Chase: Roman

understandable.
        He unlocked the door and took the chain out of the slot, stepped outside onto the concrete promenade. He waited for her to close the door and to put both locks back in place, then left the motel in his Mustang.
        Really alone for the first time in days, he found his mind wandering down avenues he had thus far managed to avoid. The argument with Glenda, however, had forced him to consider exactly what she meant to him and what losing her would do to his life. Before, he had emotionally accepted that such a loss would be greater than he could handle, but until this moment he had not intellectually faced the reasons why her death would destroy him. There was, naturally, the simple truth that he loved her as he never had loved another woman in his life. But men had lost love and had gone on to find happiness. It was not just that. He had to confront and accept the second reason her death must be prevented at all costs: if she died because of Judge, then she had indirectly died because of Chase, and she was his responsibility. If he hadn't come into her life, Judge wouldn't have known her. He had placed her in peril, and if he could not get her out of it, there was one more count of guilt to add to the list he already carried with him.
        And that would mean insanity.
        
        At a quarter past eight in the evening, Chase parked two blocks from Richard Linski's house and made the rest of the journey on foot, staying to the far side of the street. At the corner, half concealed by the public telephone booth, he looked the place over, setting it firmly in mind by daylight so that when he returned after dark, he would move more familiarly about it. It was a tidy little bungalow, second from the corner, and it was kept in good repair and appeared to have been painted recently: white with emerald-green trim and dark-green slate roof. It was set on one and a half lots, which were also well managed, the entire property ringed with waist-high hedges that were so even they might have been trimmed with the aid of a quality micrometer.
        He turned and walked down the street that ran perpendicular to the one on which the bungalow faced, found the mouth of a narrow alleyway and entered it. He went far enough to be able to see the rear of Linski's house. A back porch, not so large as the Indian-style, wide-floored, roofed front veranda, led to a windowless back door. Windows flanked the door, and both were partially curtained in a cheery red and orange pattern.
        Chase returned to the Mustang to wait until dark.
        At first he tried to occupy himself with word games, then with the radio, but soon gave that up. He had been trying not to think about his impulsive decision to come here alone, for he did not want to puzzle out the nature of his reasons. He got out of the car and took a walk away from the bungalow, and in that manner he passed the time until half an hour after nightfall.
        He approached the bungalow through the narrow alley and crouched by the thorny hedge where it parted for the entrance to the rear flagstone walk. The kitchen windows were lighted, though Chase could not see anyone in the room beyond them. He waited ten minutes, not thinking about anything, geared down and idling as he had learned to do in Nam before a crucial encounter, then he moved quickly forward, running silently on the lawn beside the walk, rushing from shrub to shrub with only a slight pause at each. When he reached the back porch, he remained crouched so that he was shielded from the windows by the wooden railing, the edge of the steps and the elevated floor of the porch itself, further cloaked with darkness.
        Inside, a radio was playing instrumental versions of Broadway show tunes, between commercials delivered by a rather loud and unpleasant voice. It was the only sound.
        Chase turned away from the house for a brief moment and surveyed the black lawn spread out behind him. At several points, lumps of shadow grew, shrubs and small trees, a miniature wheelbarrow planter full of wilted petunias. Nothing moved or reflected light.
        When he was satisfied that he was alone, he looked back at the house and crept cautiously up the steps and onto the porch. There was a swing on the porch, a small cocktail table and two wicker chairs. A board squeaked under his foot and brought him to a standstill. He felt beads of sticky perspiration on his forehead and