Night-World (12 page)

“But I’m going to find out.” Barringer frowned and reached for the telephone.

Dr. Vicente was silent as the Lieutenant put through a call to the deputy coroner’s office. The conversation that followed was cryptic, but Barringer’s expression, when he cradled the phone again, told its own story.

“Okay, Doc,” he said. “The p.m.’s not completed, but preliminaries on Rodell’s blood samples and stomach contents show he was clean when he died.”

“No trace of amphetamine?”

Barringer shook his head. “Not in Rodell. But you were right—the dogs didn’t attack him by accident. They’d been fixed.”

“Fixed?”

“The dog’s were destroyed this morning. I asked for an examination. According to the report, their stomachs were full of meat—and indications are that they were fed at least half a dozen capsules along with it.

“No wonder they attacked Rodell when he came in. They would have attacked anything that moved. Somebody turned those dogs on with speed.”

CHAPTER 16

H
e spent the night in the car, parked inside the barricaded cul-de-sac of an abandoned freeway entrance. Shrubbery shielded him from the street as he slept.

Sleeping was never a problem; he merely closed his eyes and fell immediately into a dark hole. A hiding place, lightless and soundless, where nothing could find him, not even a dream. He hadn’t dreamed in years.

“Of course you dream,” the doctor always insisted. “Everyone dreams. It’s just that you repress such memories from your consciousness.” The implication was obvious; he was blocking out recall because his nightmares were too terrible to be borne. That’s what the doctor wanted to believe, but he was wrong. Nothing is too terrible to be borne. He had proved that beyond a doubt—not in dreams, but in reality. No one had ever suffered as he suffered, and yet he had survived. He survived, and the others—the dreamers—were dead. As for himself, he merely slept. Slept snugly, slept securely, slept with the certainty of one who knows he will awaken.
For I am the resurrection and the life, forever and ever. Amen.

Awakening came with a rumble and a roar.

He blinked into instantaneous awareness, scrambling up out of the dark hole as the bombs fell—
no, not bombs, that was in another time, another place.

Then he knew where he was, here in the cul-de-sac, and he recognized the source of the sound: garbage trucks, moving into the early-morning emptiness of the street in line of duty. Immediately upon realizing what he was hearing his heart stopped pounding and he was calm again.

He sat up, permitting himself a slight smile, not in acknowledgment of the content of his thought, but in appreciation of the discipline and control which enabled him to evolve it so effortlessly. How many others, under similar circumstances, could come up with something like that?

No one else could. Because there were no others, not really. They were only actors. Of course none of them knew it, any more than the doctor did. They thought they were real, but they were only figments of imagination.
The world is my idea.

It was discovering this secret which made everything so easy.

At first he hadn’t been certain. He’d wondered what it would be like, wondered if he could actually carry out the part he had rehearsed over and over again in his mind. He had written the play, directed it, blocked out the movements, selected the cast, planned the whole production. He knew his own role perfectly, but the nagging doubt had remained—could he play it?

Now he knew the answer. There had been no stage fright.
Grand Guignol,
Theatre of Cruelty, call it what you will, was no different from the Theatre of the Absurd. Comedy and Tragedy alike were only masks to be worn and discarded at will. One had only to remember that it was all make-believe. The blood was merely ketchup, the twitching and grimaces and shrieks and cries all emanated from actors responding on cue, hamming it up for their big death scene.

Of course he had to be careful, because
he
was real, and his blood wasn’t ketchup. Everyone would be crying, “Author, author!” but he couldn’t afford to take bows; he had to avoid the spotlight at all costs. The best way was to keep changing roles.

Each man in his time plays many parts.
The dutiful-patient character for Dr. Griswold and the staff; the all-powerful leader for the other patients. And then, for select audiences of one, the silent bits. The man in the closet for Dorothy Anderson, the man in the shadows for Jack Lorch, the man in the garden waiting for Edna Drexel. The swimming pool had been a great prop; something stirring in his memory told him he’d plagiarized it from that old Oriental melodrama,
Kismet.
Life copies art.

But Tony Rodell’s removal from the stage had been a matter of brilliant improvisation. Using the dogs that way had been a stroke of genius; perhaps he’d managed to fool the audience completely.

He leaned forward in the car seat and switched on the radio, then push-buttoned his way across the dial in search of the early morning news.

The announcer’s chatter gave him the answer he was seeking.

“—shocking and brutal series of murders climaxed in the early hours of this morning by the death of former rock-and-pop music star Tony Rodell—”

He listened until he was satisfied they’d found out about the dogs; that was important. They hadn’t found out about him, and that was more important still. The rest was merely an exercise in ill-tempered name-calling—“homicidal maniac still on the loose,” and all the rest of it. People who don’t understand the play always give it bad notices.

He switched off the radio and plugged in the shaver he’d picked up in the drugstore yesterday. Using the rearview mirror, he removed the bristle of beard from his face. Then he reached under the seat and brought out a change of clothing. Lucky there’d been so much cash in Griswold’s wallet, enough for a fresh outfit. He remembered how careful he’d been with Dorothy Anderson—actually taking one of the smocks hanging in her closet and tying it around his neck like an apron to protect himself from the spattering blood. He’d tossed the stained smock into a gully before picking up Tony Rodell’s car and they apparently hadn’t found it yet—not that the smock would be of any help to them.

He peered through the bushes at the street beyond. Some morning traffic was passing—people on their way to work—but nobody glanced his way. Even so, he slid down behind the wheel, concealing himself as much as possible as he shed his old garments and donned the new. Just his luck to be picked up for indecent exposure.

No, it wasn’t just his luck.
His
luck was good, had been from the beginning. Because the wise man makes his own luck, and he had everything worked out.

He slipped the trousers on, then picked the pins out of the new shirt. Once he’d buttoned it, he reached for the necktie and sat upright in the seat again as he knotted it, eyes intent on the mirror. Then he transferred the contents of his pockets to the new outfit, pausing to count the money remaining in Griswold’s wallet. Thirty-four dollars. Not a fortune, but enough to carry him through the day. And there would be more money. More money, and more days.

For the first time he permitted the thought to openly intrude. It had been waiting there for some time, waiting patiently until the stage was set.
Why limit this to one performance?

Even at the sanatorium, he had sensed the notion. And last night it had made itself felt even more strongly. Now, today, he would reach the climax and the curtain would fall. His part would be over.

But did it have to end?

Eliminating witnesses was conceived of as a precautionary measure, and that made sense. But why stop there?

The world was full of candidates for oblivion. Like that ass on the radio, with his self-righteous braying about a “homicidal maniac.” Yes, and so many others.

A parade began to pass through his mind, led by a leggy, half-naked drum majorette, smirking and strutting in hot pants, fondling the silver phallus beloved by all such teasing bitches, licking her lips as she jabbed it up into the air in mockery of a man’s role. After her, the idiot cheerleader, breasts bobbing beneath her sweater, cavorting with grotesque grimaces and spastic gestures as she shrieked passionately, “Gimme a
P,
gimme a
U,
gimme a
K,
gimme an
E!!”
And then, burly, brawny, bulging brute in uniform, face of a fish fast-frozen, eyes like marbles, body moving mindlessly in the stiff-gaited rhythm of a robot—His Militant Majesty, the drill sergeant, barking incessantly and insanely the meaningless distillation of all stupidity, “Ten
-hut!”

And behind him, all the others, the millions upon millions of others, who followed such leaders. Who accepted the orotund obscenities of the announcers and the lewd lies they burbled about people they’d never seen and products they’d never used. Who applauded the drum majorettes as “cute,” as part of the spectacle of “good, clean sports,” performed by lumbering cretins kicking and hitting and grabbing at one another. Who shrieked nonsense syllables on command of cheerleaders without the slightest concept of either cheer or leadership. Who obeyed without question the guttural growls of the goose-stepping parodies of pride who double-marched them to doom.

The parade was endless.

But he could end it.

For a fleeting moment he sensed some symbolic similarity about all those he evoked; every one was, in a way, an authority figure. If so, it merely intensified his impulse.

He thought about it as he reached into the glove compartment for a handful of tissues and carefully wiped the dashboard instruments, the steering wheel, the rearview mirror. Bundling his discarded clothing in the wrappings which had enclosed the new, he placed the package under his arm and climbed out. Again he used the tissues to wipe the door handles.

Peering through the shrubbery at the street beyond, he waited for a moment when no traffic was in sight, then stepped out onto the walk and started off. When he reached the intersection, he turned and made his way along a side street. Halfway up the block, he paused before one of a row of garbage cans, set out for emptying. Again he glanced around, making sure there was no traffic, no one to observe him. Then he lifted the lid of a container and dumped the wrapped clothing-bundle into the can, covering it with old newspapers. A grubby task, but the end justifies the means, however menial.

Turning away, he started down the street. There’d be a coffee shop somewhere near the intersection ahead. After he’d eaten, he must find another car—prowl the alleys behind the shops where the clerks and storekeepers parked, until he located a vehicle whose careless owner had left a key in the ignition. Another degrading exercise, but again he had to consider the end. The end he would bring to others.

What was that irritating inanity the hippies had leeched onto for their own?
Life-style.
A pretentious phrase for a filthy, irresponsible, empty existence with no style at all.

He was different. His life-style was death.

Thou shalt not kill.

God’s commandment. But no one really heeded it, or heeded Him. Not with the mess the world was in. If God were running for reelection on his record, he’d lose.

Killing was easy. Everyone knows that. The hand swats the fly, the foot squashes the bug.

With some people, it stops there. But others go on. The farm wife, wringing the neck of the chicken. The stockyard workers in the slaughterhouse, clubbing the steer, butchering the squealing pigs.

The next step, of course, was war. But he didn’t want to think about that. The massacre of the innocents.

Better to think about the righteous extermination of the guilty. It was a play, after all—a morality play, a passion play.

Passion.
The worm stirred, gnawing his groin.

Suddenly, for no reason, he remembered the high school biology class and the dissection of a frog. He could see the bleached white underside of the creature, legs outstretched, as it wriggled on the table under the impalement of a knife.

And then the table became a bed, and the frog turned into a Prince—no, a Princess. A girl with bleached white skin, legs outstretched, wriggling under another impalement.

He knew who the girl was, of course.

And he’d be seeing her, today.

CHAPTER 17

W
hen Karen finished dressing and came out into the living room, she was surprised to find Tom Doyle sitting there.

“I thought I wouldn’t be seeing you again until this afternoon,” she said.

“Somebody fouled up on the assignments downtown.” Doyle shook his head. “The relief man never showed. They called and asked me to switch shifts, so I came along and took over from Lubeck.”

“He left?”

“About an hour ago. You were still asleep. No sense disturbing you. I figured you needed the rest.”

Karen nodded. She started towards the kitchen. “How about something to eat?”

“I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Coming up.”

Karen set the pot on, then fried herself an egg, put two slices of bread in the toaster, and took the orange juice from the refrigerator. The routine was automatic and somehow reassuring. Setting the table she could almost convince herself that this was just another day.

Doyle watched her from the kitchen doorway. “You look better this morning.”

“I feel better.” And she did. After that first nightmare Karen remembered nothing. She’d really slept.

The coffee was perking. Karen filled two cups, brought out the milk, turned the egg, deposited it on a plate just as the toast popped up. The choreography of habit, everything timed out perfectly. She carried her food to the table as Doyle took his place across from her.

The taste of toast and juice was reassuring, and so was the sight of the morning sun filtering through the blinds. Then she remembered something and started to rise from her chair.

Doyle glanced up. “Forget something?”

“The paper. They leave it outside the door.”