Phantasos by Robert Barnard Page A

financially.”
    “Did he seem upset lately?” King asked.
    “There had been some prank calls,” Danny admitted. “One of them really upset him. He had been drinking more than usual. But, I mean, what are you guys trying to get me to say here?”
    “Hm,” Drummond said, and he jotted some notes into his memo pad before flipping it shut. “Danny, I have to tell you how we’re seeing this whole thing from our perspective. The sad, vague notes he left. The nature of his accident. Hell, with what you just told us about his girlfriend, it’s no wonder he chose to go the way he did. Train tracks. Poetic.”
    “His fiancé,” Danny said, correcting the officer. “Not girlfriend. And what the hell are you implying?” Danny demanded. He felt himself getting angry.
    “Danny,” King said, and he gave him a look—a caring look, but one that also said: Don’t turn this into something worse. “It might have been hard for you to see how troubled he was, with how close the two of you were—”
    “Yeah, we’re close! If he was ‘troubled’ I would have noticed—”
    “But the money problems, the tragic story of his fiancé,” King said, putting extra annunciation on ‘fiancé’, “the nature of the crime scene. I’m sorry to tell it to you like this, son.  We’re treating your friend’s death as a suicide.”
    “Like hell you are,” Danny said. “Didn’t you read the note?”
    “Which one?” Drummond said. “The one where he apologized for letting you down?”
    “No,” Danny said, narrowing his eyes. “The one where he says someone impersonating Shelly is following him.”
    King and Drummond shrugged. “We checked out that hotel north of town. The Sunway. Little old woman at the front desk says she remembered seeing Todd. Alone. There were only two rooms checked out today. One was to some guy in room 126—a crack head. Not really one to be easily mistaken for a blonde beauty. The other was in 201. Again, a male. We’ll pull any security tapes, of course, but I wouldn’t count on it helping with anything. The crime scene was—well, quite horrible—the worst many of us have ever seen. We’ve had experts combing through the wreckage for the past hour, and there was only one occupant in Mr. Prower’s Fiero, and that was Mr. Prower.”
    “It doesn’t make any sense,” Danny said, defeated.
    “These things never do,” King said, and the officers excused themselves.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
    Sixteen
     
    ALLEY HEARD THE FAMILIAR HISS OF oxygen pumping into him, the impatient droning of emergency sirens overhead.
    He didn’t want to open his eyes, he’d rather they just stay firmly shut and he could imagine the entire thing was a bad dream. I just wanted to play at the arcade with my friend, he thought. Why today, why today, why today…?
    At last, he blinked his eyes open, found himself looking into a bright fluorescent light. Four shadows converged over him: dark, featureless, their silhouettes only vaguely human shaped.
    Alley screamed out, “Get away!”
    Responding to his cry, one of the shadows loomed down closer, until it was nose-to-nose with Alley. Its breath smelled rotten, and it seemed to purr.
    He shut his eyes and again screamed, “Get away from me!”
    “What’s wrong with him?” Lauren asked, kneeling over her younger brother.
    Alley, relieved to hear the softness of his sister’s voice, summoned the courage to open his eyes once more. Leaning over him was Lauren, her long waves of hair tickling the tip of his nose.
    “You’re not him,” Alley said.
    The paramedic at the end of Alley’s gurney said, “He’s just confused. He’s coming to. Back up, give him a little room to breathe.”
    “What did you mean just now, Alley?” Lauren said. “What does ‘you’re not him’ mean?”
    Alley said, “It’s nothing. And I’m not confused.”
    Lauren leaned back away from her brother, following the