“That would be fine, yes. Thank you very much.”
She hung up, and looked around the room.
Perhaps those men at the meeting had been right, perhaps the police weren’t going to help – but surely, if she just gave the police a chance to see what had happened…
Surely they would see.
2.
Smith had slept from six until nine; he intended to be at work by ten, so he couldn’t really allow himself any more. Einar didn’t mind if he kept flexible hours, as long as they weren’t too far out of step, and as long as the programs he wrote did what they were supposed to and came in before deadline. Even so, Smith didn’t think anything later than ten would be a good idea.
An odd thing that was bothering Smith slightly was that for the first time since leaving his apartment he had gone an entire night without even the faintest suspicion of a glimpse of a nightmare person. Every other night, even if he hadn’t gotten a clear look at one, he had felt them out there, watching him – and he had usually gotten at least one clear look. The exact number and personnel had varied somewhat; he had seen Nora Hagarty and Walt Harris and Bill Goodwin once each, and of course that one that didn’t have a disguise yet, the one that always wore a slouch hat and had Smith’s own voice, had been there every time.
It had come looking for him every other night – but not last night.
Smith had sat up waiting for it, as he had the last few nights, but it had never come. He had spent the night watching TV, playing with his computer, thinking over the long, horrible day that had just ended, and the monster had never come.
Did Elias’s death have something to do with it, perhaps? It had been a different monster that had killed the boy, not the one that was after Smith, but perhaps there was some connection.
Smith couldn’t see what the connection would be, but perhaps there was one.
At nine-thirty in the morning, though, he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. He was supposed to be getting to work and thinking about the program he was finishing up.
He had managed to shave and shower and dress, but when he got in his car and pulled out of the lot he found himself heading toward Diamond Park without consciously intending it.
That was the wrong direction.
Making a U-turn on Clopper Road at rush hour – even the tail end of rush hour – was completely impossible; he turned onto Firstfield Road, then around the corner onto Bank Street and through the Quince Orchard Plaza shopping center from end to end, then back onto Clopper, heading the right way this time.
The sky was clouding up; it looked very much as if it was about to start raining. Everything looked so normal – the construction work, the cars, the grass and the sound barriers on either side of the highway, all just as they had been a week ago, before anything strange had begun to happen. He was in his own car, on his way to work, just like any other Monday.
Just like any other Monday – except that he had only had three hours sleep.
Just like any other Monday – except that he had seen a boy horribly killed by a monster the day before, right before his eyes.
The first drops of rain spattered the windshield, and as he reached for the wiper button he realized that his hands were shaking.
3.
The officer glanced at Mrs. McGowan, who was shaking off her umbrella, and then rang the bell. The psychiatrist stood back a pace or two, watching.
“Who is it?” called a cheerful voice from inside.
“It’s me, Annie,” Mrs. McGowan called, furling the umbrella.
The door opened, and a startled little face appeared. “Annie?” Then she noticed the others. “Who’s this?” she asked.
“This is Officer Nilson,” Annie said. “And that’s Dr. Dodge. Could we come in and talk to you?”
“Oh, is it about those terrorists that said they planted a bomb last week?” the false Kate asked anxiously. Then her face cleared. “Oh, no, it couldn’t be, Annie, because you didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Could we come in?” Annie repeated.
“Ma’am,” Officer Nilson said, “May we, please? We’d just like to talk to you. Nobody’s done anything wrong.”
Annie threw him a glance of outrage at this lie, since someone certainly had done something wrong in replacing Kate with this fraud, but then she covered her anger and smiled. “May we, Katie?”
“Certainly, if you like,” the imposter said, swinging the door wide and smiling in return, her head tipped to one side just as the real Kate’s always was when she smiled.
Annie stifled her revulsion. The real Kate would have seen how upset she was and wouldn’t have smiled like that.
She studied the creature closely as the four of them settled into Kate’s living room. Dr. Dodge sat on the couch; Annie and the monster took the flowered armchairs, and Officer Nilson, rather than taking the other end of the couch, brought a straight chair over from the dining area.
Annie approved of that action; it seemed more businesslike. She wasn’t quite sure why it seemed more businesslike, but all the same, she was glad that Officer Nilson had done it.
Nilson, on the other hand, knew exactly why he had settled on the hard chair. He was well aware that if either of these dotty old women were to go berserk he would need to stand up in a hurry and grab her before she could do any damage, and it was much easier to get up quickly from a solid wood seat than from the depths of an overstuffed sofa.
Old women might look harmless, but he knew better. Anybody could turn violent, and even the feeblest cripple could do some damage if not stopped. Every cop knew that.
And these two might both be in their sixties, but they both looked pretty healthy. He watched both women closely.
The big one’s story that the other was an imposter sounded crazy, but you could never be absolutely sure. It was far more likely that one of the pair had slipped a cam somewhere – or maybe both of them had – but the possibility that their hostess really wasn’t Kate McGowan had to be kept in mind, as well.
“Can I get you anything?” Kate – or whoever it was – asked. “I have some ginger ale in the fridge, or I can have the kettle hot in a few minutes if you’d like tea or instant coffee.”
“That’s all right, ma’am, we’re fine,” Nilson replied, watching the nervously-fluttering hands.
“Well then,” she asked, her gaze turning nervously to Dr. Dodge, and then back to Nilson, “What can I do for you?”
Nilson glanced at Dr. Dodge, who made a small waving gesture, urging him to proceed.
“Well, ma’am,” Nilson said, “Your sister-in-law was worried about you. There have been some peculiar incidents here recently, like that bomb scare…”
“Oh, yes, wasn’t that ridiculous?” Kate tittered. “All of us down there in our nightclothes, waiting for the building to blow up!”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nilson was watching Annie McGowan rather more closely than he was watching Kate. Kate seemed a little discomfited by the presence of unexpected guests, probably especially because they were police, and maybe even more so because one of them was black, which still made a difference to a lot of people, especially older ones – Dr. Dodge knew that, which was probably why he was letting Nilson do all the talking. Or maybe Dodge was just keeping up his role as impartial psychiatric observer, rather than thinking about his race.
Whatever the reasons, Kate appeared discomfited, but only discomfited, nothing more than that. Annie, on the other hand, looked as if she were smothering an outburst of some kind and were almost ready to explode.