The medical examiner would not perform the autopsy himself, for he had to catch a 5:30 flight to San Francisco in order to keep a speaking engagement. The chore was assigned to a pathologist on his staff.
The dead man waited in a cold room with other dead men, on a cold cart, motionless beneath a white shroud.
***
Hilary Thomas was exhausted. Every bone ached dully; every joint seemed enflamed. Every muscle felt as if it had been put through a blender at high speed and then reconstituted. Emotional strain could have precisely the same physiological effect as strenuous physical labor.
She was also jumpy, much too tense to be able to refresh with a nap. Each time the big house made a normal settling noise, she wondered if the sound was actually the squeak of a floorboard under the weight of an intruder. When the softly sighing wind brushed a palm frond or a pine branch against a window, she imagined someone was stealthily cutting the glass or prying at a window lock. But when there was a long period of perfect quiet, she sensed something sinister in the silence. Her nerves were worn thinner than the knees of a compulsive penitent’s trousers.
The best cure she had ever found for nervous tension was a good book. She looked through the shelves in the study and chose James Clavell’s most recent novel, a massive story set in the Orient. She poured a glass of Dry Sack on the rocks, settled down in the deep brown armchair, and began to read.
Twenty minutes later, when she was just beginning to lose herself thoroughly in Clavell’s story, the telephone rang. She got up and answered it. “Hello.”
There was no response.
“Hello?”
The caller listened for a few seconds, then hung up.
Hilary put down the receiver and stared at it thoughtfully for a moment.
Wrong number?
Must have been.
But why didn’t he say so?
Some people just don’t know any better, she told herself. They’re rude.
But what if it wasn’t a wrong number. What if it was … something else.
Stop looking for goblins in every shadow! she told herself angrily. Frye’s dead. It was a bad thing, but it’s over and done with. You deserve a rest, a couple of days to collect your nerves and wits. But then you’ve got to stop looking over your shoulder and get on with your life. Otherwise, you’ll end up in a padded room.
She curled up in the armchair again, but she caught a chill that brought goosebumps to her arms. She went to the closet and got a blue and green knitted afghan, returned to the chair, and draped the blanket over her legs.
She sipped the Dry Sack.
She started reading Clavell again.
In a while, she forgot about the telephone call.
***
After signing out for the day, Tony went home and washed his face, changed from his suit into jeans and a checkered blue shirt. He put on a thin tan jacket and walked two blocks to The Bolt Hole.
Frank was already there, sitting in a back booth, still in his suit and tie, sipping Scotch.
The Bolt Hole–or simply The Hole, as regular customers referred to it–was that rare and vanishing thing: an ordinary neighborhood bar. During the past two decades, in response to a continuously fracturing and subdividing culture, the American tavern industry, at least that part of it in cities and suburbs, had indulged in a frenzy of specialization. But The Hole had successfully bucked the trend. It wasn’t a gay bar. It wasn’t a singles’ bar or a swingers’ bar. It wasn’t a bar patronized primarily by bikers or truckers or show business types or off-duty policemen or account executives; its clientele was a mixture, representative of the community. It wasn’t a topless go-go bar. It wasn’t a rock and roll bar or a country and western bar. And, thank God, it wasn’t a sports bar with one of those six-foot television screens and Howard Cosell’s voice in quadraphonic sound. The Hole had nothing more to offer than pleasantly low lighting, cleanliness, courtesy, comfortable stools and booths, a jukebox that wasn’t turned too loud, hot dogs and hamburgers served from the minuscule kitchen, and good drinks at reasonable prices.