Strange Highways

Basic Composition." The killer whispered on for two or three minutes, reciting biographical facts that Chase had thought private. Courthouse records, college files, newspaper morgues, and half a dozen other sources had provided the killer with far more information about Chase's life than could have been gleaned merely from the recent articles in the Press-Dispatch.
     "I think I've been on the line too long," the killer said. "It's time I went to another booth. Is your phone tapped, Chase?"
     "No."
     "Just the same, I'll hang up now and call you back in a few minutes." The line went dead.
     Five minutes later the killer called again.
     "What I gave you before was just so much dry grass, Chase. But let me add a few more things and do some speculating. Let's see if I can add a match to it."
     "Whatever you have to do."
     "For one thing," the man said, "you inherited a lot of money, but you haven't spent much of it."
     "Not a lot."
     "Forty thousand after taxes, but you live frugally."
     "How would you know that?"
     "I drove by your house today and discovered that you live in a furnished apartment on the third floor. When I saw you coming home, it was apparent that you don't spend much on clothes. Until that pretty new Mustang, you didn't have a car. It follows, then, that you must have a great deal of your inheritance left, what with the monthly disability pension from the government to pay most or all of your bills."
     "I want you to stop checking on me."
     The man laughed. "Can't stop. Remember the necessity to evaluate your moral content before passing judgment, Mr. Chase."
     Chase hung up this time. Having taken the initiative cheered him a little. When the phone began to ring again, he summoned the will not to answer it. After thirty rings, it stopped.
     When the ringing began again, ten minutes later, he finally picked it up and said hello.
     The killer was furious, straining his damaged throat to the limit. "If you ever do that to me again, then I'll make sure it isn't a quick, clean kill. I'll see to that. You understand me?"
     Chase was silent.
     "Mr. Chase?" A beat. "What's wrong with you?"
     "Wish I knew," Chase said.
     The stranger decided to let his anger go, and he fell into his previous tone of forced irony: "That 'wounded in action' bit excites me, Mr. Chase. That part of your biography. Because you don't appear disabled enough to deserve a pension, and you more than held your own in our fight. That gives me ideas, makes me think your most serious wounds aren't physical at all."
     "Whose are?"
     "I think you had psychological problems that put you in that army hospital and got you a discharge."
     Chase said nothing.
     "And you tell me that I need counseling. I'll have to take more time to check in to this. Very interesting. Well, rest easy tonight, Mr. Chase. You're not scheduled to die yet."
     "Wait."
     "Yes?"
     "I have to have a name for you. I can't go on thinking of you in totally impersonal terms like 'the man' and 'the stranger' and 'the killer.' Do you see how that is?"
     "Yes," the man admitted.
     "A name?"
     He considered. Then he said, "You can call me Judge."
     "Judge?"
     "Yes, as in 'judge, jury, and executioner.'" He laughed until he coughed, and then he hung up as if he were just an anonymous prankster who had phoned to ask if Chase had Prince Albert in a can.
     Chase went to the refrigerator and got an apple. He peeled it and cut it into eight sections, chewing each thoroughly. It wasn't much of a dinner. But there were a lot of energy-giving calories in a glass of whiskey, so he poured a few ounces over ice, for dessert.
     He washed his hands, which had become sticky with apple juice.
     He would have washed them even if they hadn't been sticky. He washed his hands frequently. Ever since Nam. Sometimes he washed them so often in a single day that they became red and chapped.
     With another drink, he went to the bed and watched a movie on TV. He tried not to think about anything except the satisfying daily routines to which he was accustomed: breakfast at Woolworth's, paperback novels, old movies on television, the forty thousand of go-to-hell money in his savings account, his pension check, and the good