“What does it say?” Joanna asked.
Sam read the words woodenly, without expression. They made no sense and she didn't know how they were spelled. All she knew was they were the same words that Pete had spoken over the phone.
“Not even Ward knew what was written on that paper,” she murmured. “How did Pete know that?”
In reply, Sam picked up the wall phone and handed it to her. “Listen,” he said.
Puzzled, she put it to her ear. There was no dial tone. The line was dead.
“To my knowledge that phone's been disconnected for two years,” Sam said. “It just stayed on the wall because…well, because nobody bothered to take it off.”
It took only an instant for the terrible suspicion that had already seized Sam to strike its chilling logic into Roger's and Joanna's minds.
Pete was dead.
The next few minutes, when she tried to sort them out later, remained a blur. She couldn't be sure in what order things had happened. Whether she'd heard Peggy's voice calling down. Or seen the faint reflection of blue light sweeping the cellar walls. Or simply guessed, then known intuitively and for sure what had happened.
Sam was the first up the stairs. She followed. And then Roger. They could hear the chatter of a police radio now, coming from the patrol car parked outside the window. The flashing blue light gave a sickly, stroboscopic pallor to everybody in the room. Peggy's hands went to her face, horrified at what she'd just been told. The movement had an unreal, silent-movie quality about it. Next to her Tania Phillips and Brad Bucklehurst stood rooted where they were, in shock.
Sam was talking to two men in NYPD uniforms. One of them, Joanna noticed, wore a hat, the other did not. It was an unimportant detail and she had no idea why she'd registered it-unless perhaps to distance herself from the words she could hear being spoken in that flat, emotionless, follow-the-regulations tone of a cop.
“The body was discovered at ten after five, in an alley off Pike Street near Cherry. All he had to identify him was a campus ID card, which is why we're here. Cash, credit cards, if he'd been carrying any, were all gone. Likewise watch and any jewelry he might have had. Multiple stab wounds-we'll have to wait for the coroner's report for an exact cause of death. Meanwhile I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the morgue for a formal identification.”
42
She walked with Roger to a bar just off the campus where they'd been a couple of times before. Sam said he'd meet her back at her apartment as soon as he could-probably an hour, maybe two. Roger had offered to accompany her and wait, but she'd said she needed people around her, some semblance of normal life. And a drink.
All the tables were busy, so they sat on stools at the bar.
“It's strange,” she said, “I can't even cry. I'm not in shock, it's worse-something in me just accepts it.”
Roger took a long sip of his scotch and water. “I liked Pete a lot.” There was a tremor in his voice that he suppressed by clearing his throat. “Nice kid. Smart. Straightforward.”
They were silent awhile. Then Joanna said, “What are we going to do?”
When he didn't offer a response, she essayed one herself. “Maybe if we just walked away, gave up trying to destroy him, forgot about him…”
Roger gave a short, faintly sardonic laugh. “Forgetting about Adam Wyatt sounds as easy as not thinking about a rhinoceros for five minutes.”
Again they fell silent amid the busy early evening life going on around them.
“So,” she said eventually, “we just sit here waiting to see who's next. Is that all we can do?”
He drained his glass and signaled the bartender. “What I'm doing is having another drink. You?”
She shook her head.
“The trouble was,” he said, clinking the fresh ice in his newly refilled glass, “we wanted proof.”
She turned to look at him. “Proof?” she asked, waiting for him to expand on the remark.
“We invented somebody who never existed. There's nothing new in that-writers, artists, children do it all the time. But they don't pretend it's any more than that. We did. We looked for proof that this Adam Wyatt we'd dreamed up was real. We made him talk to us, prove he was real.”
“That,” she said, “was the point of the whole experiment.”
He took another long sip of his drink, then kept the glass in his hand, moving it slightly to emphasize a word here and there.
“Every scientist worth his salt knows that if you look hard enough for a proof of something, or even just evidence, you'll find it. For example, we cannot put our hands on our hearts and swear that we're observing subatomic structure in high-energy accelerators and not creating it by looking for it. We start with equations and theories suggesting that certain particles may, sometimes we even say must, exist. Then, because we'll never see these particles-they're not seeable — we look for their tracks in the collision chambers. And sooner or later we see them-like footprints in the snow that people who believe in the yeti say must have been left by the yeti, so that proves the yeti exists.”
He took another long sip of his drink, then looked at her. “We like to pretend that what we observe determines our theory, but it doesn't, not really. Einstein said that in reality it's the theory that decides what we observe. So what are we doing, we scientists? Are we chipping away at a block of stone and discovering some fossil of truth hidden inside it? Or are we carving it like a sculptor? Is the shape we end up with something that's been in the stone all along, or has it come from our imagination?”
He tipped his head back and finished his drink, then looked thoughtfully at his empty glass. “And anyway, what's the difference?”
He caught the bartender's eye for another refill, and glanced at her. “How about you-ready yet?”
“No, thanks.”
She watched as he ordered a double, then she said, “Tell me something, Roger…I've never really understood why you got into all this in the first place, or why you agreed to let your name be used.”
He sipped his fresh drink thoughtfully. “Something interesting has happened to scientists this century. We started out as the champions of reason and logic. We believed that if we just worked diligently enough, observed and measured carefully enough, nature would in the end be forced to yield up her innermost secrets. And they would be logical and rational. They would make perfect sense, because the universe, we believed, made sense. Anything that went against that belief was dismissed as mere superstition. Well, the trouble started right there. The more we learned about nature through the application of this process of reason and logic, the more we found ourselves being forced to abandon the idea that nature makes sense at all.”
She became aware that he was watching her as he paused, checking that she was listening and not growing impatient as she had the other night after Drew and Barry died.
“The idea that we can uncover the truth and find out why things are the way they are goes against all the accumulated evidence of science, of which there's now a great deal. It's not that we can't see what's going on. We can observe and measure with extraordinary precision-enough to calculate the distance between New York and Los Angeles to the thickness of a human hair. That's an example that Dick Feynman liked to use. He also said, repeatedly, that nature was absurd. Even though we know how it behaves, and can predict its behavior accurately enough to use it and accomplish some mightily impressive things with it, we have no idea why it behaves that way. It doesn't make any sense. We know that this happens if we do that. But the idea that there's a logical reason for it turns out to be the biggest superstition of all. In fact it looks more and more like just a childish emotional need to believe that our world has order and meaning and that we're secure in it.”
She thought about this for a while, then said, “I suppose that's why Sam says everybody's superstitious.”
Roger gave a wry smile. “He's right. When we cross our fingers or touch wood, we're reaching out for someplace where things happen the
way they're supposed to, where there's order and rules you can play by-the way scientists thought the world was until they looked at it more closely.”
He took another long sip of his drink. Joanna noticed that he'd almost finished it already, his third since they arrived. His thought process seemed perfectly lucid, but he was starting to slur his words a little.
“So what are scientists?” he asked, giving the question a rhetorical flourish. “Surveyors? Stocktakers and clerks? Measuring and recording-ingeniously, I grant you-but nothing more?”
He threw back his head to finish his drink, then banged his glass down on the bar a little harder than necessary. “I suppose,” he said, swiveling to look at her full on, “I suppose that's the reason I signed on. To find out if Sam had anything new to offer. And also because you have terrific legs.”
He flashed her a rakish smile, his spirits revived by the alcohol. “Now,” he said, “how about that other drink that you've been putting off?” He looked around for the bartender.
“I have to go. And Roger, I don't want to sound like your mother, but I don't think you should have much more…”
“There I'm afraid I must disagree with you…Barman…!”
“All right, if you're determined to get drunk, I'll stay.”
“If that's blackmail, you win. Stay right where you are.”
The bartender appeared, smiling, awaiting Roger's order.
“Another large scotch and water, if you will. And…?”
He looked questioningly at Joanna.
“No, really, nothing.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, God, I really have to go. Look, Roger, at least let me arrange for a car-on the magazine-to take you back to Princeton.”
“Whatever you say, my dear. And don't worry-you're not a bit like my mother.”
She took out her phone and called the car service with which the magazine had a permanent account. If Taylor Freestone questioned the expenditure later, she'd pay for the damn thing herself, but she didn't imagine for a second that he would.
“There'll be a car outside in twenty minutes,” she said when she'd finished, and slipped off her stool. “I don't care how blasted you get now, at least I know you'll get back safely-all right?”
“All right, my dear,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.
She gave him a hug. “Take care, Roger. See you soon.”
“You bet!”
When she reached the door she paused and looked back. He was watching her and waved cheerfully across the crowded room.
She blew him a kiss, and stepped out into the night.
43
Fifteen minutes later she paid off the cab that dropped her at Beekman Place. She noticed that the doorman wasn't on duty, which meant he must be doing some chore in the building, so she tapped in the code that admitted her to the lobby, and took the elevator to her apartment. She deliberately drew the blinds before putting on the lights, aware that it wasn't something she normally did. What, she asked herself, was she hiding from?
She wondered what Roger was doing, hoping he'd had only one more drink and was already on his way home in the car she'd provided. Then she wondered how to occupy herself until Sam arrived. She didn't want to talk to anybody on the phone, couldn't concentrate to read, listen to music, or watch television. She felt the kind of awful restlessness that needed to be worked off in a long walk or a vigorous physical sport. Yet she didn't want to be outdoors, exposed, unprotected. Here, in familiar surroundings, she felt at least relatively safe. She made herself a cup of herbal tea and stretched out on the sofa with that morning's New York Times, which she hadn't opened, willing herself to make sense of the words that swam before her eyes.
After a couple of minutes her entry phone buzzed. She got up quickly and crossed to answer it with a sense of relief, expecting to hear Sam's voice.
“Joanna, I'm downstairs. There's no doorman-can you let me in?”
It wasn't Sam's voice, it was Ralph Cazaubon's.
“Joanna? Are you there? Hello?”
She froze, unable to speak.
“Joanna, it's me, Ralph.”
She hung up. But she missed the cradle and the handset clattered noisily down the wall, bouncing at the end of its cable. She could hear his voice still coming thinly and distantly from it, like the sound of Pete's voice earlier. She reached out for the thing, hesitating as though half afraid it would give her an electric shock, finally snatching it and slamming it back in place.
This time it didn't fall, but it buzzed again, insistently, repeatedly. She backed away, her gaze fixed on it, struggling to control her mounting panic. Thoughts chased each other through her mind, each one wilder than the last. Wildest of all was the one insisting there was nothing to be afraid of-that there was just a man downstairs who had stopped by to see her, and she was behaving hysterically.
Yet she had met him only two days ago. Nobody in a city like New York went to the home of somebody they barely knew and expected to be let in just casually. Maybe there was some special reason. She hadn't even asked. What was so terrible about a man ringing her doorbell in the early evening, a man she had met and who had been perfectly charming and courteous and normal in every way? Was she going insane? Would she be running in fear for her own shadow next?
Yet nothing on earth would have persuaded her to pick up that entry phone again and speak to him. She stepped around and past it like someone skirting a chained but vicious dog. Its continuing, staccato, ear-jabbing buzz growing more unbearable each second.
She ran to the door and checked the locks. She was safe, but trapped. What could she do? She could call down to the lobby and see if the doorman was back from whatever he'd been doing.
Or call the police? And say what? She would worry about that if and when she had to-she had no sane reason to call the police yet.
Call Sam? Yes, call Sam-that made sense. Sam would understand why she was terrified. She began to dial the number of his cellular and prayed that he was carrying it. Maybe he was on his way to the apartment now and would arrive any minute. She must warn him of possible danger from whoever or whatever was down there waiting in the street.
The noise from the entry phone stopped. In the silence she could hear only her own breathing and the sound of her heart beating. She realized she was halfway through Sam's number, but forgot how many digits she'd dialed, and hung up.
She listened to the silence. Had he gone away? He knew there was someone in the apartment because she'd answered, but she hadn't spoken. It could have been a friend, a colleague, a cleaner-anyone-who had picked up the phone.
Cautiously she moved to the edge of one of her windows, pulled back a drape, and peered out. There was no sign of anybody in the street. She couldn't see the door from where she was, so he could still be there, but at least he'd given up trying to get in.
Unless, of course, the doorman was back and had opened it for him. But the doorman wouldn't let him up without calling. That was the rule, stated plainly on a sign in the lobby:“All Callers Must Be Announced.”
“Joanna…?”
She spun around with a cry of alarm. The voice had come from just behind her. His voice. In the room with her.
For a second she saw nobody, and told herself she had hallucinated it. Then a shadow moved in the hall beyond the open doorway of her living room. Ralph Cazaubon stepped into view.
“Joanna, will you please tell me what's wrong?”
His expression was earnest, his tone of voice concerned. Except for the fact that he was dressed more formally now, he looked exactly as he had the previous day. Yet something in his manner had changed. There was a familiarity in it, an intimacy even, that had no place between them.
“How did you get in here?” she managed to gasp in a shaky voice.
His frown of consternation deepened. He took a step toward her. “Joanna, what's wrong…?”
She backed away. The corner of a table jabbed into her hip, a lamp tipped over and crashed to the floor.
&nb
sp; “Don't come near me!” Her hands groped behind her, whether to find something to defend herself with or to avoid further collisions she wasn't sure.
“Will you stop this, please!” There was a note of anger in his voice now, and in the way he reached out to grab her by the shoulders, as though wanting to shake this nonsense out of her.
She spun away from him and over to her desk. There was a paper knife somewhere there, a long steel blade sharpened to a point. Her fingers scrabbled among the scattered books and papers until they closed on the carved ivory handle. She held it out before her like a dagger.
“Don't come near me. I'll use this if I have to.”
He looked alarmed now and held up his hands. “All right, all right…I'm not moving, calm down…just tell me what's the matter and let me help you…please, Joanna…”
Her breath was coming raggedly in gasps, breaking, close to turning into sobs. She made an effort to control herself, fight back the fear, stay in control. Keeping the knife out and ready to thrust, she began moving sideways, edging crablike toward the tiny hallway, not for a second taking her eyes off him.
He turned, following her movement, his hands still up, but less in surrender now than in a readiness to defend himself, even attack her if he saw a break in her concentration.
But there was no break. She wiped her free hand across her face and discovered she was bathed in perspiration. She blinked and then stretched her eyes wide to clear the cloudiness from them. And all the time kept moving, one careful step after another, toward the door of her apartment and escape. When she began to walk backward the few last steps, he followed her, but held back when she raised the knife a threatening inch or so.
“I warned you-don't come near me.”
She had to transfer the knife from one hand to the other in order to undo the locks. First the main lock, then the lower one. They were locked just as she had left them when she came in.
Her eyes flickered sideways for a second as she sought the handle to pull the door open. Out of the corner of her vision she saw him move.
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