by Dean Koontz
‘I think I've been on the line about five minutes,’ the killer said. ‘It's time I went to another booth. Is your phone tapped, Chase?’
‘No,’ Chase said.
‘Just the same, I'll hang up now and call you back in a few minutes.’ The line went dead, hissing in Chase's ear like a snake.
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 that dry grass.’
‘What do you mean?’ Chase asked.
‘For one thing,’ the man said, ‘you inherited a lot of money, but you haven't spent much of it. Thirty thousand after taxes, but you live frugally.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘I drove by your house today and discovered you live in a furnished apartment on the third floor. When I saw you coming home, it was apparent that you don't sink much into a nice wardrobe. Until you won your Mustang through bravery, 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,’ Chase said hotly. He was suddenly more terrified of this stranger than of all the dead men in his nightmares. He was beginning to feel like a subject on exhibition, housed in a glass cage, all the faces in the world pressed against the walls, peering in.
The man laughed. ‘I can hardly stop. Remember the necessity to evaluate your moral content before passing judgment, Mr Chase.’
Chase hung up this time. The fact that he had taken the initiative cheered him considerably. When it began to ring again, he summoned up the will not to answer it. After thirty rings, it stopped. When it rang again, ten minutes later, however, he picked it up and said hello.
The killer was furious, straining his ruined throat to the limit. ‘If you ever do that again, you rotten son of a bitch, you'll be sorry! It won't be a clean kill. I'll see to that. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes,’ Chase said, feeling ill.
The stranger calmed at once. ‘Something else, Mr Chase. That “wounded in action” bit excites me. You don't appear disabled enough to deserve a pension, and you more than held your own in our fight. That gives me ideas. It makes me think your wounds aren't physical at all.’
Chase said, ‘Oh?’ His heart was beating too fast and his mouth had gone dry.
‘I think you had psychological problems that put you in that army hospital and got you a discharge.’ He waited.
‘You're wrong,’ Chase said.
‘Maybe, maybe not. I'll have to take more time to check into it, that's all. Well, rest easy tonight, Mr Chase. You're not scheduled to die yet.’
‘Wait!’ Chase said.
‘Yes?’
‘I have to have a name for you. I can't go on thinking of you in totally abstract terms like “the man” and “the stranger” and “the killer.” Do you see how that is?’
‘Yes,’ the man admitted.
‘A name?’
He considered a moment, then said, ‘You can call me Judge.’
‘Judge?’
‘Yes, as in “Judge, jury and executioner,” Mr Chase.’ He laughed until he coughed, then hung up, like a prankster.
Chase went to the refrigerator and got an apple. He carried it to the table and put it down on a napkin, went to get a paring knife from the utilities drawer. He peeled the apple and cut it into eight sections, chewing each one thoroughly. He supposed it was not much of a supper, but then there were a lot of energy-giving calories in a glass of whiskey. He poured himself a few ounces over ice, for dessert.
He washed his hands, which had become sticky with apple juice.
With another drink, he went to the bed and sat down, staring through the movie on the television screen. He tried not to think about anything except the routines he was used to, the things he relied on. Breakfast at Woolworth's, paperback reading material, liquor purchases. Old movies on television, the twenty-eight thousand dollars in the savings account, his pension cheque, the wonderful bottle a day. Those things were what counted, what gave life its substance. Anything else was misleading, dross that had no place in his scheme of things.
Again he refrained from calling the police.
Three
The nightmares were so bad that Chase slept fitfully, waking repeatedly at the penultimate moment of horror, redreaming the tight circle of dead men and the silent harangue that they directed against him as they closed in with their hands outstretched . . .
He rose early, abandoning any hope of rest, bathed and shaved, sat down at the table and peeled an apple for breakfast. He did not want to face the regular customers at Woolworth's counter now that he was something more than just another face to them, yet he could not think of another place where he could go unrecognized. The apple was not much on which to start the day. He decided that he would have to go out for lunch if he could remember the name of a restaurant where one could have some degree of privacy.
After lunch, of course, he could survive on Jack Daniel's quite nicely.
The time was 9:35 in the morning.
It was much too early to begin drinking, for he would only make himself ill hitting a bottle already. After lunch. But what could he do with the long hours between now and noon? He turned on the television but couldn't find any old movies, turned it off. He had read what books there were in the room.
At last, with nothing to do, he began to recall the details of the nightmare that had wakened him, and he knew that was no good. He picked up the phone; for the second time he placed a call, working the unfamiliar dial clumsily.
It rang three times before a pert young woman answered. She said. ‘Dr Cauvel'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 said, as if it were a small joy to be hearing from him. ‘Good morning, Mr Chase.’ She rattled the pages of an appointment book and said. ‘Your regularly scheduled visit is this Friday afternoon at three.’
‘I have to see Dr Cauvel before that,’ Chase said. When he first conceived of this irregular contact, he had not been at all sure if it was wise. Now it seemed not only wise, but wildly important. ‘I must see him.’
‘Tomorrow morning we have half an hour -’
Chase interrupted her. ‘Today.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Miss Pringle said, her joy at hearing his voice having diminished appreciably.
‘I want an appointment today,’ Chase repeated.
Miss Pringle attempted to inform him of the heavy work load the doctor carried and of the extra working hours necessary in each day for the doctor to study case histories of new patients. He had to read the latest journals and write his own occasional articles for those same prestigious publications. It was clear that Miss Pringle somewhat idolized him, and Chase wondered whether she slept with him. In all the times he had seen her, such a thought had never occurred to him. Uneasily, he realized that it was a sign of changing circumstances - changes in his life utterly beyond his control. But perhaps they were not beyond the doctor's control. When she was halfway through her set speech, having recovered a bit of her plastic, warm tone of friendship, Chase interrupted her, and in a few well-chosen words, convinced her to ask Dr Cauvel himself.
A few minutes later, chagrined, Miss Pringle returned to the phone to tell Chase he had an appointment for four o'clock that same 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 Cauvel received less compensation for his time than he would have by indulging a wealthy neurotic. What she had quite forgotten to include in her detailed schedule of the doctor's day, however, was time to have extra sessions with patients whom the doctor consid
ered especially intriguing.
It helped, if one had to be slightly mad, to have a very unique sort of madness . . .
At eleven-thirty, while Chase was dressing to go out for lunch, Judge called again. His voice sounded better, though still not normal. He said, ‘How are you feeling this morning?’
‘Well,’ Chase said, though that was a lie.
‘Be expecting a call at six this evening,’ Judge said.
‘Look here -’
‘At six o'clock sharp, Mr Chase. Do you understand me?’ He 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.’
‘I understand,’ Chase said.
Judge said, ‘Have a good day, now.’
They broke the connection at the same moment. Chase slammed his receiver into its cradle. Hard.
The room on the eighth floor of the Kaine Building, in the centre of the city, did not resemble a psychiatrist's counselling chamber as the image had been established in countless films and books. For one thing, it was not small and intimate, not at all reminiscent of the womb. It was a pleasant, musty, rambling chamber, perhaps thirty feet by thirty-five, with a high and shadow-shrouded ceiling. Two of the walls contained bookshelves that ran from floor to ceiling; one wall was dressed with paintings depicting tranquil country scenes, while the fourth wall was nothing but white plaster and two large windows. The bookshelves contained only a handful of expensively bound volumes, along with close to three hundred glass dogs, none larger than the palm of a man's hand and most a good deal smaller than that. Collecting glass dogs was Dr Cauvel's hobby.
Just as the room - with its battered desk, heavily padded easy chairs and foot-scarred coffee table – did not look its purpose, Dr Cauvel was as unlike any stereotypical image of a psychiatrist as was possible, whether by intent or nature Chase never knew for certain. He was a small man, rather athletic-looking, with hair that spilled over his collar in a manner that suggested carelessness rather than style. He always looked as if he needed a shave, and he always wore a blue suit cut a bit too long in the trousers and in need of a hot iron. It was possible to see him as a schoolteacher (English), a store manager (the local five-and-ten), or the minister of some esoteric fundamentalist Christian sect. But not a doctor. And not ever, ever a doctor of the mind.
‘Sit down, Ben,’ Cauvel said. ‘Like a drink?’
‘No, thank you,’ Chase said. There was no couch upon which to act out the familiar scene of psychiatry's myths. Chase sat in his favourite easy chair.
Cauvel took the chair to Chase's right, sank back and propped his feet on the coffee table. He urged Chase to follow suit. When they were at least in the pose of relaxation, he said, ‘No preliminaries, then?’
‘Not today,’ Chase said.
‘You're tense, Ben.’
‘Yes.’ Chase tried to determine where he should begin, how the story should be best unfolded.
Tell me about it?’
Now, Chase clearly remembered the first time Judge had called him, but he could not bring himself to explain the situation to Cauvel. Even making this appointment had been an admission of his slowly dissolving hold on things: explaining it might be ruinous.
‘Can't do it?’
‘No.’
‘Want to play some word association?’
Chase nodded, dreading the game they often used to loosen his tongue. He always seemed to expose more of himself than he wished in his answers. And Cauvel did not play it according to established rules, but with a swift and vicious tone that cut quickly to the heart of the matter. Still, he said, ‘Go on.’
Cauvel said, ‘Mother.’
‘Dead.’
‘Father.’
‘Dead.’
Cauvel had his fingers steepled before him, like a child playing the See the Church game. ‘Love.’
‘Woman.’
‘Love.’
‘Woman,’ Chase repeated.
Cauvel did not look at him but stared studiously at the blue glass terrier on the bookshelf nearest him. He said, ‘Don't repeat yourself, please.’ When Chase had apologized (he had been surprised the first time Cauvel had expected an apology, for he had not thought such a guilt-touched relationship was desirable between a psychiatrist and his patient; with each enusing apology over the months, he was less surprised at anything Cauvel might suggest), the doctor said, ‘Love.’
‘Girl.’
‘That's an evasion.’
‘Everything is an evasion.’
That observation appeared to surprise the doctor, but not enough to jar him out of the stubborn, wearying routine which he had begun. He said, after a slight pause, ‘Love.’
Already Chase was perspiring, and he did not know why. He finally said, ‘Myself.’
‘Very good,’ Cauvel said. And now the interchange of words went faster, one barked close after the other, as if speed counted in the scoring. Cauvel said, ‘Hate.’
‘Army.’
‘Hate.’
‘Vietnam.’
‘Hate!’ Cauvel raised his voice, almost shouted it.
‘Guns.’
‘Hate!
‘Zacharia,’ Chase said, though he had often sworn never to repeat that name again or to remember the man attached to it or, indeed, to recall the events that man had perpetrated.
‘Hate,’ Cauvel said, more quietly this time.
‘Another word, please.’
‘Hate,’ Cauvel insisted.
‘Lieutenant Zacharia, Lieutenant Zacharia, Lieutenant Zacharia!’
Abruptly, the doctor brought an end to the game, though it had been much less complex than usual. He said, ‘Do you remember what Lieutenant Zacharia ordered you to do, Benjamin?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What were those orders?’
‘We had sealed off the two back entrances to a Cong tunnel system, and Lieutenant Zacharia ordered me to clear the last entrance.’
‘How did you accomplish that?’
‘With a grenade, sir. Then, before the air round the tunnel face could clear, I went forward and used a machine gun.’
Then, Benjamin?’
‘Then we went down, sir.’
‘We?’
‘Lieutenant Zacharia, Sergeant Coombs, Privates Halsey and Wade, a couple of other men.’
‘And you.’
‘Yes, and me.’
Then?’
‘In the tunnels, we found four dead men and parts of men lying in the foyer of the complex. Lieutenant Zacharia ordered a cautious advance. A hundred and fifty yards along, we came across a bamboo grate behind which a number of villagers, mostly women, were stationed.’
‘How many women, Ben?’
‘Maybe twenty.’
‘Children?’
Chase sank down in the heavy padding, his shoulders drawn up as if he wished to hide between them. ‘A few.’
Then?’
‘We tried to open the grate, but the women were holding it shut with a system of ropes. When we ordered them out of the way, they would not move. The lieutenant said it might very well be a trap, designed to contain us at that point until the Cong could somehow get behind us. It was dark. There was a smell in that tunnel I can't explain, made up of sweat and urine and rotting vegetables, as heavy as if it had substance. Lieutenant Zacharia ordered us to open fire and clear the way.’
‘Did you comply?’
‘Yes. Everyone did.’
‘Later, when the tunnel had been demolished, you ran into the ambush which earned you your Medal of Honor.’
‘Yes,’ Chase said.
Cauvel said, ‘You crawled across the field of fire for a distance of nearly two hundred yards and brought back a wounded sergeant named Coombs. You received two minor but painful wounds in the thigh and calf of your right leg, but you did not stop crawling until you had reached shelter, at which point you secured Coombs behind a stand of scrub, and having reached a point on the enemy's flank
by means of your heroic crossing of the open field, accounted for eighteen communist soldiers. Your actions, therefore, not only saved Sergeant Coombs’ life but contributed substantially to the well-being of your entire unit.’ He had only slightly paraphrased the wording on the scroll which Chase had received in the mail from the President himself.
Chase said nothing.
‘You see where this heroism came from, Ben?’
‘We've talked about it before. It came from guilt, because I wanted to die, subconsciously wanted to be killed.’
‘Do you believe that analysis, or do you think it's just something I made up to degrade your medal?’
Chase said, ‘I believe it. I never wanted the medal in the first place.’
‘Now,’ Cauvel said, unsteepling his fingers, ‘lets extend that analysis just a bit. Though you hoped to be shot and killed in that ambush, took absurd risks to make it a certainty, the opposite transpired. You became a national hero. When you learned Lieutenant Zacharia had submitted your name for consideration, you suffered a nervous breakdown that hospitalized you and eventually led to your honourable discharge. The breakdown was an attempt to punish yourself, once you'd failed to get yourself killed, but it failed too. Well regarded, honourably discharged, too strong not to recover from the breakdown, you still carried your burden of guilt.’
There was a pause. Chase was silent.
Cauvel continued: ‘Perhaps when you chanced upon that scene in the park on Kanackaway, you recognized another opportunity to punish yourself. You must have realized that there was a strong possibility that you would be hurt or killed, and you must have subconsciously anticipated that agreeably enough.’
‘You're wrong,’ Chase said. ‘It wasn't like that at all. I had thirty pounds on him, and I knew what I was doing. He was an amateur. He had no hope of really hurting me.’
Cauvel said nothing. Several minutes passed until Chase recognized the scene they were acting out and had acted out in a number of other sessions. When he apologized at last, Cauvel smiled at him. ‘Well, you aren't a psychiatrist, so we can't expect you to see into it quite so clearly. You aren't detached from it like I am.’ He cleared his throat, looked back at the blue terrier. He said, ‘Now that we have come this far, why did you solicit this extra session, Ben?’