Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

Miss Pringle escorted him to the outer door of the waiting room and closed it after him, leaving him alone in the hallway.

"Judge is real," Chase said to no one at all. "Isn't he?"

AT SIX O'CLOCK, CHASE WAS SITTING ON THE EDGE OF HIS BED BY THE nightstand and telephone, sipping Jack Daniel's. He put the drink down, wiped his sweaty hands on his slacks, cleared his throat so that his voice wouldn't catch when he tried to speak.

At five minutes past six he began to feel uneasy. He thought of going downstairs to ask Mrs. Fielding what time her clocks showed, in the event that his own was not functioning properly. He refrained from doing so only because he was afraid of missing the call while downstairs.

At six-fifteen he washed his hands.

At six-thirty he went to the cupboard, took down his whiskey bottle of the day — which he'd barely touched — and poured a glassful. He did not put it away again. He read the label, which he had studied a hundred times before, then carried his drink back to the bed.

By seven o'clock he was feeling the liquor. He settled back against the headboard and finally considered what Fauvel had said: that there was no Judge, that he had been illusory, a psychological mechanism for rationalizing the gradual diminishment of Chase's guilt complex. He tried to think about that, to study the meaning of it, but he could not be sure if this was a good or a bad development.

In the bathroom, he drew a tub of warm water and tested it until it was just right. He folded a damp washcloth on the wide porcelain rim of the tub and placed his drink on that. The whiskey, the water, and the rising steam conspired to make him feel as though he were floating up into soft clouds. He leaned back until his head touched the wall, closed his eyes, and tried not to think about anything — especially blocking all thoughts of Judge and the Medal of Honor and the nine months that he had spent on active duty in Nam.

Unfortunately, he began to think of Louise Allenby, the girl whose life he had saved, and in his mind's eye he saw her small, trembling, bare breasts, which had looked so inviting in the weak light of the car in lovers' lane. The thought, though pleasant enough, was unfortunate because it contributed to his first erection in nearly a year. That development was perhaps desirable; he wasn't sure. But it seemed inappropriate, given the hideous circumstances in which he'd seen the girl half undressed. He was reminded of the blood in the car — and the blood reminded him of the reasons for his recent inability to function as a man. Those reasons were still so formidable that he couldn't face them alone. The erection was short-lived, and when it was gone, he wasn't certain if it indicated an eventual end to his psychological impotency or whether it had resulted only from the warm water.

He got out of the water when his whiskey glass was empty. He was toweling himself when the telephone rang.

The electric clock showed two minutes past eight.

Naked, he sat on the bed and answered the phone.

"Sorry I'm late," Judge said.

Dr. Fauvel had been wrong.

"I thought you weren't going to call," Chase said.

"I required a little more time than I'd expected to locate some information on you."

"What information?"

Judge ignored the question, intent on proceeding in his own fashion. "So you see a psychiatrist once a week, do you?"

Chase did not reply.

"That alone is fairly good proof that the accusation I made yesterday is true — that your disability pension is for mental, not physical, injuries."

Chase wished that he had a drink with him, but he could not ask Judge to hold on while he poured one. For reasons that he could not explain, he didn't want Judge to know that he drank heavily.

Chase said, "How did you find out?"

"Followed you this afternoon," Judge said.

"Bold."

"The righteous can afford to be bold."

"Of course."

Judge laughed as if delighted with himself. "I saw you going into the Kaine Building, and I got into the lobby fast enough to see which elevator you took and which floor you got off at. On the eighth floor, besides Dr. Fauvel's offices, there are two dentists and three insurance companies. It was simple enough to look in the waiting rooms of those other places and inquire after you, like a friend, with the secretaries and receptionists. I left the shrink's place for last, because I just knew that's where you were. When no one knew you in the other offices, I didn't have to risk glancing in Fauvel's waiting room. I knew."

Chase said, "So what?"

He hoped that he sounded more nonchalant than he felt, for it was somehow important to make the right impression on Judge. He was sweating again. He would need to take another bath by the time this conversation was concluded. And he would need a drink, a cold drink.

"As soon as I knew you were in the psychiatrist's office," Judge said, "I decided I had to obtain copies of his personal files on you. I remained in the building, out of sight in a maintenance closet, until all the offices were closed and the employees went home."

"I don't believe you," Chase said, aware of what was coming, dreading to hear it.

"You don't want to believe me, but you do." Judge took a long, slow breath before he continued: "The eighth floor was clear by six o'clock. By six-thirty I got the door open to Dr. Fauvel's suite. I know a little about such things, and I was very careful. I didn't damage the lock, and I didn't trip any alarms because there were none. I required an additional half an hour to locate his files and to secure your records, which I copied on his photocopier."

"Breaking and entering — then theft," Chase said.

"But it hardly matters on top of murder, does it?"

"You admit that what you've done is murder."

"No. Judgment. But the authorities don't understand. They call it murder. They're part of the problem. They're not good facilitators."

Chase said nothing.

"You'll receive in the mail, probably the day after tomorrow, complete copies of Dr. Fauvel's notes on you, along with copies of several articles he's written for various medical journals. You're mentioned in all these and are, in some of them, the sole subject of discussion. Not by name. 'Patient C,' he calls you. But it's clearly you."

Chase said, "I didn't know he'd done that."

"They're interesting articles, Chase. They'll give you some idea of what he thinks of you." Judge's tone changed, became more contemptuous. "Reading those records, Chase, I found more than enough to permit me to pass judgment on you."

"Oh?"

"I read all about how you got your Medal of Honor."

Chase waited.

"And I read about the tunnels and what you did in them — and how you failed to expose Lieutenant Zacharia when he destroyed the evidence and falsified the report. Do you think the Congress would have voted you the Medal of Honor if they knew you killed civilians, Chase?"

"Stop."

"You killed women, didn't you?"

"Maybe."

"You killed women and children, Chase, noncombatants."

"I'm not sure if I killed anyone," Chase said more to himself than to Judge. "I pulled the trigger… but I was… firing wildly at the walls… I don't know."

"Noncombatants."

"You don't know what it was like."

"Children, Chase."

"You know nothing about me."

"You killed children. What kind of animal are you, Chase?"

"Fuck you!" Chase had come to his feet as if something had exploded close behind him. "What would you know about it? Were you ever over there, did you ever have to serve in that stinking country?"

"Some patriotic paean to duty won't change my mind, Chase. We all love this country, but most of us realize there are limits to—"