'Salem's Lot(66)

'They wouldn't. They know me.'

Ben turned from the window. 'Who do they know? A funny old duck who lives alone out on Taggart Stream Road. Just the fact that you're not married is apt to make them believe you've got a screw loose anyway. And what backup can I give you? I saw the body but nothing else. Even if I had, they would just say I was an outsider. They would even get around to telling each other we were a couple of queers and, this was the way we got our kicks.'

Matt was looking at him with slowly dawning horror.

'One word, Matt. That's all it will take to finish you in salem's Lot.'

'So there's nothing to be done.'

'Yes, there is. You have a certain theory about who - or what - killed Mike Ryerson. The theory is relatively simple to prove or disprove, I think. I'm in a hell of a fix. I can't believe you're crazy, but I can't believe that Danny Glick came back from the dead and sucked Mike Ryerson's blood for a whole week before killing him, either. But I'm going to put the idea to the test. And you've got to help.'

'How?'

'Call your doctor, Cody is his name? Then call Parkins Gillespie. Let the machinery take over. Tell your story just as though you I d never heard a thing in the night. You went into Dell's and sat down with Mike. He said he'd been feeling sick since last Sunday. You invited him home with you. You went in to check him around three-thirty this morning, couldn't wake him, and called me.'

'That's all?'

'That's it. When you speak to Cody, don't even say he's dead.'

'Not dead - '

'Christ, how do we know he is?' Ben exploded. 'You took his pulse and couldn't find it; I tried to find his breath and couldn't do it. If I thought someone was going to shove me into my grave on that basis, I'd damn well pack a lunch. Especially if I looked as lifelike as he does.'

'That bothers you as much as it does me, doesn't it?'

'Yes, it bothers me,' Ben admitted. 'He looks like a goddamn waxwork.'

'All right,' Matt said. 'You're talking sense . . . as much as anyone can in a business like this. I guess I sounded nuts, at that.'

Ben started to deprecate, but Matt waved it off. 'But suppose . . . just hypothetically . . . that my first suspicion is right? Would you want even the remotest possibility in the back of your mind? The possibility that Mike might . . . come back?'

'As I said, that theory is easy enough to prove or dis?prove. And it isn't what bothers me about all this.'

'What is?'

'Just a minute. First things first. Proving or disproving it ought to be no more than an exercise in logic - ruling out possibilities. First possibility: Mike died of some disease ?a virus or something. How do you confirm that or rule it out?'

Matt shrugged. 'Medical examination, I suppose.'

'Exactly. And the same method to confirm or rule out foul play. If somebody poisoned him or shot him or got him to eat a piece of fudge with a bundle of wires in it - '

'Murder has gone undetected before.'

'Sure it has. But I'll bet on the medical examiner.'

'And if the medical examiner's verdict is "unknown cause"?'

'Then,' Ben said deliberately, 'we can visit the grave after the funeral and see if he rises. If he does - which I can't conceive of - we'll know. If he doesn't, we're faced with the thing that bothers me.'

'The fact of my insanity,' Matt said slowly. 'Ben, I swear on my mother's name that those marks were there, that I heard the window go up, that - '

'I believe you,' Ben said quietly.

Matt stopped. His expression was that of a man who has braced himself for a crash that never came.

'You do?' he said uncertainly.

'To put it another way, I refuse to believe that you're crazy or had a hallucination. I had an experience once . . . an experience that had to do with that damned house on the hill . . . that makes me extremely sympathetic to people whose stories seem utterly insane in light of rational knowl?edge. I'll tell you about that, one day.'

'Why not now?'

'There's no time. You have those calls to make. And I have one more question. Think about it carefully. Do you have any enemies?'

'No one who qualifies for something like this.'

'An ex-student, maybe? One with a grudge?'

Matt, who knew exactly to what extent he influenced the lives of his students, laughed politely.

'Okay,' Ben said. 'I'll take your word for it.' He shook his head. 'I don't like it. First that dog shows up on the cemetery gates. Then Ralphie Glick disappears, his brother dies, and Mike Ryerson. Maybe they all tie in somehow. But this . . . I can't believe it.'

'I better call Cody's home,' Matt said, getting up. 'Par?kins will be at home.'

'Call in sick at school, too.'

'Right.' Matt laughed without force. 'It will be my first sick day in three years. A real occasion.'

He went into the living room and began to make his calls, waiting at the end of each number sequence for the bell to prod sleepers awake. Cody's wife apparently referred him to Cumberland Receiving, for he dialed another number, asked for Cody, and went into his story after a short wait.

He hung up and called into the kitchen: 'Jimmy will be here in an hour.'