Chase: Roman

sounded genuinely pleased to hear from him, but then perhaps anyone is pleased to talk to someone who saved her life. She said, ‘How are you?’
        ‘Fine,’ he said, nodding as if she were able to see him. Then he checked himself and said, ‘Well, really, not so fine at all.’
        ‘What is it?’ she asked, her voice concerned now. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
        ‘I'd like to talk to you, if possible,’ Chase said. ‘About what happened Monday night.’
        ‘Well - sure, all right,’ she said.
        ‘It won't upset you?’
        ‘No,’ she said. And from the note of flippancy in her voice, he knew that was the truth. She said, ‘Can you come over now?’
        ‘If it's convenient, I'd very much like to,’ he said.
        ‘Fine. It's ten o'clock now - in half an hour, at ten-thirty? Will that be all right?’
        ‘Just right,’ Chase said.
        ‘I'll be expecting you.’
        She put the phone down so gently that for several long seconds Chase did not realize she had hung up.
        His bruises were beginning to stiffen him, so that he felt bound by a length of flat, waxed cord. He stood up and stretched, found his car keys and quickly finished his drink.
        When it was time to go, he did not want to begin. Suddenly he realized how completely this one act, this assumption of responsibility, would destroy the simple routines by which he had survived in the months since his discharge from both the army and the hospital. There would be no more leisurely mornings in town, no more afternoons watching old movies on television, no more evenings reading and drinking until he could sleep - at least not for a long while, not until this entire mess was straightened out, from the apprehension of Judge through the trial and its aftermath. Yet, if he remained here, in his own room, if he took his chances, he might remain alive until Judge was caught in a few weeks or, at most, a few months.
        Then again, Judge might not miss the next time.
        He cursed everyone who had forced him out of his comfortable niche - Zacharia, the local press, the Merchants’ Association, Judge, Dr Cauvel, Wallace, Tuppinger - but he knew that he had no choice but to get on with it. His only consolation was the certainty that their victory was only a temporary one. When this was all finished with, he would come back to his room and close the door and reorganize his routines, again settle into the quiet and unchallenging life he had established for himself during the past year.
        Mrs Fiedling did not bother him on his way out of the house, and he chose to see this as a good omen.
        
        The Allenbys, mother and daughter, lived in a two-storey neo-Colonial brick home on a small lot in the middle-income-bracket section of Ashside. Two Dutch elm trees were featured at the head of the short flagstone walk and two tiny pine trees at the end of it. Two steps rose to a white door with a brass knocker. The knocker, when lifted and let fall, not only produced a hollow tok, but activated door chimes as well, a touch which Chase found unpleasant in the same way he found gilt-edged mirrors, souvenir ashtrays and brightly coloured afghans distasteful.
        Louise answered the door herself. She was wearing white shorts and a thin white halter top, and she looked as if she had spent the last half-hour putting on her make-up and brushing her long hair. ‘Come in,’ she said, stepping aside to give him room.
        The living room was what he had expected: expensive Colonial furniture, a colour television set in an enormous and wasteful console cabinet, knotted rugs over polished pine floors - and just the hint of carelessness in the way the house was kept: magazines spilling out of their rack, dried water rings on the coffee table and a trace of dust on the lower rungs of the spindly chairs.
        ‘Sit down,’ Louise said. ‘The sofa's comfortable, and so's that big chair with the flowered print. The rest of them are like cafeteria chairs at school. Mother's crazy about antiques and Colonial styles. I hate all that kind of stuff.’
        He smiled and chose the sofa. ‘I'm sorry to bother you like this, so late at night -’
        ‘Don't worry about that,’ she said, interrupting in a breezy and very self-confident manner. Indeed, he hardly recognized her as the girl he had taken, whimpering, from Michael Karnes's car on Monday night. ‘Since I'm finished