The Dark Half(38)

'divided mind.' He recounted what he'd found out and how he'd done it. Then he went on to his real business. He was very careful about showing us the hook, but the hook was there. He said he was an aspiring writer himself, but he didn't have much time to write - his law studies were demanding, but that was only part of it. The real problem, he said, was that he had to work in a bookstore to help pay his tuition and other bills. He said he would like to show Thad some of his work, and if Thad thought it showed promise, perhaps he might feel moved to put together an assistance package to help him along the way.'

'An assistance package,' Alan said, bemused. 'Is that what they're calling it these days?'

Thad threw back his head and laughed..'That's what Clawson called it, anyway. I think I can quote the last bit by heart. 'I know this

must seem a very forward request to you on first reading,' he said, 'but I am sure that if you studied my work, you would quickly understand that such an arrangement might hold advantages for both of us.'

'Thad and I raved about it for awhile, then we laughed about it, then I think we raved some more.'

'Yeah,' Thad said. 'I don't know about the laughing, but we sure did do a lot of raving.'

'Finally we got down to just plain talking. We talked almost until midnight. We both recognized Clawson's letter and his photographs for what they were, and once Thad got over being angry - '

'I'm still not over being angry,' Thad interjected, 'and the guy's dead.'

'Well, once the yelling died down, Thad was almost relieved. He'd wanted to jettison Stark for quite awhile, and he'd already gotten to work on a long, serious book of his own. Which he's still doing. It's called The Golden Dog. I've read the first two hundred pages, and it's lovely. Much better than the last couple of things he churned out as George Stark. So Thad decided - '

'We decided,' Thad said.

'Okay, we decided that Clawson was a blessing in disguise, a way to hurry along what was already coming. Thad's only fear was that Rick Cowley wouldn't like the idea much, because George Stark was earning more for the agency than Thad, by far. But he was a real honey about it. In fact, he said it might just generate some publicity that would help in a number of areas: Stark's backlist, Thad's own backlist - '

'All two books of it,' Thad put in with a smile.

'-and the new book, when it finally comes out.'

'Pardon me - what's a backlist?' Alan asked.

Grinning now, Thad said: 'The old books they no longer put in the big fancy dump-bins at the front of the chain bookstores.'

'So you went public.'

'Yes,' Liz said. 'First to the AP here in Maine and to Publishers Weekly, but the story popped up on the national wire Stark was a best-selling writer, after all, and the fact that he never really existed at all made for interesting filler on the back pages. And then People magazine got in touch.

'We got one more squealing, angry letter from Frederick Clawson, telling us how mean and nasty and thankless we were. He seemed to think we had no right to take him out of things the way we had, because he had done all the work and all Thad had done was to write a few books. After that he signed off.'

'And now he's signed off for good,' Thad said.

'No,' Alan said. 'Someone signed off for him . . . and that's a big difference.'

A silence fell among them. It was short . . . but very, very heavy. 3

Alan thought for several minutes. Thad and Liz let him. At last he looked up and said, 'Okay. Why? Why would anyone resort to murder over this? Especially after the secret had already come out?'

Thad shook his head. 'If it has to do with me, or the books I wrote as George Stark, I don't know who or why.'.'And over a pen name?' Alan asked in a musing voice. 'I mean - no offense intended, Thad, but

it wasn't exactly a classified document or a big military secret.'

'No offense taken,' Thad said. 'In fact, I couldn't agree more.'

'Stark had a lot of fans,' Liz said. 'Some of them were angry that Thad wasn't going to write any more novels as Stark. People got some letters after the article, and Thad's gotten a bunch. One lady went so far as to suggest that Alexis Machine should come out of retirement and cook Thad's goose.'

'Who's Alexis Machine?' Alan had produced the notebook again. Thad grinned. 'Soft, soft, my good Inspector. Machine's just a character in two of the novels George wrote. The first and the last.'

'A fiction by a fiction,' Alan said, putting the notebook back. 'Great.'

Thad, meanwhile, looked mildly startled. 'A fiction by a fiction,' he said. 'That's not bad. Not bad at all.'

'My point was this,' Liz said. 'Maybe Clawson had a friend always assuming Creepazoids have friends - who was a rabid Stark fan. Maybe he knew Clawson was really responsible for blowing the story wide open, and got so mad because there wouldn't be any more Stark novels that he . . . '

She sighed, looked down at her beer-bottle for a moment, then raised her head again.

'That's actually pretty lame, isn't it?'

'I'm afraid so,' Alan said kindly, then looked at Thad. 'You ought to be down on your knees thanking God for your alibi now, even if you weren't before. You do realize this makes you look even tastier as a suspect, don't you?'