Red Dragon - Страница 30

The legend beside the bag said: "With These He Offended Me."

But Dolarhyde had left his desk.

He was sitting on the basement stairs in the cool must of earth and mildew. The beam from his electric lantern moved over draped furniture, the dusty backs of the great mirrors that once hung in the house and now leaned against the walls, the trunk containing his case of dynamite.

The beam stopped on a tall draped shape, one of several in the far corner of the cellar. Cobwebs touched his face as he went to it. Dust made him sneeze when he pulled off the cloth cover.

He blinked back the tears and shone his light on the old oak wheelchair he had uncovered. It was high-backed, heavy, and strong, one of three in the basement. The county had provided them to Grandmother in the 1940's when she ran her nursing home here.

The wheels squeaked as he rolled the chair across the floor. Despite its weight, he carried it easily up the stairs. In the kitchen he oiled the wheels. The small front wheels still squeaked, but the back ones had good bearings and spun freely at a flip of his finger.

The searing anger in him was eased by the wheels' soothing hum. As he spun them, Dolarhyde hummed too.

CHAPTER 20

When Freddy Lounds left the Tattler office at noon on Tuesday he was tired and high. He had put together the Tattler story on the plane to Chicago and laid it out in the composing room in thirty minutes flat.

The rest of the time he had worked steadily on his paperback, brushing off all callers. He was a good organizer and now he had fifty thousand words of solid background.

When the Tooth Fairy was caught, he'd do a whammo lead and an account of the capture. The background material would fit in neatly. He had arranged to have three of the Tattler's better reporters ready to go on short notice. Within hours of the capture they could be digging for details wherever the Tooth Fairy lived.

His agent talked very big numbers. Discussing the project with the agent ahead of time was, strictly speaking, a violation of his agreement with Crawford. All contracts and memos would be postdated after the capture to cover that up.

Crawford held a big stick – he had Lounds's threat on tape. Interstate transmission of a threatening message was an indictable offense outside any protection Lounds enjoyed under the First Amendment. Lounds also knew that Crawford, with one phone call, could give him a permanent problem with the Internal Revenue Service.

There were polyps of honesty in Lounds; he had few illusions about the nature of his work. But he had developed a near-religious fervor about this project.

He was possessed with a vision of a better life on the other side of the money. Buried under all the dirt he had ever done, his old hopes still faced east. Now they stirred and strained to rise.

Satisfied that his cameras and recording equipment were ready, he drove home to sleep for three hours before the flight to Washington, where he would meet Crawford near the trap.

A damned nuisance in the underground garage. The black van, parked in the space next to his, was over the line. It crowded into the space clearly marked "Mr. Frederick Lounds."

Lounds opened his door hard, banging the side of the van and leaving a dent and a mark. That would teach the inconsiderate bastard.

Lounds was locking his car when the van door opened behind him. He was turning, had half-turned when the flat sap thocked over his ear. He got his hands up, but his knees were going and there was tremendous pressure around his neck and the air was shut off. When his heaving chest could fill again it sucked chloroform.

# # #

Dolarhyde parked the van behind his house, climbed out and stretched. He had fought a crosswind all the way from Chicago and his arms were tired. He studied the night sky. The Perseid meteor shower was due soon, and he must not miss it.

Revelation: And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them down to the earth…

His doing in another time. He must see it and remember.

Dolarhyde unlocked the back door and made his routine search of the house. When he came outside again he wore a stocking mask.

He opened the van and attached a ramp. Then he rolled out Freddy Lounds. Lounds wore nothing but his shorts and a gag and blindfold. Though he was only semiconscious, he did not slump. He sat up very straight, his head against the high back of the old oak wheelchair. From the back of his head to the soles of his feet he was bonded to the chair with epoxy glue.

Dolarhyde rolled him into the house and parked him in a corner of the parlor with his back to the room, as though he had misbehaved.

“Are you too cool? Would you like a blanket?”

Dolarhyde peeled off the sanitary napkins covering Lounds’s eyes and mouth. Lounds didn’t answer. The odor of chloroform hung on him.

“I’ll get you a blanket.” Dolarhyde took an afghan from the sofa and tucked it around Lounds up to the chin, then pressed an ammonia bottle under his nose.

Lounds’s eyes opened wide on a blurred joining of walls. He coughed and started talking.

“Accident? Am I hurt bad?”

The voice behind him: “No, Mr. Lounds. You’ll be just fine.”

“My back hurts. My skin. Did I get burned? I hope to God I’m not burned.”

“Burned? Burned. No. You just rest here. I’ll be with you in a little while.”

“Let me lie down. Listen, I want you to call my office. My God, I’m in a Striker frame. My back’s broken – tell me the truth!”

Footsteps going away.

“What am I doing here?” The question shrill at the end.

The answer came from far behind him. “Atoning, Mr. Lounds.”

Lounds heard footsteps mounting stairs. He heard a shower running. His head was clearer now. He remembered leaving the office and driving, but he couldn’t remember after that. The side of his head throbbed and the smell of chloroform made him gag. Held rigidly erect, he was afraid he would vomit and drown. He opened his mouth wide and breathed deep. He could hear his heart.

Lounds hoped he was asleep. He tried to raise his arm from the armrest, increasing the pull deliberately until the pain in his palm and arm was enough to wake him from any dream. He was not asleep. His mind gathered speed.

By straining he could turn his eyes enough to see his arm for seconds at a time. He saw how he was fastened. This was no device to protect broken backs. This was no hospital. Someone had him.

Lounds thought he heard footsteps on the floor above, but they might have been his heartbeats.

He tried to think. Strained to think. Keep cool and think, he whispered. Cool and think.

The stairs creaked as Dolarhyde came down.

Lounds felt the weight of him in every step. A presence behind him now.

Lounds spoke several words before he could adjust the volume of his voice.

“I haven’t seen your face. I couldn’t identify you. I don’t know what you look like. The Tattler, I work for The National Tattler, would pay a reward… a big reward for me. Half a million, a million maybe. A million dollars.”

Silence behind him. Then a squeak of couch springs. He was sitting down, then.

“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”

Put the pain and fear away and think. Now. For all time. To have some time. To have years. He hasn’t decided to kill me. He hasn’t let me see his face.

“What do you think, Mr. Lounds?”

“I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

“Do you know Who I Am, Mr. Lounds?”

“No. I don’t want to know, believe me.”

“According to you, I’m a vicious, perverted sexual failure. An animal, you said. Probably turned loose from an asylum by a do-good judge.” Ordinarily, Dolarhyde would have avoided the sibilant /s/ in “sexual.” In the presence of this audience, very far from laughter, he was freed. “You know now, don’t you?”

Don’t lie. Think fast. “Yes.”

“Why do you write lies, Mr. Lounds? Why do you say I’m crazy? Answer now.”

“When a person… when a person does things that most pcople can’t understand, they call him…”

“Crazy.”

“They called, like… the Wright brothers. All through history-“

“History. Do you understand what I’m doing, Mr. Lounds?”

Understand. There it was. A chance. Swing hard. “No, but I think I’ve got an opportunity to understand, and then all my readers could understand too.”

“Do you feel privileged?”

“It’s a privilege. But I have to tell you, man to man, that I’m scared. It’s hard to concentrate when you’re scared. If you have a great idea, you wouldn’t have to scare me for me to really be impressed.”

“Man to man. Man to man. You use that expression to imply frankness, Mr. Lounds, I appreciate that. But you see, I am not a man. I began as one but by the Grace of God and my own Will, I have become Other and More than a man. You say you’re frightened. Do you believe that God is in attendance here, Mr. Lounds?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you praying to Him now?”

“Sometimes I pray. I have to tell you, I just pray mostly when I’m scared.”

“And does God help you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think about it after. I ought to.”

“You ought to. Um-hmmmm. There are so many things you ought to understand. In a little while I’ll help you understand. Will you excuse me now?”

“Certainly.”

Footsteps out of the room. The slide and rattle of a kitchen drawer. Lounds had covered many murders committed in kitchens where things are handy. Police reporting can change forever your view of kitchens. Water running now.