3

NOON

IN BUDDY‘S NIGHTMARE two men were filling the town’s reservoir with cats. In the deepest shadows of the night, just before sunrise, they were standing at the edge of the pool, opening cages and pitching the animals into the water. The felines squalled about this assault on their dignity and comfort. Soon the reservoir was teeming with cats: alley cats, Siamese cats, Angora cats, Persian cats, black cats and gray cats and white cats and yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, old cats and kittens. Below the reservoir, in Black River, Buddy innocently turned on the cold water tap in his kitchen—and cats, dozens upon dozens of fiercely angry cats, began to spill into the sink, full-sized cats that had somehow, miraculously, passed through the plumbing, through narrow-gauge pipe and rat traps and elbow joints and filter screens. Screeching, wailing, hissing, biting, scratching cats fell over one another and clawed the porcelain and scrambled inexorably out of the sink as new streams of cats poured in behind them. Cats on the counter. Cats on the breadbox. Cats in the dish rack. They leapt to the floor and clambered atop the cupboards. One of them jumped on Buddy’s back as he turned to run. He tore it loose and threw it against the wall. The other cats were outraged by this cruelty. They Swarmed after Buddy, all of them spitting and snarling. He reached the bedroom/living room inches ahead of them, slammed and locked the door. They threw themselves against the far side of the barrier and yammered incessantly, but they weren’t strong enough to force their way through it.

Relieved that he had escaped them, Buddy turned—and saw ten-yard-square cages full of cats, scores of green eyes studying him intensely, and behind the cages two men wearing shoulder holsters, holding pistols, and dressed in black rubber scuba suits.

He woke up, sat up, and screamed. He flailed at the mattress, wrestled with the sheets, and pounded his fists into the pillows for a few seconds until, gradually, he realized that none of these things was a cat.

“Dream,” he mumbled.

Because Buddy slept in the mornings and early afternoons, the drapes were heavy, and there was virtually no light in the room. He quickly switched on the bedside lamp.

No cats.

No men in scuba suits.

Although he knew that he had been dreaming, although he’d had this same dream on each of the last three days, Buddy got out of bed, stepped into a pair of slippers that were as large as most men’s boots, and lumbered into the kitchen to check the water faucets. There were no cats streaming out of them, and that was a good thing to know.

However, he was badly shaken. He was no less affected by the dream for having endured it on two other occasions. All week his sleep had been disturbed by dreams of one sort or another; and he never was able to fall back to sleep once brought awake by a vivid nightmare.

The wall clock showed 12:13. He came home from the mill at half past eight and went to bed at half past nine, five days a week, as if he were a clockwork mechanism. Which meant that he had gotten barely three hours of sleep.

He went to the kitchen table, sat down, and opened the travel magazine that he had bought at the general store last Monday. He studied the photographs of divers in scuba suits.

why? he thought. Divers. Seamen. Guns. At the reservoir. Why? So late. Late at night. Dark. Divers. ‘Why? Figure it. Come on. Figure it. Can’t. Can. Can’t.

Can. Can’t. Divers. In woods. Night. So crazy. Can’t figure it.

He decided to shower, get dressed, and walk across the street to Edison’s General Store. It was time he asked Sam to figure it for him.

At 12:05 Rya watched a man in thick glasses, gray trousers, and a dark blue shirt enter Pauline Vicker’s rooming house. He was the man who had ordered Bob Thorp to kill Mark.

At 12:10 she went to St. Margaret Mary’s and hid in one of the confessionals at the right rear corner of the nave. Last week she had heard Emma mention the Friday lunch and card club that met all afternoon in the church basement.

Through a chink in the crimson velveteen confessional curtains, she could look across the back of the nave to the steps that ]ed down to the recreation room.

Women in bright summer dresses and pantSuits, many of them carrying umbrellas, arrived singly and in pairs for the next fifteen minutes—and Emma Thorp came through the foyer arch promptly at twelve thirty. Rya recognized her even in the dim light. As soon as Emma disappeared down the stairs, Rya left the confessional.

For a moment she was transfixed by the sight of the crucifix at the far end of the chamber. The wooden Christ seemed to be staring over all the pews, directly at her.

You could have saved my mother, she thought. You could have saved Mark. Why did you put killers on earth?

Of course the crucifix had no answer.

God helps those who help themselves, she thought. Okay. I’m going to help myself. I’m going to make them pay for what they did to Mark. I’m going to get proof of it. You wait and see if I don’t. You wait and see.

She was beginning to tremble again, and she felt tears at the Corners of her eyes. She took a minute to calm herself, then Walked out of the nave.

In the foyer she discovered that one of the main doors was open, and that the lowest of its four hinges had been removed. A toolbox stood on the foyer floor, and a variety of tools were spread out around it. The workman apparently had gone to get some piece of material that he had forgotten on his first trip.

She turned and looked through the archway at the twelve-foot-high crucifix.

The wooden eyes still seemed to be staring at her, a terribly sad expression in them.

Quickly, worried that the workman might return at any moment, she bent down, peered into the toolbox, and plucked a heavy wrench from it. She slipped the wrench into a pocket of her windbreaker and left the church.

At 12:35 she strolled past the municipal building which was at the northeast corner of the square. The police chief’s office was toward the rear of the first floor, and it had two large windows. The venetian blinds were raised. As she passed she saw Bob Thorp sitting at his desk, facing the windows; he was eating a sandwich and reading a magazine.

At 12:40 she stood in front of Ultman’s Cafe and watched as a dozen kids cycled north on Union Road toward the macadamed alley where some of the Friday races were held. Jeremy Thorp was one of the cyclists.

At 12:45, at the southern end of Union Road, Rya crossed the street, walked under the grapevine arbor, and went around to the back of the Thorp place. The lawn ended in brush and trees, no parallel streets and no buildings in that direction. There was no house to her left—just the lawn and the garage and the river. To her right the nearest dwelling was set closer to Union Road than was the Thorp house; therefore, she was not in anyone’s line of sight.

A polished copper knocker gleamed in the center of the door. To one side of that, near the knob, were three decorative windows, each six inches wide and nine inches long.

She knocked loudly.

No one answered.

When she tried the door she found that it was locked. She had expected as much.

She took the stolen wrench from her windbreaker, gripped it tightly in one hand, and used it to smash the middle pane in the verticle row of three. The blow made considerably more noise than she had anticipated—although not sufficient noise to discourage her. When she had broken every shard of glass out of the frame, she pocketed the wrench, reached through the window, and felt for the latch. She began to despair of ever locating the mechanism—and then her fingers touched cool metal. She fumbled with the lock for almost a minute, finally released it, withdrew her arm from the window, and shoved open the door.

Standing on the stoop, staring warily into the shadow-hung kitchen, she thought: ‘What if one of them comes back home and finds me in there?

Go ahead, she urged herself. You better go inside before you lose your courage.

I’m scared. They killed Mark.

You ran away this morning. Are you going to run away again? Are you going to run away from everything that scares you, from now until the day you die?

She walked into the kitchen.

Glass crunched underfoot.

When she reached the electric range where the murder had taken place, she stood quite still, poised to flee, and listened closely for movement. The refrigerator and the upright freezer rumbled softly, steadily. The clock-radio hummed. A loose window rattled as a gust of wind rushed along the side of the house. In the living room a grandfather clock, running a few minutes late, solemnly chimed the third quarter of the hour; the note reverberated long after the pipe had been struck. The house was filled with noises; but none of them had a human source; she was alone.

Having broken the law, having violated the sanctity of another person’s home, with the first and most dangerous step already taken, she couldn’t decide what to do next. Well . . Search the house. Of course. Search it from top to bottom.

Look for the body. But where to begin?

At last, when she realized that her indecision was an outgrowth of the fear which she was determined to overcome, when she realized that she was desperately afraid of finding Mark’s corpse even though she had come here to do precisely that, she began the search in the kitchen. There were only a few places in that room where the body of a nine-year-old boy might possibly be concealed. She looked in the pantry, in the refrigerator, and then in the freezer, but she uncovered nothing out of the ordinary.

When she opened the cabinet beneath the sink, however, she saw a bucket full of bloody rags. Not rags, really. Dish towels. They had used the towels to clean up, had thrown them in the bucket—and then apparently had forgotten to destroy the evidence. She picked up one of the cloths. It was wet, cold, and heavy with blood. She dropped it and gazed at her stained hand.

“Oh, Mark,” she said sadly, a bit breathlessly. A pain rose from deep inside of her, filled her chest. “Little Mark … You never ever hurt anyone. Not anyone. What they did to you. What an awful thing they did to you. Why?”

She stood up. Her knees felt weak.

Find the body, she thought.

No, she told herself.

You came here to find the body.

I’ve changed my mind. Find the body? No. No, that’s just… too much. Much too much. Finding him… Mark… with his skull cracked open … and his eyes rolled back in his head .

and dried blood all over his face … Too much. Even strong girls can’t deal with everything in life. Even strong girls have their limits, don’t they? This is mine. My limit. I can’t go looking … all through the house … just can’t . .

Beginning to cry, beginning to shake, she picked up the bucket and left the house.

At 12:45 Salsbury carried his briefcase down from his room and went to the parlor.

Pauline Vicker was sitting in the largest of the three armchairs. She was a heavyset woman in her early sixties. Fluffy gray hair. Ruddy complexion. Double chin. Merry eyes and a nearly constant smile. She had the archetypal grandmother’s face, the model for grandmothers’

faces in storybooks and movies. Her bare feet were propped up on a hassock. She was eating candies and watching a television soap opera.

From the doorway he said, “Mrs. Vicker.”

She glanced up, chewing a caramel. She had some trouble swallowing. Then: “Good afternoon, Mr. Deighton. If you’ve a complaint about your room or anything—do you think perhaps it could wait just a bit, a few minutes—not longer than that mind you—just until this show ends? It’s one of my favorite shows and—”

“I am the key,” he said impatiently.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed that she wasn’t going to be able to finish watching the program. “I am the lock.”

“Get up, Mrs. Vicker.”

She struggled out of the chair.

Fat old cow, he thought.

“What do you need?” she asked pleasantly.

“I’ll need this room for a while,” he said, walking to the desk which held her private telephone. “Don’t disturb me.”

“Am I to leave?”

“Yes. Now.”

She looked wistfully at the round maple table beside her armchair. “May I take my box of candy?”

“Yes, yes. Just get the hell out of here.”

Pleased, she snatched up the candy. “I’m as good as gone. As good as gone, Mr.

Deighton. You take your time here. I won’t let anyone disturb you.”

“Mrs. Vicker.”

“Yes?”

“Go to the kitchen.”

“All right.”

“Eat your chocolates if you want.”

“I will.”

“Listen to your radio, and wait in the kitchen until I come to see you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that completely clear?”

“Certainly. Certainly. I’ll do just what you say. See if I don’t. I’ll go straight out to the kitchen and eat my chocolates and listen—”

“And close the door as you leave,” he said sharply. “Leave now, Mrs. Vicker.”

She shut the parlor door behind her.

At the desk Salsbury opened his briefcase. He took from it a set of screwdrivers and one of the infinity transmitters—a small black box with several wires trailing from it—that Dawson had purchased in Brussels.

Smart, he thought. Clever. Clever of me to bring the IF. Didn’t know why I was packing it at the time. A hunch. Just a hunch. And it’s paid off now. Clever.

I’m on top of the situation. Right up there on top, in control. Full control.

Having carefully considered his options, algebraic even when he was so recently returned from the edge of panic, he had decided that it was time to hear what Paul Annendale was saying to the Edisons. There were a dozen miniature glass swans lined up across the top of the desk, each slightly different in size and shape and color from the one that preceded it. He brushed these figurines to the floor; they bounced on the carpet and clinked against one another. His mother had collected hand-blown figurines, although not swans. She favored glass dogs.

By the hundreds. He crushed one of the swans under his heel and imagined that it was a glass dog. Curiously satisfied by this gesture, he connected the infinity transmitter to the telephone and dialed the number of the general store. Across the street no telephone rang at the Edison’s place. Nevertheless, every receiver in the store, as well as in the family’s living quarters above the store, opened to Salsbury’s ear.

What he heard in the first couple of minutes broke down the paper-thin wall of composure that he had managed to rebuild since the murder. Buddy Pellineri, in his own half-literate fashion, was telling Sam and Jenny and Paul about the two men who had come down from the reservoir on the morning of August sixth.

Rossner and Holbrook had been seen!

However, that was neither the only nor the worst piece of bad news. Before Buddy had reached the end of his story, before Edison and the others had finished questioning him, Annendale’s daughter arrived with the bucket full of bloody rags. The damned bucket! In his haste to clean up the kitchen and hide the corpse, he had shoved the bucket under the sink and then had completely forgotten about it. The boy’s body wasn’t all that well hidden—but at least it wasn’t in the room where the murder had occurred. The damned bloody rags. He had left evidence at the scene of the crime, virtually out in plain sight where any fool could have found it!

He could no longer afford to spend hours formulating his response to the events of the morning. If he was to contain the crisis and save the project, he would have to think faster and move faster than he had ever done before.

He stepped on another glass swan and snapped it to pieces.