Chase: Roman Read Online Free PDF Page B

appreciate it if you didn't say anything about that to anyone. We'd like to see him try for her where we could get at him.’
        ‘Might he?’
        ‘If he thinks she can identify him, yes. Remember, he knows she got a good long look at his face, and he has no way of knowing how badly her mind was working then.’
        ‘I guess so.’
        ‘It's occurred to me that we wouldn't be far off if we gave you a tail as well. Have you thought of that?’
        Alarmed out of proportion by the suggestion, Chase said, ‘No. I don't see what value that would have.’
        ‘Well,’ Wallace observed, ‘the story was in the papers this morning. Though he probably doesn't fear you identifying him as much as the girl, he might bear a grudge of some sort.’
        ‘He'd have to be a madman, then.’
        ‘What else is he, Mr Chase?’
        ‘You mean you've found no motives from questioning the girl, no old lovers who might have -’
        ‘No,’ Wallace said. ‘Right now we're operating on the assumption that there was no rational motive, that we're dealing with a psychotic.’
        ‘I see.’
        ‘Well,’ Wallace said, ‘I'm sorry there isn't more solid news.’
        ‘And I'm sorry to have bothered you,’ Chase said. ‘You've probably not had much sleep.’
        ‘None,’ Wallace admitted.
        They said goodbye, and Chase hung up without telling him a thing, though he had intended to spill it all. A twenty-four-hour guard on the girl. They would do the same to him, worse if they knew he'd been contacted. The walls seemed to sway, alternately closing in like the jaws of an immense vice and swinging out like flat grey gates. The floor rose and fell like waves. Instability swelled around him, the very thing that had landed him in the hospital and had eventually led to his seventy-five-percent disability pension. He could not let it take hold again, and he knew the best way to fight it was to constrict the perimeters of his world, gain solace from solitude. He went to get another drink.
        
        The telephone woke him from his nap just as the dead men, standing in a ring around him, reached for him with soft, white, corrupted hands. He sat straight up in bed and cried out, his arms held before him to ward off their cold touch. When he saw where he was and that he was alone, he sank back, exhausted, and listened to the ringing. Insistently, the thing sounded again and again until, after thirty harsh explosions, he had no choice but to pick it up.
        ‘Yes.’
        ‘I was about to come check on you,’ Mrs Fiedling said. ‘Are you all right?’
        ‘I'm okay’ he said.
        ‘It took you so long to answer.’
        ‘I was asleep.’
        She hesitated, as if framing what she was about to say. ‘I'm having Swiss steak, mushrooms, baked corn and mashed potatoes for supper. Would you like to come down; there's more than I can use.’
        ‘I don't think -’
        ‘A strapping boy like you needs his regular meals,’ she said.
        ‘I've already eaten.’
        She was silent for a long while, then said, ‘All right. But I wish you'd waited, ‘cause I got all this food.’
        ‘I'm sorry, but I'm stuffed,’ he said.
        ‘Tomorrow night, maybe.’
        ‘Maybe,’ he said. He rang off before she could suggest a late-night snack together.
        The ice melted in his glass, diluting what whiskey he had not drunk. He emptied the sadly coloured result into the bathroom sink, got new ice and a new shot of liquor. It tasted as bitter as a bite of lemon rind. He drank it anyway. There was nothing else in the cupboard or refrigerator but a bag of Winesap apples, and they would be infinitely worse.
        He turned on the small black-and-white television set again and rotated the dial slowly through all the local channels, found nothing but the news and a single cartoon programme. He watched the cartoons.
        None of them were