Strange Highways

heard."
     "It's the longest he's gone without calling."
     Wallace nodded. "It's possible, you know, that he won't be calling at all, any more."
     "You mean, since he passed judgment on me?"
     Chase saw that Tuppinger was disconnecting wires and packing his equipment into the suitcase.
     Wallace said, "I'm afraid you're right, Mr. Chase. The killer has passed his judgment - or lost interest in you, one or the other - and he isn't going to try to contact you again. We don't want to keep a man tied up here."
     "You're leaving?" Chase asked.
     "Well, yeah, it seems best."
     "But another few hours might-"
     "Might produce nothing," Wallace said. "What we're going to do, Mr. Chase, is we're going to rely on you to tell us what Judge says if, as seems unlikely now, he should call again." He smiled at Chase.
     In that smile was all the explanation that Chase required. He said, "When Tuppinger sent me out for dinner, he called you, didn't he?" Not waiting for a response, he went on: "And he told you about the call from Dr. Fauvel's secretary - the word 'session' probably alarmed him. And now you've talked to the good doctor."
     Tuppinger finished packing the equipment. He hefted the case and looked quickly around the room to be sure that he had not left anything behind.
     "Judge is real," Chase told Wallace.
     "I'm sure that he is," Wallace said. "That's why I want you to report any calls he might make to you." But his tone was that of an adult humoring a child.
     "You stupid bastard, he is real!"
     Wallace flushed with anger. When he spoke, there was tension in his voice, and his controlled tone was achieved with obvious effort. "Mr. Chase, you saved the girl. You deserve to be praised for that. But the fact remains, no one has called here in nearly twenty-four hours. And if you believed such a man as Judge existed, you surely would've contacted us before this, when he first called. It would've been natural for you to rush to us - especially a duty - conscious young man like yourself. All these things, examined in the light of your psychiatric record and Dr. Fauvel's explanations, make it clear that the expenditure of one of our best men isn't required. Tuppinger has other duties."
     Chase saw how overwhelmingly the evidence seemed to point to Fauvel's thesis, just as he saw how his own behavior hadn't helped him. His fondness for whiskey in front of Tuppinger. His inability to carry on a simple conversation. Worst of all, his anxiety about publicity might have appeared to be the insincere protestations of a man who, in fact, wanted attention. Still, with his fists balled at his sides, he said, "Get out."
     "Take it easy, son," Wallace said.
     "Get out right now."
     Wallace looked around the room and let his attention come to rest on the bottle of whiskey. "Tuppinger tells me you haven't any food on hand, but that there are five bottles in that cupboard." He did not look at Chase. He seemed to be embarrassed by Tuppinger's obvious spying. "You look thirty pounds underweight, son."
     "Get out," Chase repeated.
     Wallace was not ready to leave yet. He was searching for some way to soften the accusation implicit in their departure. But then he sighed and said, "Son, no matter what happened to you over there in Vietnam, you aren't going to forget about it with whiskey."
     Before Chase, infuriated at the homespun psychoanalysis, could order him out again, Wallace finally left with Jim Tuppinger at his heels.
     Chase closed the door after them. Quietly.
     He locked it.
     He poured a drink.
     He was alone again. But he was accustomed to being alone.

    6

THURSDAY EVENING AT SEVEN-THIRTY, HAVING SUCCESSFULLY EVADED Mrs. Fielding on his way out of the house, Chase drove his Mustang to Kanackaway Ridge Road, aware and yet unaware of his destination. He stayed within the speed limits through Ashside and the outlying districts, but floored the accelerator at the bottom of the mountain road, taking the wide curves on the far outside. The white guardrails slipped past so quickly and so close on the right that they blurred into a continuous wall of pale planking, the cables between them like black scrawls on the phantom boards.
     On the top of the ridge, he parked where he had pulled off the road Monday night, killed the