It didn’t.
5
When Ralph came down, tucking his shirt into his jeans with one hand and holding his sneakers in the other, he found his wife sitting at the kitchen table. There was no morning cup of coffee in front of her, no juice, no cereal. He asked her if she was okay.
“No. There was a man here last night.”
He stopped where he was, one side of his shirt squared away, the other hanging down over his belt. He dropped his sneakers. “Say what?”
“A man. The one who killed Frank Peterson.”
He looked around, suddenly wide awake. “When? What are you talking about?”
“Last night. He’s gone now, but he had a message for you. Sit down, Ralph.”
He did, and she told him what had happened. He listened without saying a word, looking into her eyes. He saw nothing in them but absolute conviction. When she was done, he got up to check the burglar alarm console by the back door.
“It’s armed, Jeannie. And the door’s locked. At least this one is.”
“I know it’s armed. And they’re all locked. I checked. The windows are, too.”
“Then how—”
“I don’t know, but he was here.”
“Sitting right there.” He pointed to the archway.
“Yes. As if he didn’t want to get too far into the light.”
“And he was big, you say?”
“Yes. Maybe not as big as you—I couldn’t tell his height because he was sitting down—but he had broad shoulders and lots of muscle. Like a guy who spends three hours a day in a gym. Or lifting weights in a prison yard.”
He left the table and got down on his knees where the kitchen’s wooden floor met the living room carpet. She knew what he was looking for, and knew he wouldn’t find it. She had checked this, too, and it didn’t change her mind. If you weren’t crazy, you knew the difference between dreams and reality, even when the reality was far outside the boundaries of normal life. Once she might have doubted that （as she knew Ralph was doubting now）， but no more. Now she knew better.
He got up. “That’s a new carpet, honey. If a man had sat there, even for a short while, the feet of the chair would have left marks in the nap. There aren’t any.”
She nodded. “I know. But he was there.”
“What are you saying? That he was a ghost?”
“I don’t know what he was, but I know he was right. You have to stop. If you don’t, something bad is going to happen.” She went to him, tilting her head up to look him full in the face. “Something terrible.”
He took her hands. “This has been a stressful time, Jeannie. For you as much as for m—”
She pulled away. “Don’t go there, Ralph. Don’t. He was here.”
“For the sake of argument, say he was. I’ve been threatened before. Any cop worth his salt has been threatened.”
“You’re not the only one being threatened!” She had to struggle not to shout. This was like being caught in one of those ridiculous horror movies where no one believes the heroine when she says Jason or Freddy or Michael Myers has come back yet again. “He was in our house!”
He thought about going over it again: locked doors, locked windows, burglar alarm armed but quiet. He thought about reminding her that she had awakened this morning in her own bed, safe and sound. He could see by her face that none of those things would do any good. And an argument with his wife in her current state was the last thing he wanted.
“Was he burned, Jeannie? Like the man I saw at the courthouse?”
She shook her head.
“You’re sure? Because you said he was in the shadows.”
“He leaned forward at one point, and I saw a little. I saw enough.” She shuddered. “Broad forehead, shelving over his eyes. The eyes themselves were dark, maybe black, maybe brown, maybe deep blue, I couldn’t tell. His hair was short and bristly. Some gray, but most of it still black. He had a goatee. His lips were very red.”
The description struck a chime in his head, but Ralph didn’t trust the feeling; it was probably a false positive caused by her intensity. God knew he wanted to believe her. If there had been one single scrap of empirical evidence . . .
“Wait a minute, his feet! He was wearing moccasins without socks and there were these red blotches all over them. I thought it was psoriasis, but I suppose it could have been burns.”
He started the coffeemaker. “I don’t know what to tell you, Jeannie. You woke up in bed, and there’s just no sign anyone was—”