her head. “There ain’t no Mr. Langston. He’s dead.”
“Oh,” I said.
“You reckon we ought to call the doctor?” Josie asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Wait a minute.”
Mrs. Langston stirred, and her eyes opened. I raised her with an arm round her shoulders, and held the whisky to her lips. She took a drink of it, and coughed, but kept it down. I handed the glass to Josie. “Get some water.”
In a moment she was able to sit up. I helped her into one of the armchairs and gave her another drink, mixed with water. Some of the color had come back to her face.
“Thank you,” she said shakily.
I waved it off impatiently. “Do you know who he is?”
“No,” she said.
“You don’t have any idea at all?” She shook her head helplessly. “But you reported it to the police.”
She nodded. “Several times.”
There was no time to lose. I went over to the phone and dialed Operator. “Give me the Sheriffs office.” A man’s voice answered after the second ring, and I said, “I’d like to speak to the Sheriff—”
“He’s not here. This is Magruder; what is it?”
“I’m calling from the Magnolia Lodge,” I said. “It’s about the psycho that’s been calling Mrs. Langston. I think you’ve had a complaint on it—”
“On the what?”
“A psycho,” I repeated. “A nut. He’s been bothering Mrs. Langston, calling her on the phone—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said. “What about him?”
“I think I can give you a lead, and if you work fast you may be able to nail him. He just hung up about two minutes ago—”
“Hold if, friend. Not so fast. Who are you?”
I took a deep breath. “My name’s Chatham. I’m staying at the motel, and I happened to be in the office here when the creep called this time. I listened to him—“
“Why?”
That might not be the stupidest question it would be possible for a police officer to ask, I thought, but it was close. I choked down a sarcastic reply. “Just to see if I could get a lead on where he was calling from—”
“And he told you? That was nice of him.”
I sighed. “No. I’m trying to tell you. I think I lucked into something that could help you—”
“Yeah. Yeah. Sure. You got his prints over the phone.”
“Then you’re not interested?”
“Listen, friend,” he said coldly, “you think we got nothing to do but pussyfoot around looking for a drunk on a telephone jag? Tell Mrs. Langston if she don’t want to listen to this goof all she’s got to do is hang up.”
“She can’t take much more of it,” I said.
“She don’t have to answer, does she?”
“A business phone?” I asked coldly.
“I can’t help what kind of phone she got. But nobody’s ever been hurt over one of ‘em, believe me.”
“I never thought of that,” I said. “I’ll tell her, and everything will be all right.” I hung up, burning.
2
I turned back to her. Josie had returned to work. She pushed a hand up through the dark hair with that weary gesture she had, and she was still too pale. One of these days she was going to come apart like a dropped plate.
“They ever do anything about it at all?” I asked.
“The first time or two. They sent a deputy out to talk to me. But I’m not sure they even believe me.”
That’s about it, I thought; it was a pretty even bet.
“He bother any other women, do you know?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” Then the horror came back into her eyes for a moment, and she cried, “Why does he do it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Why do they jump out of the shrubbery in a park without their clothes on? But they’re nearly always harmless.”
It occurred to me I was almost as silly as that clown Magruder. Harmless? Well, in any physical sense they were.
She glanced up at me. “Why did you ask me to answer him?”
I shrugged. “Force of habit. I used to be a cop.”
“Oh,” she said. “You wanted to keep him talking, is that it?”
“Sure. That’s your only connection with him, and once he hangs up he might as well be in another universe. The longer he spews, the more chance there is he’ll say something that’ll give you a lead. Or that you’ll hear something else in the background.”
She looked at me with quickened interest “And did you hear something?”
That’s right. He was calling from a box. That doesn’t mean much, of course; they nearly always do. But this