Strange Highways

by Dean Koontz

  you saved others. Remember that.”

  Chase stood, bewildered, no longer perfectly sure that he did know what was real and what was not.

  Fauvel put his arm around Chase’s shoulders and walked him to the door. “Friday at three,” the doctor said. “Let’s see how far out of your hole you’ve come by then. I think you’re going to make it, Ben. Don’t despair.”

  Miss Pringle escorted him to the outer door of the waiting room and closed it after him, leaving him alone in the hallway.

  “Judge is real,” Chase said to no one at all. “Isn’t he?”

  5

  AT SIX O’CLOCK, CHASE WAS SITTING ON THE EDGE OF HIS BED BY THE nightstand and telephone, sipping Jack Daniel’s. He put the drink down, wiped his sweaty hands on his slacks, cleared his throat so that his voice wouldn’t catch when he tried to speak.

  At five minutes past six he began to feel uneasy. He thought of going downstairs to ask Mrs. Fielding what time her clocks showed, in the event that his own was not functioning properly. He refrained from doing so only because he was afraid of missing the call while downstairs.

  At six-fifteen he washed his hands.

  At six-thirty he went to the cupboard, took down his whiskey bottle of the day—which he’d barely touched—and poured a glassful. He did not put it away again. He read the label, which he had studied a hundred times before, then carried his drink back to the bed.

  By seven o’clock he was feeling the liquor. He settled back against the headboard and finally considered what Fauvel had said: that there was no Judge, that he had been illusory, a psychological mechanism for rationalizing the gradual diminishment of Chase’s guilt complex. He tried to think about that, to study the meaning of it, but he could not be sure if this was a good or a bad development.

  In the bathroom, he drew a tub of warm water and tested it until it was just right. He folded a damp washcloth on the wide porcelain rim of the tub and placed his drink on that. The whiskey, the water, and the rising steam conspired to make him feel as though he were floating up into soft clouds. He leaned back until his head touched the wall, closed his eyes, and tried not to think about anything—especially blocking all thoughts of Judge and the Medal of Honor and the nine months that he had spent on active duty in Nam.

  Unfortunately, he began to think of Louise Allenby, the girl whose life he had saved, and in his mind’s eye he saw her small, trembling, bare breasts, which had looked so inviting in the weak light of the car in lovers’ lane. The thought, though pleasant enough, was unfortunate because it contributed to his first erection in nearly a year. That development was perhaps desirable; he wasn’t sure. But it seemed inappropriate, given the hideous circumstances in which he’d seen the girl half undressed. He was reminded of the blood in the car—and the blood reminded him of the reasons for his recent inability to function as a man. Those reasons were still so formidable that he couldn’t face them alone. The erection was short-lived, and when it was gone, he wasn’t certain if it indicated an eventual end to his psychological impotency or whether it had resulted only from the warm water.

  He got out of the water when his whiskey glass was empty. He was toweling himself when the telephone rang.

  The electric clock showed two minutes past eight.

  Naked, he sat on the bed and answered the phone.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Judge said.

  Dr. Fauvel had been wrong.

  “I thought you weren’t going to call,” Chase said.

  “I required a little more time than I’d expected to locate some information on you.”

  “What information?”

  Judge ignored the question, intent on proceeding in his own fashion. “So you see a psychiatrist once a week, do you?”

  Chase did not reply.

  “That alone is fairly good proof that the accusation I made yesterday is true—that your disability pension is for mental, not physical, injuries.”

  Chase wished that he had a drink with him, but he could not ask Judge to hold on while he poured one. For reasons that he could not explain, he didn’t want Judge to know that he drank heavily.

  Chase said, “How did you find out?”

  “Followed you this afternoon,” Judge said.

  “Bold.”

  “The righteous can afford to be bold.”

  “Of course.”

  Judge laughed as if delighted with himself. “I saw you going into the Kaine Building, and I got into the lobby fast enough to see which elevator you took and which floor you got off at. On the eighth floor, besides Dr. Fauvel’s offices, there are two dentists and three insurance companies. It was simple enough to look in the waiting rooms of those other places and inquire after you, like a friend, with the secretaries and receptionists. I left the shrink’s place for last, because I just knew that’s where you were. When no one knew you in the other offices, I didn’t have to risk glancing in Fauvel’s waiting room. I knew.”

  Chase said, “So what?”

  He hoped that he sounded more nonchalant than he felt, for it was somehow important to make the right impression on Judge. He was sweating again. He would need to take another bath by the time this conversation was concluded. And he would need a drink, a cold drink.

  “As soon as I knew you were in the psychiatrist’s office,” Judge said, “I decided I had to obtain copies of his personal files on you. I remained in the building, out of sight in a maintenance closet, until all the offices were closed and the employees went home.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Chase said, aware of what was coming, dreading to hear it.

  “You don’t want to believe me, but you do.” Judge took a long, slow breath before he continued: “The eighth floor was clear by six o’clock. By six-thirty I got the door open to Dr. Fauvel’s suite. I know a little about such things, and I was very careful. I didn’t damage the lock, and I didn’t trip any alarms because there were none. I required an additional half an hour to locate his files and to secure your records, which I copied on his photocopier.”

  “Breaking and entering—then theft,” Chase said.

  “But it hardly matters on top of murder, does it?”

  “You admit that what you’ve done is murder.”

  “No. Judgment. But the authorities don’t understand. They call it murder. They’re part of the problem. They’re not good facilitators.”

  Chase said nothing.

  “You’ll receive in the mail, probably the day after tomorrow, complete copies of Dr. Fauvel’s notes on you, along with copies of several articles he’s written for various medical journals. You’re mentioned in all these and are, in some of them, the sole subject of discussion. Not by name. ‘Patient C,’ he calls you. But it’s clearly you.”

  Chase said, “I didn’t know he’d done that.”

  “They’re interesting articles, Chase. They’ll give you some idea of what he thinks of you.” Judge’s tone changed, became more contemptuous. “Reading those records, Chase, I found more than enough to permit me to pass judgment on you.”

  “Oh?”

  “I read all about how you got your Medal of Honor.”

  Chase waited.

  “And I read about the tunnels and what you did in them—and how you failed to expose Lieutenant Zacharia when he destroyed the evidence and falsified the report. Do you think the Congress would have voted you the Medal of Honor if they knew you killed civilians, Chase?”

  “Stop.”

  “You killed women, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You killed women and children, Chase, noncombatants.”

  “I’m not sure if I killed anyone,” Chase said more to himself than to Judge. “I pulled the trigger … but I was … firing wildly at the walls … I don’t know.”

  “Noncombatants.”

  “You don’t know what it was like.”

  “Children, Chase.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  “You killed children. What kind o
f animal are you, Chase?”

  “Fuck you!” Chase had come to his feet as if something had exploded close behind him. “What would you know about it? Were you ever over there, did you ever have to serve in that stinking country?”

  “Some patriotic paean to duty won’t change my mind, Chase. We all love this country, but most of us realize there are limits to-“

  “Bullshit,” Chase said.

  He could not remember having been this angry in all the time since his breakdown. Now and then he had been irritated by something or someone, but he had never allowed himself to feel extremes of emotion.

  “Chase-“

  “I bet you were all for the war. I’ll bet you’re one of the people that made it possible for me to be there in the first place. It’s easy to set standards of performance, select limits of right and wrong, when you never get closer than ten thousand miles to the place where it’s all coming down.”

  Judge tried to speak, but Chase talked him down:

  “I didn’t even want to be there. I didn’t believe in it, and I was scared shitless the whole time. All I thought about was staying alive. In that tunnel, I couldn’t think of anything else. I wasn’t me. I was a textbook case of paranoia, living in blind terror, just trying to get through.”

  He had never spoken about the experience so directly or at such length to anyone, not even to Fauvel, who had pried his story from him in single words and sentence fragments.

  “You’re eaten with guilt,” Judge said.

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “I think it does. It proves you know you did wrong and you-“

  “It doesn’t matter, because regardless of how guilty I feel, you haven’t the right to pass judgment on me. You’re sitting there with your little list of commandments, but you’ve never been anywhere that made a list seem pointless, anywhere that circumstances forced you to act in a way you loathed.”

  Chase was amazed to realize that he was crying. He had not cried in a long time.

  “You’re rationalizing,” Judge began, trying to regain control of the conversation. “You’re a despicable, murdering-“

  Chase said, “You’ve not exactly followed that commandment yourself You killed Michael Karnes.”

  “There was a difference,” Judge said. Some of the hoarseness had returned to his voice.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” Judge said defensively. “I studied his situation carefully, collected evidence against him, and only then passed judgment. You didn’t do any of that, Chase. You killed perfect strangers, and you very likely murdered innocents who had no black marks on their souls.”

  Chase hung up.

  When the phone rang at four different times during the following hour, he was able to ignore it completely. His anger remained sharp, the strongest emotion that he had experienced in long months of near catatonia.

  He drank three more glasses of whiskey before be began to feel mellow again. The tremors in his hands gradually subsided.

  At ten o’clock he dialed the number of police headquarters and asked for Detective Wallace, who at that moment was out.

  He tried again at ten-forty. This time Wallace was in and willing to speak to him.

  “Nothing’s going as well as we hoped,” Wallace said. “This guy doesn’t seem to have been printed. At least, he’s not among the most obvious profile group of felons. We still might find him in another group—military files or something.”

  “What about the ring?”

  “Turns out to be a cheap accessory that sells at under fifteen bucks retail in about every store in the state. Impossible to keep track of where and when and to whom a particular ring might have been sold.”

  Chase committed himself reluctantly. “Then I have something for you,” he said. In a few short sentences, he told the detective about Judge’s calls.

  Wallace was angry, though he made an effort not to shout. “Why in the hell didn’t you let us know about this before?”

  “I thought, with the prints, you’d be sure to get him.”

  “prints hardly ever make a difference in a situation like this,” Wallace said. There was still a bite in his voice, though it was softer now. He had evidently remembered that his informant was a war hero.

  “Besides,” Chase said, “the killer realized the chance of the line being tapped. He’s been calling from pay phones and keeping the calls under five minutes.”

  “Just the same, I’d like to hear him. I’ll be over with a man in fifteen minutes.”

  “Just one man?”

  Wallace said, “We’ll try not to upset your routine too much.”

  Chase almost laughed at that.

  * * *

  From his third-floor window, Chase watched for the police. He met them at the front door to avoid Mrs. Fielding’s involvement.

  Wallace introduced the plainclothes officer who came with him: James Tuppinger. Tuppinger was six inches taller than Wallace—and not drab-looking. He wore his blond hair in such a short crew cut that he appeared almost bald from a distance. His eyes were blue and moved from one object to another with the swift, penetrating glance of an accountant itemizing an inventory. He carried a large suitcase.

  Mrs. Fielding watched from the living room, where she pretended to be engrossed in a television program, but she did not come out to see what was happening. Chase got the two men upstairs before she could learn who they were.

  “Cozy little place you have,” Wallace said.

  “It’s enough for me,” Chase said.

  Tuppinger’s gaze flicked about, catching the unmade bed, the dirty whiskey glasses on the counter, and the half-empty bottle of liquor. He did not say anything. He took his suitcase full of tools to the phone, put it down, and began examining the lead-in wires that came through the wall near the base of the single window.

  While Tuppinger worked, Wallace questioned Chase. “What did he sound like on the phone?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Old? Young?”

  “In between.”

  “Accent?”

  “No.”

  “Speech impediment?”

  “No. Just hoarse—apparently from the struggle we had.”

  Wallace said, “Can you remember what he said, each time he called?”

  “Approximately.”

  “Tell me.” He slumped down in the only easy chair in the room and crossed his legs. He looked as if he had fallen asleep, though he was alert.

  Chase told Wallace everything that he could remember about the strange conversations with Judge. The detective had a few questions that stirred a few additional details from Chase’s memory.

  “He sounds like a religious psychotic,” Wallace said. “All this stuff about fornication and sin and passing judgments.”

  “Maybe. But I wouldn’t look for him at tent meetings. I think it’s more of a moral excuse to kill than a genuine belief “

  “Maybe,” Wallace said. “Then again, we get his sort every once in a while.”

  Jim Tuppinger finished his work. He outlined the workings of his listening and recording equipment and further explained the trace equipment that the telephone company would use to seek Judge when he called.

  “Well,” Wallace said, “tonight, for once, I intend to go home when my shift ends.” Just the thought of eight hours’ sleep made his lids droop over his weary, bloodshot eyes.

  “One thing,” Chase said.

  “Yeah?”

  “If this leads to something—do you have to tell the press about my part in it?”

  “Why?” Wallace asked.

  “It’s just that I’m tired of being a celebrity, of having people bother me at all hours of the day and night.”

  “It has to come out in the trial, if we nab him,” Wallace said.

  “But not before?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Chase said. “In any case, I’ll have to appear at the trial, won’t I?”

  “Probably.�
��

  “If the press didn’t have to know until then, it would cut down on the news coverage by half.”

  “You really are modest, aren’t you?” Wallace asked. Before Chase could respond to that, the detective smiled, clapped him on the shoulder, and left.

  “Would you like a drink?” Chase asked Tuppinger.

  “Not on duty.”

  “Mind if I—?”

  “No. Go ahead.”

  Chase noticed that Tuppinger watched him with interest as he got new ice cubes and poured a large dose of whiskey. It wasn’t as large as usual. He supposed he’d have to restrain his thirst with the cop around.

  When Chase sat on the bed, Tuppinger said, “I read all about your exploits over there.”

  “Oh?”

  “Really something,” Tuppinger said.

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, yes, really,” Tuppinger insisted. He was sitting in the easy chair, which he had moved close to his equipment. “It had to be hard over there, worse than anybody at home could ever know.”

  Chase nodded.

  “I’d imagine the medals don’t mean much. I mean, considering everything you had to go through to earn them, they must seem kind of insignificant.”

  Chase looked up from his drink, surprised at the insight. “You’re right. They don’t mean anything.”

  Tuppinger said, “And it must be hard to come back from a place like that and settle into a normal life. Memories couldn’t fade that quickly.”

  Chase started to respond, then saw Tuppinger glance meaningfully at the glass of whiskey in his hand. He closed his mouth, bit off his response. Then, hating Tuppinger as badly as he hated Judge, he lifted the drink and took a large swallow.

  He said, “I’ll have another, I think. Sure you don’t want one?”