Chase (15 page)

In the downstairs hallway, Mrs Fiedling said, ‘I hadn't realized you were going away overnight.’

‘Neither had I,’ Chase said.

She looked at his rumpled clothes as he kept walking toward the steps. ‘You didn't have an accident, did you?’

‘No,’ he said, starting up the stairs. ‘And I wasn't drinking, either.’

His attitude so surprised her that she didn't have anything to say until he was too far up the stairs to hear her.

In his room, he bolted the door and lay down on the bed. He let the shakes take him completely, until the fear was sweated out of him.

Nine

Two hours later Judge called. When Chase picked up the receiver, hoping it was Glenda, Judge said, ‘Well, you were lucky again.’

Chase was not as calm as he had been the other times they'd talked, and he had to fight off the urge to slam the phone down. He said, ‘You were just as bad a marksman as before, that's all.’

‘I'll agree with that,’ Judge said amicably enough. ‘But it's also the fault of the bore on the silencer.’

Chase said, ‘I have money. You know that. If I paid you off, would you let me alone?’

‘How much?’ Judge sounded eager.

‘Five thousand,’ Chase said.

‘It's not enough.’

‘Seven, then.’

‘Ten,’ Judge said. ‘Ten thousand dollars, and I'll stop trying to kill you, Mr Chase.’

Chase felt himself smiling, a very tight smile but a smile nonetheless. He said, ‘Fine. How do I make the payment?’

Judge's voice was suddenly so loud and furious that Chase could only barely understand what he said. ‘You bastard, don't you realize I can't be bought off, not with your money, not with anything in this world? You deserve to die, because you killed children and you're a fornicator, and you are going to be punished accordingly. I am not corrupt. I can't be bribed!’

Chase waited, listening as Judge regained control of himself. In the tone and fury of the tantrum, Judge's madness had been more evident than ever.

At last Judge said, ‘Do you see my point?

‘Yes.’

‘Good!’ Judge paused, sighed. ‘I saw you going into her apartment, you know, and I can be certain that you spent the night in her bed, with that blonde slut.’

‘She's no slut.’

‘I know exactly who and what she is.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. She's that tall blonde slut from the
Press-Dispatch.
I saw her Tuesday when I was there looking over their back issues.’

‘What does this have to do with our situation?’ Chase asked.

‘A great deal, because I've decided to kill her first.’

Chase was silent.

‘Did you hear me, Chase?’

‘You can't be serious.’

‘Oh, but I am!’

Chase took a slow, deep breath, and said, ‘You told me that you kill only those who deserve it, after researching their lives and learning all their sins. Are you breaking that rule now? Are you going to start killing indiscriminately?’

‘She deserves to die,’ Judge said. ‘She's a fornicator. She let you stay the night with her, just the two of you, and she deserves to have judgment passed on her for that alone.’

‘Is that why you called for the first time in three days, to tell me you'll kill her first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Do you like her, Chase?’

Chase said nothing.

‘I hope you like her,’ Judge said, ‘because then it will be more fun to see how you react when I've finished with her.’

Chase waited, not daring to speak.

‘Do you like her, Chase?’

‘No.’

‘That's a lie. I saw how you acted when you left her place, whistling and very jaunty - oh, very jaunty indeed!’

Chase said, ‘I know who you are.

Judge laughed and said, ‘I doubt that.’

‘Listen. You're about my height, blond, with a long thin nose. You walk with your shoulders hunched forward, and you're a neat dresser. You are a perfectionist in the way you do things.’

‘That's only a description,’ Judge said. ‘And not a particularly good one at that.’

‘I think you're also a homosexual,’ Chase said.

‘That's not true!’ Judge said, but he said it too vehemently. Evidently he realized that as well as Chase did, for he took a softer tone when he said, ‘You've got wrong information.’

‘I don't think so,’ Chase said. ‘I think I've just about got you nailed down.’

‘No,’ Judge said. ‘You don't know my name, because if you knew it, you'd already have been to the cops.’

Chase said, ‘Don't harm her.’

Judge only laughed again, deep and throaty, and hung up.

Chase tapped the buttons until he got the dial tone, looked up Glenda's number in the book and dialled it. She answered on the third ring. He said, ‘I've got to see you.’

She hesitated a moment, then said, ‘You sound serious. I hope you don't think we have to go through any more self-recrimination.’

‘Not that,’ he said. ‘It's very important, Glenda, as important as life and death.’

She chuckled. That's one of the oldest lines in the book.’

‘Please,’ he said, ‘I'm serious. I'm coming over.’

‘You forget what day it is.’

‘Your mother's still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘When will she leave?’

‘After dinner.’

That's too late!’

‘Really, Ben,’ she said, ‘you're beginning to make me angry.’

He forced himself to wait a moment and to reply in a measured tone. ‘Okay. But I'll be over at eight, if that's all right. Between now and then, don't answer your door for anyone you don't know, no matter how often he rings.’

She said, ‘What's the matter?’

‘I can't say now,’ he told her. ‘Will you do what I say?’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘See you at eight.’

Chase paced the room until he began to feel that he was only making the time drag by more slowly than ever. He went to the cupboard and took down his whisky bottle. It had lasted him several days already, but when he began to pour it, he knew that it would have to last several more, for he did not want to be the least bit fuzzy-headed tonight, not if the confrontation was to come soon. He corked the bottle, put it into the cupboard again, closed the cupboard door so that he could not see it, washed out the glass and dried it and put it away.

He realized, in this single decision, how much things had changed in such a short period of time.

He bathed, trying to take as long at it as he could, soaping and rinsing more than once.

He shaved, and then exercised.

When he looked at the clock, it read a few minutes after five.

Less than three hours until he could explain the situation to Glenda and offer whatever protection he could provide her. That was not so long, three hours. Except that she might be dead by then.

Ten

She was wearing a short green skirt and a dark blouse the colour of tobacco with a wing collar and puffed sleeves, eight buttons on each long cuff. Her yellow hair was drawn into a pair of pony tails, one just behind each ear, a device which made her, inexplicably, appear both childlike and sophisticated, though Chase supposed a visiting mother would notice only the innocence of the intended childish touch.

They kissed for a long while after she closed the door, as if their separation had been a few days rather than a matter of a few hours. Chase wondered, as he held her and felt her tongue in his mouth, how such a relationship between a man and a woman could develop in such a short time. It had not been love at first sight, of course, though not much less than that either. In short order, he had progressed from an immature and distant appreciation of her as a woman, through an unfulfilled desire for her as a sex object, through friendship and finally into love of a sort. Though they were not married, and though he could not physically possess her, he felt the confusion of emotion, love and lust and tenderness and a will to dominate her every moment, that supposedly plagued all newlywedded husbands. He imagined the two of them had found such a strong affinity for each other only because, psychologically, each of them gave something that the other required, but he did not want to delve into self-analysis very deeply. He simply wanted to enjoy, while holding most of the guilt at bay.

‘Drink?’ she asked when they broke apart.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We have some serious talking to do first. Come here.’

On the couch, side by side, as they had started the previous evening, he said, ‘Has anyone come to the door, anyone that you've never seen before?’

‘No one,’ she said.

‘Any phone calls?’

‘Just yours.’

‘Good,’ he said. But it was not a reprieve, only a postponement.

She took his hand in both of hers and said, ‘Ben, what is it, what's the matter?’

‘Nobody believes me,’ he said. ‘Because of Cauvel, the police won't listen to me.’

‘I'll listen,’ she said.

‘You have to,’ he said, ‘because you're a part of it now.’

She waited a long time for him to continue, and when he did not say anything more, she said, ‘Maybe I better get those drinks after all.’

‘No,’ he said, holding onto her. ‘If I start drinking or delay at all, I'll lose my nerve and not tell you.’ He did not look at her again for twenty minutes, though he told her all of it, even about Operation Jules Verne and the tunnel. And the bamboo grate. And the women, all of it, right through to Judge's latest threat.

‘Now I
need a
drink,’ she said.

He didn't stop her. When she came back with two, he took his and said, ‘Does this change anything? I guess it has to.’

‘Change what?’ she asked.

‘Us.’

‘Why should it change us?’ she asked, and she seemed genuinely perplexed by the statement.

‘But now you know what I am, what I've done, my part in the killing of those women.’

‘That wasn't you,’ she said.

‘I shot like the rest.’

‘Listen to me,’ she said, and she spoke more earnestly, more firmly than he had ever heard her, the softness of her voice like a tiny but forcefully driven hammer, rapping out words so there would be no mistake about them. ‘When you were over there in Vietnam, there were two Benjamin Chases. There was the Ben who took his orders seriously and carried them out because he had been raised to believe that every authority was right and that disobedience was some indication of spinelessness or subversiveness, the Ben who was further affected by fear that reinforced this respect for authority because the fear told him he would die on his own. Then there was the other Ben, the one who knew right and wrong, good and evil, instinctively, beyond the interference that his society had built into his moral judgments. That's the Ben I know, the second one. He has spent well over a year trying to destroy the remnants of the other Ben, the one who obeyed this Zacharia, and he's gone through hell to cleanse himself. The first Ben
is
dead. The war killed him, one of the few good kills that damn stupid war has made. And now there is no reason on earth why the second Ben, my Ben, should be ashamed of himself or want to be punished. And there's even less of a reason why I should hold anything that the dead Ben did against my own Ben.’ She paused and blushed, evidently surprised at her own verbosity, and looked at her round knees. ‘That's simplified, but it's me. Can you understand what I'm saying?’

‘Yes,’ he said. He took her in his arms and kissed her then, for he could not see anything else to do.

When his hands slipped down over her breasts and began to massage her full hips, he realized abruptly that he was only leading them toward another point of frustration. He pulled back, and directing the conversation to Judge again, said, ‘Have you thought of anything I might have overlooked, even the smallest lead?’

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I recognized him from your description, but I don't know his name or anything else about him.’ She took a swallow of her drink and suddenly put it down. ‘Did you ask Louise Allenby if anyone had been bothering her and the dead boy - maybe weeks and weeks prior to the murder? If Judge really followed them around doing his “research,” they might have noticed him or had a run-in with him.’

Chase said, ‘I'd suspect they never even noticed him. Besides, the police would probably have thought to ask.’

‘They don't know nearly as much as you do, nothing at all about this “research” angle.’

‘True enough,’ he said. ‘I'll give her a call. If she's home, we can go right out there.’

She was home, and she was pleased to hear from him. At ten o'clock Chase and Glenda left the apartment and went down to the Mustang.

The night was quiet and far less muggy than the day had been. Chase was conscious, in the pools of darkness, of all the places where a man with a gun might hide.

He had argued that there was no need for her to accompany him, that it was folly for the two of them to walk out the front of the building together, but he could not make her see it his way. She had said, ‘If we're too frightened to go outside, Judge has already won, in a way, hasn't he?’ Chase had tried to explain what a .32-calibre bullet would do to her if placed properly, but she had countered with the observation that he had made earlier - Judge was a poor shot.

When he stepped off the kerb with her to walk her to the door, she said, ‘No need to play the courtly gentleman. I hate men opening doors for me as if I'm an invalid.’

‘What if the gentleman enjoys being courtly?’ he asked.

Then he can take me somewhere that I have to wear a long ball gown, where I
need
help.’

He let go of her arm. ‘Very well, Miss Liberation. But can we get inside, out of sight?’

‘You think he may be watching from a nearby roof? He'd have to have an awfully good eye to shoot in this darkness.’

‘Just the same,’ he said, turning away from her and going to the driver's door, which he opened a split second before she began to open hers. In that split second, he knew that something was terribly wrong. . .

He had left the car locked. She should not have been able to open her door until he had reached across and pushed up the latch stem.