Thorn

Chapter Fifteen

Rage augments strength, and sometimes cunning and the will as well. If one can harness it properly, and take the time to seek out tools, and improvise means, then eventually if one has eyes that see in virtual darkness, in a matter of only a few hours perhaps, the door of even a heavy wall safe can be seen swung back, with its great lock reduced to hanging wreckage. Success had been greatly aided by the ability to work on both sides of the door alternately. And now the cans of films and containers of tapes could be brought out. It was something to do, somewhere to start; and it had become necessary now to make a start at once.

Electric power to the Seabright mansion had recently been shut off, a difficulty overcome by some attention to the main. Dorlan and his wife had also departed by the morning after the bombing, which was a help.

The laboratory tucked away in the mansion's lowest level was equipped with projection devices of all kinds, and these when sworn at properly in medieval tongues were at last persuaded to function properly. The private show, sans titles, soundtrack, or any other frills, began.

At first glance the star of the show, an enormous fat man who cavorted naked with adolescents of both sexes, as in some gross parody of more conventional porn, appeared to be Ellison Seabright himself. At a second look it did not appear to be him. The monumental man in the film looked as big as Ellison and resembled him facially but was even older, with a fringe of white hair round his massive head. Now and then he could be seen casting a look toward the hidden camera that must have done the filming through one of the concealed ports in the playroom wall. It was recognizably the playroom-lounge of this very house where the action was going on. The huge old man knew without a doubt that the camera was there. He was intending to watch himself in action later, evidently thus doubling his enjoyment of these acts. Here we did not have your common garden variety of senior citizen. Mr. Thorn, no stereotype of the golden years himself, had no doubt at all that he was beholding the image of Delaunay Seabright.

The broken safe had yielded up perhaps a dozen cans of film in all, with an equal number of videotape cartridges. A sampling of three, four, five, six of these containers showed no essential variation in content, though the supporting cast appeared to be always different. With one exception. Several times the same lean, dark man of thirty or thereabouts appeared—otherwise the players were all quite young and interchangeable, coming and going like seasonal flowers in a vase.

After the sixth sample, Thorn turned off the projector and sat in darkness trying to think. He could feel that sunny daylight had come, aboveground, but that did not concern him here. His course of breaking into the safe, despite its first feeling of instinctive rightness, was proving to be of no apparent help. The sad secrets of the safe seemed to have nothing to do at all with Mary Rogers or her death. Nor did they explain why Seabright or anyone else would have any reason to want to eliminate Thorn. Nothing here to tell Thorn who was guilty, where to start a search . . .

A faint sound, aboveground, out of doors but near the house. A car had stopped.

Someone else was coming to the mansion.

* * *

There was no hurry on this job, no need to be furtive. As former butler-bodyguard in the house, the man called Brandreth still had a set of keys. If the police or the FBI or reporters should be watching the place this morning, he could tell them he had been sent by Ellison Seabright to check on things, and Ellison Seabright would back him up.

Brandreth eased his car to a stop outside the iron gates, and got out to unlock them. Even before he stopped, he had noticed the other car, parked a little distance away on the other side of the road. Whoever was watching the place from over there wasn't trying to be very subtle about it. Brandreth of course would go on in, the perfectly respectable servant doing a job. Only when he was in the house and sure, very sure, that he was alone, would he get on with his real job and go to open the small hidden safe that Gliddon had told him of . . .

A couple of hours earlier, about dawn, Brandreth had met Gliddon in a small town in northern Arizona, to get keys and instructions. Brandreth had been at the door of the dingy hotel room, leaving, when Gliddon called him back. "And, listen, if you ever get any ideas about seeing what's on those tapes and films and putting them to use yourself—"

"Not me, boss. Not me."

"—then you can go right ahead and try. They're not worth a cent, get me? I'd go and take care of them myself if that was the case, even if I am supposed to be missing. They're just something that could mean trouble for whoever is found in possession of them, and Seabright tells me he wants 'em out of the house. So get 'em and dispose of 'em, and I mean thoroughly."

"I will. I—"

"How are you going to do it?"

Brandreth, with an inward sigh, leaned his large body against the doorframe. Gliddon's stare always unnerved him and he tried to take a relaxed pose in order not to show it. "Want me to bring 'em here?"

"All the way up here? No. I won't be here anyway, I have to disappear again. Just tear them up, burn them, scatter the ashes. Then stay in Phoenix, where I can get hold of you by phone. I may have another job for you soon."

Brandreth looked a question.

"No, I don't think it'll involve wasting anybody, this time. Never can tell, though."

"I did all right on that Blazer, huh?"

"I guess." Gliddon looked meditative. "It just bothers me that the guy we were supposed to get wasn't in it after all. Maybe we shouldn't have been so cute, using delayed timers and all."

"That was your—"

"I know, my idea." Gliddon spoke very patiently and reasonably. "I just didn't want your thing going off in the hotel garage, injuring innocent bystanders and all. Too much heat gets generated that way. It's bad publicity. Well, it looks like maybe we got rid of Thorn anyway; he may still be running. And I don't think our employer's really unhappy either that we blew up that bothersome broad. Teach her to go out with strangers." And Gliddon had smiled.

Brandreth, watching, felt something like a shudder, purely internal. Even if Gliddon was not as big, and a queer besides, Brandreth was afraid of him.

* * *

Now, several hours later, Brandreth going calmly about his butler's business had just got the iron gate unlocked when he heard a car door from across the road. He looked up and saw that a lone man had just got out of the vehicle, an ancient sort of wreck, that was parked over there. The man was walking across the road toward Brandreth, approaching tiredly, almost reluctantly. Not a cop, probably not a reporter either, although there was nothing specific about him to rule out either possibility. He had long brown hair and an unkempt beard, and looked as if he hadn't slept all night.

When the man got close he said: "I was just watching, wondering if anyone was home over here."

"The house is vacant now, sir." Brandreth was wary, but confident. He had several inches and about thirty pounds on the other man, not taking into account the pistol in his belt under his jacket, if this turned out to be a game of some kind. "I'm one of the staff. I just come round periodically to check if everything's all right."

"Oh." The other considered this, with vacant sadness. He put his hands in his pockets and brought out a big-bowled pipe and put it away again. "I'm Robinson Miller. Mary Rogers was . . . was a good friend of mine. She used to live here once. Maybe you knew her."

"Sir?"

"Mary Rogers. The girl who was blown up with a bomb last night. I've been at the morgue, looking at her, trying to find out something from the police. You ever look at anyone in a morgue? Who's been all torn to pieces by a bomb?"

Brandreth had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling. Talk about coincidence, this was good. Gliddon would get a chuckle out of this one when Brandreth told him—or would he? "I'm sorry to hear that, sir. There was something on the radio about someone being blown up in a car."

"She was out here, at this house, last night, you see. With a man named Thorn, the one the car was rented by. Did you know that?"

"No, sir, I had no idea she was here last night." Brandreth found the impulse to smile completely gone. He was watching this dazed man very carefully and at the same time trying to think. "Dorlan, he's the regular caretaker, would have been here then."

Robinson Miller wasn't really listening. "You see, I talked to the police at the morgue, but I didn't really say anything important. I wanted to think things over, first. Like I might have an idea of who was behind the bombing. It was these people here, this Seabright bunch, who killed her, one way or another. Oh, I don't blame you, you just work here. There was a man named Gliddon who worked here too, and he's supposed to be dead now but he's not."

"He's not?" Brandreth had no trouble at all in sounding surprised.

"No he isn't. Thorn told us that and they killed him, or tried to. Mary knew it, and they killed her."

This sounded like it might be too serious to let it get by without taking action. "Sir? You really don't look well. Would you like to come into the house for a moment? I can get you a cup of coffee, or a drink, or something."

Miller sighed. He rotated his head, and rubbed the back of his neck in weariness. "That's good of you. Maybe I will, if you're sure they're all gone. I wouldn't want to face them just now. I don't know what I might do."

"They're all gone, I'm sure. Listen, there might be a thing or two I could tell you about the Seabrights, if you're interested. I don't want to get involved, though."

Miller suddenly looked somewhat more awake. "A thing or two? Like what?"

"Oh, not about bombings. Nothing like that. But . . . look, sir, why don't you just drive your car in through the gate, and park near the house? There's been some problem lately with vandalism in the neighborhood."

"With my car, it doesn't matter," Miller said. But then when Brandreth looked anxious he trudged back across the road and started up his engine. With the gate standing open, they drove both cars in; then Miller waited in his while Brandreth locked up the gate again. Then he followed Brandreth's car up to the house, where neither car would be visible from outside the gate.

As he led the way up to the main door, Brandreth looked the place over carefully. The house looked tightly closed up, all right. But as soon as he had unlocked and opened the front door, he stopped; an overhead light just inside was burning, and he had thought that the electricity was supposed to be already turned off. Well, things might go a little easier on this visit if it wasn't.

Like a good butler Brandreth switched the overhead light off now, then gestured deferentially. "The bar's downstairs, sir. If you'd like a drink." Downstairs was more certainly private, if things should happen to take a turn for which privacy appeared desirable, as Brandreth was beginning to feel sure they would.

"It's morning, but—hell yes, I want a drink."

Since the power was still on, Brandreth led the way toward the elevator. Once he had his guest down in the rec room at the bar, he filled an order for Scotch on the rocks, and then tried to reach Dorlan on the intercom that communicated with the caretaker's quarters. No one answered. Evidently the man and his wife were gone, and the dogs with them, as Gliddon had said they would be. All satisfactory, the place would be lonely as a tomb.

Brandreth flipped off the intercom and gazed across the bar at Miller, who already looked like a lonely drunk. Half the Scotch was gone. Brandreth asked: "Did I understand you correctly, sir? That you have some reason to think Mr. Gliddon is still alive?"

Miller looked up, though not as if he really saw Brandreth, or heard him. He chewed his brown mustache. "You know, she just wouldn't leave it alone. She wouldn't. She kept harassing Seabright, and threw that stuff on him, and then she went off with Thorn to cook up something more. I don't know what, but . . . I guess she never really understood how dangerous the world can be."

"Sir, I can make you another one of those if you'd like."

Robinson Miller looked down at his glass for a fairly long time. "I don't know," he said at last.

"Excuse me, sir, I just want to check on something in here." While Brandreth was waiting for his man to get drunk and/or talk some more spontaneously, he thought he might as well do the job that he had come here for in the first place. Switching on more lights as he went, he walked off into the white tunnel and through it to the laboratory area just off the museum. Here a white panel in the wall came loose, just as Gliddon had said it would, and the small safe hidden behind it opened properly for Brandreth when he used the combination Gliddon had provided. He closed up the safe again and started to walk back to the lounge. All the valuable art had already been taken out, of course, and everything looked—

What was that wrecking bar doing, lying beside the inner laboratory door? Brandreth detoured a few steps and stood looking down at the tool. He thought he recognized it as one that was customarily kept in a shed near the caretaker's lodging.

He had broken into houses himself in his time, and he had a feel for when something was going on along that line. The lab door was locked, but it took Brandreth only a moment to find the right key in his bunch. With gun in hand he opened the locked door, to behold ruin—a big wall safe, one Gliddon hadn't even mentioned, yawning open. The door of it had somehow been cracked, with parts dangling from their steel roots in the concrete-reinforced wall.

Someone was behind him, and Brandreth spun, brandishing the gun. Miller had doubtless been approaching innocently, for he was carrying his drink in hand. At the sight of Brandreth's face and weapon he recoiled, and seemed to come fully awake for the first time.

Miller started to say: "You've got to be in on—" before he caught himself. Then he tried again, lamely: "There's been a robbery."

"Brilliant, cocksucker," said Brandreth, and raised the gun. He had been surprised and upset at a moment when he thought himself in control of the situation, and when that happened he sometimes tended to lose his head. Miller turned, cowering away, trying to protect his head. Brandreth brought the gunbarrel down, cracking on a forearm, bringing a yelp of pain. Then he laid the second blow alongside Miller's hairy head, not too hard. Miller pitched forward on his face, and lay there groaning, trying to move.

"Now, son of a bitch," said Brandreth. "You're gonna tell me—"

He reached down, meaning to yank the smaller man to his feet. But something that felt like a gorilla's paw closed on Brandreth's own left shoulder. His reaching arm was stopped. Then his whole body was yanked into the air, as it hadn't been since he was pint-sized and in the orphanage. Now he was being thrown. The room spun round him with his flight, and smashed him with its far wall, almost hard enough to knock him out.

He wasn't that easy to take out, though. Gun still in his right hand, he got himself up on one knee, ready to use it on—

—on one thin man in dark, burned-looking clothes. A man with a pale, half-familiar face, calm now as an utter lunatic. Thorn, God yes, it was Thorn. Brandreth, when playing butler, had one day answered the front door of this very house to let him in. He must be a black belt in judo, to throw a man of Brandreth's weight like that . . . but Brandreth held the top card in his own hand now. As his head cleared, he smiled, even though his left shoulder still wasn't working, and was going to begin to hurt like a bastard in a minute.

The situation, and Thorn's burned clothes, made Brandreth smile again. "Holy shit," he remarked. "You must have been standing right beside the car." Then he made a preemptory motion with his gun. "Who else is in here?"

"No one," the singed man said calmly. "We three are quite alone."

"You blew that safe? I guess you're pretty good in the trade yourself." Brandreth could see, in the far corner of the room, Robinson Miller getting slowly up to his hands and knees. A drop of blood dripped from Miller's head to the carpet. But this time it wasn't going to be Brandreth's job to clean up anything.

Thorn inquired: "In the trade?"

"You know. Making things go bang. I'm pretty good at that myself."

At last there came a change in Thorn's madly cool expression—a relief for Brandreth, it had begun to make him nervous to have someone look back at him like that from the wrong end of a gun.

"Then it was you," said Thorn, "who planted the bomb . . . ?" He had no need to finish. He could read his answer in Brandreth's face. "How fortunate," he added in a softer tone, and came walking forward.

"You're better off dead, you lunatic," said Brandreth, and fired. Twice.

And somehow missed, both times. How could he have missed? And fired again, and—

The grip this time came on the arm that held the gun. Brandreth screamed, feeling the bones go.

When he came out of it, or at least out of it enough to know where he was, he wished he hadn't. He was sitting propped up in one of the chairs inside the laboratory, which was almost dark. In front of him a projection screen had been rolled open, and Thorn stood nearby, fussing with a projector. Beyond Thorn the door was open to the small room with the cot, and Brandreth could see that Robinson Miller was lying in there. Miller's face looked pale in the dim light but he was only sleeping, for his chest rose and fell.

Thorn lifted his head from what he was doing, enough to glance at Brandreth from the corner of an eye. He inquired softly: "What is on this film that you were carrying?"

"Honest to God . . . I don't know."

"We shall soon see, in any event. Why did you come to this house today?"

"I—I was the butler here. Just checking up—"

Thorn put out a hand and touched him on the arm. "That is a half-truth, and not acceptable. Ah, if screaming will relieve your feelings, pray continue. I feel sure that those who scream down here are never heard outside."

The next time Brandreth's senses cleared, Thorn was bending over him again, but only speaking very gently, pointing to a frozen image on the screen. "That is the face of Delaunay Seabright, is it not?"

"I . . ." Brandreth tried his best to see the screen clearly. He was still slumped in his chair, groggy with shock, bathed in a cold sweat. His left arm wouldn't work and his right felt as if the bones might be about to poke out through his coat sleeve. He didn't want to know if they really were. "I dunno." His voice was pitiful. "I never saw Delaunay. Honest to God. Ellison's the one who hired me."

"And Gliddon?"

"Gliddon was already working for the Seabrights. I take orders from Gliddon. He passes on what . . . Ellison wants." Brandreth drew a deep, shuddering breath. Once he had been seriously afraid of Gliddon. But now he understood more fully what it could mean to be afraid. "Gliddon's supposed to be dead now. But he's not."

"To be sure," Thorn said soothingly. "And it was Gliddon who sent you here to get this film?"

Brandreth nodded. He could feel another faint coming on now, and tried to fight it back. He knew that if he fainted now he was going to be revived. But he didn't know how.

"And what were you to do with it?"

"Destroy it. The film and tape both. Just the ones in the little, hidden safe. Gliddon said there were more in a big wall safe somewhere, the one you blew I guess. But he didn't care about those. Why these are so important I don't know. Something big is going on here that I don't know about . . . I don't ask questions. I need help with this arm. Or I'm gonna pass out."

"Who helped you with the bombing?"

"I . . . do all that on my own. Gliddon just told me to do it."

"Not Ellison Seabright?"

"It was supposed to be what he wanted done. I dunno. I hardly ever talk to Ellison. He's supposed to be in Santa Fe now. As far as I know, he is."

Thorn turned away, to the projector. Brandreth let out a sighing groan. In the next room, Robinson Miller mumbled something but did not wake up. Now the screen darkened, then brightened again with a closeup of Delaunay's face, talking.

"This will be Session Thirteen," Delaunay's bass voice said, addressing the camera. He was filmed sitting in the laboratory. He was wearing a turtleneck sweater under an expensive sport coat, and looked vastly more competent, somehow, than his half-brother ever did. "Session Thirteen, on the fourth of April. I think we made real progress yesterday, and I hope for more today."

Darkness again, and when the scene came back there were two people sitting in the lab. In a soft reclining chair facing Delaunay and what was probably a hidden camera sat a teenaged girl with brown hair, small and slight, demurely dressed. Delaunay was also fully clothed, and it was soon apparent that both participants were likely to remain that way.

The girl was gazing, dreamily, at a small instrument on Delaunay's desk that sent a rhythmic, gentle, flashing light into her eyes.

"—sleep," Del was intoning gently as the scene started. "Deep sleep. And you will not wake up until I tell you. You will be able to hear me perfectly, and follow my instructions, but you will not awaken until I tell you . . . Helen? Are you asleep?"

"Yes," the girl answered in a calm, remote voice. Her eyes were now closed.

Delaunay brought his hand out from under his desk, where it had perhaps been on a hidden control that served to turn hidden recording devices off and on.

In Brandreth's ear Thorn whispered: "Who is the girl?"

"It must be Helen Seabright. The one who was killed. It looks like her pictures. I never saw her."

Thorn stood up straight, emitting a faint sigh.

"The last time we talked, Helen," Seabright was now saying, in the voice of a chatty psychiatrist, "you told me that next time you'd tell me why that painting fascinates you so."

"I don't want to talk about that, Uncle Del." It was a prim, calm voice, the voice of a young lady who knew her mind.

"But next time is now, Helen," Seabright prodded gently. When he got no response he tried again. "I'll make a bargain with you, if you like. How's this? I'll leave the painting where you can come and look at it anytime. And in return—what, Helen?" The girl had said something, very low.

"I said, it was really Annie who liked the painting anyway."

"Oh yes, of course. But you can like it too."

"And Annie's dead now."

"No more Annie. That's quite right. And do you miss her?"

Helen frowned.

Seabright said softly and with great certainty: "Annie was always running away. She had no home, no family, no love. Always and forever on the run. Don't you think it's really better that she's dead?"

"I don't miss her, really. She's really better off . . . but sometimes . . ."

"Yes. All right. Now, as I started to say, Helen, I'll leave the painting out somewhere, where you can look at it. And in return you, now don't frown, you don't have to talk about the painting at all if you don't want to. Only about some other things, that happened to you when you were . . . much younger than you are now. How does that kind of bargain sound?"

The girl was troubled. Frowning, she shook her head, and mumbled something.

"We don't necessarily have to go back very far in the things we talk about. Not right away. Suppose we began with that night when, how shall I describe it, that night when Annie was here for the first time? Would it bother you—I see it would. All right. All right. You needn't do anything that you don't want to do. Not at all. Not for Uncle Del. Would you rather talk to me about the painting, then? It's a nice, fascinating old thing, isn't it?"

"Yes. Oh yes, it is." And Helen's agitation, that had been growing, eased somewhat.

"Who painted it, my dear? Who do you think did?"

Brandreth, somewhat surprised at himself that he still hadn't passed out again, heard a small, strange sound from somewhere nearby. From Thorn.

Delaunay Seabright's image explained: "You see, my dear, some people think it may have been done, long years ago, by a famous painter called Verrocchio. Have you heard of him?"

"Yes."

"Now don't say you have, don't say anything just to please me. You really did hear of Verrocchio, before I mentioned him?"

"Yes."

Seabright paused, as if hopeful that the girl might say more. When she did not, he went on: "Others, on the other hand, think it barely possible that a certain young boy did that painting. A boy who became quite famous in later life. Most authorities believe the boy was too young when this was painted, that he hadn't yet started to work in Mr. Verrocchio's studio. Now I wasn't there myself and I don't know. But I'd like very much to find out. If—"

The girl was toppling forward in her chair. Seabright moved quickly for all his bulk, to catch her, ease her tenderly back into a sitting position. Her face had gone completely pale, drained-looking. "All right, Helen. All right, that's it for today. You are feeling fine. You are going to wake up soon, when I tell you, as from a deep, refreshing sleep." It took another minute of careful coaxing and urging to bring the girl back into what appeared to be her original hypnotic state.

"I'm going to wake you up soon, Helen. First, though, would you like to give Uncle Del his big hug for the day?"

The girl's eyes opened for a moment, then closed again. She arose, dutifully, and walked to the man's chair to bend over him and hug him, gently, almost formally, like some shy distant niece. The huge man patted her back with one hand. His other hand went to the hidden control beneath his desk. The screen went dark.

* * *

The ringing phone jarred Chicago police lieutenant Joe Keogh out of sleep. He was lying in his and Kate's bedroom in their condominium apartment on the North Side, just off Lake Shore Drive. This was not one of the supremely expensive towers down close to Michigan Boulevard, but an older building of modest height, somewhat farther north. The place had large rooms, from the days when they built them that way, and hardwood floors and a fireplace. Joe would have been hard pressed to make the mortgage payments on his pay unaided, let alone trying to furnish and decorate the place the way Kate had. He found it really pleasant to have married into money.

He rolled his spare, muscular body over in the wide waterbed, establishing waves, and lifted the phone. "Hello, who's this?" At home he used a more guarded answering technique than the efficient response that was his habit at the office.

"Joseph, I have some information for you."

Joe was fully awake in an instant. He switched on the bedside lamp, and at the same time glanced over his shoulder toward Kate, as if for reassurance that she still slept at his side. He could see, between a mounded blue blanket and a white pillow, a familiar mass of honey-blond hair and the curve of one naked shoulder. For a man with his job, middle-of-the-night phone calls were nothing out of the ordinary, and in six months of marriage Kate had already schooled herself to sleep through most of them.

Joe was sitting up straight now, running a hand through his sandy hair. The waterbed was no scene for serious drama; it wobbled gelatinously, gently rocking his body and his wife's. "Are you hurt?" he asked the phone.

"No, Joseph, not seriously. I appreciate your concern." The voice sounded much as it had on the comparatively few occasions when Joe had heard it before: precise, slightly accented in a vaguely middle-European way. Good-humored. Still good-humored, after a bombing, oh my God.

Joe found himself sweating slightly, and turned back the covers a little. "Go ahead, then."

"First of all I would like to confirm what I have heard about how it could have been done; how the bomb could possibly have been planted where it was."

"Yeah, the bomb. I heard about that. They called me about it. Were you near the car when it blew up?"

"I was in it."

"Oh." Good God. "And you're . . . who do you think planted the bomb?"

"On that I believe I now have information that is accurate, if incomplete. The technician was a man named Brandreth, acting on orders from a man called Gliddon. The very same, I believe, whose aircraft was supposedly lost not long ago."

"Ah. That business about the painting. And where are Brandreth and Gliddon now? And how do you spell Brandreth?"

"Gliddon is probably somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico; I have no precise information. And Brandreth can be found in the Seabright mansion in Phoenix. The place is otherwise unoccupied."

"He's in—"

"You need make no hurried calls, nor be concerned to write down his name. He will be there."

"Oh."

"Now about the bomb. By the way, Joseph, is your home telephone secure?"

"I guess. Internal Investigation doesn't tap it any more, if that's what you mean. Since you were here in Chicago they've given up. They don't want to know what's going on with me."

"Then let us discuss the bomb. No one, I think, could have planted it in that vehicle between the last proper functioning of the starter and the explosion."

"Okay, I have a couple of ideas. Sometimes I talk shop with a friend of mine who's on the Bomb Squad. It's possible to use a detonator that doesn't function until the second or third time the starter's used. Or to use a timer. A timer could be set for a specific time, or else not to start running until the engine did."

"I see. Yes, that confirms what I have been told. Thank you."

Joe glanced again at Kate. She hadn't moved, and he thought it probable that she was still asleep. He said: "The Phoenix police told me on the phone that it looked like a real professional job. See, your hotel there had a record of a call from your room to my number at the station here in Chicago. So naturally one of the first things Phoenix did in their investigation was to call me."

"Naturally. I suppose they named no suspects? Did the name of Ellison Seabright arise at all in your conversation?"

"No it didn't. I wouldn't have expected them to name me suspects even if they had some. You think he was involved too?"

"Gliddon works for the Seabright family. Or he did. Much is still obscure to me. And there are matters involved that I find personally troubling. I want to be certain about Ellison before I move against him."

"Please do."

"And what," the distant voice inquired, with casual brightness, "did you say to the Phoenix police about me?"

Kate had moved. She was facing Joe now, and at least one of her baby-blue eyes was open, regarding him over a mound of pillow as she waited calmly to find out what was going on. Maybe she had already heard enough to know, or guess, who he was talking to.

Still watching Kate, Joe cleared his throat. "I told them that a man calling himself Thorn sometimes phones me and gives me information. That I had no idea of this Thorn's real name or where he lives or where he calls me from. That's not as crazy as it might sound. There actually are informants who behave like that, and sometimes they give useful information."

When the other end of the line remained silent, Joe went on: "Of course the next thing they asked was what you had been calling me about from Phoenix." He paused again here, thinking carefully. If ever it should come to a choice between getting himself into legal trouble, police trouble, and making an enemy out of the man now on the phone, he knew which choice he'd have to make. Kate's family could afford the best in legal help, but a lot of good that would do him if—"I said you'd talked to me about a possible lead on the missing painting that's been in the news, but that you hadn't given me anything definite on it at all. Is that all right?"

"Yes, Joe, that is quite all right." A soothing tone.

"Of course they quickly discovered that there isn't any Oak Tree, Illinois. And since your home address was a fake they'll probably assume that the name Thorn's a fake too. So most likely they're stuck as to where to look for you next. Since your body wasn't found with the car, they'll assume you weren't in it. Maybe they think you planted the bomb yourself. By the way, there were parts of a pair of men's shoes, pretty well destroyed, found in the wreckage."

"I am not surprised to hear it. Brandreth's shoes fit me tolerably well."

"They thought the woman's body was lying on the wrong side of the vehicle for her to have been in the driver's seat. It was the Mary Rogers you were asking about, I assume you know that. Say, was she a friend of yours? If so, I'm sorry."

The long-distance hum of equipment. "We had not grown to know each other well," Thorn replied at last. "Still, I think a certain rapport was beginning to grow between us. We might have become good friends. One has few good friends even in a long life, and one loses even them. Yes, her death grieves me."

Kate reached out to touch Joe's arm with one finger. When he looked at her, her lips formed a silent, one-word question: Judy?

Joe shook his head minimally. He had no reason to think as yet that Judy had come into it at all. Then he asked the telephone: "What about that O'Grandison you were asking about, is he connected with this in any way? None of my contacts here seem to know where he is. They say they haven't seen him for a while. Have you reached him yet?"

"I have not. I know no more about him now than when I spoke with you last."

"Okay. Do you want me to tell Phoenix that I've heard from you again? That you blame the bombing on Gliddon and this Brandreth or whoever he is?"

Thorn took a moment before answering. "If in return, when you hear anything about the whereabouts of Gliddon, you are willing to tell me—then yes, you may tell them that."

"On second thought I guess I won't have to mention Brandreth. But I'll tell them that you called again, and that you claim Gliddon's still alive. How's that?"

"That will be fine . . . Joseph."

"What?"

"Do not worry, about me. I mean that I am an old friend of Kate's family, which is now yours. I know that you are my friend, and mean well. And I am not all that greatly concerned about what you tell or do not tell the police in Phoenix or anywhere else. Trouble with the law does not mean much to me, ultimately. Take care of Kate, and of yourself."

And with a distant click the line went dead. Joe had the vague sensation that his ears were burning. As if he had been caught out in cowardice.

Slowly he hung up the phone, and looked at Kate. He said: "I was going to tell you. I did call your little sister, earlier, trying to warn her not to get involved in this. She got a little angry at me, but I think she knows I'm right."

Kate looked doubtful at first. Then she looked worse than doubtful. "I don't know, Joe. You say you made her angry? Were you issuing orders?"

"Come on, give me credit for a little more sense than that."

"Still, I don't know. She's quite grown up now. Maybe even suggesting what she ought to do was a mistake."

"I figured she must have heard in the news about the bombing. I don't know if she knows that now he's calling himself Thorn. I don't have any idea when they've seen each other last, to tell the truth."

"I don't know either." Kate sighed. "Maybe it's all over. And her school is at least five hundred miles away from Phoenix."

"I don't think it's all over for her. She got angry. But as far as I could tell she wasn't really planning to do anything, like go to Arizona. She's anything but a wild kid, usually." Then Joe paused, listening to his own words, what he was saying about a girl who had had an affair with a vampire, however brief.

Husband and wife lay looking at each other, exchanging hopeful and supportive thoughts. At least Joe was trying to make the exchange hopeful, and he could see that Kate was doing the same.

"Well," Joe added at last, "we could call her again in the morning, and tell her that we know for sure now that he's still alive."

"She must know that much at least," Kate said positively. "There's still at least that much contact between them, if there's any relationship left at all."

"Yeah, I suppose. That's spooky." Joe knew that Kate knew more about the subject than he did.

"Give me a hug, Joey."

Joe rolled away from Kate to turn the light off. Then he rolled back again. Kate hugged his face against her bare breasts.

The telephone rang again.

For a moment, as he floundered his way back over the quaking mattress to pick up the receiver, Joe's imagination flickered with a truly horrible suggestion. Suppose, just suppose, that Thorn had been deranged somehow by the bomb's concussion, and turned into a crank phone caller. To imagine him gone mad, driven out of the state that with him passed for normality . . .

"Hello, who is this?"

In the next moment, puzzlement and fear had a new tangent. It was a woman's voice on the phone, one that Joe had never heard before. It sounded young, and, of all things, vaguely British. "Yes. Am I speaking to Mr. Joseph Keogh?"

"Lieutenant Keogh. Yes. Who is this?" It didn't sound like long-distance this time.

"Sorry, lieutenant, of course, of the police department. I don't suppose you would recognize my name. I should like to communicate with Mr. Jonathan Thorn. Have you any idea at what number I could reach him quickly?"