“You’re not well.” Chase realized the absurd inadequacy of that statement, but the killer – like all else in the modern world – had reduced him to clichés.
The killer either did not hear or pretended not to hear what Chase had said. “I just wanted to tell you, Mr. Chase, that it doesn’t end here. You are not a facilitator of justice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll deal with you, Chase, once I’ve researched your background and have weighed a proper judgment on you. Then, when you’ve been made to pay, I’ll deal with the whore, that girl.”
“Deal with?” Chase asked.
The euphemism reminded him of the similar evasions of vocabulary to which he had grown accustomed in Nam. He felt much older than he was, more tired than he had been a moment earlier.
“I’m going to kill you, Chase. I’m going to punish you for whatever sins are on your record, because you’ve interfered with the intended pattern. You are not a facilitator of justice.” He was silent. Then: “Do you understand?”
“As much as I understand anything.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“What more?” Chase wondered.
“I’ll be talking to you again.”
“What’s the point of this?”
“Facilitation,” the killer said – and disconnected.
Chase hung up and leaned back against the headboard of the bed. He felt something cold in his hand, looked down, and was surprised to see the glass of whiskey. He raised it to his lips and took a taste. It was slightly bitter.
He closed his eyes.
So easy not to care.
Or maybe not so easy. If it had been as easy as he wanted it to be, he could have put the whiskey aside and gone to sleep. Or, instead of waiting for the bird-dogger to come after him, he could have blown out his own brains.
Too easy to care. He opened his eyes.
He had to decide what to do about the call.
The police would be interested, of course, because it was a solid lead to the man who had killed Michael Karnes. They would probably want to monitor the telephone line in hope that the killer would call again – especially since he had said that Chase would be hearing from him. They might even station an officer in Chase’s room, and they might put a tail on him both for his own protection and to try to nab the murderer.
Yet he hesitated to call Detective Wallace.
The past few weeks, since the news about the Medal of Honor, Chase’s daily routine had been destroyed. He loathed the change.
He had been accustomed to deep solitude, disturbed only by his need to talk to store clerks and to Mrs. Fielding, his landlady. In the mornings he went downtown and had breakfast at Woolworth’s. He bought a paperback, occasionally a magazine – but never a newspaper – picked up what incidentals he required, stopped twice a week at the liquor store, spent the noon hour in the park watching the girls in their short skirts as they walked to and from their jobs, then went home and passed the rest of the day in his room. He read during the long afternoons, and he drank. By evening he could not clearly see the print on the pages of his book, and he turned on the small television to watch old movies that he had memorized virtually scene by scene. Around eleven o’clock, he finished the day’s bottle or portion thereof, after having eaten little or nothing for dinner – and then he slept as long as he could.
It was not much of a life, certainly not what he had once expected, but it was bearable. Because it was simple, it was also solid, safe, empty of doubt and uncertainty, lacking in choices and decisions that might bring about another breakdown.
Then, after the AP and UPI had carried the story of the Vietnam hero who had declined to attend a White House ceremony for the awarding of the Congressional Medal of Honor (though he had not declined the medal itself, since he felt that would bring more publicity than he could handle), there had been no hope of simplicity.