The Dark Half(55)

'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 tine.

'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 he 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 he 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,