Inside Rick's apartment, the two technicians from Communications who had come to cook the phones lay dead on the living-room rug. Tacked to the forehead of one with a push-pin was this note: THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING AGAIN.
Tacked to the forehead of the other was a second message: MORE FOOL'S STUFFING. TELL THAD.
II
Stark Takes Charge
"Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls," Machine told Jack Halstead. "Did you know that?"
Jack began to laugh. The look Machine turned on him made him think better of it.
"Wipe that asshole grin off your face and pay attention to me," Machine said. "I am giving you instruction here. Arc you paying attention?"
"Yes, Mr. Machine. "
"Then hear this, and never forget it. Any fool with fast hands can take a tiger by the balls. but it takes a hero to keep on squeezing. I'll tell you something else, while I'm at it: only heroes and quitters walk away, Jack. No one else. And I am no quitter. "
--Machine's Way
by George Stark
Fifteen
STARK DISBELIEF
1
Thad and Liz sat encased in shock so deep and blue it felt like ice, listening as Alan Pangborn told them how the early morning hours had gone in New York City. Mike Donaldson, slashed and beaten to death in the hallway of his apartment building; Phyllis Myers and two policemen gunned down at her West Side condo. The night doorman at Myers's building had been hit with something heavy, and had suffered a fractured skull. The doctors held out odds slightly better than even that he would wake up on the mortal side of heaven. The doorman at Donaldson's building was dead. The wet-work had been carried out gangland-style in all cases, with the hitter simply walking up to his victims and starting in.
As Alan talked, he referred to the killer repeatedly as Stark.
He's calling him by his right name without even thinking about it, Thad mused. Then he shook his head, a little impatient with himself. You had to call him something, he supposed, and Stark was maybe a little better than "the perp" or "Mr. X." It would be a mistake at this point to think Pangborn was using the name in any way other than as a convenient handle.
"What about Rick?" he asked when Alan had finished and he was finally able to unlock his tongue.
"Mr. Cowley is alive and well and under police protection." It was quarter of ten in the morning; the explosion which would kill Rick and one of his guardians was still almost two hours away.
"Phyllis Myers was under police protection, too," Liz said. In the big playpen, Wendy was fast asleep and William was nodding out. His head would go down on his chest, his eyes would close . . . then he would jerk his head up again. To Alan he looked comically like a sentry trying not to fall asleep on duty. But each head-jerk was a little weaker. Watching the twins, his notebook now dosed and in his lap, Alan noticed an interesting thing: every time William jerked his head up in an effort to stay awake, Wendy twitched in her sleep.
Have the parents noticed that? he wondered, and then thought, Of course they have.
"That's true, Liz. He surprised them. Police are as prone to surprise as anyone else, you know; they're just supposed to react to it better. On the floor where Phyllis Myers lived, several people along the ball opened their doors and looked out after the shots were fired, and we've got a pretty good idea of what went down from their statements and what the police found at the crime scene. Stark pretended to be a blind man. He hadn't changed his clothes following the murders of Miriam Cowley and Michael Donaldson, which were . . . forgive me, both of you, but they were messy. He comes out of the elevator, wearing dark glasses he probably bought in Times Square or from a pushcart vendor and waving a white cane covered with blood. God knows where he got the cane, but N. Y. P. D. thinks he also used it to bash the doormen. "
"He stole it from a real blind man, of course," Thad said calmly. "This guy is not Sir Galahad, Alan. "
"Obviously not. He was probably yelling that he'd been mugged, or maybe that he had been attacked by burglars in his apartment. Either way, he came on to them so fast they didn't have much time to react. They were, after all, a couple of prowl-car cops who were hauled off their beat and stuck in front of this woman's door without much warning. "
"But surely they knew that Donaldson had been murdered, too," Liz protested. "If something like that couldn't alert them to the fact the man was dangerous--"
"They also knew Donaldson's police protection had arrived after the man had been murdered," Thad said. "They were overconfident. "
"Maybe they were, a little," Alan conceded. "I have no way of knowing. But the guys with Cowley know that this man is daring and quite clever as well as homicidal. Their eyes are open. No, Thad--your agent is safe. You can count on it. "
"You said there were witnesses," Thad said.
"Oh yeah. Lots of witnesses. At the Cowley woman's place, at Donaldson's, at Myers's. He didn't seem to give a shit." He looked at Liz and said, "Excuse me. "
She smiled briefly. "I've heard that one a time or two before, Alan. "
He nodded, gave her a little smile, and turned back to Thad.
"The description I gave you?"
"It checks out all down the line," Alan said. "He's big, blonde, got a pretty good tan. So tell me who he is, Thad. Give me a name. I've got a lot more than Homer Gamache to worry about now. I've got the goddam Police Commissioner of New York City leaning on me, Sheila Brigham--that's my chief dispatcher--thinks I'm going to be a media star, but it's still Homer I care about. Even more than the two dead police officers who were trying to protect Phyllis Myers, I care about Homer. So give me a name. "
"I already have," Thad said.
There was a long silence--perhaps ten seconds. Then, very softly, Alan said, "What?"
"His name is George Stark." Thad was surprised to hear how calm he sounded, even more surprised to find that he felt calm . . . unless deep shock and calm felt the same. But the relief of actually saying that--You have his name, his name is George Stark--was inexpressible.
"I don't think I understand you," Alan said after another long pause.
"Of course you do, Alan," Liz said. Thad looked at her, startled by the crisp, no-nonsense tone of her voice. "What my husband is saying is that his pseudonym has somehow come to life. The tombstone in the picture . . . what it says on that tombstone where there should be a homily or a little verse is something Thad said to the wire-service reporter who originally broke the story. NOT A VERY NICE GUY. Do you recall that?"
"Yes, but Liz--" He was looking at them both with a kind of helpless surprise, as if realizing for the first time that he had been holding a conversation with people who had lost their minds.
"Save your buts," she said in the same brisk tone. "You'll have plenty of time for buts and rebuttals. You and everyone else. For the time being, just listen to me. Thad wasn't kidding when he said George Stark wasn't a very nice guy. He may have thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. I knew it even if he didn't. Not only was George Stark not a very nice guy, he was in fact a horrible guy. He made me more nervous with each of the four books he wrote, and when Thad finally decided to kill him, I went upstairs to our bedroom and cried with relief." She looked at Thad, who was staring at her. She measured him with her gaze before nodding. "That's right. I cried. I really cried. Mr. Clawson in Washington was a disgusting little Creepazoid, but he did us a favor, maybe the biggest favor of our married life together, and for that reason I'm sorry he's dead, if for no other. "
"Liz, I don't think you really mean--"
"Don't tell me what I do and do not mean!" she said.
Alan blinked. Her voice remained modulated, not loud enough to waken Wendy or cause William to do more than raise his head one final time before lying down on his side and falling asleep beside his sister. Alan had a feeling that, if not for the kids, he would have heard a louder voice, though. Maybe even one turned up to full volume.
"Thad has got some things to tell you now. You ne
ed to listen to him very carefully, Alan, and you need to try and believe him. Because if you don't, I'm afraid this man--or whatever he is--will go on killing until he's worked all the way to the bottom of his butcher's bill. I have some very personal reasons for not wanting that to happen. You see, I think Thad and I and our babies may well be on that list. "
"All right." His own voice was mild, but his thoughts were clicking over at a rapid rate. He made a conscious effort to push frustration, anger, even wonder aside and consider this mad idea as clearly as he could. Not the question of whether it was true or false--it was, of course, impossible even to consider it as true--but the one of just why they were even bothering to tell such a story in the first place. Was it concocted to hide some imagined complicity in the murders? A real one? Was it even possible that they believed it? It seemed impossible that such a pair of well-educated and rational--up to now, anyway--people could believe it, but it was as it had been on the day he had come to arrest Thad for Homer's murder; they just didn't give off the faint but unmistakable aroma of people who were lying. Consciously lying, he amended to himself. "Go on, Thad. "
"All right," Thad said. He cleared his throat nervously and got up. His hand went to his breast pocket and he realized with an amusement that was half-bitter what he was doing: reaching for the cigarettes which had not been there for years now. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked at Alan Pangborn as he might look at a troubled advisee who had washed up on the mostly friendly shores of Thad's office.
"Something very odd is going on here. No--it's more than odd. It's terrible and it's inexplicable, but it is happening. And it started, I think, when I was just eleven years old. "
2
Thad told it all: the childhood headaches, the shrill cries and muddy visions of the sparrows which had heralded the arrival of these headaches, the return of the sparrows. He showed Alan the manuscript page with THE SPARROWS ARE FLYING slashed across it in dark pencil strokes. He told him about the fugue state he had entered at his office yesterday, and what he had written (as well as he could remember it) on the back of the order-form. He explained what had happened to the form, and tried to express the fear and bewilderment which had compelled him to destroy it.
Alan's face remained impassive.
"Besides," Thad finished, "I know it's Stark. Here." He made a fist and knocked lightly on his own chest.
Alan said nothing at all for a few moments. He had begun turning his wedding ring on the third finger of his left hand, and this operation seemed to have captured all his attention.
"You've lost weight since you were married," Liz said quietly. "If you don't have that ring sized, Alan, you'll lose it one day. "
"I suppose I will." He raised his head and looked at her. When he spoke, it was as if Thad had left the room on some errand and only the two of them were there. "Your husband took you upstairs to his study and showed you this first message from the spirit world after I left . . . is that correct?"
"The only spirit world I know about for sure is the Agency Liquor Store about a mile down the road," Liz said evenly, "but he did show me the message after you left, yes. "
"Right after I left?"
"No--we put the twins to bed, and then, while we were getting ready for bed ourselves, I asked Thad what he was hiding. "
"Between the time when I left and the time when he told you about the blackouts and the bird-sounds, there were periods when he was out of your sight? Times when he could have gone upstairs and written the phrase I mentioned to you?"
"I don't remember for sure," she said. "I think we were together all that time, but I can't say absolutely. And it wouldn't matter even if I told you he never left my sight, would it?"
"What do you mean, Liz?"
"I mean you'd then assume I was also lying, wouldn't you?"
Alan sighed deeply. It was the only answer either of them really needed.
"Thad isn't lying about this. "
Alan nodded his head. "I appreciate your honesty--but since you can't swear he never left you for a couple of minutes, I don't have to accuse you of lying. I'm glad of that. You admit the opportunity may have been there, and I think you'll also admit that the alternative is pretty wild. "
Thad leaned against the mantel, his eyes shifting back and forth like the eyes of a man watching a tennis match. Sheriff Pangborn was not saying a thing Thad had not foreseen, and he was pointing out the holes in his story a good deal more kindly than he might have done, but Thad found that he was still bitterly disappointed . . . almost heartsick. That premonition that Alan would believe--somehow just instinctively believe--had proved as bogus as a bottle of medicine show cure-all.
"Yes, I admit those things," Liz said evenly.
"As for what Thad claims happened at his office . . . there are no witnesses to either the blackout or to what he claims to have written down. In fact, he didn't mention the incident to you at all until after Ms. Cowley called, did he?"
"No. He did not. "
"And so . . ." He shrugged.
"I have a question for you, Alan. "
"All right. "
"Why would Thad lie? What purpose would it serve?"
"I don't know." Alan looked at her with complete candor. "He may not know himself." He glanced briefly at Thad, then returned his eyes to Liz's. "He may not even know he is lying. What I'm saying is pretty flat: this is not the sort of thing any police officer could accept without strong proof. And there is none. "
"Thad is telling the truth about this. I understand everything you've said, but I want very badly for you to believe he is telling the truth, too. I want that desperately. You see, I lived with George Stark. And I know how Thad was about him as time went on. I'll tell you something that wasn't in People magazine. Thad started talking about getting rid of Stark two books before the last one--"
"Three," Thad said quietly from his place by the mantel. His craving for a cigarette had become a dry fever. "I started talking about it after the first one. "
"Okay, three. The magazine article made it sound as though this was a pretty recent thing, and that just wasn't true. That's the point I'm trying to make. If Frederick Clawson hadn't come along and forced my husband's hand, I think Thad would still be talking about getting rid of him in the same way. The way an alcoholic or drug addict tells his family and his friends that he'll quit tomorrow . . . or the next day . . . or the day after that. "
"No," Thad said. "Not exactly like that. Right church but the wrong pew. "
He paused, frowning, doing more than thinking. Concentrating. Alan reluctantly gave up the idea that they were lying, or having him on for some weird reason. They were not spending their efforts in order to convince him, or even themselves, but only to articulate how it had been . . . the way men might try to describe a fire-fight long after it was over.
"Look," Thad said finally. "Let's drop the subject of the blackouts and the sparrows and the precognitive visions--if that's what they were--for a minute. If you feel you need to, you can talk to my doctor, George Hume, about the physical symptoms. Maybe the head-tests I took yesterday will show something odd when they come back, and even if they don't, the doctor who performed the operation on me when I was a kid may still be alive and able to talk to you about the case. He may know something that could cast some light on this mess. I can't remember his name right off-hand, but I'm sure it's in my medical records. But right now, all of this psychic shit is a side-track. "
This struck Alan as a very odd thing for Thad to say . . . if he had planted the one precognitive note and lied about the other. Someone crazy enough to do such a thing--and crazy enough to forget he'd done it, to actually believe the notes were real manifestations of psychic phenomena--would want to talk about nothing else. Wouldn't he? His head was beginning to ache.
"All right," he said evenly, "if what you call 'this psychic shit' is a side-track, then what's the main line?"
"George Stark is the main line," Thad said, and thought: The lin
e that goes to Endsville, where all rail service terminates. "Imagine that some stranger moved into your house. Someone you've always been a little bit frightened of, the way Jim Hawkins was always a little bit frightened of the Old Sea-Dog at the Admiral Benbow--have you read Treasure Island, Alan?"
He nodded.
"Well, you know the sort of feeling I'm trying to express, then. You're scared of this guy, and you don't like him at all, but you let him stay. You don't run an inn, like in Treasure Island, but maybe you think he's a distant relative of your wife's, or something. Do you follow me?"
Alan nodded.
"And finally one day, after this bad guest has done something like slam the salt-cellar against the wall because it's clogged, you say to your wife, 'How long is your idiot second cousin going to hang around, anyway?' And she looks at you and says, 'My second cousin? I thought he was your second cousin!' "
Alan grunted laughter in spite of himself.
"But do you kick the guy out?" Thad went on. "No. For one thing, he's already been in your house for awhile, and as grotesque as it might sound to someone who's not actually in the situation, it seems like he's got . . . squatter's rights, or something. But that isn't the important thing. "
Liz had been nodding. Her eyes had the excited, grateful look of a woman who has just been told the word which has been dancing on the tip of her tongue all day long.
"The important thing is how goddamned scared of him you are," she said. "Scared of what he might do if you actually told him, flat out, to take his act and put it on the road. "
"There you go," Thad said. "You want to be brave and tell him to leave, and not just because you're afraid he might be dangerous, either. It becomes a matter of self-respect. But . . . you keep putting it off. You find reasons to put it off. Like it's raining out, and he's less apt to raise the roof about going if you show him the door on a sunny day. Or maybe after you've all had a good night's sleep. You think of a thousand reasons to put it off. You find that, if the reasons sound good enough to yourself, you can retain at least some of your self-respect, and some is better than none at all. Some is also better than all of it, if having all of it means you wind up hurt, or dead.