Insomnia (63 page)

Lois, dully: [
‘Oh God – the little boy who cried wolf.’
]

Clotho: [
Correct, Lois.
]

Ralph: [‘Has
he planted a bomb? He has, hasn’t he?’
]

Bright light washed across the roof, stretching the shadows of the twirling heat-ventilators like taffy. Clotho and Lachesis looked at these shadows and then to the east, where the sun’s top arc had broken over the horizon, with identical expressions of dismay.

Lachesis: [
We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. You must stop the speech from happening, and there is only one way to do that: you must convince the women in charge to cancel Susan Day’s appearance. Do you understand?
She must not appear in the Civic Center tonight!
You can’t stop Ed, and you daren’t try to approach Atropos, so you must stop Susan Day
.]

Ralph: [
‘But—’
]

It wasn’t the strengthening sunlight that shut his mouth, or the growing look of harried fear on the faces of the little bald docs. It was Lois. She put a hand on his cheek and gave a small but decisive shake of the head.

[
‘No more. We have to go down, Ralph. Now.’
]

Questions were circling in his mind like mosquitoes, but if she said there was no more time, there was no more time. He glanced at the sun, saw it had entirely cleared the horizon, and nodded. He slipped his arm around her waist.

Clotho, anxiously: [
Do not fail us, Ralph and Lois
.]

Ralph: [
‘Save the pep-talk, short stuff. This isn’t a football game.’
]

Before either of them could reply, Ralph closed his eyes and concentrated on dropping back down to the Short-Time world.

There was that sensation of
blink!
and a chill morning breeze struck his face. Ralph opened his eyes and looked at the woman beside him. For just a moment he could see her aura wisping away behind her like the gauzy overskirt of a lady’s ball-gown and then it was just Lois, looking twenty years younger than she had the week before . . . and also looking extremely out of place, in her light fall coat and good visiting-the-sick dress, here on the tar-and-gravel hospital roof.

Ralph hugged her tighter as she began to shiver. Of Lachesis and Clotho there was no sign.

Although they could be standing right beside us,
Ralph thought.
Probably are, as a matter of fact
.

He suddenly thought of that old carny pitchman’s line again, the one about how you had to pay if you wanted to play, so step right up, gentlemen, and lay your money down. But more often than not you were played instead of playing. Played for what? A sucker, of course. And why did he have that feeling now?

Because there were a lot of things you never found out,
Carolyn said from inside his head.
They led you down a lot of interesting sidetracks and kept you away from the main point until it was too late for you to ask the questions they might not have wanted to answer . . . and I don’t think something like that happens by accident, do you?

No. He didn’t.

That feeling of being pushed by invisible hands into some dark tunnel where anything might be waiting was stronger now. That sense of being manipulated. He felt small . . . and vulnerable . . . and pissed off.

‘W-Well, we’re b-b-back,’ Lois said through her briskly chattering teeth. ‘What time is it, do you think?’

It felt like about six o’clock, but when Ralph glanced down at his watch, he wasn’t surprised to see it had stopped. He couldn’t remember when he had last wound it. Tuesday morning, probably.

He followed Lois’s gaze to the southwest and saw the Civic Center standing like an island in the middle of a parking-lot ocean. With the early morning sunlight kicking bright sheets of reflection from its curved banks of windows, it looked like an oversized version of the office building George Jetson worked in. The vast deathbag which had surrounded it only moments before was gone.

‘Early,’ he said, pulling her more tightly against him as the wind gusted, blowing his hair – hair that now had almost as much black in it as white – back from his forehead. ‘But it’s going to get late fast, I think.’

She took his meaning and nodded. ‘Where are L-Lachesis and C-C—’

‘On a level where the wind doesn’t freeze your ass off, I imagine. Come on. Let’s find a door and get the hell off this roof.’

She stayed where she was a moment longer, though, shivering and looking across town. ‘What has he done?’ she asked in a small voice. ‘If he hasn’t planted a bomb in there, what
can
he have done?’

‘Maybe he
has
planted a bomb and the dogs with the educated noses just haven’t found it yet. Or maybe it’s something the dogs aren’t trained to find. A canister stuck up in the rafters, say – a little something nasty Ed whipped up in the bathtub. Chemistry is what he did for a living, after all . . . at least until he gave up his job to become a full-time psycho. He could be planning to gas them like rats.’

‘Oh Jesus, Ralph!’ She put her hand to her chest just above the swell of her bosom and looked at him with wide, dismayed eyes.

‘Come on, Lois. Let’s get off this damned roof.’

This time she came willingly enough. Ralph led her toward the roof door . . . which, he fervently hoped, they would find unlocked.

‘Two thousand people,’ she almost moaned as they reached the door. Ralph was relieved when the knob turned under his hand, but Lois seized his wrist with chilly fingers before he could pull the door open. Her uptilted face was full of frantic hope. ‘Maybe those little men were lying, Ralph – maybe they’ve got their own axe to grind, something we couldn’t even
hope
to understand, and they were lying.’

‘I don’t think they
can
lie,’ he said slowly. ‘That’s the hell of it, Lois – I don’t think they
can
. And then there’s that.’ He pointed at the Civic Center, at the dirty membrane they couldn’t see but which both knew was still there. Lois would not turn to look at it. She put her cold hand over his instead, pulled the roof door open, and started down the stairs.

Ralph opened the door at the foot of the stairs, peeped into the sixth-floor corridor, saw that it was empty, and drew Lois out of the stairwell. They headed for the elevators, then stopped together outside an open door with
DOCTOR
’
S LOUNGE
printed on the wall beside it in bright red letters. Inside was the room they had seen on their way up to the roof with Clotho and Lachesis – Winslow Homer prints hanging crooked on the walls, a Silex standing on a hotplate, hideous Swedish Modern furniture. No one was in the room right now, but the TV bolted to the wall was playing nevertheless, and their old friend Lisette Benson was reading the morning news. Ralph remembered the day he and Lois and Bill had sat in Lois’s living room, eating macaroni and cheese as they watched Lisette Benson report on the doll-throwing incident at WomanCare. Less than a month ago that had been. He suddenly remembered that Bill McGovern would never watch Lisette Benson again, or forget to lock the front door, and a sense of loss as fierce as a November gale swept through him. He could not completely believe it, at least not yet. How could Bill have died so quickly and so unceremoniously?
He would have hated it,
Ralph thought,
and not just because he would have considered dying of a heart attack in a hospital corridor in bad taste. He would’ve considered it bad theater, as well
.

But he had seen it happen, and Lois had actually felt it eating away at Bill’s insides. That made Ralph think of the deathbag surrounding the Civic Center, and what was going to happen there if they didn’t stop the speech. He started toward the elevator again, but Lois pulled him back. She was looking at the TV, fascinated.

‘– will feel a lot of relief when tonight’s speech by feminist abortion-rights advocate Susan Day is history,’ Lisette Benson was saying, ‘but the police aren’t the
only
ones who will feel that way. Apparently both pro-life and pro-choice advocates are beginning to feel the strain of living on the edge of confrontation. John Kirkland is live at the Derry Civic Center this morning, and he has more. John?’

The pallid, unsmiling man standing next to Kirkland was Dan Dalton. The button on his shirt showed a scalpel descending toward an infant with its knees drawn up in the fetal position. This was surrounded by a red circle with a diagonal red line slashed across it. Ralph could see half a dozen police cars and two news trucks, one with the NBC logo on its side, in the background of the shot. A uniformed cop strolled across the lawn leading two dogs – a bloodhound and a German Shepherd – on leashes.

‘That’s right, Lisette, I’m here at the Civic Center, where the mood could be termed one of worry and quiet determination. With me is Dan Dalton, President of The Friends of Life organization which has been so vehemently opposed to Ms Day’s speech. Mr Dalton, would you agree with that assessment of the situation?’

‘That there’s a lot of worry and determination in the air?’ Dalton asked. To Ralph his smile looked both nervous and disdainful. ‘Yes, I suppose you could put it that way. We’re
worried
that Susan Day, one of this country’s greatest unindicted criminals, will succeed in her efforts to confuse the central issue here in Derry: the murder of twelve to fourteen helpless unborn children each and every day.’

‘But Mr Dalton—’

‘And,’ Dalton overrode him, ‘we are
determined
to show a watching nation that we are not willing to be good Nazis, that we are not all cowed by the religion of political correctness – the dreaded pee-cee.’

‘Mr Dalton—’

‘We are also determined to show a watching nation that some of us are still capable of standing up for our beliefs, and to fulfill the sacred responsibility which a loving God has—’

‘Mr Dalton, are The Friends of Life planning any sort of violent protest here?’

That shut him up for a moment and at least temporarily drained all the canned vitality from his face. With it gone, Ralph saw a dismaying thing: underneath his bluster, Dalton was scared to death.

‘Violence?’ he said at last. He brought the word out carefully, like something that could give his mouth a bad cut if mishandled. ‘Good Lord, no. The Friends of Life reject the idea that two wrongs can ever make a right. We intend to mount a massive demonstration – we are being joined in this fight by pro-life advocates from Augusta, Portland, Portsmouth, and even Boston – but there will be no violence.’

‘What about Ed Deepneau? Can you speak for him?’

Dalton’s lips, already thinned down to little more than a seam, now seemed to disappear altogether. ‘Mr Deepneau is no longer associated with The Friends of Life,’ he said. Ralph thought he detected both fear and anger in Dalton’s tone. ‘Neither are Frank Felton, Sandra McKay, and Charles Pickering, in case you intended to ask.’

John Kirkland’s glance at the camera was brief but telling. It said that he thought Dan Dalton was as nutty as a bag of trail-mix.

‘Are you saying that Ed Deepneau and these other individuals – I’m sorry, I don’t know who they are – have formed their own anti-abortion group? A kind of offshoot?’

‘We are not anti-abortion, we are
pro-life
!’ Dalton cried. ‘There’s a big difference, but you reporters seem to keep missing it!’

‘So you don’t know Ed Deepneau’s whereabouts, or what – if anything – he might be planning?’

‘I don’t know where he is, I don’t
care
where he is, and I don’t care about his . . .
offshoots,
either.’

You’re afraid, though,
Ralph thought.
And if a self-righteous little prick like you is afraid, I think I’m terrified.

Dalton started off. Kirkland, apparently deciding he wasn’t wrung completely dry yet, walked after him, shaking out his microphone cord as he went.

‘But isn’t it true, Mr Dalton, that while he was a member of The Friends of Life, Ed Deepneau instigated
several
violence-oriented protests, including one last month where dolls soaked with artificial blood were thrown—’

‘You’re all the same, aren’t you?’ Dan Dalton asked. ‘I’ll pray for you, my friend.’ He stalked off.

Kirkland looked after him for a moment, bemused, then turned back to the camera. ‘We tried to get hold of Mr Dalton’s opposite number – Gretchen Tillbury, who has taken on the formidable job of coordinating this event for WomanCare – but she was unavailable for comment. We’ve heard that Ms Tillbury is at High Ridge, a women’s shelter and halfway house which is owned and operated by WomanCare. Presumably, she and her associates are out there putting the finishing touches on plans for what they hope will be a safe, violence-free rally and speech at the Civic Center tonight.’

Ralph glanced at Lois and said, ‘Okay – now we know where we’re going, at least.’

The TV picture switched to Lisette Benson, in the studio. ‘John, are there any real signs of possible violence at the Civic Center?’

Back to Kirkland, who had returned to his original location in front of the cop cars. He was holding up a small white rectangle with some printing on it in front of his tie. ‘Well, the private security police on duty here found hundreds of these file-cards scattered on the Civic Center’s front lawn this morning just after first light. One of the guards claims to have seen the vehicle they were dumped from. He says it was a Cadillac from the late sixties, either brown or black. He didn’t get the license number, but says there was a sticker on the back bumper reading
ABORTION IS MURDER, NOT CHOICE
.’