"Why don't you just stay home and watch old movies?" Chase wondered.
"What?"
"Or seek counseling."
"I'm not in need of counseling. This sick world is in need of counseling. The world, not me." His anger sent him into another coughing fit. Then: "They were both sluts, the boy as well as the girl. They deserved what they got — except she didn't get hers, thanks to you."
Chase waited.
The man said, "You see, I must research you as thoroughly as I did those two. Otherwise, I would never be sure if you deserved the judgment of death or whether I'd eliminated you simply because you'd interfered with my plans and I wanted revenge. In short, I'm not killing people. I'm executing those who deserve it."
Chase said, "I don't want you calling here again."
"Yes, you do."
Chase didn't reply.
"I'm your motivation," said the killer.
"My motivation?"
"There's a destiny here."
"My motivation to do what?"
"That," said the killer, "is for you to decide."
"I'll have the line bugged."
"That won't stop me," the stranger said, again amused. "I'll simply place the phone calls from various booths around the city, and I'll keep them too short to trace."
"If I refuse to answer my phone?"
"You'll answer it. Six o'clock this evening," he reminded Chase, and he hung up.
Chase dropped the receiver, uneasily aware that the killer knew him better than he knew himself. He would answer every time, of course. And for the same reasons that he had answered all the nuisance calls of the last few weeks rather than obtain an unlisted number. The only problem was that he didn't know just what those reasons were.
Impulsively, he lifted the receiver and placed a call to the police headquarters downtown. It was the first time in ten and a half months that he had initiated a call.
When the desk sergeant answered, Chase asked for Detective Wallace.
Wallace came on the line a moment later. "Yes, Mr. Chase, can I help you?"
Chase didn't mention the calls from the killer — which had been why he thought he'd phoned Wallace. Instead he asked, "How's the investigation coming along?"
Wallace was not averse to talking shop. "Slowly but surely. We found prints on the knife. If he's ever been arrested for a serious crime or worked for any branch of government, we'll have him soon."
"And if he's never been printed?"
Wallace said, "We'll get him anyway. We found a man's ring in the Chevy. It didn't belong to the dead boy, and it looks as if it would be too small for your fingers by a size or three. Didn't lose a ring, did you?"
"No," Chase said.
"I thought so. Should have called you on it, but I was pretty sure about it. It's his, right enough."
"Anything else besides the prints and ring?"
"We're keeping a constant watch on the girl and her parents, though I'd appreciate it if you didn't say anything about that to anyone."
"You think he might try for her?"
"Maybe. If he thinks she can identify him. You know, it's occurred to me that we wouldn't be far off if we gave you a tail as well. Have you thought of that?"
Alarmed out of proportion by the suggestion, Chase said, "No. I don't see what value that would have."
"Well, the story was in the papers this morning. He probably doesn't fear you identifying him as much as he does the girl, but he might bear a grudge against you."
"Grudge? He'd have to be nuts."
Wallace laughed. "Well, if not nuts, what is he?"
"You mean you've found no motives from questioning the girl, no old lovers who might have—"
"No," Wallace said. "Right now we're operating on the assumption there's no rational motive, that he's psychotic."
"I see."
"Well," Wallace said, "I'm sorry there isn't more solid news."
"And I'm sorry to have bothered you," Chase said.
He hung up without telling Wallace about the calls that he had received from the killer, though he had intended to spill it all. A twenty-four-hour guard on the girl. They would do the same to him, if they knew that he'd been contacted.
The walls seemed to sway, alternately closing in like the jaws of an immense vise and swinging away from him as if they were flat gray gates. The floor rose and fell — or seemed to.
A sense of extreme instability overcame him, a sense that the world was not a solid place but as fluid as a shimmering mirage: the very thing that had landed him in the hospital and had eventually led to his seventy-five-percent disability pension. He could not let it grip him again, and he knew that the best way to fight it was to constrict the perimeters of his world, take solace from solitude. He got another drink.
The telephone woke him from his nap just as the dead men touched him with soft, white, corrupted hands. He sat straight up in bed and cried out, his arms held before him to ward off their cold touch.
When he saw where he was and that he was alone, he sank back, exhausted, and listened to the phone. After thirty rings, he had no choice but to pick it up.
"Yes."
"I was about to come check on you," Mrs. Fielding said. "Are you all right?"
"I'm okay,"
"It took you so long to answer."
"I was asleep."
She hesitated, as if framing what she was about to say. "I'm having Swiss steak, mushrooms, baked corn, and mashed potatoes for supper. Would you like to come down? There's more than I can use."
"I don't think—"
"A strapping boy like you needs his regular meals."
"I've already eaten."
She was silent. Then she said, "All right. But I wish you'd waited, 'cause I got all this food."
"I'm sorry, but I'm stuffed," he said.
"Tomorrow night, maybe."
"Maybe," he said. He rang off before she could suggest a late-night snack together.
The ice melted in his glass, diluting what whiskey he had not drunk. He emptied the watered booze into the bathroom sink, got new ice and a new shot of liquor. It tasted as sour as a bite of lemon rind. He drank it anyway. The cupboard and refrigerator contained nothing else but a bag of Winesap apples.
He turned on the small black-and-white television again and slowly cycled through all the local channels. Nothing but news, news, news, and a cartoon program. He watched the cartoons.
None was amusing.
After the cartoons, he watched an old movie.
Except for the telephone call he'd been told to expect at six o'clock, he had the whole evening ahead of him.
At six o'clock on the nose, the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Good evening, Chase," the killer said. His voice was still rough.
Chase sat on the bed.
"How are you tonight?" the killer asked.
"Okay. "
"You know what I've been up to all day?"
"Research."
"That's right."
"Tell me what you found," Chase said, as if it would be news to him even though he was the subject. And maybe it would be.
"First, you were born here a little over twenty-four years ago on June eleventh, 1947, in Mercy Hospital. Your parents died in an auto accident a couple of years ago. You went to school at State and graduated in a three-year accelerated program, having majored in business administration. You did well in all subjects except a few required courses, chiefly Basic Physical Sciences, Biology One and Two, Chemistry One, and Basic Composition." The killer whispered on for two or three minutes, reciting biographical facts that Chase had thought private. Courthouse records, college files, newspaper morgues, and half a dozen other sources had provided the killer with far more information about Chase's life than could have been gleaned merely from the recent articles in the Press-Dispatch.