, as if mocking her.
She yelled and slammed her hand on the steering wheel, then remembered how to unlock it. The garage door settled to the concrete floor behind her with a thump as she punched in the last three digits of the phone’s number. An instant of silence, and then there was another tone, and then the blessed dashed lines of a full signal. She picked up the handset and then dropped it when the phone rang.
She let it lie there on the seat, afraid to touch it. It rang again, then a third time. Him. It had to be him. Finally, her hand trembling, she reached down and hit the Send button,
then picked it up.
Karen-n-n-n.
She closed her eyes but didn’t reply. Just held the phone to her ear.
Get clear of this. Get your largefriend clear of this. Don’t be there when I come for him I won’t warn you again.
She squeezed her eyes shut to make him go away.
I’m going now.
The whisper grew weaker, overlaid with reverberations.
I’m going now, Karen. Don’t make me come back Then there was nothing except the hiss of static in her ear. She hit the Clear button and let the phone drop into her lap as she slumped back against the seat of the car. Her stomach felt weak and fluttery. Her hands and even her legs were still trembling.
She picked up the phone again to make a call, then stopped. A call to whom? The cops? And tell them what?
That she was sitting in her garage, locked in her Mercedes, because there was some guy talking to her on a phone? She could just hear the cops’ response: Yeah, right, lady, we’ll be hustling right along.
Another Great Falls Yuppie princess who’s overdone her meds.
But for some reason, she felt that he was indeed gone.
She reached for the remote transmitter button, then hesitated. What if he wasn’t? She turned around slowly in the seat and looked out at the side mirror. She could barely make out the inside surface of the garage door, but there was a thin line of dim light along the garage floor. She turned back around and unlocked the doors, wincing at the suddenly loud noise. She opened the door and slid out of the driver’s seat. Opening the door turned on the car’s interior light. Feeling exposed, she pushed the door shut, trying to make no noise.
Standing by the door, she had to hang on to the door handle because her legs were trembling so badly. She stared hard at the bottom of the garage door. But now she could clearly see the crack of dim light visible along the bottom.
She crept back to the leftrear fender, then slowly sank down to one knee to look under the door. She froze.
There were two dim shapes that looked very much like shoes standing right by the door.
She held her breath and closed her eyes. You’re imagining things. Look again. I don’t want to look again. Do it.
She looked again. Nothing. She bent farther down, scanning the entire crack. Nothing. Taking care to make not a sound, she straightened up and leaned back on the fender. A mouse scuttled in some leaves in a comer of the garage, but there were no other sounds, inside or out.
Call Train. Yes, call Train. But not on this phone. Use the other phone, the Explorer’s. She went over to the Ford, looked inside, and got in.
