The Dark Half Page 18

  What they could not see was that third eye inside his head. That eye, glowing in the dark half of him, the side which was in constant shade . . . that was like a God, and he was glad they could not see it. If they could, he thought many of them would try to steal it. Yes, even if it meant gouging it right out of his flesh with a dull knife.

  Looking into the dark, he summoned up his private image of George Stark--the real George Stark, who looked nothing like the model who had posed for the jacket photo. He looked for the shadow-man who had accreted soundlessly over the years, found him, and began showing him to Alan Pangborn.

  "He's fairly tall," he began. "Taller than me, anyway. Six-three, maybe six-four in a pair of boots. He's got blonde hair, cut short and neat. Blue eyes. His long vision is excellent. About five years ago he took to wearing glasses for close work. Reading and writing, mostly.

  "The reason he gets noticed isn't his height but his breadth. He's not fat, but he's extremely wide. Neck size maybe eighteen-and-a-half, maybe nineteen. He's my age, Alan, but he's not fading the way I'm starting to or running to fat. He's strong. Like Schwarzenegger looks now that Schwarzenegger has started to build down a little. He works out with weights. He can pump a bicep hard enough to pop a sleeve-seam on his shirt, but he's not muscle-bound.

  "He was born in New Hampshire, but following the divorce of his parents, he moved with his mother to Oxford, Mississippi, where she was raised. He's lived most of his life there. When he was younger, he had an accent so thick he sounded like he came from Dogpatch. A lot of people made fun of that accent in college-not to his face, though, you don't make fun of a guy like this to his face--and he worked hard on getting rid of it. Now I think the only time you'd be apt to hear cracker in his voice would be when he gets mad, and I think people who make him mad are often not available for testimony later on. He's got a short fuse. He's violent. He's dangerous. He is, in fact, a practicing psychotic. "

  "What--" Pangborn began, but Thad overrode him.

  "He's quite deeply tanned, and since blonde men usually don't tan all that well, it might be a good point of identification. Big feet, big hands, big neck, wide shoulders. His face looks like somebody talented but in a hurry chopped it out of a hard rock.

  "Final thing: he may be driving a black Toronado. I don't know what year. One of the old ones that had a lot of blasting powder under the hood, anyway. Black. It could have Mississippi plates, but he's probably switched them." He paused, then added: "Oh, and there's a sticker on the back bumper. It says HIGH-TONED SON OF A BITCH. "

  He opened his eyes.

  Liz was staring at him. Her face was paler than ever.

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

  "Alan? Are you--"

  "Just a sec. I'm writing." There was another, shorter, pause. "Okay," he said at last. "I got it. You can tell me all of this but not who the guy is or your connection with him or how you know him?"

  "I don't know, but I'll try. Tomorrow. Knowing his name isn't going to help anyone tonight anyway, because he's using another one. "

  "George Stark. "

  "Well, he could be crazy enough to be calling himself Alexis Machine, but I doubt it. Stark is what I think, yeah." He tried to wink at Liz. He did not really believe the mood could be lightened by a wink or anything else, but he tried, anyway. He only succeeded in blinking both eyes, like a sleepy owl.

  "There's no way I can persuade you to go on with this tonight, is there?"

  "No. There's not. I'm sorry, but there's not. "

  "All right. I'll get back to you as soon as I can." And he was gone, just like that, no thank-you, no goodbye. Thinking it over, Thad supposed he didn't really rate a thank-you.

  He hung up the phone and went to his wife, who sat looking at him as if she had been turned into a statue. He took her hands--they were very cold--and said, "This is going to be all right, Liz. I swear it is. "

  "Are you going to tell him about the trances when you talk to him tomorrow? The sound of the birds? How you heard it when you were a kid, and what it meant then? The things you wrote?"

  "I'm going to tell him everything," Thad said. "What he chooses to pass on to the other authorities. . ." He shrugged. "That's up to him. "

  "So much," she said in a strengthless little voice. Her eyes were still fixed on him--seemed powerless to leave him. "You know so much about him. Thad . . . how?"

  He could only kneel there before her, holding her cold hands. How could he know so much? People asked him that all the time. They used different words to express it--how did you make that up? how did you put that into words? how did you remember that? how did you see that?--but it always came back to the same thing: how did you know that?

  He didn't know how he knew.

  He just did.

  "So much," she repeated, and she spoke in the tone of a sleeper who is in the grip of a distressful dream. Then they were both silent. He kept expecting the twins to sense their parents' upset, to wake up and begin crying, but there was only the steady tick of the clock. He shifted to a more comfortable position on the floor by her chair and went on holding her hands, hoping he could warm them up. They were still cold fifteen minutes later when the phone rang.

  5

  Alan Pangborn was flat and declarative. Rick Cowley was safe in his apartment, and was under police protection. He would soon be on his way to his ex-wife, who would now be his ex-wife forever; the reconciliation of which both had spoken from time to time, and with considerable longing, was never going to happen. Miriam was dead. Rick would make the formal identification at the Borough of Manhattan Morgue on First Avenue. Thad should not expect a call from Rick tonight or attempt to make one himself; Thad's connection with Miriam Cowley's murder had been withheld from Rick "pending developments." Phyllis Myers had been located and was also under police protection. Michael Donaldson was proving a tougher nut, but they expected to have him located and covered by midnight.

  "How was she killed?" Thad asked, knowing the answer perfectly well. But sometimes you had to ask. God knew why.

  "Throat was cut," Alan said with what Thad suspected was intentional brutality. He followed it up a moment later. "Still sure there's nothing you want to tell me?"

  "In the morning. When we can look at each other. "

  "Okay. I didn't think there was any harm in asking. "

  "No. No harm. "

  "The New York City Police have an APB out on a man named George Stark, your description. "

  "Good." And he supposed it was, although he knew it was also probably pointless. They almost certainly wouldn't find him if be didn't want to be found, and if anyone did, Thad thought that person would be sorry.

  "Nine o'clock," Pangborn said. "Make sure you're at home, Thad. "

  "Count on it. "

  6

  Liz took a tranquilizer and finally fell asleep. Thad drifted in and out of a thin, scratchy doze and got up at quarter past three to use the bathroom. As he was standing there, urinating into the bowl, he thought be heard the sparrows. He tensed, listening, the flow of his water drying up at once. The sound neither grew nor diminished, and after a few moments he realized it was only crickets.

  He looked out the window and saw a State Police cruiser parked across the road, dark and silent. He might have thought it was also deserted if he hadn't seen the fitful wink of a cigarette ember. It seemed that he, Liz, and the twins were also under police protection.

  Or police guard, he thought, and went back to bed.

  Whichever it was, it seemed to provide a little peace of mind. He fell asleep and woke at eight, with no memory of bad dreams. But of course the real bad dream was still out there. Somewhere.

  Fourteen

  FOOL'S STUFFING

  1

  The guy with the stupid little pussy-tickler mustache was a lot quicker than Stark had expected.

  Stark had been waiting for Michael Donaldson in the ninth-floor hallway of the building where Donaldson lived, just around the co
rner from Donaldson's apartment door. It all would have been easier if Stark could have gotten into the apartment first, as he had done with the bitch, but a single glance was enough to convince him that these locks, unlike hers, had not been put in by Jiminy Cricket. It should have been all right just the same. It was late, and all the rabbits in the warren should have been fast asleep and dreaming of clover. Donaldson himself should have been slow and fuddled--when you came home at quarter of one in the morning, it wasn't from the public library.

  Donaldson

  did seem a trifle fuddled, but he was not slow at all.

  When Stark stepped around the corner and slashed out with the razor as Donaldson fiddled and diddled with his keyring, he expected to blind the man quickly and efficiently. Then, before he could more than begin a cry, he would open Donaldson's throat, cutting his plumbing at the same time he severed his vocal cords.

  Stark did not try to move quietly. He wanted Donaldson to hear him, wanted Donaldson to turn his face toward him. It would make it easier.

  Donaldson did what he was supposed to at first. Stark whipped the razor at his face in a short, hard arc. But Donaldson managed to duck a little--not much, but too much for Stark's purposes. Instead of getting his eyes, the straight-razor laid his forehead open to the bone. A flap of skin curled down over Donaldson's eyebrows like a loose strip of wallpaper.

  "HELP!" Donaldson blatted in a strangled, sheeplike voice, and there went your no-hitter. Fuck.

  Stark moved in, holding the straight-razor out in front of his own eyes with the blade slightly turned up, like a matador saluting the bull before the first corrida. Okay; it didn't go just according to Hoyle every time. He hadn't blinded the stool-pigeon, but blood was pouring out of the cut on his forehead in what looked like pints, and what little Donaldson was seeing would be coming through a sticky red haze.

  He slashed at Donaldson's throat and the bastard pulled his head back almost as fast as a rattlesnake recoiling from a strike, amazing speed, and Stark found himself admiring the man a little, ridiculous pussy-tickler mustache or not.

  The blade cut only air a quarter of an inch from the man's throat and he screamed for help again. The rabbits, who never slept deeply in this city, this maggoty old Big Apple, would be waking up. Stark reversed direction and brought the blade back again, at the same time rising on his toes and thrusting his body forward. It was a graceful, balletic movement, and should have finished it. But Donaldson somehow managed to get a hand up in front of his throat; instead of killing him, Stark only administered a series of long, shallow wounds which police pathologists would call defense cuts. Donaldson raised his hand palm out, and the razor passed across the base of all four fingers. He wore a heavy class ring on the third, and so that one sustained no wound. There was a crisp and minute metallic sound--brinnk!--as the blade ran across it, leaving a tiny scar in the gold alloy. The razor cut the other three fingers deeply, sliding as effortlessly into the flesh as a warm knife slides into butter. Tendons cut, the fingers slumped forward like sleepy puppets, leaving only the ring-finger standing upright, as if in his confusion and horror, Donaldson had forgotten which finger you used when you wanted to flip somebody the bird.

  This time when Donaldson opened his mouth he actually howled, and Stark knew he could forget about getting out of this one unheard and unnoticed. He'd had every expectation of doing just that, since he didn't have to save Donaldson long enough to make any telephone calls, but it just wasn't happening. But neither did he intend to let Donaldson live. Once you'd started the wet-work, you didn't quit until either it was done or you were.

  Stark bored in. They had moved down the corridor almost to the next apartment door by now. He flicked the straight-razor casually sideways to clear the Made. A fine spray of droplets splashed the cream-colored wall.

  Farther down the hall a door opened and a man in a blue pajama shirt with his hair in steep-corkscrews poked his head and shoulders out.

  "What's going on?" he cried in a gruff voice which proclaimed that he didn't care if it was the Pope of Rome out here, the party was over.

  "Murder," Stark said conversationally, and for just a moment his eyes shifted from the bloody, howling man in front of him to the man in the doorway. Later this man would tell the police that the intruder's eyes were blue. Bright blue. And utterly mad. "Do you want some?"

  The door shut so fast it might never have been opened at all.

  Panicked though he must be, hurt though he undoubtedly was, Donaldson saw an opportunity when Stark's gaze shifted, even though the diversion was only momentary. He took it. The little bastard really was quick. Stark's admiration grew. The mark's speed and sense of self-preservation were almost enough to outweigh the fucking nuisance he was making of himself.

  Had he leaped forward, grappled with Stark, he might have graduated from the nuisance stage to something approaching a real problem. Instead, Donaldson turned to run.

  Perfectly understandable, but a mistake.

  Stark ran after him, big shoes whispering on the carpet, and slashed at the back of the man's neck, confident that this would finally finish it.

  But in the instant of time before the straight-razor should have slashed home, Donaldson simultaneously jerked his head forward and somehow tucked it, like a turtle pulling into its shell. Stark was beginning to think Donaldson was telepathic. This time what was meant to be the killing strike merely split the scalp above the protective bulge of bone at the back of the neck. It was bloody, but far from fatal.

  This was irritating, maddening . . . and edging into the land of the ludicrous.

  Donaldson lurched down the corridor, veering from one side to the other, sometimes even banging off the walls like a pinball striking one of those lighted posts that score the player 100, 000 points or a free game or some fucking thing. He screamed as he lurched down the hall. He poured blood on the carpet as he lurched down the hall. He left the occasional gory handprint to mark his progress as he lurched down the hall. But he was not yet dying as he lurched down the hall.

  No other doors opened, but Stark knew that right now in at least half a dozen apartments, half a dozen fingers were punching (or had already punched) 911 on half a dozen phones.

  Donaldson lurched and stumbled onward toward the elevators.

  Not angry or frightened, only terribly exasperated, Stark strode after him. Suddenly he thundered: "Oh why don't you just stop it and BEHAVE!"

  Donaldson's current cry for help turned into a shocked squeak. He tried to look around. His feet tangled in each other and he fell sprawling ten feet from where the hallway opened into the small elevator lobby. Even the most nimble of fellows, Stark had found, eventually ran out of happy thoughts if you cut them enough.

  Donaldson got to his knees. He apparently meant to crawl to the elevator lobby now that his feet had betrayed him. He looked around with his bloody no-face to see where his attacker was, and Stark launched a kick at the red-drenched ridge of his nose. He was wearing brown loafers and he kicked the goddam pest as hard as he could, hands down at his sides and thrust slightly backward to maintain balance, left foot connecting and then rising in an arc as high as his own forehead. Anyone who had ever seen a football game would have inevitably been reminded of a very good, very strong punt.

  Donaldson's head flew backward, smashed into the wall bard enough to cave the plaster into a shallow bowl-shape at that point, and rebounded.

  "Finally pulled your batteries, didn't I?" Stark murmured, and heard a door open behind him. He turned and saw a woman with tousled black hair and huge dark eyes looking out of an apartment door almost all the way down the hall. "GET BACK IN THERE, BITCH!" he screamed. The door slammed as if it were on a spring.

  He bent, grabbed Donaldson's tacky, gruesome hair, twisted his head back, and cut his throat. He thought Donaldson had probably been dead even before his head connected with the wall, and almost certainly after, but it was best to be sure. And besides: when you started cutting, you finished cutting.<
br />
  He stepped back quickly, but Donaldson did not spurt as the woman had. His pump had already quit or was wheezing to a stop. Stark walked rapidly toward the elevators, folding the straight-razor and sliding it back into his pocket.

  An arriving elevator binged softly.

  It might have been a tenant; going-on-one wasn't really late in the big city, even for a Monday night. All the same, Stark moved rapidly for the large potted plant which occupied the corner of the elevator lobby along with an absolutely useless nonrepresentational painting. He stepped behind the plant. All his radar was pinging loudly it could be someone returning from a post-weekend bout of Disco Fever or the bibulous aftermath of a business dinner, but he didn't believe it would be either. He believed it would be the police In fact, he knew it.

  A cruiser which fortuitously happened to be in the vicinity of the building when one of the residents of this wing telephoned to say that a murder was being committed in the hallway? Possible, but Stark doubted it. It seemed more likely that Beaumont had raised the roof, sissy had been discovered, and this was Donaldson's police protection arriving. Better belated than never.

  He slid slowly down the wall with his back against it, the blood-stained sport-coat he was wearing making a husky whispering noise. He did not so much hide as submerge like a submarine going to periscope depth, and the concealment the potted plant offered was at best minimal. If they looked around, they would see him. Stark, however, was betting all their attention would be riveted by Exhibit A there, halfway down the hall. For a few moments, anyway--and that would be enough.

  The plant's broad, crisscrossing leaves printed saw-toothed shadows on his face. Stark stared out from between them like a blue-eyed tiger.

  The elevator doors opened. There was a muffled exclamation, holy something-or-other, and two uniformed cops rushed out. They were followed by a black guy in a pair of pegged jeans and big old ditty-bop sneakers with Velcro closures. The black guy also wore a t-shirt with cutoff sleeves. PROPERTY OF THE N. Y. YANKEES was printed on the front. He also wore a pair of wraparound pimp shades, and if he wasn't a detective, Stark was George of the Motherfucking Jungle. When they went undercover, they always. went too far . . . and then acted self-conscious about it. It was as if they knew they were going overboard but simply couldn't help it. This was--or had been meant to be, anyhow--Donaldson's protection, then. There wouldn't have been a detective in a passing squad-car. That was just a little too fortuitous. This guy had come along with the door-guards to first question Donaldson and then babysit him.