When the ringing began again, ten minutes later, he finally picked it up and said hello.
The killer was furious, straining his damaged throat to the limit. “If you ever do that to me again, then I’ll make sure it isn’t a quick, clean kill. I’ll see to that. You understand me?”
Chase was silent.
“Mr. Chase?” A beat. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Wish I knew,” Chase said.
The stranger decided to let his anger go, and he fell into his previous tone of forced irony: “That ‘wounded in action’ bit excites me, Mr. Chase. That part of your biography. Because you don’t appear disabled enough to deserve a pension, and you more than held your own in our fight. That gives me ideas, makes me think your most serious wounds aren’t physical at all.”
“Whose are?”
“I think you had psychological problems that put you in that army hospital and got you a discharge.”
Chase said nothing.
“And you tell me that I need counseling. I’ll have to take more time to check in to this. Very interesting. Well, rest easy tonight, Mr. Chase. You’re not scheduled to die yet.”
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
“I have to have a name for you. I can’t go on thinking of you in totally impersonal terms like ‘the man’ and ‘the stranger’ and ‘the killer.’ Do you see how that is?”
“Yes,” the man admitted.
“A name?”
He considered. Then he said, “You can call me Judge.”
“Judge?”
“Yes, as in ‘judge, jury, and executioner.'” He laughed until he coughed, and then he hung up as if he were just an anonymous prankster who had phoned to ask if Chase had Prince Albert in a can.
Chase went to the refrigerator and got an apple. He peeled it and cut it into eight sections, chewing each thoroughly. It wasn’t much of a dinner. But there were a lot of energy-giving calories in a glass of whiskey, so he poured a few ounces over ice, for dessert.
He washed his hands, which had become sticky with apple juice.
He would have washed them even if they hadn’t been sticky. He washed his hands frequently. Ever since Nam. Sometimes he washed them so often in a single day that they became red and chapped.
With another drink, he went to the bed and watched a movie on TV. He tried not to think about anything except the satisfying daily routines to which he was accustomed: breakfast at Woolworth’s, paperback novels, old movies on television, the forty thousand of go-to-hell money in his savings account, his pension check, and the good folks in Tennessee who made Jack Daniel’s. Those were the things that counted, that made his small world satisfying and safe.
Again, he refrained from calling the police.
4
THE NIGHTMARES WERE SO BAD THAT CHASE SLEPT FITFULLY, WAKING repeatedly at the penultimate moment of horror, as he was surrounded by the tight circle of dead men, as their silent accusations began, as they closed in on him with their hands outstretched.
He rose early, abandoning any hope of rest. He bathed, shaved, and washed his hands with special attention to the dirt under his fingernails.
He sat at the table and peeled an apple for breakfast. He did not want to face the regular customers at Woolworth’s lunch counter now that he was more than just another face to them, yet he couldn’t think of any place where he might go unrecognized.
It was nine-thirty-five, much too early to begin drinking. He observed few rules, but never drinking before lunch was one of them. He seldom broke that one. Afternoons and evenings were for drinking. Mornings were for remorse, regret, and silent repentance.
But what could he do with the long hours until noon? Filling time without drinking was increasingly difficult.
He turned on the television but couldn’t find any old movies. Turned it off.
At last, with nothing to do, he began to recall the details of the nightmare that had awakened him, and that was no good. That was dangerous.
He picked up the phone and placed another call.
It rang three times before a pert young woman answered. She said, “Dr. Fauvel’s office, Miss Pringle speaking, can I help you?”