Chase: Roman

slept.
        It was not much, he supposed, certainly not what he had once thought would constitute a reasonable life style, but it was bearable. Because it was simple, it was also solid, easy to work within, empty of doubt and uncertainty, lacking in choices and decisions that might bring about another breakdown. Then, when the AP and UPI carried the story of the Vietnam hero who had declined to personally attend a White House ceremony for the awarding of the Congressional Medal of Honor (though he had not declined the medal itself, since he felt that would bring more publicity than he could handle), there was no time or opportunity for simplicity.
        He had weathered the uproar, the sentiment and enthusiasm, somehow, granting as few interviews as possible, talking in monosyllables on the phone. The only thing for which he was forced to leave his room was the banquet, and he had been able to cope with that only because he knew that once it was over, he could return to his attic apartment and pick up the uneventful life that had so recently been wrenched away from him.
        The incident in lovers’ lane had changed his plans, postponed a return to stability. The papers would carry it again, front page and with pictures. There would be more calls, more congratulations, more interviewers to be turned down. Then it would die out, in a week or two - if he could tolerate it that long - and things would be as they had once been, quiet and manageable.
        He took another sip of his drink. It tasted better than it had a short while ago.
        There were limits to what he could endure, however. Two more weeks of newspaper stories, telephone calls, job offers and marriage proposals would take him to the end of his meagre resources. If, during that same time, he had to share his room with an officer of the law and be followed everywhere he went, he would not hold up. Already he felt the same vague emptiness filling him that had filled him so completely in the hospital. It was that lack of purpose, that loss of desire to go on that he must stave off at all costs. Even if it meant withholding information from the authorities.
        He wouldn't tell the police about the call.
        He took more of his drink, went to the cupboard and refreshed it with another slug from the dark bottle.
        After all, it was unlikely that the killer was serious. He had to be a madman, for no sane person would attack a couple in a parked car and hack one of them nearly to pieces with a long-bladed butcher knife. Madmen were dangerous, to be sure, but they rarely ever did what they promised to do. Or, at least, that was what Chase thought.
        He understood that he was keeping a lead from the police, a contact they might make good use of. But the police were clever. They would find the man without Chase's aid. They must have fingerprints from the door handle of the Chevrolet, from the handle of the murder weapon. They had already thought to issue a statement that the killer would be suffering from a badly bruised throat and the resultant laryngitis. What he was keeping from them would do little to speed up their efficient system of detection and apprehension.
        He finished his drink. It had gone down quickly, smoothly.
        It was decided.
        He poured more whiskey and went back to bed, slid beneath the covers and stared at the blank eye of the television set. In a few days everything would be back to normal. He could settle into old routines, living comfortably on his disability pension and the moderately ample inheritance from his parents’ estate. There would be no need to get a job or to talk to anyone or to make decisions. His only task would be to consume enough whiskey to be able to sleep despite the nightmares.
        He finished his glassful. He slept.
        

    Two
        
        Chase rose early the next morning, frightened awake by nightmares full of dead men who were trying to talk to him. After that, the day deteriorated.
        His mistake was in trying to go on with it in a manner that denied anything unusual had happened. He rose, bathed, shaved, dressed and went downstairs to see if there was any mail on the hall table for him. There was none, but Mrs Fiedling heard him and hurried out of the perpetually darkened living room to show him the first edition of the Press-Dispatch. His picture was on the front page, turned half toward Louise Allenby getting out of the squad