find the truck driver’s blood on them. “My God, I sent him after
Cooper.”
He was so appalled, so psychologically oppressed by a sense of
responsibility for what had happened, that he wanted desperately to wash
his hands, scrub them until they were raw. When he tried to get up, his
legs were too weak to support him, and he had to sit right down again.
Lindsey was shocked and horrified, but she did not react to the news
story as strongly as Hatch did.
Then he told her about the reflection of the black-dressed young man in
sunglasses, which he had seen in the mirrored door in place of his own
image, last night in the den when he had been ranting about Cooper. He
told her, as well, how he lay in bed after she was asleep, brooding
about Cooper, and how his anger suddenly exploded into artery-popping
rage.
He spoke of the sense he’d had of being invaded and overwhelmed, ending
in the blackout. And for a kicker, he recounted how his anger had
escalated unreasonably as he had read the piece in Arts American earlier
this evening, and he took the magazine out of his nightstand to show her
the inexplicably scorched pages.
By the time Hatch finished, Lindsey’s anxiety matched his, but dismay at
his secretiveness seemed greater than anything else she was feeling.
“Why’d you hide all of this from me?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” he said, knowing how feeble it sounded.
“We’ve never hidden anything from each other before. We’ve always
shared everything. Everything.”
“I’m sorry, Lindsey. I….. . it’s just that… these last couple
months … the nightmares of rotting bodies, violence, fire,… and
the last few days, all this wierdness….”
“From now on,” she said, “there’ll be no secrets.”
“I only wanted to spare yon-”
“No secrets,” she insisted.
“Okay. No secrets.”
“And you’re not responsible for what happened to Cooper. Even if there
is some kind of link between you and this killer, and even if that’s why
Cooper became a target, it’s not your fault. You didn’t know that being
angry at Cooper was equivalent to a death sentence. You couldn’t have
done anything to prevent it.”
Hatch looked at the heat-seared magazine in her hands, and a shudder of
dread passed through him. “But it’ll be my fault if I don’t try to save
Honell.”
Frowning, she said, “What do you mean?”
“If my anger somehow focused this guy on Cooper, why wouldn’t it also
focus him on Honell?”
Honell woke to a world of pain. The difference was, this time he was on
the receiving end of it-and it was physical rather than emotional pain.
His crotch ached from the kick he’d taken. A blow to his throat had
left his esophagus feeling like broken glass. His headache was
excruciating.
His wrists and ankles burned, and at first he could not understand why;
then he realized he was tied to the four posts of something, probably
his bed, and the ropes were chafing his skin.
He could not see much, partly because his vision was blurred by tears
but also because his contact lenses had been knocked out in the attack.
He knew he had been assaulted, but for a moment he could not recall the
identity of his assailant.
Then the young man’s face loomed over him, blurred at first like the
surface of the moon through an unadjusted telescope. The boy bent
closer, closer, and his face came into focus, handsome and pale, framed
by thick black hair. He was not smiling in the tradition of movie
psychotics, as Honell expected he would be. He was not scowling,
either, or even frowning. He was expressionless-except, perhaps, for a
subtle hint of that solemn professional curiosity with which an
entomologist might study some new mutant variation of a familiar species
of insect.
“I’m sorry for this discourteous treatment, sir, after you were kind
enough to welcome me into your home. But I’m rather in a hurry and
couldn’t take the time to discover what I need to know through ordinary
conversation.”
“Whatever you want,” Honell said placatingly. He was shocked to hear
how drastically his mellifluous voice, always a reliable tool for