"No problem." He reached across the desk, shook Leydecker's hand, then headed for the door. He felt absurdly like Lieutenant Columbo on TV-all he needed was the cigar and the ratty trench coat. He put his hand on the knob, then paused and turned back.
"Can I ask you about something totally unrelated to Charlie Pickering?"
"Fire away."
"This morning in the Red Apple Store I heard that Mrs. Locher, my neighbor up the street, died in the night. Nothing so surprising about that; she had emphysema, But there are police-line tapes up between the sidewalk and her front yard, plus a sign on the door saying the site has been sealed by the Derry P,D. Do you know what it's about?"
Leydecker looked at him so long and hard that Ralph would have felt acutely uncomfortable... if not for the man's aura. There was nothing in it which communicated suspicion.
God, Ralph, you're taking these things a little too seriously aren't you?
Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Either way he was glad that the green flickers at the edges of Leydecker's aura had not reappeared, "Why are you looking at me that way?" Ralph asked. "If I presumed or spoke out of turn, I'm sorry."
"Not at all," Leydecker said. "It's a little weird, that's all.
If I tell you about it, can you keep it quiet?"
"Yes."
"It's your downstairs tenant I'm chiefly worried about.
When the word discretion is mentioned, it's not the Prof I think of."
Ralph laughed heartily. "I won't say a word to him-SCOut's Honor-but it's interesting you'd mention him; Bill vent to school with Mrs. Locher, way back when. Grammar school."
"Man, I can't imagine the Prof in grammar school," Leydecker said.
"Can you?"
"Sort of," Ralph said, but the picture which rose in his mind was an exceedingly peculiar one: Bill McGovern looking like a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Tom Sawyer in a pair of knickers, long white socks... and a Panama hat.
"We're not sure what happened to Mrs. Locher," Leydecker said.
"What we do know is that shortly after three a.m 911 logged an anonymous call from someone-a male-who claimed to have just seen two men, one carrying a pair of scissors, come out of Mrs. Locher's house."
"She was killed?" Ralph exclaimed, realizing two things simultaneously: that he sounded more believable than he ever would have expected, and that he had just crossed a bridge. He hadn't burned it behind him-not yet, anyway-but he would not be able to go back to the other side without a lot of explanations.
Leydecker turned his hands palms-up and shrugged. "If she was, it wasn't with a pair of scissors or any other sharp object. There wasn't a mark on her."
That, at least, was something of a relief.
"On the other hand, it's possible to scare someone to deathespecially someone who's old and sick-during the commission of a crime," Leydecker said. "Anyway, this'll be easier to explain if you let me just tell you what I know. It won't take long, believe me."
"Of course. Sorry."
"Want to hear something funny? The first person I thought of when I looked over the 911 call-sheet was you."
"Because of the insomnia, right?" Ralph asked. His voice was steady.
"That and the fact that the caller claimed to have seen these men from his living room. Your living room looks out on the Avenue, doesn't it?"
"Yes."
"Uh-huh. I even thought of listening to the tape, then I remembered that you were coming in today... and that you're sleeping through again. That's right, isn't it?"
Without an instant of pause or consideration, Ralph set fire to the bridge he had just crossed. "Well, I'm not sleeping like I did when I was sixteen and working two after-school jobs, I won't kid \'OLI about that, but if I was the guy who called 911 last night, I did it in my sleep."
"Exactly what I figured. Besides, if you saw something a little offkilter on the street, why would you make the call anonymously?"
"I don't know," Ralph said, and thought, But suppose it tta.v a little more than off-kilter, John? Suppose it was completely unbelievable?
"Me, neither," Leydecker said. "Your place has a view of Harris Avenue, yes, but so do about three dozen others... and just because the guy who made the call said he was inside, that doesn't mean he really was, does it?"
"I guess not. There's a pay-phone outside the Red Apple he could have called from, plus one outside the liquor store. A couple in Strawford Park, too, if they work."