The Dark Half(46)

'Okay,' he said. 'Okay, sis. You're upset. I understand. I don't know if you believe this or not, but I even sympathize. And you're in luck, because it just so happens I know the number myself. I know it as well as I know my own, you might say. And do you know what? I'm not even going to make you dial it, partly because I don't want to sit here until hell freezes over, waiting for you to get it right, but also because I do sympathize. I am going to lean over and dial it myself. Do you know what that means?'

Miriam Cowley shook her head. Her dark eyes appeared to have eaten up most of her face.

'It means I'm going to trust you. But only so far; only just so far and no further, old girl. Are you listening? Are you getting all this?'

Miriam nodded frantically, her hair flying. God, he loved a woman with a lot of hair.

'Good. That's good. While I dial the phone, sis, you want to keep your eyes right on this blade. It will help you keep your happy thoughts in good order.'

He leaned forward and began to pick out the number on the old-fashioned rotary dial. Amplified clicking sounds came from the message recorder beside the phone as he did so. It sounded like a carny Wheel of Fortune slowing down. Miriam Cowley sat with the phone handset in her lap, looking alternately at the razor and the flat, crude planes of this horrible stranger's face.

'Talk to him,' the blonde man said. 'If his wife answers, tell her it's Miriam in New York and you want to talk to her man. I know your mouth is swollen, but make whoever answers know it's you. Put out for me, sis. If you don't want your face to wind up looking like a Picasso portrait, you put out for me just fine.' The last two words came out jest fahn.

'What . . . What do I say?'

The blonde man smiled. She was a piece of work, all right. Mighty tasty. All that hair. More stirrings from the area below his belt-buckle. It was getting lively down there. The phone was ringing. They could both hear it through the answering machine.

'You'll think of the right thing, sis.'

There was a click as the phone was picked up. The blonde man waited until he heard Beaumont's voice say hello, and then with the speed of a striking snake he leaned forward and drew the straight-razor down Miriam Cowley's left cheek, pulling open a flap of skin there. Blood poured out in a freshet. Miriam shrieked.

'Hello!' Beaumont's voice barked. 'Hello, who is this? Goddammit, is it you?'

Yes, it's me, all right, you son of a bitch, the blonde man thought. It's me and you know it's me, don't you?

'Tell him who you are and what's happening here!' he barked at Miriam. 'Do it! Don't make me tell you twice!'.'Who's that?' Beaumont cried. 'What's going on? Who is this?'

Miriam shrieked again. Blood splattered on the wheat-colored sofa cushions. There wasn't just a single drop of blood on the bodice of her dress now; it was soaked.

'Do what I say or I'll cut your f**king head off with this thing!'

'Thad there's a man here!' she screamed into the telephone. In her pain and terror, she was enunciating clearly again. 'There's a bad man here! Thad THERE'S A BAD MAN H - '

'SAY YOUR NAME!' he roared at her, and sliced the straight-razor through the air an inch in front of her eyes. She cringed back, wailing.

'Who is this? Wh - '

'MIRIAM!' she shrieked. 'OH THAD DON'T LET HIM CUT ME AGAIN DON'T LET THE BAD

MAN CUT ME AGAIN DON'T - '

George Stark swept the straight-razor through the kinked telephone cord. The phone machine uttered one angry bark of static and fell silent.

It was good. It could have been better; he'd wanted to do her, really wanted to have it off with her. It had been a long time since he'd wanted to have it off with a woman, but he had wanted this one, and he wasn't going to get her. There had been too much screaming. The rabbits would be poking their heads out of their holes again, scenting the air for the big predator that was padding around somewhere in the jungle just beyond the glow of their pitiful little electric campfires. She was still shrieking.

It was clear she had lost all her happy thoughts.

So Stark grabbed her by the hair again, bent her head back until she was staring at the ceiling, shrieking at the ceiling, and cut her throat.

The room fell silent.

'There, sis,' he said tenderly. He folded the straight-razor back into its handle and put it into his pocket. Then he reached out his bloody left hand and closed her eyes. The cuff of his shirt was immediately soaked in warm blood because her jugular was still pumping the claret, but the proper thing to do was the proper thing to do. When it was a woman, you closed her eyes. It didn't matter how bad she had been, it didn't matter if she was a junkie whore who had sold her own kids to buy dope, you closed her eyes.

And she was only a small part of it. Rick Cowley was a different story. And the man who had written the magazine piece.

And the bitch who had taken the pictures, especially that one of the tombstone. A bitch, yes, a right bitch, but he would close her eyes, too.

And when they were all taken care of, it would be time to talk to Thad himself. No intermediaries; mano a mano. Time to make Thad see reason. After he had done all of them, he fully expected Thad to be ready to see reason. If he wasn't, there were ways to make him see it. He was, after all, a man with a wife - a very beautiful wife, a veritable queen of air and darkness.