'How was she killed?' Thad asked, knowing the answer perfectly well. But sometimes you had to ask. God knew why.
'Throat was cut,' Alan said with what Thad suspected was intentional brutality. He followed it up a moment later. 'Still sure there's nothing you want to tell me?'
'In the morning. When we can look at each other.'
'Okay. I didn't think there was any harm in asking.'
'No. No harm.'
'The New York City Police have an APB out on a man named George Stark, your description.'
'Good.' And he supposed it was, although he knew it was also probably pointless. They almost certainly wouldn't find him if he didn't want to be found, and if anyone did, Thad thought that person would be sorry.
'Nine o'clock,' Pangborn said. 'Make sure you're at home, Thad.'
'Count on it.'
6
Liz took a tranquilizer and finally fell asleep. Thad drifted in and out of a thin, scratchy doze and got up at quarter past three to use the bathroom. As he was standing there, urinating into the bowl, he thought he heard the sparrows. He tensed, listening, the flow of his water drying up at once. The sound neither grew nor diminished, and after a few moments he realized it was only crickets. He looked out the window and saw a state police cruiser parked across the road, dark and silent. He might have thought it was also deserted if he hadn't seen the fitful wink of a cigarette ember. It seemed that he, Liz, and the twins were also under police protection. Or police guard, he thought, and went back to bed..Whichever it was, it seemed to provide a little peace of mind. He fell asleep and woke at eight,
with no memory of bad dreams. But of course the real bad dream was still out there. Somewhere.
Chapter Fourteen
Fools Stuffing
1
The guy with the stupid little pu**y-tickler mustache was a lot quicker than Stark had expected. Stark had been waiting for Michael Donaldson in the ninth-floor hallway of the building where Donaldson lived, just around the comer from Donaldson's apartment door. It all would have been easier if Stark could have gotten into the apartment first, as he had done with the bitch, but a single glance was enough to convince him that these locks, unlike hers, had not been put in by jiminy Cricket. It should have been all right just the same. It was late, and all the rabbits in the warren should have been fast asleep and dreaming of clover. Donaldson himself should have been slow and fuddled - when you came home at quarter of one in the morning, it wasn't from the public library.
Donaldson did seem a trifle fuddled, but he was not slow at all. When Stark stepped around the corner and slashed out with the razor as Donaldson fiddled and diddled with his keyring, he expected to blind the man quickly and efficiently. Then, before he could more than begin a cry, he would open Donaldson's throat, cutting his plumbing at the same time he severed his vocal cords.
Stark did not try to move quietly. He wanted Donaldson to hear him, wanted Donaldson to turn his face toward him. It would make it easier.
Donaldson did what he was supposed to at first. Stark whipped the razor at his face in a short, hard arc. But Donaldson managed to duck a little - not much, but too much for Stark's purposes. Instead of getting his eyes, the straight-razor laid his forehead open to the bone. A flap of skin curled down over Donaldson's eyebrows like a loose strip of wallpaper.
'HELP!' Donaldson blatted in a strangled, sheeplike voice, and there went your no-hitter. Fuck. Stark moved in, holding the straight-razor out in front of his own eyes with the blade slightly, turned up, like a matador saluting the bull before the first corrida. Okay; it didn't go just according to Hoyle every time. He hadn't blinded the stool-pigeon, but blood was pouring out of the cut on his forehead in what looked like pints, and what little Donaldson was seeing would be coming through a sticky red haze.
He slashed at Donaldson's throat and the bastard pulled his head back almost as fast as a rattlesnake recoiling from a strike, amazing speed, and Stark found himself admiring the man a little, ridiculous pu**y-tickler mustache or not.