The Key to Midnight

stairs.
        'Scared?' he asked.
        'Yeah.'
        'Want to back out?'
        'Can't,' she said.
        Though they were whispering, their voices echoed in the cold stairwell.
        He unbuttoned his coat and withdrew the 9mm pistol that had been jammed under his belt. He put it in an overcoat pocket and kept his hand on the grip.
        She put her hand on the butcher's knife in her pocket.
        They climbed the stairs to the fourth floor.
        The corridor was brightly lighted, deserted - and too quiet.
        They hurried along the hallway, glancing at room numbers. In spite of the elegant decor, Alex couldn't shake the feeling that he was in a carnival funhouse and that a monster was going to spring at them suddenly from a door or out of the ceiling.
        Just before they reached 416, Alex was stopped abruptly by a vivid premonition: an intense vision like the brief but commanding burst of a camera's electronic flash. In his mind's eye, he saw Tom Chelgrin spattered with blood. Never before had anything like that happened to him, and he was shaken both by the weirdness of it and by the wet, red vividness of the image.
        Joanna stopped beside him, gripped his arm. 'What's wrong?'
        'He's dead.'
        'What? The senator? How do you know?'
        'I just… I do. I'm sure of it.'
        He took the pistol from his coat pocket and continued along the corridor. The door to 416 was ajar.
        'Stand behind me,' he said.
        She shuddered. 'Let's call the police.'
        'We can't. Not yet.'
        'We have enough proof now.'
        'We don't have anything more than we did yesterday.'
        'If he's dead - that's proof of something.'
        'We don't know he's dead,' Alex said, though he knew. 'Besides, even if he is - that's not proof of anything.'
        'Let's get out of here.'
        'We don't have anywhere to go.'
        He used the pistol to push the door all the way open.
        Stillness.
        The lights were on in the suite.
        'Senator?' he said softly.
        When no one answered, Alex stepped across the threshold, and Joanna followed him.
        Thomas Chelgrin was face down on the drawing-room floor.

----

    50
        
        Tom Chelgrin was unquestionably dead. The quantity of blood alone was sufficient to eliminate any doubt.
        The senator was wearing a blue bathrobe that had soaked up a great deal of blood. The back of the garment was marred by three bloody holes. He had been shot once at the base of the spine, once in the middle of the back, and once between the shoulders. His left arm was extended in front of him, fingers hooked into the carpet, and his right arm was folded under his chest. His head was turned to one side. Only half his face remained visible, and that was obscured by smears of blood and by a thick shock of white hair that had fallen across his eye.
        Alex closed the door to the hall and cautiously inspected the rest of the small suite, but the killers were not to be found. He had known they would be gone.
        When he returned to the drawing room, Joanna was kneeling beside the corpse. Alarmed, he said, 'Don't touch him!'
        She looked puzzled. 'Why not?'
        'It won't be easy to walk out of here and into our hotel if you're covered with bloodstains.'
        'I'll be careful.'
        'You've already got blood on the hem of your coat.'
        She glanced down. 'Damn!'
        He pulled her to her feet and away from the corpse. With his handkerchief, he rubbed at the stain on her coat. 'It doesn't look good, but it'll have to pass.'
        'Shouldn't we check him over? Maybe he's alive.'
        'Alive? Look at those wounds. They used a weapon with a hell of a punch. All this blood. He's dead as a man can be.'
        'How did you know he'd be here like this? Out there in the hall, how did you know what we'd find?'
        'Hard to explain,' he said uneasily. 'I'd call it a premonition if that didn't sound too crazy. But it does sound crazy, and I'm no clairvoyant.'
        'So it wasn't just a hunch, professional instinct, like you've said before?'
        He recalled the alarming vivid mental image of the blood-spattered corpse, and although the position and condition of the real body did not perfectly match the details of the vision, the differences were not substantial.
        'Weird,' he said.
        She stared at the cadaver and shook