by Dean Koontz
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 se
rious 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.
‘Don't move!’ he shouted across the roof of the Mustang.
She responded much better than he could have hoped. She did not continue instinctively to open the door, as most would have, thinking the danger behind her. If she had opened the door any wider, she would have been dead a moment later.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘He's been in the car.’
‘Judge?’
‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. His mouth was dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of it when he tried to speak. ‘Don't open your door any wider. Let it go slowly back into place, but don't slam it or shut it tightly.’
‘Why?’
‘I believe he's wired explosives to your door.’
She was silent for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, she was genuinely frightened for the first time. ‘How can you tell?’
‘When I opened my door, the overhead light came on. From here, I can see a single strand of heavy-duty wire leading from the window knob on your door into the glove compartment. The explosives must be in there, for he's taken out the bulb in the glove-compartment door and left the door open.’
‘But how in the world did you-?’
‘We used to check a car in Nam before we got in. The Cong used the routine on us regularly.’
She had been slowly releasing the door as they conversed, and now she let go of it as it came to rest against the frame.
‘Now walk away from the car and get back by the building.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Disarm it,’ Chase said.
‘I won't let you-’
‘I've done it a dozen times before,’ he said. ‘Now do as I told you.’
When she was far enough back to be safe from any accidental explosion, Chase opened his door the rest of the way and sat down in the driver's seat.
A white panel delivery truck roared by, leaving a wake of sealike echoes that shushed back and forth between the brick walls of the apartment houses.
Chase leaned over the console between the bucket seats and peered into the open glove compartment. Even in the weak light, he could see the pebbled curve of the grenade. It had been taped secure
ly to the shelf the glove-compartment door made when it lay open, then further bound by lengths of heavy-gauge wire that encompassed the width and breadth of the small door. The wire knotted around the window knob on the passenger's door led directly to the steel arming ring at the top of the grenade and was twisted around that bright loop many times.
Chase got out of the car and went to the apartment house steps where Glenda was waiting. ‘Do you have any household tools? A pair of pliers would be the thing.’
‘Needlenose pliers?’ she asked. ‘I have a pair of those that came with my Christmas tree lights.’
‘Good enough,’ he said.
While she was gone, he stood by the steps with his hands in his pockets, trying not to think what the grenade would have done to her. He might have been hurt himself, but she would have been literally torn apart as the sheet metal of the Mustang door shattered like glass.
She came back with the pliers. ‘How long?’ she asked.
‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Wait right here. I don't think we have to worry about Judge for the moment. He'll have been confident the explosion would finish us off.’
In the car again, he leaned over the console and caught the trigger wire in the back jaws of the pliers, squeezed the handles shut and began to twist back and forth as rapidly as he could manage. There was actually little danger of exploding the hand grenade now, though he would not feel safe until the trigger wire had been severed. Judge had given the lead at least ten inches of slack, a generous safety margin for all the work that Chase had to do.
Judge had not intended to make the disarming process easier by providing the slack, of course. His purpose had been to insure that Glenda had partly opened the door before the grenade could go off, so that the full force of the explosion would strike her more directly. Indeed, with that much slack, and the seven seconds between the pin-pull and the detonation, she might even have slid inside and sat down without noticing the wire, aware of the danger only when it was too late to escape.
The trigger wire snapped in two as Chase applied one last, hard twist to it.
He put the pliers down and crawled over the console, sat in the passenger's seat. He opened that door to let some of the streetlight flood in, and then set to work snipping the wires that bound the grenade in place. Those and the strips of black electrician's tape came away with little problem. When he freed the metal pineapple and tested its weight, there was no longer any doubt in his mind that it was a live piece and not just a stage prop Judge had put there for a laugh.
