“You have no worries.”
Sondgard went back inside. “Larry, come here a second.”
Temple came over, looking more and more pale and bushed.
Sondgard said, “I’d like you to stick around just a little longer. When the reporter’s done with Bob Haldemann, he’ll want to talk to you about the second killing. Give him any facts he wants to know, but nothing about the investigation, right?”
“Sure, Dr. Sondgard.”
“You’d better sit down some place till he’s ready for you. You look ready to drop.”
“I’m okay.”
“I know you are. Mike, come on along with me.”
“Where we going?”
“To search the rooms. We’re going to take this place apart, piece by piece.”
“What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know. What would a madman have in his room? Paper dolls he’s cut out? A Napoleon hat? Maybe he writes notes to himself, too.”
“All right, we can try it.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Sondgard took two steps up the stairs, and then said, “Oh, damn! I forgot. The doors are all locked. Hold on a second.” He hurried back outside, and saw Haldemann and Edwards just going into the theater. He shouted, and they waited while he trotted across the gravel to them. He said, “Bob, have you got a general key? One for all the interior doors?”
Edwards said, “You’re making a search? What are you looking for?”
“Not yet,” Sondgard told him. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep my side of the bargain. Have you, Bob?”
“Yes, sure. In the office. Come on.”
They went into the theater, and Haldemann produced a skeleton key from his desk drawer. Sondgard brought it back to the house and he and Mike went upstairs to start searching. Larry Temple was sitting on the bottom stair, his eyes half closed.
After Sondgard/Chax left the room, they all started talking at once, all of them except the madman. He sat slumped in a folding chair, chewing on the inside of his cheek, trying to think.
He had a lot to think about. Sondgard/Chax was closing in on him. Sondgard/Chax was attacking him from everywhere, was giving him too many things to guard against at once.
The search. That was something to think about. He pictured his room upstairs, trying to see if there was anything in it that would help Sondgard/Chax.
Not the furniture. None of that was his, it all came with the room, it was all there when he’d moved in the day before yesterday.
Not the clothing or the suitcase. All of that belonged to the driver he’d killed; none of it could be traced back to Robert Ellington.
And what else was there in the room? Nothing.
Yes, one more thing. His copy of the play they should be rehearsing, with his speeches underlined. But that couldn’t be of any help either.
There was the clothing he’d worn last night. The shoes were still wet, for instance. But they were on the floor in the closet, and he had fresh dry shoes on now, and there was no reason to expect Sondgard/Chax to pick those shoes up. He would just open the closet and look in and see clothing hanging from the bar, and shoes on the floor, and that would be all. No reason to touch the shoes at all.
And even if he did, what of it? His shoes were wet. He could think of a story to cover that. He had— He had—
He had taken a shower. Last night he’d come home drunk with the others, and instead of going straight to bed he’d taken a quick shower, but he’d been so drunk he’d stepped under the water without taking his clothes off first. Then he’d taken them all off. It was as simple as that.
That would cover the rest of the clothing, too. The shirt and underwear and socks stuffed still damp into his laundry bag. The damp trousers hanging way back in the corner of the closet. None of the clothing had any obvious bloodstains, so they would have to accept his explanation. And there were plenty of people to testify that they’d all drunk too much last night.
So much for the search. There was nothing to find but some wet clothes, and Sondgard/Chax probably wouldn’t even notice them, and even if he did the madman had a sensible explanation for them, so the search wouldn’t be so terrible after all. Sondgard/Chax would just be wasting his time and his energy, that’s all.
But then there was the fingerprint. Now that wasn’t clever. He hadn’t thought about fingerprints at all, either time. Of course, Sondgard/Chax had admitted there was a chance the fingerprint wouldn’t be any good, but it was a small chance.
The business about the fingerprint was stupid. It was not clever. Not in any way. There hadn’t been any reason to write that note on the mirror; at this point he could hardly remember why he had wanted to do it at the time. And it had just been foolish not to remember fingerprints. There were so many things he’d forgotten, that he had once known, long ago, before the asylum. He had to be so careful, while he was relearning.
But what to do about the fingerprint? Surely they were watching the house, so it wouldn’t be either clever or safe to try to run away now. If there was any way to change his fingerprints between now and three o’clock this afternoon, he didn’t know about it.
A nine-to-one chance. That’s what Sondgard/Chax had said.
But was that right? Maybe it wasn’t a nine-to-one chance. Maybe it was a one-to-one chance. Maybe Sondgard was just hoping the fingerprint would be good, and was trying to bluff the madman into running away.
Why else would he be searching? If he had a nine-to-one chance, would he waste so much time and energy searching?
He’d admitted, admitted, that they couldn’t be sure about the fingerprint until they got the enlargement. So how did he know it was a nine-to-one chance?
It didn’t matter. The only thing to do was hope. Hope Sondgard/Chax had the odds wrong, and then hope the odds turned out not to favor all the Doctors Chax. It was the only way to handle this threat; wait to see if it turned out to be a real threat. Make no move at all before three o’clock. But if the men from the state capital did come at three o’clock, and did start taking everybody’s fingerprints, then that would mean the enlargement had turned out good, and then the madman would see to it that he escaped before his own fingerprints were taken. There would be a lot of milling around when the state men came, a lot of inevitable confusion. He could go out a side window, from the second floor, land on the dirt below, and get away.
So that took care of the second. The search, no real problem. The fingerprint, wait and see. But there still remained a third thing to think about, and that was the most dangerous of all.
Bobby did it.
Who had written that? Who had come downstairs after he had gone to bed, and written that in the jam he’d smeared on the table? Who in this group knew his secrets? Somebody, somebody. Somebody knew he was the one who had killed them; and somebody the same somebody the same sneaking somebody somebody knew his real name!
Was it possible? He didn’t know any of these people, he’d never met any of them before Wednesday, so how could one of them know so much about him?
He hadn’t written those words himself, he couldn’t have. He thought back to last night, and he could remember two times when he’d made aimless lines, scratched lines with his fingers, but he hadn’t been writing anything, not either time. Once was by the lake, just before he’d washed off the blood. And the other time was in the kitchen, after he’d smeared jam on the table. But he hadn’t written anything. There wasn’t any reason to.
(He didn’t ask himself why he’d smeared jam on the table; he didn’t think about that part of it at all.)