The House of Thunder (7 page)

Rain pattered on the window, blurring the wind-tossed trees and the black-bellied clouds.

“Jesus,” Mrs. Baker said, her face ashen. “You poor kid.”

“They were put on trial?” McGee asked.

“Yes. The district attorney didn’t think he could win if he charged them with first- or second-degree murder. Too many extenuating circumstances, including the whiskey and the fact that Jerry had actually struck the first blow when he’d busted Harch’s lip. Anyway, Harch was convicted of manslaughter and got a five-year term in the state penitentiary.”

“Just five years?” Mrs. Baker asked.

“I thought he should have been put away forever,” Susan said, as bitter now as she had been the day she’d heard the judge hand down the sentence.

“What about the other three?” McGee asked.

“They were convicted of assault and of being accomplices to Harch, but because they’d had no previous run-ins with the law and were from good families, and because none of them actually struck the killing blows, they were all given suspended sentences and put on probation.”

“Outrageous!” Mrs. Baker said.

McGee continued to hold Susan’s hand, and she was glad that he did.

“Of course,” she said, “all four of them were immediately expelled from Briarstead. And in a strange way, fate took a hand in punishing Parker and Jellicoe. They were taking the pre-med course at Briarstead, and they managed to finish their last year at another university, but after that they quickly discovered that no top-of-the-line medical school would accept students with serious criminal records. They hustled for another year, submitting applications everywhere, and they finally managed to squeeze into the medical program at a distinctly second-rate university. The night they were notified of their acceptance, they went drinking to celebrate, got stinking drunk, and were both killed when Parker lost control of the car and rolled it over twice. Maybe I should be ashamed to say this, but I was relieved and grateful when I heard what had happened to them.”

“Of course you were,” Mrs. Baker said. “That’s only natural. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.”

“What about Randy Lee Quince?” McGee asked.

“I never heard what happened to him,” Susan said. “And I don’t care ... just as long as he suffered.”

Two closely spaced explosions of lightning and thunder shook the world outside, and for a moment Susan and McGee and Mrs. Baker stared at the window, where the rain struck with greater force than before.

Then Mrs. Baker said, “It’s a horrible story, just horrible. But I’m not sure I understand exactly what it has to do with your fainting spell in the hall a while ago.”

Before Susan could respond, McGee said, “Apparently, the man who stepped out of the elevator, in front of Susan’s wheelchair, was one of those fraternity brothers from Briarstead.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“Either Harch or Quince.”

“Ernest Harch,” Susan said.

“An incredible coincidence,” McGee said, giving her hand one last, gentle squeeze before letting go of it. “Thirteen years after the fact—and a whole continent away from where the two of you last saw each other.”

Mrs. Baker frowned. “But you must be mistaken.”

“Oh, no,” Susan said, shaking her head vigorously. “I’ll never forget that face. Never.”

“But his name’s not Harch,” Mrs. Baker said.

“Yes, it is.”

“No. It’s Richmond. Bill Richmond.”

“Then he’s changed his name since I knew him.”

“I wouldn’t think a convicted criminal would be allowed to change his name,” Mrs. Baker said.

“I didn’t mean he changed it legally, in court, or anything like that,” Susan said, frustrated by the nurse’s reluctance to accept the truth. The man was Harch.

“What’s he here for?” McGee asked Thelma Baker.

“He’s having surgery tomorrow,” the nurse said. “Dr. Viteski’s going to remove two rather large cysts from his lower back.”

“Not spinal cysts?”

“No. Fatty tissue cysts. But they’re large ones.”

“Benign?” McGee asked.

“Yes. But I guess they’re deeply rooted, and they’re causing him some discomfort.”

“Admitted this morning?”

“That’s right.”

“And his name’s Richmond. You’re sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“But it used to be Harch,” Susan insisted.

Mrs. Baker took off her glasses and let them dangle on the beaded chain around her neck. She scratched the bridge of her nose, looked quizzically at Susan, and said, “How old was this Harch when he killed Jerry Stein?”

“He was a senior at Briarstead that year,” Susan said. “Twenty-one years old.”

“That settles it, then,” the nurse said.

“Why?” McGee asked.

Mrs. Baker put her glasses on again and said, “Bill Richmond is only in his early twenties.”

“He can’t be,” Susan said.

“In fact I’m pretty sure he’s just twenty-one himself. He’d have been about eight years old when Jerry Stein was killed.”

“He’s not twenty-one,” Susan said anxiously. “He’s thirty-four by now.”

“Well, he certainly doesn’t look any older than twenty-one,” Mrs. Baker said. “In fact he looks younger than that. A good deal younger than that. He’s hardly more than a kid. If he was lying about it one way or the other, I’d think he was actually adding on a few years, not taking them off.”

As the lights flickered again, and as thunder rolled across the hollow, sheet-metal sky, Dr. McGee looked at Susan and said, “How old did he look to you when he stepped out of the elevator?”

She thought about it for a moment, and she got a sinking feeling in her stomach. “Well ... he looked
exactly
like Ernest Harch.”

“Exactly like Harch looked back then?”

“Uh ... yeah.”

“Like a twenty-one-year-old college man?”

Susan nodded reluctantly.

McGee pressed the point. “Then you mean that he didn’t look thirty-four to you?”

“No. But maybe he’s aged well. Some thirty-four-year-olds could pass for ten years younger.” She was confused about the apparent age discrepancy, but she was not the least bit confused about the man’s identity: “He is Harch.”

“Perhaps it’s just a strong resemblance,” Mrs. Baker said.

“No,”
Susan insisted. “It’s him, all right. I recognized him, and I saw him recognize me, too. And I don’t feel safe. It was my testimony that sent him to prison. If you’d have seen the way he glared at me in that courtroom ...”

McGee and Mrs. Baker stared at her, and there was something in their eyes that made her feel as if this were a courtroom, too, as if she were standing before a jury, awaiting judgment. She stared back at them for a moment, but then she lowered her eyes because she was made miserable by the doubt she saw in theirs.

“Listen,” McGee said, “I’ll go take a look at this guy’s records. Maybe I’ll even have a word or two with him. We’ll see if we can straighten this out.”

“Sure,” Susan said, knowing it was hopeless.

“If he’s really Harch, we’ll make sure he doesn’t get anywhere near you. And if he isn’t Harch, you’ll be able to rest easy.”

It’s him, dammit!

But she didn’t say anything; she merely nodded.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” McGee said.

Susan stared down at her pale, interlocked hands.

“Will you be okay?” McGee asked.

“Yeah. Sure.”

She sensed a meaningful look and an unspoken message passing between the doctor and the nurse. But she didn’t look up.

McGee left the room.

™We’llget this straightened out real quick, honey, ∫ Mrs. Baker assured her.

Outside, thunder fell out of the sky with the sound of an avalanche.

 
 
 
Night would come early. Already, the storm had torn apart the autumn afternoon and had blown it away. The twilight had been swept in ahead of schedule.

™ Hiname’s deÆnitelyBill Richmond,∫ McGee said when he returned a few minutes later.

Susan sat stifØy in bed, still disbelieving.

The two of them were alone in the room. The nurses had changed shifts, and Mrs. Baker had gone home for the day.

McGee toyed with the stethoscope around his neck.™ And he’s deÆnitelyjust twenty-one years old.f

™ But you weren’t gone nearly long enough to’ve checked out his background, ∫ Susan said. ™ Ifall you did was read through his medical records, then nothing has really been proved. He could have lied to his doctor, you know.f

™ Well,it turns out that Leon-Dr. Viteski, that is-has known Bill’s parents, Grace and Harry Richmond, for twenty-Æveyears. Viteski says he delivered all three of the Richmond babies himself, right here in this very hospital. ∫

Doubt nibbled at Susan’s solid conviction.

McGee said, ™ Leortreated all of Bill Richmond’s childhood illnesses and injuries. He knows for an absolute fact that the kid was only eight years old, living in Pine Wells, just doing what eight-year-olds do, when Ernest Harch killed Jerry Stein, thirteen years ago, back there in Pennsylvania.”

“Three thousand miles away.”

“Exactly.”

Susan sagged under a heavy burden of weariness and anxiety. “But he looked just like Harch. When he stepped out of the elevator this afternoon, when I looked up and saw that face, those damned gray eyes, I could have sworn ...”

“Oh, I’m certain you didn’t panic without good reason,” he said placatingly. “I’m sure there’s a resemblance.”

Although she had come to like McGee a lot in just one day, Susan was angry with him for letting even a vaguely patronizing tone enter his voice. Her anger rejuvenated her a bit, and she sat up straighter in bed, her hands fisted at her sides. “Not just a resemblance,” she said sharply. “He looked
exactly
like Harch.”

“Well, of course, you’ve got to keep in mind that it’s been a long time since you’ve seen Harch.”

“So?”

“You may not remember him quite as well as you think you do,” McGee said.

“Oh, I remember. Perfectly. This Richmond is the same height as Harch, the same weight, the same build.”

“It’s a fairly common body type.”

“He has the same blond hair, the same square features, the same
eyes.
Such light gray eyes, almost transparent. How many people have eyes like that? Not very many. Feature by feature, this Bill Richmond and Ernest Harch are duplicates. It’s not just a simple resemblance. It’s a lot stranger than that. It’s downright uncanny.”

“Okay, okay,” McGee said, holding up one hand to stop her. “Perhaps they are remarkably alike, virtually identical. If that’s the case, then it’s an incredible coincidence that you’ve encountered both of them, thirteen years apart, at opposite ends of the country; but that’s all it is—a coincidence.”

Her hands were cold. Freezing. She rubbed them together, trying to generate heat.

She said, “When it comes to the subject of coincidences, I agree with Philip Marlowe.”

“Who?”

“Marlowe. He’s a private detective in those novels by Raymond Chandler.
The Lady in the Lake, The Big Sleep,
The Long
Goodbye...”

“Of course. Marlowe. Okay, so what did he have to say about coincidences?”

“He said,‘Show me a coincidence, and when I open it up for you, I’ll show you at least two people inside, plotting some sort of mischief.”’

McGee frowned and shook his head. “That philosophy might be suitable for a character in a detective story. But out here in the real world, it’s a little paranoid, don’t you think?”

He was right, and she couldn’t sustain her anger with him. As her fury faded, so did her strength, and she sank back against the pillows once more. “Could two people really look so much alike?”

“I’ve heard it said that everyone has an unrelated twin somewhere in the world, what some people call a ’doppelgänger.’”

“Maybe,” Susan said, unconvinced. “But this was ... different. It was weird. I’d swear he recognized me, too. He smiled so strangely. And he—winked at me!”

For the first time since he had returned to her room, McGee smiled. “Winked at you? Well, there’s certainly nothing strange or uncanny about that, dear lady.” His intensely blue eyes sparkled with amusement. “In case you didn’t know it, men frequently wink at attractive women. Now don’t tell me you’ve never been winked at before. Don’t tell me you’ve spent your life in a nunnery or on a desert island.” He grinned.

“There’s nothing attractive about me at the moment,” she insisted.

“Nonsense.”

“My hair needs a real washing, not just brushed with powder. I’m emaciated, and I’ve got bags under my eyes. I hardly think I inspire romantic thoughts in my present condition.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself. Emaciated? No. You’ve just got a haunting Audrey Hepburn quality.”

Susan resisted his charm, which wasn’t easy. But she was determined to say everything that was on her mind. “Besides, it wasn’t that kind of wink.”

“Ahhhh,” he said. “So now you admit you’ve been winked at in the past. Suddenly you’re an expert on winking.”

She refused to be coaxed and kidded into forgetting the man who had stepped out of the elevator.

“What kind of wink was it, exactly?” he asked, a teasing tone still in his voice.

“It was a smartass wink. Smug. There wasn’t anything at all flirtatious about it, either. It wasn’t warm and friendly, like a wink ought to be. It was cold. Cold and smug and nasty and ... somehow threatening,” she said, but even as she spoke she realized how ludicrous it sounded to give such an exhaustively detailed interpretation to something as simple as a wink.

“It’s a good thing I didn’t ask you to interpret his entire facial expression,” McGee said. “We’d have been here until tomorrow morning!”

Susan finally succumbed: She smiled. “I guess it does sound pretty silly, huh?”

“Especially since we know for a fact that his name’s Bill Richmond and that he’s only twenty-one.”