Stephen King - Duma Key

“Not yet.” My family and friends would be the most vulnerable, and the fact that they’d gone their separate ways afforded me no comfort. Perse had already demonstrated that her reach was long. And I had started meddling. I thought she was angry with me, or frightened of me, or both.

My first impulse was to call Pam, but then I remembered what Wireman had said about sparing myself a long, involved conversation. I consulted my own untrustworthy memory instead of Wireman’s little book… and for once, under pressure, it came through.

But I’ll get his answering machine, I thought. And I did, but at first I didn’t know it.

“Hello, Edgar.” Tom Riley’s voice, but not Tom’s voice. It was dead of emotion. It’s the drugs he takes, I thought… although that deadness hadn’t been there at the Scoto.

“Tom, listen and don’t say anyth—”

But the voice went on. That dead voice. “She’ll kill you, you know. You and all your friends. The way she’s killed me. Only I’m still alive.”

I staggered on my feet.

“ Edgar! ” Wireman said sharply. “Edgar, what’s wrong?”

“Shut up,” I said. “I need to hear.”

The message seemed to be over, but I could still hear him breathing. Slow, shallow respiration coming from Minnesota. Then he resumed.

“Being dead is better,” he said. “Now I have to go and kill Pam.”

“Tom!” I shouted at the message. “Tom, wake up !”

“After we’re dead we’re going to be married. It’s to be a shipboard wedding. She promised.”

“Tom!” Wireman and Jack crowding in, one gripping my arm, the other gripping my stump. I hardly noticed.

And then:

“Leave a message at the beep.”

The beep came and then the line went silent.

I didn’t hang up the phone; I dropped it. I turned to Wireman. “Tom Riley’s gone to kill my wife,” I said. And then went on, although the words didn’t feel like mine: “He may have done it already.”

Wireman didn’t ask for an explanation, just told me to call her. I put the telephone back to my ear, but couldn’t remember the number. Wireman read it to me, but I couldn’t punch it in; the bad side of my vision had, for the first time in weeks, come over all red.

Jack did it for me.

I stood listening to the phone ring in Mendota Heights, waiting for Pam’s bright, impersonal voice on the answering machine — a message saying she was in Florida but would return calls soon. Pam who was no longer in Florida, but who might be lying dead on her kitchen floor, with Tom Riley next to her, just as dead. This vision was so clear I could see blood on the cabinets, and on the knife in Tom’s stiffening hand.

One ring… two… three… the next would kick the answering machine into life…

“Hello?” It was Pam. She sounded breathless.

“Pam!” I shouted. “Jesus Christ, is it actually you? Answer me!”

“Edgar? Who told you?” She sounded totally bewildered. And still breathless. Or maybe not. That was a Pam-voice I knew: slightly foggy, the way she sounded when she had a cold, or when she was…

“Pam, are you crying?” And then, belatedly: “Told me what?”

“About Tom Riley,” she said. “I thought you might be his brother. Or — please, God, no — his mother.”

“What about Tom?”

“He was fine on the trip back,” she said, “laughing and showing off his new sketch, playing cards in the back of the plane with Kamen and some of the others.” Now she did start to cry, big sobs like static, her words coming in between. It was an ugly sound, but it was also beautiful. Because it was alive. “He was fine . And then, tonight, he killed himself. The papers will probably call it an accident, but it was suicide. That’s what Bozie says. Bozie has a friend on the cops who called and told him, and then he called me. Tom drove into a retaining wall at seventy miles an hour or more. No skid-marks. This was on Route 23, which means he was probably on his way here.”

I understood everything, and I didn’t need any phantom arm to tell me, either. There was something Perse wanted, because she was angry with me. Angry? Furious . Only Tom had had a moment of sanity — a moment of courage — and had taken a quick detour into a concrete cliff.

Wireman was making crazy what’s-going-on gestures in front of my face. I turned away from him.

“Panda, he saved your life.”

“ What? ”

“I know what I know,” I said. “The sketch he was showing off in the plane… it was one of mine, right?”

“Yes… he was so proud… Edgar, what are you —”

“Did it have a name? Did the sketch have a name? Do you know?”

“It was called Hello . He kept saying, ‘Don’t look much like Minnesota dere’… doing that dumb Yooper thing of his…” A pause, and I didn’t break in because I was trying to think. Then: “This is your special kind of knowing. Isn’t it?”

Hello, I was thinking. Yes, of course. The first sketch I’d done in Big Pink had also been one of the powerful ones. And Tom had bought it.

Goddamned Hello .

Wireman took the phone from me, gently but firmly.

“Pam? It’s Wireman. Is Tom Riley…?” He listened, nodding. His voice was very calm, very soothing. It was a voice I’d heard him use with Elizabeth. “All right… yes… yes, Edgar’s fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine down here. Sorry about Mr. Riley, of course. Only you need to do something for us, and it’s extremely important. I’m going to put you on speaker.” He pushed a button I hadn’t even noticed before. “Are you still there?”

“Yes…” Her voice was tinny but clear. And she was getting herself under control.

“How many of Edgar’s family and friends bought pictures?”

She considered. “Nobody in the family bought any of the actual paintings, I’m sure of that.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think they were sort of hoping — or maybe expecting’s the word — that in time… on the right birthday, or maybe at Christmas…”

“I understand. So they didn’t get anything.”

“I didn’t say that. Melinda’s boyfriend also bought one of the sketches. What’s this about? What’s wrong with the pictures? ”

Ric. My heart jumped. “Pam, this is Edgar. Did Melinda and Ric take the sketch with them?”

“With all those airplanes, including transatlantic? He asked that it be framed and shipped. I don’t think she knows. It was of flowers done in colored pencils.”

“So that one’s still at the Scoto.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure nobody else in the family bought paintings.”

She took maybe ten seconds to consider. It was agony. At last she said, “No. I’m positive.” You better be, Panda, I thought. “But Angel and Helen Slobotnik bought one. Mailbox with Flowers, I believe it’s called.”

I knew the one she was talking about. It was actually titled Mailbox with Oxeyes . And I thought that one was harmless, I thought that one was probably all mine, but still…

“They didn’t take it, did they?”

“No, because they were going to Orlando first, fly home from there. They also asked that it be framed and shipped.” No questions now, only answers. She sounded younger — like the Pam I had married, the one who’d kept my books back in those pre-Tom days. “Your surgeon — can’t remember his name—”

“Todd Jamieson.” I said it automatically. If I’d paused to think, I wouldn’t have been able to remember.

“Yes, him. He also bought a painting, and arranged for shipment. He wanted one of those spooky Girl and Ship ones, but they were spoken for. He settled for a conch-shell floating on the water.”