He felt an urge to try Miriam's number again, but didn't dare Alan might pick that very moment to call back, and would find the Beaumont number busy. He found himself again wishing, in an aimless sort of way, that they had a second line. Well, he thought, wish in one hand, spit in the other.
Reason and rationality told him that Stark could not be out there, ramming around like some weird cancer in human form, killing people. As the country rube in Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer was wont to say, it was perfectly unpossible, Diggory. He was, though. Thad knew he was, and Liz knew it, too. He wondered if Alan would also know when he told him. You'd think not; you'd expect the man would simply send for those fine young men in their clean white coats. Because George Stark was not real, and neither was Alexis Machine, that fiction within a fiction. Neither of them had ever existed, any more than George Eliot had ever existed, or Mark Twain, or Lewis Carroll, or Tucker Coe, or Edgar Box. Pseudonyms were only a higher form of fictional character. Yet Thad found it difficult to believe Alan Pangborn would not believe, even if he did not want to at first. Thad himself did not want to, yet found himself helpless to do anything else. It was, if you could pardon the expression, inexorably plausible.
'Why doesn't he call?' Liz asked restlessly.
'It's only been five minutes, babe.'
'Closer to ten.'.He resisted an urge to snap at her - this wasn't the Bonus Round in a TV game-show, Alan
would not be awarded extra points and valuable prizes for calling back before nine o'clock. There was no Stark, part of his mind continued to insist upon insisting. The voice was rational but oddly powerless, seeming to repeat this screed not out of any real conviction but only by rote, like a parrot trained to say Pretty boy! or Polly wants a cracker! Yet it was true, wasn't it? Was he supposed to believe Stark had come BACK FROM THE GRAVE, like a monster in a horror movie? That would be a neat trick, since the man - or un-man - had never been buried, his marker only a papier-m ch? headstone set up on the surface of an empty cemetery plot, as fictional as the rest of him -
Anyhow, that brings me to the last point . . . or aspect . . . or whatever the hell you want to call it . . . What's your shoe-size, Mr Beaumont?
Thad had been slouched in his chair, crazily close to dozing in spite of everything. Now he sat up so suddenly he almost spilled his tea. Footprints. Pangborn had said something about - What footprints are these?
Doesn't matter. We don't even have photos. We've got almost everything on the table . . .
'Thad? What is it?' Liz asked.
What footprints? Where? In Castle Rock, of course, or Alan wouldn't have known about them. Had they perhaps been in Homeland Cemetery, where the neurasthenic lady photographer had shot the picture he and Liz had found so amusing?
'Not a very nice guy,' he muttered.
'Thad?'
Then the phone rang, and both of them spilled their tea. 4
Thad's hand dived for the receiver . . . then paused for a moment, floating just above it. What if it's him?
I'm not done with you, Thad. You don't want to f**k with me, because when you f**k with me, you're f**king with the best.
He made his hand go down, close around the telephone, and bring it to his ear. 'Hello?'
'Thad?' It was Alan Pangborn's voice. Suddenly Thad felt very limp, as if his body had been held together with stiff little wires which had just been removed.
'Yes,' he said. The word came out sibilant, in a kind of sigh. He drew in another breath. 'Is Miriam all right?'
'I don't know,' Alan Pangborn said. 'I've given the N.Y.P.D. her address. We should hear quite soon, although I want to caution you that fifteen minutes or half an hour may not seem like quite soon to you and your wife this evening.'
'No. It won't.'
'Is she all right?' Liz was asking, and Thad covered the phone mouthpiece long enough to tell her that Pangborn didn't know yet. Liz nodded and settled back, still too white but seeming calmer and more in control than before. At least people were doing things now, and it wasn't solely their responsibility anymore.
'They also got Mr Cowley's address from the telephone company - '
'Hey! They won't - '.'Thad, they won't do anything until they know what the Cowley woman's condition is. I told
them we had a situation where a mentally unbalanced man might be after a person or persons named in the People magazine article about the Stark pen name, and explained the connection the Cowleys had to you. I hope I got it right. I don't know much about writers and even less about their agents. But they do understand it would be wrong for the lady's ex-husband to go rushing over there before they arrive.'
'Thank you. Thank you for everything, Alan.'
'Thad, N.Y.P.D. is too busy moving on this to want or need further explanations right now, but they will want them. I do, too. Who do you think this guy is?'
'That's something I don't want to tell you over the telephone. I'd come to you, Alan, but I don't want to leave my wife and children right now. I think you can understand. You'll have to come here.'
'I can't do that,' Alan said patiently. 'I have a job of my own, and - '