Four Past Midnight

  He approached the garbage cabinet and his stomach rolled over like a dog doing a trick. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and he wasn't sure he could take care of what needed taking care of. Bump's head was cocked far to the left, giving him a grotesque questioning look. His teeth, small, neat, and needle-sharp, were bared. There was a little blood around the blade of the screwdriver at the point where it was driven into his

  (bib)

  ruff, but not very much. Bump was a friendly cat; if Shooter had approached him, Bump would not have shied away. And that was what Shooter must have done, Mort thought, and wiped the sick sweat off his forehead. He had picked the cat up, snapped its neck between his fingers like a Popsicle stick, and then nailed it to the slanting roof of the garbage cabinet, all while Mort Rainey slept, if not the sleep of the just, that of the unheeding.

  Mort crumpled up the sheet of paper, stuffed it in his back pocket, then put his hand on Bump's chest. The body, not stiff and not even entirely cold, shifted under his hand. His stomach rolled again, but he forced his other hand to close around the screwdriver's yellow plastic handle and pull it free.

  He tossed the screwdriver onto the porch and held poor old Bump in his right hand like a bundle of rags. Now his stomach was in free fall, simply rolling and rolling and rolling. He lifted one of the two lids on top of the garbage cabinet, and secured it with the hook-and-eyelet that kept the heavy lid from crashing down on the arms or head of whoever was depositing trash inside. Three cans were lined up within. Mort lifted the lid from the center one and deposited Bump's body gently inside. It lay draped over the top of an olive-green Hefty bag like a fur stole.

  He was suddenly furious with Shooter. If the man had appeared in the driveway at that second, Mort would have charged him without a second thought--driven him to the ground and choked him if he could.

  Easy--it really is catching.

  Maybe it was. And maybe he didn't care. It wasn't just that Shooter had killed his only companion in this lonely October house by the lake; it was that he had done it while Mort was asleep, and in such a way that good old Bump had become an object of revulsion, something it was hard not to puke over.

  Most of all it was the fact that he had been forced to put his good cat in a garbage can like a piece of worthless trash.

  I'll bury him tomorrow. Right over in that soft patch to the left of the house. In sight of the lake.

  Yes, but tonight Bump would lie in undignified state on top of a Hefty bag in the garbage cabinet because some man--some crazy son of a bitch--could be out there, and the man had a grudge over a story Mort Rainey hadn't even thought of for the last five years or so. The man was crazy, and consequently Mort was afraid to bury Bump tonight, because, note or no note, Shooter might be out there.

  I want to kill him. And if the crazy bastard pushes me much more, I might just try to do it.

  He went inside, slammed the door, and locked it. Then he walked deliberately through the house, locking all the doors and windows. When that was done, he went back to the window by the porch door and stared pensively out into the darkness. He could see the screwdriver lying on the boards, and the dark round hole the blade had made when Shooter plunged it into the righthand lid of the garbage cabinet.

  All at once he remembered he had been about to try Amy again.

  He plugged the jack into the wall. He dialled rapidly, fingers tapping the old familiar keys which added up to home, and wondered if he would tell Amy about Bump.

  There was an unnaturally long pause after the preliminary clicks. He was about to hang up when there was one final click--so loud it was almost a thud--followed by a robot voice telling him that the number he had dialled was out of service.

  "Wonderful," he muttered. "What the hell did you do, Amy? Use it until it broke?"

  He pushed the disconnect button down, thinking he would have to call Isabelle Fortin after all, and while he was conning his memory for her number, the telephone rang in his hand.

  He hadn't realized how keyed up he was until that happened. He gave a screaky little cry and skipped backward, dropping the telephone handset on the floor and then almost tripping over the goddam bench Amy had bought and put by the telephone table, the bench absolutely no one, including Amy herself, ever used.

  He pawed out with one hand, grabbed the bookcase, and kept himself from falling. Then he snatched up the phone and said, "Hello? Is that you, Shooter?" For in that moment, when it seemed that the whole world was slowly but surely turning topsy-turvy, he couldn't imagine who else it could be.

  "Mort?" It was Amy, and she was nearly screaming. He knew the tone very well from the last two years of their marriage. It was either frustration or fury, more likely the latter. "Mort, is that you? Is it you, for God's sake? Mort? M--"

  "Yes, it's me," he said. He suddenly felt weary.

  "Where in the hell have you been? I've been trying to get you for the last three hours!"

  "Asleep," he said.

  "You pulled the jack." She spoke in the tired but accusatory tone of one who had been down this road before. "Well, you picked a great time to do it this time, champ." "I tried to call around five--"

  "I was at Ted's."

  "Well, somebody was there," he said. "Maybe--"

  "What do you mean, someone was there?" she asked, whiplash quick. "Who was there?"

  "How the hell would I know, Amy? You're the one in Derry, remember? You Derry, me Tashmore. All I know is that the line was busy when I tried to call you. If you were over at Ted's, then I assume Isabelle--"

  "I'm still at Ted's," she said, and now her voice was queerly flat. "I guess I'll be at Ted's for quite awhile to come, like it or not. Someone burned our house down, Mort. Someone burned it right to the ground." And suddenly Amy began to cry.

  15

  He had become so fixated on John Shooter that his immediate assumption, as he stood numbly in the hallway of the one remaining Rainey home with the telephone screwed against his ear, was that Shooter had burned the house down. Motive? Why, certainly, officer. He burned the house, a restored Victorian worth about $800,000, to get rid of a magazine. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, to be precise; June of 1980 issue.

  But could it have been Shooter? Surely not. The distance between Derry and Tashmore was over a hundred miles, and Bump's body had still been warm and flexible, the blood around the screwdriver blade tacky but not yet dry.

  If he hurried--

  Oh, quit it, why don't you? Pretty soon you'll be blaming Shooter for your divorce and thinking you've been sleeping sixteen hours out of every twenty-four because Shooter has been putting Phenobarb in your food. And after that? You can start writing letters to the paper saying that America's cocaine kingpin is a gentleman from Crow's Ass Mississippi named John Shooter. That he killed Jimmy Hoffa and also happened to be the famous second gun who fired at Kennedy from the grassy knoll in November of 1963. The man's crazy, okay... but do you really think he drove a hundred miles north and massacred your goddam house in order to kill a magazine? Especially when there must be copies of that magazine still in existence all across America? Get serious.

  But still... if he hurried ...

  No. It was ridiculous. But, Mort suddenly realized, he wouldn't be able to show the man his goddam proof, would he? Not unless...

  The study was at the back of the house; they had converted what had once been the loft of the carriage-barn.

  "Amy," he said.

  "It's so horrible!" she wept. "I was at Ted's and Isabelle called ... she said there were at least fifteen fire trucks there ... hoses spraying ... crowds ... rubberneckers ... gawkers ... you know how I hate it when people come and gawk at the house, even when it's not burning down ..."

  He had to bite down hard on the insides of his cheeks to stifle a wild bray of laughter. To laugh now would be the worst thing, the cruellest thing he could possibly do, because he did know. His success at his chosen trade after the years of struggle had been a great and fulfilling thing for him;
he sometimes felt like a man who has won his way through a perilous jungle where most other adventurers perish and has gained a fabulous prize by so doing. Amy had been glad for him, at least initially, but for her there had been a bitter downside: the loss of her identity not only as a private person but as a separate person.

  "Yes," he said as gently as he could, still biting at his cheeks to protect against the laughter which threatened. If he laughed, it would be at her unfortunate choice of phrasing, but she wouldn't see it that way. So often during their years together she had misinterpreted his laughter. "Yes, I know, hon. Tell me what happened."

  "Somebody burned down our house!" Amy cried tearily. "That's what happened!"

  "Is it a total loss?"

  "Yes. That's what the fire chief said." He could hear her gulping, trying to get herself under control, and then her tears stormed out again. "It b-b-burned fuh-fuh-flat!"

  "Even my study?"

  "That's w-where it st-started," she sniffled. "At least, that's what the fire chief said they thought. And it fits with what Patty saw."

  "Patty Champion?"

  The Champions owned the house next to the Raineys' on the right; the two lots were separated by a belt of yew trees that had slowly run wild over the years.

  "Yes. Just a second, Mort."

  He heard a mighty honk as she blew her nose, and when she came back on the line, she seemed more composed. "Patty was walking her dog, she told the firemen. This was a little while after it got dark. She walked past our house and saw a car parked under the portico. Then she heard a crash from inside, and saw fire in your big study window."

  "Did she see what kind of a car it was?" Mort asked. He felt sick in the pit of his stomach. As the news sank in, the John Shooter business began to dwindle in size and importance. It wasn't just the goddam June, 1980, issue of EQMM; it was almost all his manuscripts, both those which had been published and those which were incomplete, it was most of his first editions, his foreign editions, his contributors' copies.

  Oh, but that was only the start. They had lost their books, as many as four thousand volumes. All of Amy's clothes would have burned, if the damage was as bad as she said it was, and the antique furniture she had collected--sometimes with his help, but mostly on her own--would all be cinders and clinkers now. Her jewelry and their personal papers--insurance policies and so on--would probably be okay (the safe hidden at the back of the upstairs closet was supposed to be fireproof), but the Turkish rugs would be ash, the thousand or so videotapes melted lumps of plastic, the audiovisual equipment... his clothes ... their photographs, thousands of them....

  Good Christ, and the first thing he'd thought of was that goddam magazine.

  "No," Amy was saying, answering the question he had almost forgotten asking in his realization of how enormous the personal loss must be, "she couldn't tell what kind of car it was. She said she thought somebody must have used a Molotov cocktail, or something like that. Because of the way the fire came up in the window right after the sound of breaking glass. She said she started up the driveway and then the kitchen door opened and a man ran out. Bruno started to bark at him, but Patty got scared and pulled him back, although she said he just about ripped the leash out of her hand.

  "Then the man got into the car and started it up. He turned on the headlights, and Patty said they almost blinded her. She threw her arm up to shield her eyes and the car just roared out from under the portico ... that's what she said ... and she squeezed back against our front fence and pulled Bruno as hard as she could, or the man would have hit him. Then he turned out of the driveway and drove down the street, fast."

  "And she never saw what kind of car it was?"

  "No. First it was dark, and then, when the fire started to shine through your study window, the headlights dazzled her. She ran back to the house and called the fire department. Isabelle said they came fast, but you know how old our house is ... was... and... and how fast dry wood burns... especially if you use gasoline ..."

  Yes, he knew. Old, dry, full of wood, the house had been an arsonist's wet dream. But who? If not Shooter, who? This terrible news, coming on top of the day's events like a hideous dessert at the end of a loathsome meal, had almost completely paralyzed his ability to think.

  "He said it was probably gasoline... the fire chief, I mean... he was there first, but then the police came, and they kept asking questions, Mort, mostly about you... about any enemies you might have made ... enemies ... and I said I didn't think you h-had any enemies... I tried to answer all his questions ..."

  "I'm sure you did the best job you could," he said gently.

  She went on as if she hadn't heard him, speaking in breathless ellipses, like a telegraph operator relating dire news aloud just as it spills off the wire. "I didn't even know how to tell them we were divorced ... and of course they didn't know... it was Ted who had to tell them finally... Mort... my mother's Bible... it was on the nightstand in the bedroom ... there were pictures in it of my family ... and... and it was the only thing... only thing of hers I h-h-had ..."

  Her voice dissolved into miserable sobs.

  "I'll be up in the morning," he said. "If I leave at seven, I can be there by nine-thirty. Maybe by nine, now that there's no summer traffic. Where will you stay tonight? At Ted's?"

  "Yes," she said, sniffling. "I know you don't like him, Mort, but I don't know what I would have done without him tonight... how I could have handled it... you know... all their questions ..."

  "Then I'm glad you had him," he said firmly. He found the calmness, the civilization, in his voice really astounding. "Take care of yourself. Have you got your pills?" She'd had a tranquilizer prescription for the last six years of their marriage, but only took them when she had to fly ... or, he remembered, when he had some public function to fulfill. One which required the presence of the Designated Spouse.

  "They were in the medicine cabinet," she said dully. "It doesn't matter. I'm not stressed. Just heartsick."

  Mort almost told her he believed they were the same thing, and decided not to.

  "I'll be there as soon as I can," he said. "If you think I could do something by coming tonight--"

  "No," she said. "Where should we meet? Ted's?"

  Suddenly, unbidden, he saw his hand holding a chamber-maid's passkey. Saw it turning in the lock of a motel-room door. Saw the door swinging open. Saw the surprised faces above the sheet, Amy's on the left, Ted Milner's on the right. His blow-dried look had been knocked all aslant and asprawl by sleep, and to Mort he had looked a little bit like Alfalfa in the old Little Rascals short subjects. Seeing Ted's hair in sleep corkscrews like that had also made the man look really real to Mort for the first time. He had seen their dismay and their bare shoulders. And suddenly, almost randomly, he thought: A woman who would steal your love when your love was really all you had--

  "No," he said, "not Ted's. What about that little coffee shop on Witcham Street?"

  "Would you prefer I came alone?" She didn't sound angry, but she sounded ready to be angry. How well I know her, he thought. Every move, every lift and drop of her voice, every turn of phrase. And how well she must know me.

  "No," he said. "Bring Ted. That'd be fine." Not fine, but he could live with it. He thought.

  "Nine-thirty, then," she said, and he could hear her standing down a little. "Marchman's."

  "Is that the name of that place?"

  "Yes--Marchman's Restaurant."

  "Okay. Nine-thirty or a little earlier. If I get there first, I'll chalk a mark on the door--"

  "--and if I get there first, I'll rub it out," she finished the old catechism, and they both laughed a little. Mort found that even the laugh hurt. They knew each other, all right. Wasn't that what the years together were supposed to be for? And wasn't that why it hurt so goddam bad when you discovered that, not only could the years end, they really had?

  He suddenly thought of the note which had been stuck under one of the garbage cabinet's shake shingles--REMEMBE
R, YOU HAVE 3 DAYS. I AM NOT JOKING. He thought of saying, I've had a little trouble of my own down here, Amy, and then knew he couldn't add that to her current load of woe. It was his trouble.

  "If it had happened later, at least you would have saved your stuff," she was saying. "I don't like to think about all the manuscripts you must have lost, Mort. If you'd gotten the fireproof drawers two years ago, when Herb suggested them, maybe--"

  "I don't think it matters," Mort said. "I've got the manuscript of the new novel down here." He did, too. All fourteen shitty, wooden pages of it. "To hell with the rest. I'll see you tomorrow, Amy, I--"

  (love you)

  He closed his lips over it. They were divorced. Could he still love her? It seemed almost perverse. And even if he did, did he have any right to say so?

  "I'm sorry as hell about this," he told her instead.

  "So am I, Mort. So very sorry." She was starting to cry again. Now he could hear someone--a woman, probably Isabelle Fortin--comforting her.

  "Get some sleep, Amy."

  "You, too."

  He hung up. All at once the house seemed much quieter than it had on any of the other nights he had been here alone; he could hear nothing but the night wind whispering around the eaves and, very far off, a loon calling on the lake. He took the note out of his pocket, smoothed it out, and read it again. It was the sort of thing you were supposed to put aside for the police. In fact, it was the sort of thing you weren't even supposed to touch until the police had had a chance to photograph it and work their juju on it. It was--ruflle of drums and blast of trumpets, please--EVIDENCE.

  Well, fuck it, Mort thought, crumpling it up again. No police. Dave Newsome, the local constable, probably had trouble remembering what he'd eaten for breakfast by the time lunch rolled around, and he couldn't see taking the matter to either the county sheriff or the State Police. After all, it wasn't as though an attempt had been made on his life; his cat had been killed, but a cat wasn't a person. And in the wake of Amy's devastating news, John Shooter simply didn't seem as important anymore. He was one of the Crazy Folks, he had a bee in his bonnet, and he might be dangerous... but Mort felt more and more inclined to try and handle the business himself, even if Shooter was dangerous. Especially if he was dangerous.