The Outsider-Stephen King

  The picture switched back to Coben, who smiled and said, "That's a very good question."

  Before he could give a very good answer, Ralph backed up to Terry, standing to ask his question. He stared at the image for twenty seconds, then handed the iPad back to the district attorney.

  "Poof," Samuels said. "There goes our case."

  "DNA's still pending," Ralph said . . . or rather, heard himself say. He felt divorced from his own body. He supposed it was how boxers felt just before the ref stopped the fight. "And I still need to talk to Deborah Grant. After that I'm going up to Cap City to do some old-school detective work. Get off my ass and knock on doors, like the man said. Talk to people at the hotel, and at the Firepit, where they went to dinner." Then, thinking of Jeannie: "I want to look into the possibility of forensic evidence, as well."

  "Do you know how unlikely that is in a big city hotel, the best part of a week after the day in question?"

  "I do."

  "As for the restaurant, it probably won't even be open." Samuels sounded like a kid who's just been pushed down on the sidewalk by a bigger kid and scraped his knee. Ralph was coming to realize he didn't like this guy very much. He came across more and more as a quitter.

  "If it's near the hotel, chances are they'll be open for brunch."

  Samuels shook his head, still peering at the frozen image of Terry Maitland. "Even if we get a DNA match . . . which I'm starting to doubt . . . you've been in this job long enough to know that juries rarely convict based on DNA and fingerprints. The OJ trial is an excellent case in point."

  "The eyewits--"

  "Gold will demolish them on cross. Stanhope? Old and half-blind. 'Isn't it true you gave up your driver's license three years ago, Mrs. Stanhope?' June Morris? A kid who saw a bloody man from across the street. Scowcroft was drinking, and so was his buddy. Claude Bolton's got a drug jacket. The best you've got is Willow Rainwater, and I've got news for you, buddy, in this state people still don't care much for Indians. Don't much trust them."

  "But we're in too deep to back out," Ralph said.

  "That happens to be the dirty truth."

  They sat silently for a bit. Ralph's office door was open, and the station's main room was almost deserted, as it usually was on Sunday mornings in this small southwestern city. Ralph thought of telling Samuels that the video had jolted them away from the elephant in the room: a child had been murdered, and according to every bit of evidence they had gleaned, they had the man who'd done it. That Maitland appeared to have been seventy miles away was something that had to be addressed and clarified. There could be no rest for either of them until it was.

  "Come up to Cap City with me, if you want to."

  "Not going to happen," Samuels said. "I'm taking my ex-wife and the kids to Lake Ocoma. She's bringing a picnic. We're finally back on good terms, and I'd like not to jeopardize that."

  "Okay." The offer had been half-hearted, anyway. Ralph wanted to be by himself. He wanted to try to get his head around what had seemed so straightforward and was now looking like a colossal clusterfuck.

  He stood up. Bill Samuels put his iPad back in his briefcase and then stood up beside him. "I think we could lose our jobs over this, Ralph. And if Maitland walks, he'll sue. You know he will."

  "Go on to your picnic. Eat some sandwiches. This isn't over yet."

  Samuels left the office ahead of him, and something about his walk--the slumped shoulders, the briefcase banging dispiritedly at his knee--infuriated Ralph. "Bill?"

  Samuels turned.

  "A child in this town was viciously raped. Either before or just after, he may have been bitten to death. I'm still trying to get my head around that. Do you think his parents give a rodent's behind if we lose our jobs or the city gets sued?"

  Samuels made no reply, only crossed the deserted squadroom and went out into the early morning sunshine. It was going to be a great day for a picnic, but Ralph had an idea the DA wasn't going to enjoy it much.

  12

  Fred and Ollie had arrived in the Mercy Hospital ER waiting room shortly before Saturday night became Sunday morning, no more than three minutes behind the ambulance carrying Arlene Peterson. At that hour, the big waiting room had been jammed with the bruised and bleeding, the drunk and complaining, the crying and coughing. Like most ERs, the one at Mercy was extremely busy on Saturday nights, but by nine o'clock on Sunday morning, it was almost deserted. A man was holding a makeshift bandage over a bleeding hand. A woman sat with a feverish child in her lap, both of them watching Elmo caper on the TV set bolted high in one corner. A teenage girl with frizzy hair sat with her head back and her eyes closed and her hands clasped to her midriff.

  And there was them. The remains of the Peterson family. Fred had closed his eyes around six and drifted off to sleep, but Ollie only sat, staring at the elevator into which his mother had disappeared, sure that if he dozed, she would die. "Could you not have watched with me one hour?" Jesus had asked Peter, and that was a very good question, one you couldn't answer.

  At ten minutes past nine, the door of that elevator slid open and the doctor they had spoken to shortly after arriving stepped out. He was wearing blue scrubs and a sweat-stained blue surgical cap decorated with dancing red hearts. He looked very tired, and when he saw them, he turned to one side, as if wishing he could retreat. Ollie only had to see that involuntary flinch to know. He wished he could let his father sleep through the initial blast of bad news, but that would be wrong. Dad had known and loved her longer than Ollie had been alive, after all.

  "Huh!" Fred said, sitting up when Ollie shook his shoulder. "What?"

  Then he saw the doctor, who was removing his cap to expose a thatch of sweaty brown hair. "Gentlemen, I'm sorry to tell you that Mrs. Peterson has passed away. We tried hard to save her, and at first I thought we were going to be successful, but the damage was simply too great. Again, I'm very, very sorry."

  Fred stared at him unbelievingly for a moment, then let out a cry. The girl with the frizzy hair opened her eyes and stared at him. The feverish toddler cringed.

  Sorry, Ollie thought. That's the word of the day. Last week we were a family, now there's just Dad and me. Sorry's the word for that, all right. The very one, there is no other.

  Fred was weeping with his hands over his face. Ollie took him in his arms and held him.

  13

  After lunch, which Marcy and her girls only picked at, Marcy went into the bedroom to explore Terry's side of the closet. He was half of their partnership, but his clothes only took up a quarter of the space. Terry was an English teacher, a baseball and football coach, a fund-raiser when funds were required--which was like always--a husband, and a father. He was good at all of those jobs, but only the teaching gig paid, and he wasn't overloaded with dressy clothes. The blue suit was the best, it brought out the color of his eyes, but it was showing signs of wear, and no one with an eye for men's fashions was going to mistake it for Brioni. It was Men's Wearhouse, and four years old. She sighed, took it down, added a white shirt and a dark blue tie. She was putting them in a suit bag when the doorbell rang.

  It was Howie, dressed in duds much nicer than the ones Marcy had just bagged up. He gave the girls a quick hug and bussed Marcy on the cheek.

  "Are you going to bring my daddy home?" Gracie asked.

  "Not today, but soon," he said, taking the suit bag. "What about a pair of shoes, Marcy?"

  "Oh, God," she said. "I'm such a klutz."

  The black ones were okay, but they needed a polish. No time for that now, though. She put them in a bag and went back into the living room. "Okay, I'm ready."

  "All right. Step lively and pay no attention to the coyotes. Girls, keep the doors locked until your mom gets back, and don't answer the phone unless you recognize the number. Got it?"

  "We'll be okay," Sarah said. She didn't look okay. Neither of them did. Marcy wondered if it was possible for preteen girls to lose weight overnight. Surely not.

  "Here we go," Howie
said. He was bubbling over, cheerful.

  They left the house with Howie carrying the suit and Marcy carrying the shoes. The reporters once more surged to the edge of the lawn. Mrs. Maitland, have you talked to your husband? What have the police told you? Mr. Gold, has Terry Maitland responded to the charges? Are you going to request bail?

  "We have nothing to say at this time," Howie said, stone-faced, escorting Marcy to his Escalade through a glare of television lights (surely not necessary on this brilliant July day, Marcy thought). At the foot of the driveway, Howie powered down his window and leaned out to speak to one of the two cops on duty. "The Maitland girls are inside. You guys are responsible for seeing they're not bothered, right?"

  Neither responded, only looked at Howie with expressions that were either blank or hostile. Marcy couldn't tell which, but she leaned toward the latter.

  The joy and relief she'd felt after looking at that video--God bless Channel 81--hadn't left her, but there were still TV trucks and microphone-waving reporters in front of her house. Terry was still locked up--"in county," as Howie had put it, and what a terrible phrase that was, like something out of a lonesome country-and-western song. Strangers had searched their house and taken anything they pleased. The wooden faces of the policemen and their lack of response were the worst, though, far more unsettling than the TV lights and the shouted questions. A machine had swallowed her family. Howie said they would get out of it unharmed, but it hadn't happened yet.

  No, not yet.

  14

  Marcy was given a quick patdown by a sleepy-eyed female officer, who told her to dump her purse in the plastic basket provided and step through the metal detector. The officer also took their driver's licenses, put them in a Baggie, and tacked it to a bulletin board with many others. "Also the suit and shoes, missus."

  Marcy handed them over.

  "I want to see him in that suit and looking sharp when I come for him tomorrow morning," Howie said, and walked through the metal detector, which went off.

  "We'll be sure to tell his butler," said the officer on the far side of the detector. "Now get rid of whatever you've still got in your pockets and try again."

  The problem turned out to be his keyring. Howie handed it to the female officer and went through the detector a second time. "I've been here at least five thousand times, and I always forget my keys," he told Marcy. "It must be some kind of Freudian thing."

  She smiled nervously and made no reply. Her throat was dry, and she thought anything she said would come out in a croak.

  Another officer led them through one door, then another. Marcy heard laughing children and a buzz of adult conversation. They passed through a visiting area with brown industrial carpet on the floor. Children were playing. Prisoners in brown jumpsuits were talking with their wives, sweethearts, mothers. A large man with a purple birthmark dripping down one side of his face and a healing cut on the other was helping his young daughter rearrange the furniture in a dollhouse.

  This is all a dream, Marcy thought. An incredibly vivid one. I'll wake up with Terry beside me and tell him how I had a nightmare that he'd been arrested for murder. We'll laugh about it.

  One of the inmates pointed her out, with no attempt made to hide the gesture. The woman beside him stared, round-eyed, then whispered to another woman. The officer who was guiding them seemed to be having some trouble with the key-card that opened the door on the far side of the visiting area, and Marcy couldn't quite dismiss the idea that he was lollygagging on purpose. Before the lock clunked and he led them through, it seemed that everyone was staring at them. Even the kids.

  On the far side of the door was a hallway lined with small rooms divided by what looked like cloudy glass. Terry was sitting in one of these. At the sight of him, floating inside a brown jumpsuit that was far too big, Marcy began to cry. She stepped into her side of the booth and looked at her husband through what was not glass at all but a thick sheet of Perspex. She put a hand up, fingers splayed, and he put his up against it. There was a circle of small holes, like those in an old-fashioned telephone receiver, to talk through. "Stop crying, honey. If you don't, I'll start. And sit down."

  She sat, Howie crowding onto the bench beside her.

  "How are the girls?"

  "Fine. Worried about you, but better today. We've got some very good news. Honey, did you know Mr. Coben's speech was taped by the public access channel?"

  For a moment Terry just gaped. Then he began to laugh. "You know what, I think the woman who introduced him said something about that, but she was so long-winded I mostly tuned out. Holy shit."

  "Yes, it's an authentic holy shit," Howie said, smiling.

  Terry leaned forward until his forehead was almost touching the barrier. His eyes were bright, intent. "Marcy . . . Howie . . . I asked Coben something during the Q-and-A. I know it's a longshot, but maybe it got picked up on the audio. If it was, maybe they can run voice-recognition or something and do a match!"

  Marcy and Howie looked at each other and began to laugh. It was an uncommon sound in Maximum Security Visiting, and the guard at the end of the short corridor looked up, frowning.

  "What? What did I say?"

  "Terry, you're on video asking your question," Marcy said. "Do you understand? You are on the video."

  For a moment Terry didn't seem to comprehend what she was saying. Then he raised his fists and shook them beside his temples, a gesture of triumph she had seen often when one of his teams scored or pulled off a cool defensive play. Without thinking about it, she raised her own hands and copied him.

  "Are you sure? Like a hundred per cent? It seems too good to be true."

  "It's true," Howie said, grinning. "As a matter of fact you're on the tape half a dozen times, when they cut away from Coben to show the audience laughing or applauding. The question you asked is just icing on the cake, the whipped cream on top of the banana split."

  "So it's case closed, right? I'll walk free tomorrow?"

  "Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Howie's grin faded to a rather grim smile. "Tomorrow is just the arraignment, and they've got a heap of forensic evidence that they're very proud of--"

  "How can they?" Marcy burst out. "How can they, when Terry was obviously there? The tape proves it!"

  Howie put a hand up in a Stop gesture. "We'll worry about the conflict later, although I can tell you right now that what we've got trumps what they've got. Easily trumps it. But certain machinery has been set in motion."

  "The machine," Marcy said. "Yes. We know about the machine, don't we, Ter?"

  He nodded. "It's like I fell into a Kafka novel. Or 1984. And pulled you and the girls in along with me."

  "Whoa, whoa," Howie said. "You didn't pull anyone, they did. This is going to work out, guys. Uncle Howie promises it, and Uncle Howie always keeps his promises. You're going to be arraigned tomorrow at nine o'clock, Terry, in front of Judge Horton. You will be looking reet and complete in the nice suit your wife brought, which is now hanging in the prisoner storage closet. I intend to meet with Bill Samuels to discuss bail--tonight, if he'll take the meeting, tomorrow morning if he won't. He won't like it, and he's going to insist on home confinement, but we'll get it, because by then someone in the press will have discovered that Channel 81 tape, and the problems with the prosecution's case will become public knowledge. I imagine you'll have to put your home up to secure the bond, but that shouldn't be much of a risk, unless you plan to cut off the ankle monitor and run for the hills."

  "I'm not going anywhere," Terry said grimly. Color had risen in his cheeks. "What did some Civil War general say? 'I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.' "

  "Okay, so what's the next battle?" Marcy asked.

  "I will tell the DA that it would be a bad idea to present an indictment to the grand jury. And that argument will prevail. You will then walk free."

  But will he? Marcy wondered. Will we? When they claim to have his fingerprints, and people who saw him abducting that li
ttle boy, and then coming out of Figgis Park covered in blood? Will we ever be free as long as the real killer stays uncaught?

  "Marcy." Terry was smiling at her. "Take it easy. You know what I tell the boys--one base at a time."

  "I want to ask you something," Howie said. "Just a shot in the dark."

  "Ask away."

  "They claim to have all sorts of forensic evidence, although the DNA's still pending--"

  "That can't come back a match," Terry said. "It's not possible."

  "I would have said that about the fingerprints," Howie said.

  "Maybe someone set him up," Marcy blurted. "I know how paranoid that sounds, but . . ." She shrugged.

  "But why?" Howie asked. "That's the question. Can either of you think of someone who would go to such extraordinary lengths to do that?"

  The Maitlands considered, one on each side of the scuffed Perspex, then shook their heads.

  "Me, either," Howie said. "Life rarely if ever imitates the novels of Robert Ludlum. Still, they've got evidence strong enough for them to have rushed into an arrest I'm sure they now regret. My fear is that, even if I can get you out of the machine, the shadow of the machine may remain."

  "I was thinking about that most of last night," Terry said.

  "I'm still thinking about it," Marcy said.

  Howie leaned forward, hands clasped. "It would help if we had some physical evidence to match theirs. The Channel 81 tape is fine, and when you add in your colleagues, it's probably all we need, but I'm greedy. I want more."

  "Physical evidence from one of the busiest hotels in Cap City, and four days later?" Marcy asked, unaware that she was echoing Bill Samuels not long before. "That seems unlikely."

  Terry was looking off into space, brows drawn together. "Not entirely unlikely."

  "Terry?" Howie asked. "What are you thinking about?"

  He looked around at them, smiling. "There might be something. There just might be."

  15