by Dean Koontz
He was pouring his first cup of coffee when the telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“Dwight?”
“Yeah.”
“This is Billy.”
“Of course.”
Dwight was his middle name—Franklin Dwight Bollinger—and had been the name of his maternal grandfather, who had died when Frank was less than a year old. Until he met and came to know Billy, until he trusted Billy, his grandmother had been the only one who ever used his middle name. Shortly after his fourth birthday, his father abandoned the family, and his mother discovered that a four-year-old interfered with the hectic social life of a divorcee. Except for a few scattered and agonizing months with his mother—who managed to provide occasional bursts of affection only when her conscience began to bother her—he had spent his childhood with his grandmother. She not only wanted him, she cherished him. She treated him as if he were the focus not just of her own life but of the very rotation of the earth.
“Franklin is such an ordinary name,” his grandmother used to say. “But Dwight... well, now, that’s special. It was your grandfather’s name, and he was a wonderful man, not at all like other people, one of a kind. You’re going to grow up to be just like him, set apart, set above, more important than others. Let everyone call you Frank. To me you’ll always be Dwight.” His grandmother had died ten years ago. For nine and a half years no one had called him Dwight; then, six months ago, he’d met Billy. Billy understood what it was like to be one of the new breed, to have been born superior to most men. Billy was superior too, and had a right to call him Dwight. He liked hearing the name again after all this time. It was a key to his psyche, a pleasure button that lifted his spirits each time it was pushed, a reminder that he was destined for a dizzyingly high station in life.
“I tried calling you several times last night,” Billy said.
“I unplugged the phone so I could drink some Scotch and sleep in peace.”
“Have you seen the papers this morning?”
“I just got up.”
“You haven’t heard anything about Harris?”
“Who?”
“Graham Harris. The psychic.”
“Oh. No. Nothing. What’s to hear?”
“Get the papers, Dwight. And then we’d better have lunch. You are off work today, aren’t you?”
“I’m always off Thursdays and Fridays. But what’s wrong?”
“The Daily News will tell you what’s wrong. Be sure to get a copy. We’ll have lunch at The Leopard at eleven-thirty.”
Frowning, Bollinger said, “Look—”
“Eleven-thirty, Dwight.”
Billy hung up.
Three blocks from the restaurant, Bollinger left his taxi and bought the Daily News at a kiosk. In his bulky coat and sweaters and gloves and scarves and wool toboggan cap, the vendor looked like a mummy.
The lower half of the front page held a publicity photograph of Edna Mowry provided by the Rhinestone Palace. She was smiling, quite lovely. The upper half of the page featured bold black headlines:
He crossed the street and stepped into the sheltered entranceway of an office building. His teeth still chattering from the cold, but free of the wind, he read about Graham Harris and Manhattan at Midnight.
His name is Dwight, Harris had said.
The police already know him, Harris had said.
Christ! How could the son of a bitch possibly know so much? Psychic powers? That was a lot of bullshit. There weren’t such things. Were there?
Worried now, Bollinger walked to the corner, threw the newspaper into a litter basket, hunched his shoulders against the wind, and hurried toward the restaurant.
Billy was sitting at a choice table by the window. In an hour The Leopard would be full of diners and noisy conversation. This early, fifteen minutes or more before the executive lunch crowd could slip away from conference rooms and desks, Billy was the only customer. Bollinger sat opposite him. They shook hands and ordered drinks.
“Nasty weather,” Billy said. His Southern accent was heavy.
“Yes.”
They stared at each other over the bud vase and single rose that stood in the center of the table.
“Nasty news,” Billy said at last.
“Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“This Harris is incredible,” Bollinger said.
“Dwight.... Nobody but me knows you by that name. He hasn’t given them much of a clue.”
“My middle name’s on all my records—on my employee file at the department.”
Unfolding a linen napkin, Billy said, “They’ve got no reason to believe the killer’s a policeman.”
“Harris told them they already knew the Butcher.”
“They’ll just suppose that he’s someone they’ve already questioned.”
Frowning, Bollinger said, “If he gives them one more bit of detail, one more clue, I’m blown.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in psychics.”
“I was wrong. You were right.”
“Apology accepted,” Billy said, smiling thinly.
“This Harris—can we reason with him?”
“No.”
“He wouldn’t understand?”
“He’s not one of us.”
The waiter came with their drinks.
When they were alone again, Bollinger said, “I’ve never seen this Harris. What does he look like?”
“I’ll describe him to you later. Right now... do you mind telling me what you’re going to do?”
Bollinger didn’t have to think about that. Without hesitation he said, “Kill him.”
“Ah,” Billy said softly.
“Objections?”
“Absolutely none.”
“Good.” Bollinger swallowed half of his drink. “Because I’d do it even if you had objections.”
The captain came to the table and asked if they would like to hear the menu.
“Give us five minutes,” Billy said. When the captain had gone, he said, “When you’ve killed Harris, will you leave him like the Butcher would?”
“Why not?”
“Well, the others have been women.”
“This will confuse and upset them even more,” Bollinger said.
“When will you do it?”
“Tonight.”
Billy said, “I don’t think he lives alone.”
“With his mother?” Bollinger asked sourly.
“No. I believe he lives with a woman.”
“Young?”
“I would imagine so.”
“Pretty?”
“He does seem to be a man of good taste.”
“Well, that’s just fine,” Bollinger said.
“I thought you’d see it that way.”
“A double-header,” Bollinger said. “That just adds to the fun.” He grinned.
8
“Detective Preduski is on the line, Mr. Harris.”
“I’ll talk to him. Put him through. Hello?”
“Sorry to bother you, Graham. Can we be less formal than we’ve been? May I call you Graham?”
“Sure.”
“Please call me Ira.”
“I’d be honored.”
“You’re very kind. I hope I didn’t interrupt something.”
“No.”
“I know you’re a busy man. Would you rather I called you back later? Or would you like to call me back at your convenience?”
“You didn’t interrupt. What is it you want?”
“You know that writing we found on the walls of the Mowry apartment?”
“Too clearly.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to track down the source for the past few hours, and—”
“You’re still on duty at two in the afternoon?”
“No, no. I’m at home.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I wish I could. I haven’t been able to sleep more than four or five hours a day for the past twenty years. I’
m probably ruining my health. I know I am. But I’ve got this twisted brain. My head’s full of garbage, thousands of useless facts, and I can’t stop thinking about them. I keep picking at the damnedest things. Like the writing on the walls at the Mowry apartment. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about it.”
“And you’ve come up with something?”
“Well, I told you last night the poetry rang a bell. ‘Rintah roars and shakes his fires in the burden’d air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep.’ As soon as I saw it I said to myself, ‘Ira, that’s from something William Blake wrote.’ You see, when I was in college for that one year, my major was literature. I had to write a paper on Blake. Twenty-five years ago. You see what I mean about garbage in my head? I remember the most useless things. Anyway this morning I bought the Erdman edition of Blake’s poetry and prose. Sure enough, I found those lines in ‘The Argument,’ part of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Do you know Blake?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“He was a mystic and a psychic.”
“Clairvoyant?”
“No. But with a psychic bent. He thought men had the power to be gods. For an important part of his career he was a poet of chaos and cataclysm—and yet he was fundamentally a table-pounding optimist. Now, do you remember the line the Butcher printed on the bedroom door?”
“Yes.‘A rope over an abyss.’”
“Do you have any idea what that’s from?”
“None.”
“Neither did I. My head is full of garbage. There’s no room for anything important. And I’m not a well-educated man. Not well educated at all. So I called a friend of mine, a professor in the Department of English at Columbia. He didn’t recognize the line either, but he passed it around to a few of his colleagues. One of them thought he knew it. He got a concordance of the major philosophers and located the full quotation. ‘Man is rope stretched between the animal and the Superman—a rope over an abyss.’”
“Who said it?”
“Hitler’s favorite philosopher.”
“Nietzsche.”
“You know his work?”
“In passing.”
“He believed men could be gods—or at least that certain men could be gods if their society allowed them to grow and exercise their powers. He believed mankind was evolving toward godhood. You see, there’s a superficial resemblance between Blake and Nietzsche. That’s why the Butcher might quote both of them. But there’s a problem, Graham.”
“What’s that?”
“Blake was an optimist all the way. Nietzsche was a raving pessimist. Blake thought mankind had a bright future. Nietzsche thought mankind should have a bright future, but he believed that it would destroy itself before the Supermen ever evolved from it. Blake apparently liked women. Nietzsche despised them. In fact, he thought women constituted one of the greatest obstacles standing between man and his climb to godhood. You see what I’m getting at?”
“You’re saying that if the Butcher subscribes to both Blake and Nietzsche’s philosophies, then he’s a schizophrenic.”
“Yet you say he’s not even crazy.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Last night—”
“All I said was that if he’s a maniac, he’s a new kind of maniac. I said he wasn’t crazy in any traditional sense.”
“Which rules out schizophrenia?”
“I guess it does, Ira.”
“But I think it’s a good bet... maybe I’m wrong... God knows... but maybe he looks at himself as one of Nietzsche’s Supermen. A psychiatrist would call that delusions of grandeur. And delusions of grandeur characterize schizophrenia and paranoia. Do you still think the Butcher could pass any psychiatric test we could give him?”
“Yes.”
“You sense this psychically?”
“That’s right.”
“Have you ever sensed something and been wrong?”
“Not seriously wrong. No worse than thinking Edna Mowry’s name was Edna Dancer.”
“Of course. I know your reputation. I know you’re good. I didn’t mean to imply anything. You understand? But still—now where do I stand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Graham... if you were to sit down with a book of Blake’s poems, if you were to spend an hour or so reading them, would that maybe put you in tune with the Butcher? Would it spark something—if not a vision, at least a hunch?”
“It might.”
“Would you do me a favor then?”
“Name it.”
“If I send a messenger right over with an edition of Blake’s work, will you sit down with it for an hour and see what happens?”
“You can send it over today if you want, but I won’t get to it until tomorrow.”
“Maybe just half an hour.”
“Not even that. I’ve got to finish working on one of my magazines and get it off to the printer tomorrow morning. I’m already three days late with the issue. I’ll be working most of tonight. But tomorrow afternoon or evening, I’ll make time for Blake.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it. I really do. I’m counting on you. You’re my only hope. This Butcher is too much for me, too sharp for me. I’m getting nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. If we don’t get a solid lead soon, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
9
Paul Stevenson was wearing a hand-sewn blue shirt, a blue-and-black-striped silk tie, an expensive black suit, black socks, and light brown shoes with white stitching. When he came into Anthony Prine’s office at two o’clock Friday afternoon, unaware that Prine winced when he saw the shoes, he was upset. Because he was incapable of shouting and screaming at Prine, he pouted. “Tony, why are you keeping secrets from me?”
Prine was stretched out on the couch, his head propped on a bolster pillow. He was reading The New York Times. “Secrets?”
“I just found out that at your direction the company has hired a private detective agency to snoop on Graham Harris.”
“They’re not snooping. All I’ve asked them to do is establish Harris’s whereabouts at certain hours on certain days.”
“You asked the detectives not to approach Harris or his girlfriend directly. That’s snooping. And you asked them for a forty-eight-hour rush job, which triples the cost. If you want to know where he was, why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“I think he’d lie to me.”
“Why should he lie? What certain hours? What certain dates?”
Prine put down the paper, sat up, stood up, stretched. “I want to know where he was when each of those ten women was killed.”
Perplexed, blinking somewhat stupidly, Stevenson said, “Why?”
“If on all ten occasions he was alone—working alone, seeing a movie alone, walking alone—then maybe he could have killed them.”
“Harris? You think Harris is the Butcher?”
“Maybe.”
“You hire detectives on a maybe?”
“I told you, I’ve distrusted that man from the start. And if I’m right about this, what a scoop we’ll have!”
“But Harris isn’t a killer. He catches killers.”
Prine went to the bar. “If a doctor treats fifty patients for influenza one week and fifty more the next, would it surprise you if he got influenza himself during the third week?”
“I’m not sure I get your point.”
Prine filled his glass with bourbon. “For years Harris has been tuning in to murder with the deepest levels of his mind, exposing himself to trauma as few of us ever do. He has been literally delving into the minds of wife killers, child killers, mass murderers.... He’s probably seen more blood and violence than most career cops. Isn’t it conceivable that a man, unstable to begin with, could crack from all the violent input? Isn’t it conceivable that he could become the kind of maniac he’s worked so hard to catch?”
“Unstable?” Stevenson frowned. “Graham Harris is as stable as you or me.”
“How well do you know him?”
&n
bsp; “I saw him on the show.”
“There’s a bit more you should know.” Prine caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bar cabinet; he smoothed his lustrous white hair with one hand.
“For example?”
“I’ll indulge myself in amateur psychoanalysis—amateur but probably accurate. First of all, Graham Harris was born into borderline poverty and—”
“Hold on. His old man was Evan Harris, the publisher. ”
“His stepfather. His real father died when Graham was a year old. His mother was a cocktail waitress. She had trouble keeping a roof over their heads because she had to pay off her husband’s medical bills. For years they lived day to day, on the edge of disaster. That would leave marks on a child.”
“How did she meet Evan Harris?” Stevenson asked.
“I don’t know. But after they were married, Graham took his stepfather’s name. He spent the latter part of his childhood in a mansion. After he got his university degree, he had enough time and money to become one of the world’s leading climbers. Old man Harris encouraged him. In some circles, Graham was famous, a star.
Do you realize how many beautiful women are drawn to the sport of climbing?”
Stevenson shrugged.
“Not as participants,” Prine said. “As companions to the participants, as bedmates. More women than you’d think. I guess it’s the nearness of death that attracts them. For more than a decade, Graham was adored, made over. Then he took a bad fall. When he recovered, he was terrified of climbing.” Prine was listening to his own voice, fascinated by the theory he had developed. “Do you understand, Paul? He was born a nobody, lived the first six years of his life as a nobody—then overnight he became a somebody when his mother married Evan Harris. Now is it any wonder that he’s afraid of being a nobody again?”
Stevenson went to the bar and poured himself some bourbon. “It’s not likely he’ll be a nobody again. He did inherit his stepfather’s money.”
“Money isn’t the same as fame. Once he’d been a celebrity, even within the tight circle of climbing enthusiasts, maybe he developed a habit for it. Maybe he became a fame junkie. It can happen to the best. I’ve seen it.”