The Dark Half (33 page)

Thad asked Alan, “With the little differences in the spikes, they can at least
kid
themselves that two different voices were speaking, even if they know better—mat was your point, wasn't it?”

“Uh-huh. Even though I've never heard of voice-prints even remotely as dose as these.” He shrugged. “Granted, my experience with them isn't as wide as the guys at POLE who study them for a living, or even the guys in Augusta who are more or less general practitioners—voice-prints, fingerprints, footprints, tire-prints. But I
do
read the literature, and I was there when the results came back, Thad. They are kidding themselves, yes, but they're not doing it very hard. ”

“So they've got three small differences, but they're not enough. The problem is that my voice was stressed and Stark's wasn't. So they went to this enhancer thing hoping for a fall-back position. Hoping, in fact, that Stark's end of the conversation would turn out to be a tape-recording. Made by me.” He cocked an eyebrow at Alan. “Do I win the stewing chicken?”

“Not only that, you win the glassware for six and the free trip to Kittery. ”

“That's the craziest thing I ever heard,” Liz said flatly.

Thad laughed without much humor. “The whole thing is crazy. They thought I might have changed my voice, like Rich Little . . . or Mel Blanc. The idea is that I made a tape in my George Stark voice, building in pauses where I could reply, in front of witnesses, in my own voice. Of course I'd have to buy a gadget that could hook a cassette tape-recorder into a pay telephone. There
are
such things, aren't there, Alan?”

“You bet. Available at fine electronics supply houses everywhere, or just dial the 800 number that will appear on your screen, operators are standing by. ”

“Right. The only other thing I'd need would be an accomplice-someone I trusted who would go to Penn Station, attach the tape-player to a phone in the bank which looked like it was doing the least business, and dial my house at the proper time. Then—” He broke off. “How was the call paid for? I forgot about that. It wasn't collect. ”

“Your telephone credit card number was used,” Alan said. “You obviously gave it to your accomplice. ”

“Yeah, obviously. I only had to do two things once this shuck-and-jive got started. One was to make sure I answered the telephone myself. The other was to remember my lines and plug them into the correct pauses. I did very well, wouldn' t you say, Alan?”

“Yeah. Fantastic. ”

“My accomplice hangs up the telephone when the script says he should. He unhooks the tape-player from the phone, tucks it under his arm—”

“Hell, slips it into his pocket,” Alan said. “The stuff they've got now is so good even the CIA buys at Radio Shack. ”

“Okay, he slips it into his pocket and just walks away. The result is a conversation where I am both seen and heard to be talking to a man five hundred miles away, a man who
sounds
different—who sounds, in fact, just the tiniest bit Southern-fried—but has the same voice-print as I do. It's the fingerprints all over again, only better.” He looked at Alan for confirmation.

“On second thought,” Alan said, “make that an all-expense-paid trip to Portsmouth. ”

“Thank you. ”

“Don't mention it. ”

“That's not just crazy,” Liz said, “it's utterly incredible. I think all those people should have their heads—”

While her attention was diverted, the twins finally succeeded in knocking their own heads together and began to cry lustily. Liz picked up William. Thad rescued Wendy.

When the crisis passed, Alan said, “It's incredible, all right. You know it, I know it, and they know it, too. But Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say at least one thing that still holds true in crime detection: when you eliminate all the impossible explanations, whatever is left is your answer . . . no matter how improbable it may be. ”

“I think the original was a little more elegant,” Thad said.

Alan grinned. “Screw you. ”

“You two may find this funny, but I don't,” Liz said. “Thad would have to be crazy to do something like that. Of course, the police may think we're both crazy. ”

“They don't think any such thing,” Alan replied gravely, “at least not at this point, and they won't, as long as you go on keeping your wilder tales to yourselves. ”

“What about
you
, Alan?” Thad asked. “We've spilled
all
the wild tales to you—what do
you
think?”

“Not that you're crazy. All of this would be a lot simpler if I did believe it. I don't know
what's
going on. ”

“What did you get from Dr. Hume?” Liz wanted to know.

“The name of the doctor who operated on Thad when he was a kid,” Alan said. “It's Hugh Pritchard—does that ring a bell, Thad?”

Thad frowned and thought it over At last he said, “I think it does . . . but I might only be kidding myself. It was a long time ago. ”

Liz was leaning forward, bright-eyed; William goggled at Alan from the safety of his mother's lap. “What did Pritchard tell you?” she asked.

“Nothing. I got his answering machine—which allows me to deduce that the man is still alive—and that's all. I left a message. ”

Liz settled back in her chair, clearly disappointed.

“What about my tests?” Thad asked. “Did Hume have anything back? Or wouldn't he tell you?”

“He said that when he had the results, you'd be the first to know,” Alan said. He grinned. “Dr. Hume seemed rather offended at the idea of telling a County Sheriff
anything
. ”

“That's George Hume,” Thad said, and smiled. “Crusty is his middle name. ”

Alan shifted in his seat.

“Would you like something to drink, Alan?” Liz asked. “A beer or a Pepsi?”

“No thanks. Let's go back to what the State Police do and do not believe. They
don't
believe either of you is involved, but they reserve the right to believe you
might
be. They know they can't hang last night's and this morning's work on you, Thad. An accomplice, maybe—the same one, hypothetically, who would have worked the tape-recorder gag—but not you. You were here. ”

“What about Darla Gates?” Thad asked quietly. “The girl who worked in the comptroller's office?”

“Dead. Mutilated pretty badly, as be suggested, but shot once through the head first. She didn't suffer. ”

“That's a lie. ”

Alan blinked at him.

“He didn't let her off so cheaply. Not after what he did to Clawson. After all, she was the original stoolie, wasn't she? Clawson dangled some money in front of her—it couldn't have been very much, judging from the state of Clawson's finances—and she obliged by letting the cat out of the bag. So don't tell me he shot her before he cut her and that she didn't suffer. ”

“All right,” Alan said. “It wasn't like that. Do you want to know how it
really
was?”

“No,” Liz said immediately.

There was a moment of heavy silence in the room. Even the twins seemed to feel it; they looked at each other with what seemed to be great Solemnity. At last Thad asked, “Let me ask you again: what do
you
believe ? What do you believe now?”

“I don't have a theory. I know you didn't tape Stark's end of the conversation, because the enhancer didn't detect any tape-hiss, and when you jack up the audio, you can hear the Penn Station loudspeaker announcing that the
Pilgrim
to Boston is now ready for boarding on Track Number Three. The
Pilgrim
did
board on Track Three this afternoon. Boarding started at two-thirty-six p. m., and that's right in line with your little chat. But I didn't even need that. If the conversation had been taped on Stark's end, either you or Liz would have asked me what the enhancing process showed as soon as I brought it up. Neither of you did. ”

“All this and you still don't believe it, do you?” Thad said. “I mean, it's got you rocking and rolling—enough so you really
are
trying to chase down Dr. Pritchard—but you really can't get all the way to the middle of what's happening, can you?” He sounded frustrated and harried even to himself.

“The guy himself admitted he wasn't Stark. ”

“Oh yes. He was very sincere about it, too.” Thad laughed.

“You act as though that doesn't surprise you. ”

“It doesn't. Does it surprise
you?”

“Frankly, yes. It does. After going to such great pains to establish the fact that you and he share the same fingerprints, the same voice-prints—”

“Alan, stop a second,” Thad said.

Alan did, looking at Thad inquiringly.

“I told you this morning that I thought George Stark was doing these things. Not an accomplice of mine, not a psycho who has somehow managed to invent a way to wear other people's fingerprints—between his murderous fits and identity fugues, that is—and you didn't believe me. Do you now?”

“No, Thad. I wish I could tell you differently, but the best I can do is this: I believe that you believe.” He shifted his gaze to take in Liz. “
Both
of you. ”

“I'll settle for the truth, since anything less is apt to get me killed,” Thad said, “and my family along with me, more likely than not At this point it does my heart good just to hear you say you don't have a theory. It's not much, but it's a step forward. What I was trying to show you is that the fingerprints and voice-prints don't make a difference, and Stark knows it. You can talk all you want about throwing away the impossible and accepting whatever is left, no matter how improbable, but it doesn't work that way. You don't accept
Stark,
and
he's
what's left when you eliminate the rest. Let me put it this way, Alan: if you had this much evidence of a tumor in your brain, you would go into the hospital and have an operation, even if the odds were good you'd not come out alive. ”

Alan opened his mouth, shook his head, and snapped it shut again. Other than the clock and the soft babble and coo of the twins, there was no sound in the living room, where Thad was rapidly coming to feel he had spent his entire adult life.

“On one hand you have enough hard evidence to make a strong circumstantial court case,” Thad resumed softly. “On the other, you have the unsubstantiated assertion of a voice on the phone that he's ‘come to his senses, ' that he ‘knows who he is now. ' Yet you're going to ignore the evidence in favor of the assertion. ”

“No, Thad. That's not true. I'm not accepting any assertions right now—not yours, not your wife's, and least of all the ones made by the man who called on the phone. All my options are still open. ”

Thad jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the window. Beyond the gently wavering drapes, they could see the State Police car that belonged to the Troopers who were watching the Beaumont house.

“What about
them?
Are all
their
options still open? I wish to Christ you were staying here, Alan—I'd take you over an
army
of State Troopers, because you've at least got one eye half-open. Theirs are stuck shut. ”

“Thad—”

“Never mind,” Thad said. “It's true. You know it . . .
and he knows it, too.
He'll wait. And when everybody decides it's over and the Beaumonts are safe, when all the police fold their tents and move on, George Stark will come here. ”

He paused, his face a dark and complicated study. Alan saw regret, determination, and fear at work in that face.

“I'm going to tell you something now—I'm going to tell both of you. I know exactly what he wants. He wants me to write another novel under the Stark byline—probably another novel about Alexis Machine. I don't know if I could do that, but if I thought it would do any good, I'd try. I'd trash
The Golden Dog
and start tonight. ”

“Thad, no!” Liz cried.

“Don't worry,” he said. “It would kill me. Don't ask me how I know that; I just do. But if my death was the end of it, I still might try. But I don't think it would be. Because I don't really think he is a man at all. ”

Alan was silent.

“So!” Thad said, speaking with the air of a man bringing an important piece of business to a close. “That's where matters stand. I can‘t, I won't, I mustn't. That means he'll come. And when he comes, God knows what will happen. ”

“Thad,” Alan said uncomfortably, “you need a little perspective on this, that's all. And when you get it, most of it will just . . . blow away. Like a milkweed puff. Like a bad dream in the morning. ”

“It isn't perspective we need,” Liz said. They looked at her and saw she was crying silently. Not a lot, but the tears were there. “What we need is for someone to turn him
off. ”

Alan returned to Castle Rock early the next morning, arriving home shortly before two o'clock. He crept into the house as quietly as possible, noticing that Annie had once again neglected to activate the burglar alarm. He didn't like to hassle her about it—her migraines had become more frequent lately—but he supposed he would have to, sooner or later.

He started upstairs, shoes held in one hand, moving with a smoothness that made him seem almost to float. His body possessed a deep grace, the exact opposite of Thad Beaumont's clumsiness, which Alan rarely showed; his flesh seemed to know some arcane secret of motion which his mind found somehow embarrassing. Now, in this silence, there was no need to hide it, and he moved with a shadowy ease that was almost macabre.