"Yes," said Harold Smith. "Very serious."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Relief surged through Harold Smith. "Yes, I do. I reallv do. But I can't."
"You know that I know. You don't have to pretend anymore."
"Shhh, this is an open line," said Harold Smith.
"I'm sorry. But you know what I'm talking about."
"Yes, I do. And honestly, if I could talk about it, you would be the one I'd be talking to. But the nature of my work-"
"Harold, there's a big wide-open space right beside me. I'm patting it, Harold. Can you hear me patting it?" Her voice was low and soothing.
"Yes, I can," Harold Smith said uncomfortably.
"I wish you were in this big wide empty space right now."
"I will be soon. Please believe me. I will be home as soon as I possibly can. It will be like it was."
"Like it has been-or like it used to be? It feels like we're settling back into old patterns. Me the undemanding wife and you the upright husband whose work comes first-always first. I'm not sure I could stand going back to that life, Harold."
"No, that isn't happening, I promise."
"I love you, Harold."
"I know. I feel the same way,"
"But you can't say the words, even after all these years. Those three simple words. Can you, Harold,"
"Some things don't have to be said."
"Call me. Soon."
"Good night, dear," said Harold Smith quietly, and hung up. He wished she hadn't used that sexy voice. It made him yearn for her again. But to protect her, Harold Smith had to keep his distance.
Smith returned to his computer. He felt a renewed burst of stamina. It had been so hard these last days, cooped up in his office, shielded by the Folcroft security guards, who were starting to wonder if they were truly on alert to keep a deranged patient from escaping-as Dr. Smith had told them-or to keep someone out.
Talking to his wife, Smith had felt his pent-up frustration drain away. He returned to his computer terminal, a faint smile tugging at the dryish corners of his mouth. His wife thought he still secretly worked for the CIA. For years, he had kept the true nature of his job at Folcroft from her. But intuitively she knew. She had known for a long time. She didn't, however, suspect CURE's existence. As long as she didn't, Harold Smith would continue to let her believe she was merely the long-suffering wife of a dedicated CIA bureaucrat. And admire her for that.
Smith pushed the thoughts of her from his mind and returned to the problem at hand.
Over and over, he had run test programs on the pattern of the Harold Smith killings. Over and over, there had been no correlations-no common background features, no family relationships, no patterns of criminal activities. Nothing tied the Harold Smiths together except that they were all named Harold Smith, were males over sixty, and had disappeared or died in grisly circumstances.
The evidence was circumstantial, but it was compelling. It looked like the work of a possibly insane serial killer. Certainly normal law-enforcement agencies, if they ever learned of the pattern, would come to that conclusion.
Dr. Harold W. Smith knew that he was the killer's real target. He knew it with a certainty that bordered on the psychic. He knew it because of who he was, and he knew he was next on the killer's route.
The waiting was becoming a problem. Smith wished the killer would find him, just to get it over with. Just to learn the identity of his enemy.
Smith decided to attack the problem from another angle. He ran a logical extraction program and began entering facts.
Fact 1: Unknown killer knows name of target.
Fact 2: Unknown killer knows approximate age of target.
Fact 3: Unknown killer selects targets as he travels, probably by road.
Query: How does unknown killer locate his targets? The computer busily searched its files, correlating data faster than any machine but the number-crunching supercomputers owned by the Pentagon. After a minute, answers began to scroll up the screen, each rated by probability factors. Smith selected the least likely probability for a control test.
The least likely probability indicated that the unknown killer selected his targets from local phone books. Smith asked the computer to sort the names of the murdered Harold Smiths into two categories: those who were listed in local phone directories and those with unlisted numbers. As an afterthought, he added a third category, those who did not own phones or were not listed under their own names.
Smith stared for a long moment at the computer's answer.
All thirteen victims were listed in the local phone directories.
"It's too simple," Smith told himself. "It can't be." But it was. Smith had been operating on the assumption that the killer was some highly trained intelligence agent who would use sophisticated resources and experienced methods to execute his goals. This was too crude, too amateurish, too random. It would take months, even years, before the unknown killer reached his objective. Conceivably, he might kill every Harold Smith in the target group before reaching the right one. If then.
Smith entered the Social Security files in Washington-the greatest repository of data on U.S. citizens in existence-and pulled out the addresses of all Harold Smiths in the target group currently living in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and upstate New York-the states where the unknown killer was likely to strike next.
There were only three Harold Smiths in that geographical area who were over sixty. The only one listed in the telephone book was Dr. Harold VV. Smith of Rye, New York, listed as the director of Folcroft. Smith did not have a listed home number.
T'he sweat began pouring from Smith's body so hot and so fast his glasses actually steamed. He wiped them off hastily.
If the killer was indeed picking his victims out of telephone directories, he should have been to Folcroft by now. He was overdue.
At that critical psychological moment, gunfire erupted outside Smith's office.
It was a short volley of shots, like a string of firecrackers going off. It barely penetrated the walls of Smith's office, but to a man trained to recognize gunfire, there was no mistaking it.
Smith grabbed the desk phone and punched the frontgate extension.
"What's happening down there?" he demanded.
"There's someone trying to get in, Dr. Smith. I think we chased him off."
"What did he look like?" Smith demanded. "Describe him."
"Wait. There he goes. He's gone over the fence."
"The fence! Is he on the fence or over it?"
"I dunno. He moved too fast."
"Describe him, please," said Dr. Smith, gaining control over his voice. Calmly he reached into his desk drawer and removed his old OSS-vintage .45 automatic. Gunshots came through on the receiver.