"May I say what this is regarding?"
"My late husband's papers," Lisey said, spinning her opened pack of Salem Lights on the coffee table in front of her. She realized that she once again had cigarettes and no fire. Perhaps it was a warning that she should give the habit up again, after all, before it could settle its little yellow hooks back into her brain stem. She thought of adding I'm sure he'll want to talk to me and didn't bother. His wife would know that.
"Just a moment, please."
Lisey waited. She hadn't planned what she was going to say. This was in accordance with another of Landon's Rules: you only planned out what you were going to say for disagreements. When you were really angry - when you wanted to tear someone a new ass**le, as the saying was - it was usually best to just rare back and let it rip. So she sat there, mind a careful blank, spinning her pack of cigarettes. Around and around it went.
At last a smooth masculine voice she thought she remembered said, "Hello, Mrs. Landon, this is a pleasant surprise."
SOWISA, she thought. SOWISA, babyluv.
"No," Lisey said, "it's not going to be pleasant at all."
There was a pause. Then, cautiously: "I beg pardon? Is this Lisa Landon? Mrs. Scott L - "
Chapter 10
"Listen to me, you son of a bitch. There's a man harassing me. I think he's a dangerous man. Yesterday he threatened to hurt me."
"Mrs. Landon - "
"In places I didn't let the boys touch at the junior high school dances was how he put it, I think. And tonight - "
"Mrs. Landon, I don't - "
"Tonight he left a dead cat in my mailbox and a letter stuck in my door, and the letter had a telephone number on it, this number, so don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about when I know you do! " On the last word, Lisey batted the pack of cigarettes with the side of her hand. Batted it like a badminton birdie. It flew all the way across the room, shedding Salem Lights as it went. She was breathing hard and fast, but with her mouth wide open. She didn't want Woodbody to hear her doing it and mistake her rage for fear.
Woodbody made no reply. Lisey gave him time. When he still didn't talk, she said,
"Are you there? You better be."
She knew it was the same man who replied, but the smooth round lecture-hall tones were gone. This man sounded both younger and somehow older. "I'm going to put you on hold, Mrs. Landon, and take this in my study."
"Where your wife can't hear, is what you mean."
"Hold on, please."
"It better not be long, Woodsmucky, or - "
There was a click, then silence. Lisey wished she had used the cordless phone in the kitchen; she wanted to pace around, maybe snag one of her cigarettes and light it off a stove-burner. But maybe this was better. This way she couldn't blow off any of her rage. This way she had to stay strapped so tight it hurt.
Ten seconds went by. Twenty. Thirty. She was preparing to hang up when there was another click on the line and the King of the Incunks spoke to her again in his new young-old voice. It had picked up a funny little hiccupping tremor. It's his heartbeat, she thought. It was her thought, but it could have been Scott's insight. His heart's beating so hard I can actually hear it. I wanted to scare him? I scared him. Now why should that scare me?
And yes, all of a sudden she was scared. It was like a yellow thread weaving in and out of the bright red overblanket of her rage.
"Mrs. Landon, is he a man named Dooley? James or Jim Dooley? Tall and skinny, with a little bit of a hill accent? Like West Vir - "
"I don't know his name. He called himself Zack McCool on the phone, and that's the name he signed to his - "
"Fuck," Woodbody said. Only he stretched it out - Fuu-uuuck - and turned it into something almost incantatory. This was followed by a sound that might have been a groan. In Lisey's mind, a second bright yellow thread joined the first.
"What?" she asked sharply.
"That's him," Woodbody said. "It has to be. The e-mail address he gave me was Zack991."
"You told him to scare me into giving you Scott's unpublished papers, didn't you? That was the deal."
"Mrs. Landon, you don't understa - "
"I think I do. I've dealt with some fairly crazy people since Scott died, and the academics put the collectors to shame, but you make the rest of the academics look normal, Woodsmucky. That's probably why you were able to hide it at first. The really crazy people have to be able to do that. It's a survival skill."