Tornado Alley or something else.” Bobby called directory assistance in
Reno and obtained a listed number for Dr. Randolph Josephson. With a
felt-tip pen, he jotted it on a notepad.
Though I knew my imagination was to blame, the ten digits seemed to have
an evil aura, as if this was the phone number at which soul-selling
politicians could reach Satan twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week, holidays included, collect calls accepted.
“You’re the only one of us who’s heard his voice, ” Bobby said.
He rolled his chair aside, so I could reach the telephone at the
workstation. “I’ve got caller-ID block and trace-call block, so if you
make him curious, he can’t find us.” When I picked up the handset, Orson
put his forepaws on the workstation and gently clamped his jaws around
my wrist, as if to suggest that I should put the phone down without
making the call.
“Got to do it, bro.” He whined.
“Duty, ” I told him.
He understood duty, and so he released me.
Although the fine hairs on the back of my neck were dueling with one
another, I keyed in the number. As I listened to it ring, I told myself
that Randolph was dead, buried alive in the hole where that copper-lined
room had been.
He answered on the third ring. I recognized his voice at once, from the
single word hello.
“Dr. Randolph Josephson? ” I asked.
“Yes? ” My mouth was so dry that my tongue stuck to my palate almost as
securely as Velcro to Velcro.
“Hello? Are you there? ” he asked.
“Is this the Randolph Josephson formerly known as John Joseph Randolph?
” He did not answer. I could hear him breathing.
I said, “Did you think your juvenile record was expunged? Did you really
think you could kill your parents and have the facts erased forever? ” I
hung up, dropping the handset so fast that it rattled in the cradle.
“Now what? ” Sasha asked.
Getting up from the workstation chair, Bobby said, “Maybe in this
version of his life, the kook didn’t get funding for his project as
quickly as he found it at Wyvern, or maybe not enough funding. He might
not yet have started up another model of the Mystery Train.”
“But if that’s true, ” Sasha said, “how do we stop him? Drive over to
Reno and put a bullet in his brain? ”
“Not if we can avoid it, ” I said. “I tore some clippings off the wall
of his murder gallery, in that tunnel under the egg room. They were
still in my pockets when I got home. They hadn’t just vanished like ..
.
Bobby’s corpse. Which must mean those are killings Randolph’s still
committed. His annual thrill. Maybe tomorrow I should make anonymous
calls to the police, accusing him of the murders. If they look into it,
they might find his scrapbook or other mementos.”
“Even if they nail him, ” Sasha said, “his research could go on without
him. The new version of the Mystery Train might be built, and the door
between realities might be opened.” > I looked at Mungojerrie.
Mungojerrie looked at Orson. Orson looked at Sasha. Sasha looked at
Bobby. Bobby looked at me and said, “Then we’re doomed.”
“I’ll tip the cops tomorrow, ” I said. “It’s the best we can do.
And if the cops can’t convict him …” Sasha said, “Then Doogie and I
will drive over to Reno one day and waste the creep.”
“You have a way about you, woman, ” Bobby said.
Time to party.
Sasha drove the Explorer across the dunes, through shore grass silvered
with moonlight, and down a long embankment, parking on the beach of the
southern horn, just above the tide line. Driving this far onto the
strand isn’t legal, but we had been to Hell and back, so we figured we
could survive virtually any punishment meted out for this violation.
We spread blankets on the sand, near the Explorer, and fired up a single
Coleman lantern.
A large ship was stationed just beyond the mouth of the bay, north and
west of us. Although the night shrouded it, and though the porthole 5