فصل 07 - بخش 09

7

Howie and Alec were already there, and Howie was smiling. ‘Takeoff’s been pushed back a bit,’ he said. ‘Sablo’s on his way.’

‘How did he manage that?’ Ralph asked.

‘He didn’t. I did. Well, I managed half of it. Judge Martinez is in the hospital with a perforated ulcer, and that was God’s doing. Or maybe just too much hot sauce. I’m a fan of Texas Pete myself, but the way that guy poured it on used to give me the shivers. As for the other case Lieutenant Sablo was supposed to testify in, the ADA owed me a favor.’

‘Should I ask why?’ Ralph asked.

‘No,’ Howie said, now smiling widely enough to show his back teeth.

With time to kill, the four of them sat in the small waiting room – nothing so grand as a departure lounge – and watched the planes take off and land. Howie said, ‘When I got home last night, I went on the Internet and read up on doppelg?ngers. Because that’s what this outsider is, wouldn’t you say?’

Holly shrugged. ‘It’s as good a word as any.’

‘The most famous fictional one is in a story by Edgar Allan Poe. “William Wilson”, it’s called.’

‘Jeannie knew about that one,’ Ralph said. ‘We talked about it.’

‘But there have been plenty in real life. Hundreds, it seems like. Including one on the Lusitania. There was a passenger named Rachel Withers, in first class, and several people saw another woman who looked just like her, right down to the streak of white in her hair, during the voyage. Some said the double was traveling in steerage. Some said she was part of the staff. Miss Withers and a gentleman friend went looking for her, and supposedly spotted her only seconds before a torpedo from a German U-boat hit on the starboard side. Miss Withers died, but her gentleman friend survived. He called her doppelg?nger “a harbinger of doom.” The French writer, Guy de Maupassant, met his doppelg?nger one day while walking on a street in Paris – same height, same hair, same eyes, same mustache, same accent.’

‘Well, the French,’ Alec said, shrugging. ‘What do you expect? De Maupassant probably bought him a glass of wine.’

‘The most famous case happened in 1845, at a girls’ school in Latvia. The teacher was writing on the blackboard when her exact double walked into the room, stood beside the teacher, and mimicked her every move, only without the chalk. Then she walked out. Nineteen students saw it happen. Isn’t that amazing?’

No one replied. Ralph was thinking of an infested cantaloupe, and disappearing footprints, and something Holly’s dead friend had said: No end to the universe. He supposed it was a concept some people might find uplifting, even beautiful. Ralph, a just-the-facts man for his entire working life, found it terrifying.

‘Well, I think it’s amazing,’ Howie said, a bit sulkily.

Alec said, ‘Tell me something, Holly. If this guy absorbs his victims’ thoughts and memories when he takes their faces – through some sort of mystic blood transfusion, I guess – how come he didn’t know where to find the nearest walk-in clinic? And then there’s Willow Rainwater, the cab driver. Maitland knew her from the kids’ basketball program at the Y, but the man she drove to Dubrow acted like he’d never met her. Didn’t call her Willow, or Ms Rainwater. Called her ma’am.’

‘I don’t know,’ Holly said, rather crossly. ‘All I do know I picked up on the fly, and I mean that literally, because I was on airplanes when I did my reading. The only thing I can do is make guesses, and I’m tired of that.’

‘Maybe it’s like speed-reading,’ Ralph said. ‘Speed readers are very proud of being able to go through long books cover to cover in a single sitting, but what they mostly pick up is the general gist. If you question them on the details, they usually come up blank.’ He paused. ‘At least that’s what my wife says. She’s in a book club, and there’s this one lady who’s a little boasty about her reading skills. Drives Jeannie crazy.’

They watched as the ground crew fueled the King Air and the two pilots did their pre-flight walk-around. Holly dragged out her iPad and began to read (Ralph thought she was moving along pretty speedily herself). At quarter to ten, a Subaru Forester pulled into the tiny Regis parking lot and Yune Sablo got out, shrugging a camo knapsack over one shoulder as he talked on his cell phone. He ended his call as he came in.

‘Amigos! C?mo est?n?’

‘Fine,’ Ralph said, standing. ‘Let’s get this show on the road.’

‘That was Claude Bolton I was talking to. He’s going to meet us at the Plainville airport. It’s about sixty miles from Marysville, where he lives.’

Alec raised his eyebrows. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘He’s worried. Says he didn’t sleep much last night, was up and down half a dozen times, felt like someone was watching the house. He said it reminded him of days in prison when everyone knew something was going to go down, but no one knew exactly what, only that it was going to be bad. Said his mother started to get the willies, too. He asked me exactly what was going on, and I told him we’d fill him in when we got there.’

Ralph turned to Holly. ‘If this outsider exists, and if he was close to Bolton, could Bolton feel his presence?’

Instead of protesting again about being asked to guess, she answered in a voice that was soft but very firm. ‘I’m sure of it.’