Startled, Jenny turned toward the strident sound.
The phone was on the same table as the radio.
It rang again.
She snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”
The caller didn't respond.
“Hello?”
Icy silence.
Jenny's hand tightened on the receiver.
Someone was listening intently, remaining utterly silent, waiting for her to speak. She was determined not to give him that satisfaction. She just pressed the receiver to her ear and strained to hear something, anything, if even nothing more than the faint sealike ebb and flow of his breathing. He didn't make the slightest sound, but still she could feel, at the other end of the line, the presence that she had felt when she'd picked up the phone in the Santinis' house and in the sheriff's substation.
Standing in the barricaded room, in that silent house where Death had crept in with impossible stealth, Jenny Paige felt an odd transformation form her. She was well-educated, a woman of reason and logic, not even mildly superstitious. Thus far, she had attempted to solve the mystery of Snowfield by applying the tools of logic and reason. But for the first time in her life, they had utterly failed her. Now deep in her mind, something… shifted, as if an enormously heavy iron cover were being slid off a dark pit in her subconscious. In that pit, within ancient chambers of the mind, there lay a host of primitive sensations and perceptions, a superstitious awe that was new to her. Virtually on the level of racial memory stored in the genes, she sensed what was happening in Snowfield. The knowledge was within her; however, it was so alien, so fundamentally illogical, that she resisted it, fighting hard to suppress the superstitious terror that boiled up within her.
Clutching the telephone receiver, she listened to the silent presence on the line, and she argued with herself
— It isn't a man; it's a thing.
— Nonsense.
— It's not human, but it's aware.
— You're hysterical.
— Unspeakably malevolent; perfectly, purely evil.
— Stop it, stop it, stop it!
She wanted to slam down the phone. She couldn't do it. The thing on the other end of the line had her mesmerized.
Lisa stepped close. “What's wrong? What's happening?”
Shaking, drenched with sweat, feeling tainted merely by listening to the despicable presence, Jenny was about to tear the receiver away from her ear when she heard a hiss, a click and then a dial tone.
For a moment, stunned, she couldn't react.
Then, with a whimper, she jabbed at the 0 button on the phone.
There was a ringing — on the line. It was a wonderful, sweet, reassuring sound.
“Operator.”
“Operator, this is an emergency,” Jenny said, “I've got to reach the county sheriff's office in Santa Mira.”
Chapter 9
A Call for Help
“Laundry?” Kale asked, “What laundry?”
Bryce could see that Kale was jolted by the question and was only pretending not to understand.
“Sheriff, where is this supposed to lead'?” Bob Robine asked.
Bryce's hooded eyes remained hooded, and he kept his voice calm, slow. “Gee, Bob, I'm just trying to get to the bottom of things, so we can all get out of here. I swear, I don't like working on Sundays, and here this one is almost shot to hell already. I have these questions, and Mr. Kale doesn't have to answer a one of them, but I will ask, so that I can go home and put my feet up and have a beer.”
Robine sighed. He looked at Kale. “Don't answer unless I say it's okay.” Worried now, Kale nodded.
Frowning at Bryce, Robine said, “Go ahead.”
Bryce said, “When we arrived at Mr. Kale's house last Thursday, after he phoned in to report the deaths, I noticed that one cuff of his slacks and the thick bottom edge of his sweater both looked slightly damp, so as you'd hardly notice. I got the notion he'd laundered everything he was wearing and just hadn't left his clothes in the dryer quite long enough. So I had a look in the laundry room, and I found something in interesting. In the cupboard right there beside the washer, where Mrs. Kale kept all of her soaps and detergents and fabric softeners, there were two bloody fingerprints on the big box of Cheer. One was smeared, but the other was clear. The lab says it's Mr. Kale's print.”
“Whose blood was on the box?” Robine asked sharply.
“Both Mrs. Kale and Danny were type 0. So is Mr. Kale. That makes it a little more difficult for us to—”
“The blood on the box of detergent?” Robine interrupted.
“Type O.”
“Then it could have been my client's own blood! He could have gotten it on the box on a previous occasion, maybe after he cut himself gardening last week.”
Bryce shook his head. “As you know, Bob, this whole blood-typing business is getting highly sophisticated these days. Why, they can break down a sample into so many enzymes and protein signatures that a person's blood is almost as unique as his fingerprints. So they could tell us unequivocally that the blood on the box of Cheer — the blood on Mr. Kale's hand when he made those two prints — was little Danny Kale's blood.”
Fletcher Kale's gray eyes remained flat and unexpressive, but he turned quite pale. “I can explain,” he said.
“Hold it!” Robine said, “Explain it to me first — in private.” The attorney led his client to the farthest corner of the room.
Bryce slouched in his chair. He felt gray. Washed out. He'd been that way since Thursday, since seeing Danny Kale's pathetic, crumpled body.
He had expected to take considerable pleasure in watching Kale squirm. But there was no pleasure in it.
Robine and Kale returned. “Sheriff, I'm afraid my client did a stupid thing.”
Kale tried to look properly abashed.
“He did something that could be misinterpreted — just as you have misinterpreted it. Mr. Kale was frightened, confused, and grief-stricken. He wasn't thinking clearly. I'm sure any jury would sympathize with him., You see, when he found the body of his little boy he picked it up”
“He told us he never touched it.”
Kale met Bryce's gaze forthrightly and said, “When I first saw Danny lying on the floor… I couldn't really believe that he was… dead. I picked him up… thinking I should rush him to the hospital… Later, after I'd shot Joanna, I looked down and saw that I was covered with… with Danny's blood. I had shot my wife, but suddenly I realized it might look as if I'd killed my own son, too.”
“There was still the meat cleaver in your wife's hand,” Bryce said, “And Danny's blood was all over her, too. And you could've figured the coroner would find PCP in her bloodstream.”
“I realize that now,” Kale said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his eyes. “But at the time, I was afraid I'd be accused of something I'd never done.”
The word “psychopath” wasn't exactly right for Fletcher Kale, Bryce decided. He wasn't crazy. No r was he a sociopath, exactly. There wasn't a word that described him properly. However, a good cop would recognize the type and see the potential for criminal activity and, perhaps, the talent for violence, as well. There is a certain kind of man who has a lot of vitality and likes plenty of action, a man who has more than his share of shallow charm, whose clothes are more expensive than he can afford, who owns not a single book (as Kale did not), who seems to have no well-thought-out opinions about politics or art or economics or any issue of real substance, who is not religious except when misfortune befalls him or when he wishes to impress someone with his piety (as Kale, member of no church, now read the Bible in his cell for at least four hours every day), who has an athletic build but who seems to loathe any pursuit as healthy as physical exercise, who spends his leisure time in bars and cocktail lounges, who cheats on his wife as a matter of habit (as did Kale, by all reports), who is impulsive, who is unreliable and always late for appointments (as was Kale), whose goals are either vague or unrealistic ("Fletcher Kale? He's a dreamer."), who frequently overdraws his checking account and lies about money, who is quick to borrow and slow to pay back, who exaggerates, who knows he's going to be rich one day but who has no specific plan for acquiring that wealth, who never doubts or thinks about next year, who worries only about himself and only when it's too late. There was such a man, such a type, and Fletcher Kale was a prime example of the animal in question.