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Hatch agreed with her But he had to try

He was spared the hu to Honell’s reaction, however, because no one answered the phone out there in the far canyons of the desert night He let it ring twenty ties snapped through hiselectrical wires: a disarranged bed quilt; a bleeding, rope-encircled wrist; a pair of frightened, bloodshot, myopic eyes … and in the eyes, the twin reflections of a dark face loolasses

Hatch slammed down the phone and backed away from it as if the receiver had turned into a rattlesnake in his hand "It’s happening now"

The ringing phone fell silent

Vassago stared at it, but the ringing did not resume He returned his attention to the le to the brass posts of the bed "So Lindsey Harrison is the uy croaked

"Nohat I ently need, sir, is an address"

The public telephone was outside of a convenience store in a shopping center just two miles from the Harrison house It was protected frolas hood and surrounded by a curved sound shield Hatch would have preferred the greater privacy of a real booth, but those were hard to find these days, a luxury of less cost-conscious tireat a distance for anyone in the glass-fronted convenience store to notice--and perhaps recall--his license nuh a cool, blustery wind to the telephone The center’s Indian laurels were infested with thrips, and drifts of dead, tightly curled leaves blew along the pave sound In the urine-yello of the parking-lot lights, they almost looked like hordes of insects, queerlytoward their subterranean hive

The convenience store was not busy, and everything else in the shopping center was closed He hunched his shoulders and head into the pay phone sound shield, convinced he wouldn’t be overheard

He did not want to call the police from home, because he knew they had equipment that printed out every caller’s number at their end If they found Honell dead, Hatch didn’t want to become their prime suspect And if his concern for Honell’s safety proved to be unfounded, he didn’t want to be on record with the police as some kind of nutcase or hysteric

Even as he punched in the number with one bent knuckle and held the handset with a Kleenex to avoid leaving prints, he was uncertain what to say He knehat he could not say: Hi, I was dead eighty ht back to life, and now I have this crude but at times effective telepathic connection to a psychotic killer, and I think I should warn you he’s about to strike again He could not i hiuy ore a pyramid-shaped aluminum-foil hat to protect his brain from sinister radiation and who bothered the extraterrestrials next door

He had decided to call the Orange County Sheriffs Departency, because the crilasses fell in several jurisdictions

When the sheriffs operator answered, Hatch talked fast, talked over her when she began to interrupt, because he knew they could trace hih time "The man who killed the blonde and duuy who killed Willia to ive hiht now Honell lives in Silverado Canyon, I don’t know the address, but he’s probably in your jurisdiction, and he’s a deadup, turned away fro the Kleenex into his pants pocket He felt less relieved than he had expected to, and more of a fool than see into the wind All the laurel leaves, sucked dry by thrips, were noard hiainst the blacktop and crunched under his shoes

He knew that the trip had been a waste and that his effort to help Honell had been ineffective The sheriffs department would probably treat it like just another crank call

When he got home, he parked in the driveway, afraid that the clatter of the garage door would wake Regina His scalp prickled when he got out of the car He stood for athe house, around the shrubbery, under the trees Nothing

Lindsey was pouring a cup of coffee for hiratefully at the hot brew Suddenly he was colder than he had been while standing out in the night chill

"What do you think?" she asked worriedly "Did they take you seriously?"

"Pissing in the wind," he said

Vassago was still driving the pearl-gray Honda belonging to Renata Desseux, the woht and later added to his collection It was a fine car and handled well on the twisting roads as he drove down the canyon fro for e County

As he rounded a particularly sharp curve, a patrol car fro up the canyon Its siren was not blaring, but its eht on the shale banks and on the gnarled branches of the overhanging trees

He divided his attention between the winding road ahead and the dwindling taillights of the patrol car in his rearview mirror, until it rounded another bend upslope and vanished He was sure the cop was speeding to Honell’s The unanswered, interation of the author, was the trigger that had set the sheriffs departo did not drive faster At the end of Silverado Canyon, he turned south on Santiago Canyon Road and ood citizen was expected to do

8

In bed in the dark, Hatch felt his world cru to be left with dust

Happiness with Lindsey and Regina ithin his grasp Or was that an illusion? Were they infinitely beyond his reach?

He wished for an insight that would give him a new perspective on these apparently supernatural events Until he could understand the nature of the evil that had entered his life, he could not fight it

Dr Nyebern’s voice spoke softly in his y quite apart froht he could ses of Arts Aazine in the desk in the den downstairs, in the draith a lock He had added the s he carried

He had never locked anything in the desk before He was not sure why he had done so this ti evidence, he’d told hiazine proved nothing to anyone about anything

No That was not precisely true The existence of the azine proved, to hi and hallucinating everything that was happening to him What he had locked away, for his own peace of mind, was indeed evidence Evidence of his sanity

Beside him, Lindsey was also awake, either uninterested in sleep or unable to find a way into it She said, "What if this killer …"

Hatch waited He didn’t need to ask her to finish the thought, for he knehat she was going to say After a moment she said just what he expected:

"What if this killer is aware of you as much as you’re aware of hiina?"

"To precautions"

"What precautions?"

"Guns, for one thing"

"Maybe this isn’t so we can handle ourselves"

"We don’t have any choice"

"Maybe we need police protection"