The Night Listener : A Novel

minute, after all, staring at nothing and everything, the very model of a rapist or a madman, and there was no easy way to alter that impression. So I walked away—slowly at first, casually—trying to suggest that I was just a harmless neighbor out on an evening ramble. Once past the old lady’s window I thought about the police again and broke into a run. I ran for at least three blocks, leaping and stumbling and gulping the icy air, then resumed my studied stroll, in case someone else was watching.
    Where had all this guilt come from? I wondered. Why had I spent so much of my life feeling intrinsically culpable? I couldn’t see a cop car in my rearview mirror without twisting my guts into a knot—or walk into a store without worrying that a clerk would suspect me of shoplifting. Even my dreams were populated with storm troopers, righteous protectors of decency who broke down my door in the dead of night and dragged me off to justice.
    A coffee shop materialized, a place on a corner that marked the edge of a commercial district. It was open, amazingly enough, so I ducked inside, grateful for its aromatic warmth and the comforting drone of other humans. It was a coffee shop of the old school, the kind that still serves one kind of coffee from a Pyrex pot along with the chicken salad sandwiches. To one side lay a hive of red plastic booths, so I took a seat there and ordered a cup of tea and a cherry cobbler while my shoes puddled extravagantly on the floor.
    I would have to find the car again, I realized, but that would be easy enough, since I’d parked it next to the water tank. I would head there as soon as I’d thawed out, then drive back to the motel for a good night’s sleep. It was time to be rational again. I could make a few calls in the morning, check in with Ashe Findlay maybe.
    He might even have a home address for the Lomaxes, since he had once been close to Donna and had even…
    I slapped the table as it came to me. Of course. Donna Lomax had to be a real person, because Ashe Findlay had met her. He had met her when she came to New York for some psychiatric convention.
    He had sung her praises so much, in fact, that I’d wondered about the nature of their relationship. How I’d forgotten this important detail I couldn’t tell you. Write it off to snow blindness, I guess, or my deeply preoccupied imagination. Or maybe I’d just been looking too hard for answers, forcing an exotic resolution when a simple one failed to present itself naturally.
    My stigmata had begun to throb again, since I’d stupidly whacked the table with my damaged hand. I looked down at the scab and smiled at my own madness. I’d been slightly out of control ever since I’d left the airport in Milwaukee. I needed to be gentle with myself, tread more carefully in this hour of confusion. For if Pete had ever loved me, that surely hadn’t changed in the past two days; he still loved me, wherever he was and whatever he was thinking.
    And that should be enough for now.
    My back was to the door, so I didn’t see her when she came in, but it must have happened some time after my cobbler arrived. She wasn’t visible behind the high walls of the neighboring booth, but I recognized her voice immediately, that fusion of smoke and silk that had charmed me from the beginning. This time, though, the sound of it made me freeze like a cornered animal, as if she had been the one who’d been looking for me .
    “There now,” she said. “Don’t you feel better?”
    For one macabre moment I thought she meant me. That she had been there all along and had recognized my voice when I placed my order with the waitress.
    But the next time she spoke, it was clearly to someone nearby.
    Someone in her own booth: “You’re hungry, aren’t you? I’ll fix you something good when we get home.”
    I turned my head and cocked an ear, shutting out the room tone as best I could. But there was no reply—nothing at all.
    “I know,” she continued. “You love those burgers, don’t you? But they’re awful on your stomach.”
    My mind was racing just as wildly as my heart. This is the moment, I thought, the one I always knew would come. He’s right there with her, less than five feet away: my pride and joy, the offspring of my heart. But why isn’t he speaking?
    “Don’t look at me that way,” she said.
    He’s been traumatized, I thought. The ordeal of the last few weeks has been too much for him. The cancellation of his book has thrown