The Dark Half

  'Not only that, you win the glassware for six and the free trip to Kittery.'

  'That's the craziest thing I ever heard,' Liz said flatly.

  Thad laughed without much humor. 'The whole thing is crazy. They thought I might have changed my voice, like Rich Little . . . or Mel Blanc. The idea is that I made a tape in my George Stark voice, building in pauses where I could reply, in front of witnesses, in my own voice. Of course I'd have to buy a gadget that could hook a cassette tape-recorder into a pay telephone. There are such things, aren't there, Alan?'

  'You bet. Available at fine electronics supply houses everywhere, or just dial the 800 number that will appear on your screen, operators are standing by.'

   'Right. The only other thing I'd need would be an accomplice someone I trusted who would go to Penn Station, attach the tapeplayer to a phone in the bank which looked like it was doing the least business, and dial my house at the proper time. Then — ' He broke off. 'How was the call paid for? I forgot about that. It wasn't collect.'

  'Your telephone credit card number was used,' Alan said. 'You obviously gave it to your accomplice.'

    'Yeah, obviously. I only had to do two things once this shuck-and-jive got started. One was to make sure I answered the telephone myself. The other was to remember my lines and plug them into the correct pauses. I did very well, wouldn't you say, Alan?'

'Yeah. Fantastic.'

   'My accomplice hangs up the telephone when the script says he should. He unhooks the tape— player from the phone, tucks it under his arm — '

  'Hell, slips it into his pocket,' Alan said. 'The stuff they've got now is so good even the CIA buys at Radio Shack.'

    'Okay, he slips it into his pocket and just walks away. The result is a conversation where I am both seen and heard to be talking to a man five hundred miles away, a man who sounds different — who sounds, in fact, just the tiniest bit Southern-fried — but has the same voice-print as I do. It's the fingerprints all over again, only better.' He looked at Alan for confirmation.

  'On second thought,' Alan said, 'make that an all-expenses-paid trip to Portsmouth.'

  'Thank you.'

  'Don't mention it.'

    'That's not just crazy,' Liz said, 'it's utterly incredible. I think all those people should have their heads — '

  While her attention was diverted, the twins finally succeeded in knocking their own heads together and began to cry lustily. Liz picked up William. Thad rescued Wendy.

  When the crisis passed, Alan said, 'It's incredible, all right. You know it, I know it, and they know it, too. But Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes say at least one thing that still holds true in crime detection: when you eliminate all the likely explanations, whatever is left is your answer no matter how improbable it may be.'

  'I think the original was a little more elegant,' Thad said.

  Alan grinned. 'Screw you.'

  'You two may find this funny, but I don't,' Liz said. 'Thad would have to be crazy to do something like that. Of course, the police may think we're both crazy.'

    'They don't think any such thing,' Alan replied gravely, 'at least not at this point, and they won't, as long as you go on keeping your wilder tales to yourselves.'

  'What about you, Alan?' Thad asked. 'We've spilled all the wild tales to you — what do you think?'

   'Not that you're crazy. All of this would be a lot simpler if I did believe it. I don't know what's going on.'

  'What did you get from Dr Hume?' Liz wanted to know.

  'The name of the doctor who operated on Thad when he was a kid,' Alan said. 'It's Hugh Pritchard — does that ring a bell, Thad?'

   Thad frowned and thought it over. At last he said, 'I think it does . . . but I might only be kidding myself. It was a long time ago.'

   Liz was leaning forward, bright—eyed; William goggled at Alan from the safety of his mother's lap. 'What did Pritchard tell you?' she asked.

   'Nothing. I got his answering machine — which allows me to deduce that the man is still alive — and that's all. I left a message.'

Liz settled back in her chair, clearly disappointed.

'What about my tests?' Thad asked. 'Did Hume have anything back? Or wouldn't he tell you?'

    'He said that when he had the results, you'd be the first to know,' Alan said. He grinned. 'Dr Hume seemed rather offended at the idea of telling a county sheriff anything.'

  'That's George Hume,' Thad said, and smiled. 'Crusty is his middle name.'

  Alan shifted in his seat.

  'Would you like something to drink, Alan?' Liz asked. 'A beer or a Pepsi?'

    'No thanks. Let's go back to what the state police do and do not believe. They don't believe either of you is involved, but they reserve the right to believe you might be. They know they can't hang last night's and this morning's work on you, Thad. An accomplice, maybe — the same one, hypothetically, who would have worked the tape-recorder gag — but not you. You were here.'

'What about Darla Gates?' Thad asked quietly. 'The girl who worked in the comptroller's office?'

    'Dead. Mutilated pretty badly, as he suggested, but shot once through the head first. She didn't suffer.

  'That's a lie.'

  Alan blinked at him.

  'He didn't let her off so cheaply. Not after what he did to Clawson. After all, she was the original stoolie, wasn't she? Clawson dangled some money in front of her — it couldn't have been very much, judging from the state of Clawson's finances — and she obliged by letting the cat out of the bag. So don't tell me he shot her before he cut her and that she didn't suffer.'

  'All right,' Alan said. 'It wasn't like that. Do you want to know how it really was?'

  'No,' Liz said immediately.

   There was a moment of heavy silence in the room. Even the twins seemed to feet it; they looked at each other with what seemed to be great solemnity. At last Thad asked, 'Let me ask you again: what do you believe? What do you believe now?'

  'I don't have a theory. I know you didn't tape Stark's end of the conversation, because the enhancer didn't detect any tape-hiss, and when you jack up the audio, you can hear the Penn Station loudspeaker announcing that the Pilgrim to Boston is now ready for boarding on Track Number 3. The Pilgrim did board on Track 3 this afternoon. Boarding started at two thirty-six p.m., and that's right in line with your little chat. But I didn't even need that. If the conversation had been taped on Stark's end, either you or Liz would have asked me what the enhancing process showed as soon as I brought it up. Neither of you did.'

  'All this and you still don't believe it, do you?' Thad said. 'I mean, it's got you rocking and rolling — enough so you really are trying to chase down Dr Pritchard — but you really can't get all the way to the middle of what's happening, can you?' He sounded frustrated and harried even to himself.

  'The guy himself admitted he wasn't Stark.'