Strange Highways (66 page)

“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.

“I think I’ve been on the line too long,” the killer said. “It’s time I went to another booth. Is your phone tapped, Chase?”

“No.”

“Just the same, I’ll hang up now and call you back in a few minutes.” The line went dead.

Five minutes later the killer called again.

“What I gave you before was just so much dry grass, Chase. But let me add a few more things and do some speculating. Let’s see if I can add a match to it.”

“Whatever you have to do.”

“For one thing,” the man said, “you inherited a lot of money, but you haven’t spent much of it.”

“Not a lot.”

“Forty thousand after taxes, but you live frugally.”

“How would you know that?”

“I drove by your house today and discovered that you live in a furnished apartment on the third floor. When I saw you coming home, it was apparent that you don’t spend much on clothes. Until that pretty new Mustang, you didn’t have a car. It follows, then, that you must have a great deal of your inheritance left, what with the monthly disability pension from the government to pay most or all of your bills.”

“I want you to stop checking on me.”

The man laughed. “Can’t stop. Remember the necessity to evaluate your moral content before passing judgment, Mr. Chase.”

Chase hung up this time. Having taken the initiative cheered him a little. When the phone began to ring again, he summoned the will not to answer it. After thirty rings, it stopped.

When the ringing began again, ten minutes later, he finally picked it up and said hello.

The killer was furious, straining his damaged throat to the limit. “If you ever do that to me again, then I’ll make sure it isn’t a quick, clean kill. I’ll see to that. You understand me?”

Chase was silent.

“Mr. Chase?” A beat. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Wish I knew,” Chase said.

The stranger decided to let his anger go, and he fell into his previous tone of forced irony: “That ‘wounded in action’ bit excites me, Mr. Chase. That part of your biography. Because you don’t appear disabled enough to deserve a pension, and you more than held your own in our fight. That gives me ideas, makes me think your most serious wounds aren’t physical at all.”

“Whose are?”

“I think you had psychological problems that put you in that army hospital and got you a discharge.”

Chase said nothing.

“And you tell
me
that I need counseling. I’ll have to take more time to check in to this. Very interesting. Well, rest easy tonight, Mr. Chase. You’re not scheduled to die yet.”

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“I have to have a name for you. I can’t go on thinking of you in totally impersonal terms like ‘the man’ and ‘the stranger’ and ‘the killer.’ Do you see how that is?”

“Yes,” the man admitted.

“A name?”

He considered. Then he said, “You can call me Judge.”

“Judge?”

“Yes, as in ‘judge, jury, and executioner.’” He laughed until he coughed, and then he hung up as if he were just an anonymous prankster who had phoned to ask if Chase had Prince Albert in a can.

Chase went to the refrigerator and got an apple. He peeled it and cut it into eight sections, chewing each thoroughly. It wasn’t much of a dinner. But there were a lot of energy-giving calories in a glass of whiskey, so he poured a few ounces over ice, for dessert.

He washed his hands, which had become sticky with apple juice.

He would have washed them even if they hadn’t been sticky. He washed his hands frequently. Ever since Nam. Sometimes he washed them so often in a single day that they became red and chapped.

With another drink, he went to the bed and watched a movie on TV. He tried not to think about anything except the satisfying daily routines to which he was accustomed: breakfast at Woolworth’s, paperback novels, old movies on television, the forty thousand of go-to-hell money in his savings account, his pension check, and the good folks in Tennessee who made Jack Daniel’s. Those were the things that counted, that made his small world satisfying and safe.
Again, he refrained from calling the police.

4

THE NIGHTMARES WERE SO BAD THAT CHASE SLEPT FITFULLY, WAKING repeatedly at the penultimate moment of horror, as he was surrounded by the tight circle of dead men, as their silent accusations began, as they closed in on him with their hands outstretched.

He rose early, abandoning any hope of rest. He bathed, shaved, and washed his hands with special attention to the dirt under his fingernails.

He sat at the table and peeled an apple for breakfast. He did not want to face the regular customers at Woolworth’s lunch counter now that he was more than just another face to them, yet he couldn’t think of any place where he might go unrecognized.

It was nine-thirty-five, much too early to begin drinking. He observed few rules, but never drinking before lunch was one of them. He seldom broke that one. Afternoons and evenings were for drinking. Mornings were for remorse, regret, and silent repentance.

But what could he do with the long hours until noon? Filling time without drinking was increasingly difficult.

He turned on the television but couldn’t find any old movies. Turned it off.

At last, with nothing to do, he began to recall the details of the nightmare that had awakened him, and that was no good. That was dangerous.

He picked up the phone and placed another call.

It rang three times before a pert young woman answered. She said, “Dr. Fauvel’s office, Miss Pringle speaking, can I help you?”

Chase said, “I’d like to see the doctor.”

“Are you a regular patient?”

“Yes. My name’s Ben Chase.”

“Oh, yes!” Miss Pringle gasped, as though it was a small joy to be hearing from him.      ”Good morning, Mr. Chase.” She rattled the pages of an appointment book. “Your regularly scheduled visit is this Friday afternoon at three.”

“I have to see Dr. Fauvel before that.”

“Tomorrow morning we have half an hour-“

Chase interrupted her. “Today.”

“I beg your pardon?” Miss Pringle’s pleasure at hearing his voice seemed to have diminished appreciably.

“I want an appointment today,” Chase repeated.

Miss Pringle informed him of the heavy workload that the doctor carried and of the numerous extra hours in each day that the doctor required to study case histories of new patients.

“Please call Dr. Fauvel himself,” Chase said, “and see if he can find time for me.”

“Dr. Fauvel is in the middle of an appointment-“

“I’ll hold.”

“But it’s impossible to-“

“I’ll wait.”

With a sigh of exasperation, she put him on hold. A minute later, chagrined, Miss Pringle returned to the phone to tell Chase that he had an appointment at four o’clock this afternoon. Clearly, she was perturbed that the rules should be broken for him. She must have known that the government paid the tab and that Fauvel received less compensation than he would have received from one of the wealthy neurotics on his patient list.

If one had to be psychologically disturbed, it helped to have a
unique
disturbance that intrigued the doctor—and a measure of fame or infamy to ensure special treatment.

* * *

At eleven-thirty, while Chase was dressing to go out for lunch, Judge called again. His voice sounded better, although still far from normal. “How are you feeling this morning, Mr. Chase?”

Chase waited.

“Be expecting a call at six this evening,” Judge said.

“From whom?”

“Very funny. At six o’clock sharp, Mr. Chase.” Judge spoke with the smooth authority of a man accustomed to being obeyed. “I will have several interesting points to discuss with you, I’m sure. Have a good day now.”

* * *

The inner office of Fauvel’s suite on the eighth floor of the Kaine Building, in the center of the city, did not resemble the standard psychiatrist’s therapy room as portrayed in countless films and books. For one thing, it was not small and intimate, not at all reminiscent of the womb. It was a pleasantly large space, perhaps thirty feet by thirty-five, with a high shadow-shrouded ceiling. Two walls held bookshelves floor to ceiling; one wall was dressed with paintings of tranquil country scenes, and the fourth was all windows. The bookshelves contained a handful of expensively bound volumes—and perhaps three hundred glass dogs, none larger than the palm of a man’s hand and most a good deal smaller. Collecting glass dogs was Dr. Fauvel’s hobby.

Just as the decor of the room—battered desk, heavily padded armchairs, foot-scarred coffee table—didn’t match its function, Dr. Fauvel was unlike any stereotypical image of a psychiatrist, whether by intent or by nature. He was a small but solidly built man, athletic-looking, with hair that spilled over his collar in a manner that suggested carelessness rather than style. He always always wore a blue suit cut too long in the trousers and in need of a hot iron.

“Sit down, Ben,” Fauvel said. “Like something to drink—coffee, tea, a Coke?”

“No, thank you,” Chase said.

No couch was provided. The doctor did not believe in pampering his patients. Chase sat in an armchair.

Fauvel settled into the chair to Chase’s right and propped his feet on the coffee table. He urged Chase to follow suit. When they were in a pose of relaxation, he said, “No preliminaries, then?”

“Not today,” Chase said.

“You’re tense, Ben.”

“Yes.”

“Something’s happened.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s life. Something always happens. We don’t live in stasis, frozen in amber.”

“This is more than the usual something,” Chase said.

“Tell me about it.”

Chase was silent.

“You came here to tell me, didn’t you?” Fauvel urged.
“Yeah. But…. talking about a problem sometimes makes it worse.” “That’s never true.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“Not for anyone.”