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went dark.
* * *
The ringing phone jarred Chicago police lieutenant Joe Keogh out of sleep. He was lying in his and
Kate's bedroom in their condominium apartment on the North Side, just off Lake Shore Drive. This was
not one of the supremely expensive towers down close to Michigan Boulevard, but an older building of
modest height, somewhat farther north. The place had large rooms, from the days when they built them
that way, and hardwood floors and a fireplace. Joe would have been hard pressed to make the mortgage
payments on his pay unaided, let alone trying to furnish and decorate the place the way Kate had. He
found it really pleasant to have married into money.
He rolled his spare, muscular body over in the wide waterbed, establishing waves, and lifted the phone.
"Hello, who's this?" At home he used a more guarded answering technique than the efficient response that
was his habit at the office.
"Joseph, I have some information for you."
Joe was fully awake in an instant. He switched on the bedside lamp, and at the same time glanced over
his shoulder toward Kate, as if for reassurance that she still slept at his side. He could see, between a
mounded blue blanket and a white pillow, a familiar mass of honey-blond hair and the curve of one
naked shoulder. For a man with his job, middle-of-the-night phone calls were nothing out of the ordinary,
and in six months of marriage Kate had already schooled herself to sleep through most of them.
Joe was sitting up straight now, running a hand through his sandy hair. The waterbed was no scene for
serious drama; it wobbled gelatinously, gently rocking his body and his wife's. "Are you hurt?" he asked
the phone.
"No, Joseph, not seriously. I appreciate your concern." The voice sounded much as it had on the
comparatively few occassions when Joe had heard it before: precise, slightly accented in a vaguely
middle-European way. Good-humored. Still good-humored, after a bombing, oh my God.
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Joe found himself sweating slightly, and turned back the covers a little. "Go ahead, then."
"First of all I would like to confirm what I have heard about how it could have been done; how the bomb
could possibly have been planted where it was."
"Yeah, the bomb. I heard about that. They called me about it. Were you near the car when it blew up?"
"I was in it."
"Oh." Good God. "And you're . . . who do you think planted the bomb?"
"On that I believe I now have information that is accurate, if incomplete. The technician was a man
named Brandreth, acting on orders from a man called Gliddon. The very same, I believe, whose aircraft
was supposedly lost not long ago."
"Ah. That business about the painting. And where are Brandreth and Gliddon now? And how do you
spell Brandreth?"
"Gliddon is probably somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico; I have no precise information. And
Brandreth can be found in the Seabright mansion in Phoenix. The place is otherwise unoccupied."
"He's in "
"You need make no hurried calls, nor be concerned to write down his name. He will be there."
"Oh."
"Now about the bomb. By the way, Joseph, is your home telephone secure?"
"I guess. Internal Investigation doesn't tap it any more, if that's what you mean. Since you were here in
Chicago they've given up. They don't want to know what's going on with me."
"Then let us discuss the bomb. No one, I think, could have planted it in that vehicle between the last
proper functioning of the starter and the explosion."
"Okay, I have a couple of ideas. Sometimes I talk shop with a friend of mine who's on the Bomb Squad.
It's possible to use a detonator that doesn't function until the second or third time the starter's used. Or to
use a timer. A timer could be set for a specific time, or else not to start running until the engine did."
"I see. Yes, that confirms what I have been told. Thank you."
Joe glanced again at Kate. She hadn't moved, and he thought it probable that she was still asleep. He
said: "The Phoenix police told me on the phone that it looked like a real professional job. See, your hotel
there had a record of a call from your room to my number at the station here in Chicago. So naturally one
of the first things Phoenix did in their investigation was to call me."
"Naturally. I suppose they named no suspects? Did the name of Ellison Seabright arise at all in your
conversation?"
"No it didn't. I wouldn't have expected them to name me suspects even if they had some. You think he
was involved too?"
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"Gliddon works for the Seabright family. Or he did. Much is still obscure to me. And there are matters
involved that I find personally troubling. I want to be certain about Ellison before I move against him."
"Please do."
"And what," the distant voice inquired, with casual brightness, "did you say to the Phoenix police about
me?"
Kate had moved. She was facing Joe now, and at least one of her baby-blue eyes was open, regarding
him over a mound of pillow as she waited calmly to find out what was going on. Maybe she had already
heard enough to know, or guess, who he was talking to.
Still watching Kate, Joe cleared his throat. "I told them that a man calling himself Thorn sometimes
phones me and gives me information. That I had no idea of this Thorn's real name or where he lives or
where he calls me from. That's not as crazy as it might sound. There actually are informants who behave
like that, and sometimes they give useful information."
When the other end of the line remained silent, Joe went on: "Of course the next thing they asked was
what you had been calling me about from Phoenix." He paused again here, thinking carefully. If ever it
should come to a choice between getting himself into legal trouble, police trouble, and making an enemy
out of the man now on the phone, he knew which choice he'd have to make. Kate's family could afford
the best in legal help, but a lot of good that would do him if "I said you'd talked to me about a possible
lead on the missing painting that's been in the news, but that you hadn't given me anything definite on it at
all. Is that all right?"
"Yes, Joe, that is quite all right." A soothing tone.
"Of course they quickly discovered that there isn't any Oak Tree, Illinois. And since your home address
was a fake they'll probably assume that the name Thorn's a fake too. So most likely they're stuck as to
where to look for you next. Since your body wasn't found with the car, they'll assume you weren't in it.
Maybe they think you planted the bomb yourself. By the way, there were parts of a pair of men's shoes,
pretty well destroyed, found in the wreckage."
"I am not surprised to hear it. Brandreth's shoes fit me tolerably well."
"They thought the woman's body was lying on the wrong side of the vehicle for her to have been in the
driver's seat. It was the Mary Rogers you were asking about, I assume you know that. Say, was she a
friend of yours? If so, I'm sorry."
The long-distance hum of equipment. "We had not grown to know each other well," Thorn replied at
last. "Still, I think a certain rapport was beginning to grow between us. We might have become good
friends. One has few good friends even in a long life, and one loses even them. Yes, her death grieves
me."
Kate reached out to touch Joe's arm with one finger. When he looked at her, her lips formed a silent,
one-word question: Judy?
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