Whispers (43 page)

“You won't be in danger if you stay here until we can puzzle this out,” Tony said, “or at least until we come up with something that'll convince Harry Lubbock. You'll be safe here. Frye—if it is Frye—won't know where to find you.”

“How can you be sure of that?” she asked.

“He's not omniscient.”

“Isn't he?”

Tony scowled. “Wait a minute now. You aren't going to tell me that he has supernatural powers or second sight or something like that.”

“I'm not going to tell you that, and I'm not going to rule it out either,” she said. “Listen, once you've accept the fact that Frye is somehow alive, how can you rule out
anything?
I might even start believing in gnomes and goblins and Santa Claus. But what I meant was—maybe he simply followed us here.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Followed us from your house?”

“It's a possibility.”

“No. It isn't.”

“Are you positive?”

“When I arrived at your place, he ran away.”

She stopped pacing, stood in the middle of the kitchen, hugging herself. “Maybe he hung around the neighborhood, just watching, waiting to see what we'd do and where we'd go.”

“Highly unlikely. Even if he did stay nearby after I got there, he sure as hell split when he saw the police cruiser pull up.”

“You can't assume that,” Hilary said. “At best, we're dealing with a madman. At worst, we're confronting the unknown, something so far beyond our understanding that the danger is incalculable. Whichever the case, you can't expect Frye to reason and behave like an ordinary man. Whatever he may be, he's most definitely
not
ordinary.”

Tony stared at her for a moment, then wearily wiped one hand across his face. “You're right.”

“So are you positive we weren't followed here?”

“Well . . . I didn't look for a tail,” Tony said. “It never occurred to me.”

“Me either. Until just now. So as far as we know, he might be outside, watching the apartment, right this very minute.”

That idea disturbed Tony. He stood up. “But he'd have to be pretty damned bold to pull a stunt like that.”

“He
is
bold!”

Tony nodded. “Yeah. You're right again.” He stood for a moment, thinking, then walked out of the kitchen.

She followed him. “Where are you going?”

He crossed the living room toward the front door. “You stay here while I have a look around.”

“Not a chance,” Hilary said firmly. “I'm coming along with you.”

He stopped with his hand on the door. “If Frye is out there, keeping a watch on us, you'll be a whole lot safer staying here.”

“But what if I wait for you—and then it's not you who comes back?”

“It's broad daylight out there,” Tony said. “Nothing's going to happen to me.”

“Violence isn't restricted to darkness,” Hilary said. “People get killed in broad daylight all the time. You're a policeman. You know that.”

“I have my service revolver. I can take care of myself.”

She shook her head. She was adamant. “I'm not going to sit here biting my nails. Let's go.”

Outside, they stood by the balcony railing and looked down at the vehicles in the apartment complex parking lot. There were not many of them at that time of day. Most people had gone to work more than an hour ago. In addition to the blue Jeep that belonged to Tony, there were seven cars. Bright sunshine sparkled on the chrome and transformed some of the windshields into mirrors.

“I think I recognize all of them,” Tony said. “They belong to people who live here.”

“Positive?”

“Not entirely.”

“See anybody in any of them?”

He squinted. “I can't tell with the sun shining on the glass.”

“Let's take a closer look,” she said.

Down in the parking area, they found the cars were empty. There wasn't anyone hanging around who didn't belong.

“Of course,” Tony said, “even as bold as he is, it's not likely that he'd stand a watch right on our doorstep. And since there's only one driveway in and out of these apartments, he could keep an eye on us from a distance.”

They walked out of the walled complex, onto the sidewalk, and looked north, then south along the tree-shaded street. It was a neighborhood of garden apartments and townhouses and condominiums, nearly all of which lacked adequate parking; therefore, even at that hour of a weekday morning, a lot of cars were lined up along both curbs.

“You want to check them out?” Hilary asked.

“It's a waste of time. If he has binoculars, he'll be able to watch this driveway from four blocks away. We'd have to walk four blocks in each direction, and even then, he could just pull out and drive away.”

“But if he does, then we'll spot him. We won't be able to stop him, of course, but at least we'll know for sure that he followed us. And we'll know what he's driving.”

“Not if he's two or three blocks from us when he splits,” Tony said. “We wouldn't be close enough to be sure it was him. And he might just get out of his car and take a walk, then come back after we've gone.”

To Hilary, the air seemed leaden; she found it somewhat taxing to draw a deep breath. The day was going to be very hot, especially for the end of September; and it would be a humid day, too, especially for Los Angeles, where the air was nearly always dry. The sky was high and clear and gas flame-blue. Already, wriggling ghost snakes of heat were rising from the pavement. High-pitched, musical laughter sailed on the light breeze; children were playing in the swimming pool at the townhouse development across the street.

On such a day as this, it was difficult to maintain a belief in the living dead.

Hilary sighed and said, “So how do we find out if he's here, watching us?”

“There's no way to be sure.”

“I was afraid you'd say that.”

Hilary looked down the street, which was mottled with shadow and light. Horror cloaked in sunshine. Terror hiding against a backdrop of beautiful palm trees and bright stucco walls and Spanish-tile roofs. “Paranoia Avenue,” she said.

“Paranoia
City
until this is over.”

They turned away from the street and walked back across the macadam parking area in front of his apartment building.

“Now what?” she asked.

“I think we both need to get some sleep.”

Hilary had never been so weary. Her eyes were grainy and sore from lack of rest; the strong sunlight stung them. Her mouth felt fuzzy and tasted like cardboard; there was an unpleasant film of tartar on her teeth, and her tongue seemed to be coated with a furry mold. She ached in every bone and muscle and sinew, from her toes to the top of her head, and it didn't help to realize that at least half of the way she felt was the consequence of emotional rather than physical exhaustion.

“I
know
we need to sleep,” she said. “But do you really think you can?”

“I know what you mean. I'm tired as hell, but my mind's racing. It's not going to shut off easily.”

“There's a question or two I'd like to ask the coroner,” she said. “Or whoever performed the autopsy. Maybe when I get some answers I'll be able to take a nap.”

“Okay,” Tony said. “Let's lock up the apartment and go to the morgue right now.”

A few minutes later, when they drove away in Tony's blue Jeep, they watched for a tail, but they were not followed. Of course, that didn't mean Frye wasn't sitting in one of those parked cars along that tree-lined street. If he had followed them from Hilary's house earlier, he didn't need to trail after them now, for he already knew the location of their lair.

“What if he breaks in while we're gone?” Hilary asked. “What if he's hiding in there, waiting, when we come back?”

“I've got two locks on my door,” Tony said. “One of them is the best deadbolt money can buy. He'd have to chop down the door. The only other way is to break one of the windows that faces on the balcony. If he's waiting in there when we come back, we'll know it long before we set foot inside.”

“What if he finds another way in?”

“There isn't one,” Tony said. “To get in through any of the other windows, he'd have to climb to the second floor on a sheer wall, and he'd have to do it right out in the open where he'd be sure to be seen. Don't worry. Home base is safe.”

“Maybe he can pass through a door. You know,” she said shakily. “Like a ghost. Or maybe he can turn into smoke and drift through a keyhole.”

“You don't believe garbage like that,” Tony said.

She nodded. “You're right.”

“He doesn't have any supernatural powers. He had to break a windowpane to get into your house last night.”

They headed downtown through heavy traffic.

Her bone-deep weariness undermined her usually strong mental defenses against the pernicious disease of self-doubt, leaving her uncharacteristically vulnerable. For the first time since seeing Frye walk out of the dining room, she began to wonder if she truly had seen what she thought she had seen.

“Am I crazy?” she asked Tony.

He glanced at her, then back at the street. “No. You're not crazy. You saw something. You didn't wreck the house all by yourself. You didn't just imagine that the intruder looked like Bruno Frye. I'll admit I thought that's what you were doing at first. But now I know you aren't confused.”

“But . . . a walking dead man? Isn't that too much to accept?”

“It's just as difficult to accept the other theory—that two unassociated maniacs, both suffering from the same unique set of delusions, both obsessed with a psychotic fear of vampires, attacked you in one week. In fact, I think it's a little easier to believe that Frye is somehow alive.”

“Maybe you caught it from me.”

“Caught what?”

“Insanity.”

He smiled. “Insanity isn't like the common cold. You can't spread it with a cough—or a kiss.”

“Haven't you heard of a ‘shared psychosis'?”

Braking for a traffic light, he said, “Shared psychosis? Isn't that a social welfare program for underprivileged lunatics who can't afford psychoses of their own?”

“Jokes at a time like this?”

“Especially at a time like this.”

“What about mass hysteria?”

“It's not one of my favorite pastimes.”

“I mean, maybe that's what's happening here.”

“No. Impossible,” he said. “There's only two of us. That's not enough to make a mass.”

She smiled. “God, I'm glad you're here. I'd hate to be fighting this thing alone.”

“You'll never be alone again.”

She put one hand on his shoulder.

They reached the morgue at quarter past eleven.

 

At the coroner's office, Hilary and Tony learned from the secretary that the chief medical examiner had not performed the autopsy on the body of Bruno Frye. Last Thursday and Friday, he had been in San Francisco on a speaking engagement. The autopsy had been left to an assistant, another doctor on the M. E.'s staff.

That bit of news gave Hilary hope that there would be a simple solution to the mystery of Frye's return from the grave. Perhaps the assistant assigned to the job had been a slacker, a lazy man who, free of his boss's constant supervision, had skipped the autopsy and filed a false report.

That hope was dashed when she met Ira Goldfield, the young doctor in question. He was in his early thirties, a handsome man with piercing blue eyes and a lot of tight blond curls. He was friendly, energetic, bright, and obviously too interested in his work and too dedicated to it to do less than a perfect job.

Goldfield escorted them to a small conference room that smelled of pine-scented disinfectant and cigarette smoke. They sat at a rectangular table that was covered with half a dozen medical reference books, pages of lab reports, and computer print-outs.

“Sure,” Goldfield said. “I remember that one. Bruno Graham . . . no . . . Gunther. Bruno Gunther Frye. Two stab wounds, one of them just a little worse than superficial, the other very deep and fatal. Some of the best developed abdominal muscles I've ever seen.” He blinked at Hilary and said, “Oh yes. . . . You're the woman who . . . stabbed him.”

“Self-defense,” Tony said.

“I don't doubt that for a second,” Goldfield assured him. “In my professional opinion, it's highly unlikely that Miss Thomas could have initiated a successful assault against that man. He was huge. He'd have brushed her away as easily as one of us might turn aside a small child.” Goldfield looked at Hilary again. “According to the crime report and the newspaper accounts that I read, Frye attacked you without realizing you were carrying a knife.”

“That's right. He thought I was unarmed.”

Goldfield nodded. “It had to be that way. Considering the disparity in body sizes, that's the only way you could have taken him without being seriously injured yourself. I mean, the biceps and triceps and forearms on that man were truly astounding. Ten or fifteen years ago, he could have entered body building competitions with considerable success. You were damned lucky, Miss Thomas. If you hadn't surprised him, he could have broken you in half. Almost literally in half. And easily, too.” He shook his head, still impressed with Frye's body. “What was it you wanted to ask me about him?”

Tony looked at her, and she shrugged. “It seems rather pointless now that we're here.”