Free Chase: Roman by Dean Koontz

usual.
        They ate at twenty minutes to five, not bothering with dinner conversation, watching the silent phone.
        Two hours later Wallace arrived, looking thoroughly weary though he had only come on duty at six, less than an hour earlier. He said, ‘Mr Chase, do you think I might have a word, alone, with Jim?’
        ‘Sure,’ Chase said. He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. As an afterthought, he turned on the water in the sink and listened to the dead men whisper, though the noise put him on edge. He lowered the lid of the commode and sat down facing the empty bathtub, and he saw that it needed to be scrubbed out. He wondered if Tuppinger had noticed.
        Less than five minutes passed before Wallace knocked on the door. He said, ‘Sorry to have pushed you out of your own place like that.’ He smiled as if they were being very conspiratorial, and said, ‘Police business.’
        Chase said, ‘We haven't been lucky, as Tuppinger may have told you.’
        Wallace nodded. He looked peculiarly sheepish, and for the first time he could not meet Chase's gaze. ‘I've heard,’ he said.
        ‘It's the longest he's gone without calling.’
        Wallace nodded. ‘It's possible, you know, that he won't be calling at all, now.’
        ‘You mean, since he passed judgment on me?’
        Wallace said nothing, backed into the living room and turned to look at Tuppinger. When Chase followed, he saw that the other man was disconnecting wires and packing his equipment into the suitcase. Wallace said, ‘I'm afraid you're right, Mr Chase. The killer has passed his judgment, and he isn't going to try to contact you again. We don't want to keep a man tied up -’
        ‘You're leaving?’ Chase asked.
        Wallace did not even look in his direction. ‘Yes,’ he said.
        ‘But another few hours might -’
        ‘Might produce nothing,’ Wallace said. ‘What we're going to do, Mr Chase, is we're going to rely on you to tell us what Judge says if, as seems unlikely now, he should call again.’ He smiled at Chase.
        In that smile was all the explanation that Chase required. He said, ‘When Tuppinger sent me out for supper, he called you, didn't he?’ Not waiting for a response, he went on: ‘And he told you about the call from Dr Cauvel's secretary - the word “session” probably sparked him. And now you've talked to the good doctor.’
        Tuppinger finished packing the equipment and stood up. He hefted the case and looked quickly about the room to be sure he had not left anything behind.
        ‘Judge is real,’ Chase told Wallace.
        ‘I'm sure that he is,’ Wallace said. ‘That's why I want you to report any calls he might make to you.’ But his tone was that of an adult pretending with an adolescent.
        ‘You stupid bastard, he is real!’
        Wallace coloured from the neck up. When he spoke, there was tension in his voice, and the even tone was false. He said, ‘Mr Chase, you saved the girl, and you deserve to be praised for that. But the fact remains that no one has called here in nearly twenty-four hours. Also fact: if you believed such a man as Judge existed, you would have contacted us before this, after he first called. It was only natural to respond that way - especially for a duty-conscious young man like yourself. These things, examined in the light of your psychiatric record and Dr Cauvel's explanations, make it clear that the expenditure of one of our best men is not now required. Tuppinger has other duties.’
        Chase could see how overwhelmingly the evidence seemed to point to Dr Cauvel's thesis, just as he could see how his own behaviour - his fondness for whisky in front of Tuppinger, his inability to carry on a conversation, his anxiety to avoid publicity that might have appeared the protestation of a man who wanted just the opposite - could have reinforced it. Still, with his fists balled at his sides, he said, ‘Get