Fred Saberhagen - Dracula 04 by Thorn

Author:Thorn [Thorn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-15T22:52:32.881000+00:00

* * *

"Who's it from, Bill?" Judy Southerland followed the back of Bill Bird's blue shirt through the sunlight of highland New Mexico, along the pine-needle path that led from her cabin, past the schoolroom-studio where Bill taught and worked at sculpture, to the lodge that housed the school director's office.

Bill turned his head back briefly. He wasn't handsome, not by Judy's standards anyway, but very nice. "He said he was your brother-in-law. But then he said to be sure not to scare you, that the family's all okay."

"I see. Thanks." But Judy was sure she would have felt it had there been something serious wrong with Mom or Dad or Kate or Johnny; she felt things like that, even at a distance, and always had. There had been a bad dream last night, she suddenly remembered. She frowned, but the content of the dream escaped her now.

Brown-haired, sturdy, never in her young life a runaway, she walked wearing jeans and plaid shirt into the director's office. The outer room was otherwise unoccupied at the moment, maybe so she could take what sounded like an important call in privacy. The walls here, as in most of the other camp buildings, were of thick logs, the interior surfaces cut flat, heavily and neatly chinked. After that the walls had been sealed with a glossy finish through which the wood shone yellow. With walls like these it was possible for life indoors to be as civilized, as cultured, as anyone might wish, even amid mountains verging on wilderness. The fanciest interior furnishings did not look out of place. Fritz Scholder prints hung here in the office, along with the obligatory Navajo rugs.

Judy picked up the phone, meanwhile smiling reassuringly at Bill, who had remained hovering just in the doorway. "Hello," she said. Outside the screened window, open on this warm late spring afternoon, tall pines waved in a breeze.

"Judy? This is Joe. Kate and everybody here are all okay, it's nothing like that."

"So Bill said."

"But there's something I still thought I ought to talk to you about."

Judy glanced at her watch. Mid-afternoon in Chicago, one time zone away. Joe must be calling during his duty hours at the station; for him to do that, it must be something important indeed. She knew now who it was about; the feeling, though not the manifest content, of last night's nightmare came back in full force. She felt no surprise; as if, on some interior level, she had already known. "I didn't think it was the family, Joe."

"You see," said Joe's voice through the long-distance buzz, "I got a call just a little while ago from the Phoenix police. A vehicle was blown up with a bomb out there in the desert last night, and at least one person killed."

He can't be dead, I would have known at once if he were dead. "I follow you."

"They were trying to trace the man who had rented this vehicle. He had also occupied a certain hotel room out there, from which room a long-distance call was made to me here in Chicago.

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