Gary Brandner - Walkers

Avery Carlson did not raise his eyes. "It's at the end of the hall."

Hovde walked down the short hall and found the bathroom. It was sparkling clean, like the rest of the house. On a glass shelf over the toilet tank rested the hair dryer. It was one of the old bulky models that had been supplanted in recent years by more-compact versions. The cord was not plugged into the wall.

He picked up the dryer and examined it. At the base of the handle, where the double wire entered through a hole in the heavy plastic, an eighth of an inch of the rubber insulation had worn away. It bared just enough of the naked copper wire to make contact with the skin if it were held just so.

As he replaced the dryer, Hovde's eye caught a rolled-up pink shag bathmat that had been stuffed into the wastebasket beside the sink. He pulled the mat out and unrolled it. In the center were two burn marks, a foot and a half apart, each the size of a nickel.

A voice behind him said, "Yes, that's where she was standing."

Hovde looked around, surprised to see Avery Carlson standing in the doorway.

"She stepped out of the shower onto the rug there, and it was soaking wet. Grounded her, I guess."

Hovde nodded without saying anything.

"At first I thought she was dead," Carlson went on in a flat voice. "She wasn't breathing, and I couldn't find any heartbeat. I didn't know what to do, so I ran out to the living room and grabbed the phone. I was just dialing the operator to get help when I heard her voice behind me."

"You heard Mrs. Carlson's voice?" Hovde asked carefully.

Carlson tooked the scorched bathmat from Hovde, rolled it up, and shoved it back into the wastebasket. He turned and walked back out to the living room. Hovde followed.

"Yes, it was Yvonne's voice," Carlson said when they were sitting down again. "I turned around from the phone and saw her standing right there where we came in just now. She was… she didn't have any clothes on, and she looked, I don't know, funny."

"How did she look?" Hovde persisted,

"She was pale, her whole body, too pale. And her eyes were glittery and didn't seem to focus right. I figured it was the effect of the electric shock, and I was just glad she was alive."

"What happened after that?" Hovde asked gently.

"First I tried to put my arms around her, but she backed off real fast, and that wasn't like her. Then I wanted to call a doctor because of the way she looked and all."

Carlson seemed to lose his train of thought.

"Did you call a doctor?" Hovde said.

"Yvonne wouldn't let me. Didn't want anything to do with a doctor. Even grabbed me by the wrist when I started to reach for the phone. A really strong grip she had, too. Lots stronger than normal for her.

"Okay, if she didn't want to see a doctor, I wasn't going to force her. I said, 'Let's go to bed,' but she said she wasn't sleepy. I said, 'Okay, I'll sit up with you.' But she didn't want to sit either. She walked, that's all, just walked. Around and around the house, out to the kitchen, back in here, through the bedrooms, then the kitchen again. I couldn't get her to sit still. It was like she was pacing the floor, nervous, waiting for something."

"How long did that go on?"

"All night, as far as I know. I dropped off to sleep finally on the davenport, and when I woke up she was still at it-walking, walking, stopping every now and then to look out the window. Some time while I was asleep she put some clothes on, but her hair was still all messed up."

"Did she say anything to you during all this time?" Hovde asked.

"Not much, just a few words. And when she talked her voice was funny. Empty-sounding, like there wasn't any breath behind it."

"She didn't sleep?"

"Not that I know of. Didn't eat anything either. When I woke up and saw the shape she was in, I called my office and told them I wouldn't be in until later. I went out to the kitchen and made us a nice big breakfast-I used to do that on Sundays-but Vonnie wouldn't eat a bite of it." Carlson's voice caught, and he sat silently working his hands for a minute before he continued.

"All this time she didn't do anything but pace the floor and look out the window. Then, all of a sudden, about eleven o'clock, I guess, she grabbed her car keys off the mantel and headed out to the wagon. I ran after her. 'Where you going?' I asked her.

"She didn't even look at me. 'There's something I have to do,' she said, just like that. And that's all. She got in the car and drove off, and that's the last I saw of her. The next I heard was about three o'clock when I got the call from the police."

Carlson passed a hand roughly across his lips. "I guess you know what happened after that."

When he saw that Avery Carlson was not going to say any more, Hovde stood up and started moving toward the door. After a moment Carlson got up too.

"I want to thank you for giving me this much of your time," Hovde said. "And again, please accept my sympathy."

"Sure. Thanks," Carlson said.

Dr. Hovde left the neat, clean little house and drove back toward Los Angeles. The story Carlson had told left him deeply disturbed. And beyond that, the man's grief, still not fully realized, was a darker echo of his own loneliness for Marge…

"Oh, damn, damn, damn!" Hovde swore as he pulled onto the freeway heading south. He had the answers he came to get, but was he any better off? He knew things now he did not want to know.

There was simply no natural explanation for what had happened to Yvonne Carlson. No amount of time spent researching in medical libraries could answer the frightening questions raised by the evidence. There was no avoiding the fact that Yvonne Carlson had died at midnight on Wednesday. The autopsy showed that, and the woman's husband was a witness to it, even if he didn't know it. When she lay on the bathroom floor with the faulty hair dryer in her hand and 110 volts surging through her body, she was dead. And yet, thirteen hours later she had been behind the wheel of a station wagon that had almost run down Joana Raitt. The same Joana Raitt who had experienced a weird "death" by drowning the night before. Coincidence? As much as Warren Hovde wanted to believe there was no connection between the two women, he could not buy it. Joana was involved, no question. And what was more, Dr. Hovde had an overwhelming premonition that she was in danger.

When he got back to the Marina Village, Hovde gave no attention to the graceful parade of boats heading out the channel toward the ocean. He hurried into his apartment, fighting against a growing, irrational sense of urgency. He looked through his notebook and found Joana Raitt's telephone number. He punched it out on the pushbuttons, then sat trying to decide what he would say to her. In spite of his better judgment, he was involved in this thing now, and he had to do what he could to help Joana. To warn her.

The receiver burred repeatedly in his ear. After ten rings he gave up. She was not at home. Hovde left his apartment and hurried around to the poolside. There lithe-bodied young men and women played happily in the water where this nightmare had begun three days ago. The doctor ignored them and jogged across the tiled deck to Glen Early's apartment. He pushed the buzzer, leaned on it, but there was no response from inside.

All right, he had done everything he could. Whatever happened from now on, he need feel no guilt. He walked slowly past the pool and back to his own apartment. He closed the sliding glass door between him and the tennis players and drew the draperies.

He sat down and tried to concentrate on the medical journals he had set aside earlier. It was no good, the printed words would not combine into coherent sentences. They swam finally before his eyes, and he saw in his mind Yvonne Carlson, all pallid skin and glittery eyes, walking… walking.