Could it be both of them? Pangborn and Ridgewick? In on it together?
"The Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto," Keeton said in a low voice, and smiled balefully. "If it was you, Pangborn, you'll be sorry. And if it was both of you, you'll both be sorry." His hands slowly rolled themselves into fists. "I won't stand this persecution forever, you know."
His carefully manicured nails cut into the flesh of his palms. He did not notice the blood when it began to flow. Maybe Ridgewick. Maybe Pangborn, maybe Melissa Clutterbuck, the frigid bitch who was the Town Treasurer, maybe Bill Fullerton, the Second Selectman (he knew for a fact that Fullerton wanted his job and wouldn't rest until he had it) ...
Maybe all of them.
All of them together.
Keeton let out his breath in a long, tortured sigh, making a fog-flower on the wire-reinforced glass of his office window. The question was, what was he going to do about it? Between now and the 17th of the month, what was he going to do?
The answer was simple: he didn't know.
2
Danforth Keeton's life as a young man had been a thing of clear blacks and whites, and he had liked that just fine. He had gone to Castle Rock High School and began working part-time at the family car dealership when he was fourteen, washing the demonstrators and waxing the show-room models. Keeton Chevrolet was one of the oldest Chevrolet franchises in New England and keystone of the Keeton financial structure. That had been a solid structure indeed, at least until fairly recently.
During his four years at Castle Rock High, he had been Buster to just about everyone. He took the commercial courses, maintained a solid B average, ran the student council almost single-handed, and went on to Traynor Business College in Boston. He made straight A's at Traynor and graduated three semesters early. When he came back to The Rock, he quickly made it clear that his Buster days were over.
It had been a fine life until the trip he and Steve Frazier had made to Lewiston nine or ten years ago. That was when the trouble had started; that was when his neat black-and-white life began to fill with deepening shades of gray.
He had never gambled--not as Buster at C.R.H.S., not as Dan at Traynor Business, not as Mr. Keeton of Keeton Chevrolet and the Board of Selectmen. As far as Keeton knew, no one in his whole family had gambled; he could not remember even such innocent pastimes as nickel skat or pitching pennies. There was no taboo against these things, no thou shalt not, but no one did them. Keeton had not laid down a bet on anything until that first trip to Lewiston Raceway with Steve Frazier. He had never placed a bet anywhere else, nor did he need to. Lewiston Raceway was all the ruin Danforth Keeton ever needed.
He had been Third Selectman then. Steve Frazier, now at least five years in his grave, had been Castle Rock's Head Selectman. Keeton and Frazier had gone "up the city" (trips to Lewiston were always referred to in this way) along with Butch Nedeau, The Rock's overseer of County Social Services, and Harry Samuels, who had been a Selectman for most of his adult life and would probably die as one. The occasion had been a statewide conference of county officials; the subject had been the new revenue-sharing laws ... and it was revenue-sharing, of course, that had caused most of his trouble. Without it, Keeton would have been forced to dig his grave with a pick and shovel. With it, he had been able to use a financial bucket-loader.
It was a two-day conference. On the evening between, Steve had suggested they go out and have a little fun in the big city. Butch and Harry had declined. Keeton had no interest in spending the evening with Steve Frazier, either--he was a fat old blowhard with lard for brains. He had gone, though. He supposed he would have gone if Steve had suggested they spend the evening touring the deepest shitpits of hell. Steve was, after all, the Head Selectman. Harry Samuels would be content to drone along as Second, Third, or Fourth Selectman for the rest of his life, Butch Nedeau had already indicated that he meant to step down after his current term ... but Danforth Keeton had ambitions, and Frazier, fat old blowhard or not, was the key to them.
So they had gone out, stopping first at The Holly. BE JOLLY AT THE HOLLY! read the motto over the door, and Frazier had gotten very jolly indeed, drinking Scotch-and-waters as if the Scotch had been left out of them, and whistling at the strippers, who were mostly fat and mostly old and always slow. Keeton thought most of them looked stoned. He remembered thinking it was going to be a long evening.
Then they had gone to the Lewiston Raceway and everything changed.
They got there in time for the fifth pace, and Frazier had hustled a protesting Keeton over to the betting windows like a sheepdog nipping a wayward lamb back to the herd.
"Steve, I don't know anything about this--"
"That doesn't matter," Frazier replied happily, breathing Scotch fumes into Keeton's face. "We're gonna be lucky tonight, Buster. I can feel it."
He hadn't any idea of how to bet, and Frazier's constant chatter made it hard to listen to what the other bettors in line were saying when they got to the two-dollar window.
When he got there, he pushed a five-dollar bill across to the teller and said, "Number four."
"Win, place, or show?" the teller asked, but for a moment Keeton had not been able to reply. Behind the teller he saw an amazing thing. Three clerks were counting and banding huge piles of currency, more cash than Keeton had ever seen in one place.
"Win, place, or show?" the teller repeated impatiently. "Hurry up, buddy. This is not the Public Library."
"Win," Keeton had said. He hadn't the slightest idea what "place" and "show" meant, but "win" he understood very well.
The teller thrust him a ticket and three dollars' change--a one and a two. Keeton looked at the two with curious interest as Frazier placed his bet. He had known there were such things as two-dollar bills, of course, but he didn't think he'd ever seen one before. Thomas Jefferson was on it. Interesting. In fact, the whole thing was interesting--the smells of horses, popcorn, peanuts; the hurrying crowds; the atmosphere of urgency. The place was awake in a way he recognized and responded to at once. He had felt this sort of wakefulness in himself before, yes, many times, but it was the first time he had ever sensed it in the wider world. Danforth "Buster" Keeton, who rarely felt a part of anything, not really, felt he was a part of this. Very much a part.
"This beats hell out of The Holly," he said as Frazier rejoined him.
"Yeah, harness racing's okay," Frazier said. "It won't ever replace the World Series, but you know. Come on, let's get over to the rail. Which horse did you bet on?"
Keeton didn't remember. He'd had to check his ticket. "Number four," he said.
"Place or show?"
"Uh ... win."
Frazier shook his head in good-natured contempt and clapped him on the shoulder. "Win's a sucker bet, Buster. It's a sucker bet even when the tote-board says it isn't. But you'll learn."
And, of course, he had.
Somewhere a bell went off with a loud Brrrrrrannggg! that made Keeton jump. A voice bellowed, "And theyyy'rrre OFF!" through the Raceway's speakers. A thunderous roar went up from the crowd, and Keeton had felt a sudden spurt of electricity course through his body. Hooves tattooed the dirt track. Frazier grabbed Keeton's elbow with one hand and used the other to make a path through the crowd to the rail. They came out less than twenty yards from the finish line.
Now the announcer was calling the race. Number seven, My Lass, leading at the first turn, with number eight, Broken Field, second, and number one, How Do?, third. Number four was named Absolutely--the dumbest name for a horse Keeton had ever heard in his life--and it was running sixth. He hardly cared. He was transfixed by the pelting horses, their coats gleaming under the floodlights, by the blur of wheels as the sulkies swept around the turn, the bright colors of the silks worn by the drivers.
As the horses entered the backstretch, Broken Field began to press My Lass for the lead. My Lass broke stride and Broken Field flew by her. At the same time, Absolutely began to move up on the outside--Keeton saw it
before the disembodied voice of the announcer sent the news blaring across the track, and he barely felt Frazier elbowing him, barely heard him screaming, "That's your horse, Buster! That's your horse and she's got a chance!"
As the horses thundered down the final straightaway toward the place where Keeton and Frazier were standing, the entire crowd began to bellow. Keeton had felt the electricity whip through him again, not a spark this time but a storm. He began to bellow with them; the next day he would be so hoarse he could barely speak above a whisper.
"Absolutely!" he screamed. "Come on Absolutely, come on you bitch and RUN!"
"Trot," Frazier said, laughing so hard tears ran down his cheeks. "Come on you bitch and trot. That's what you mean, Buster."
Keeton paid no attention. He was in another world. He was sending brain-waves out to Absolutely, sending her telepathic strength through the air.
"Now it's Broken Field and How Do?, How Do? and Broken Field," the godlike voice of the announcer chanted, "and Absolutely is gaining fast as they come to the last eighth of a mile--"
The horses approached, raising a cloud of dust. Absolutely trotted with her neck arched and her head thrust forward, legs rising and falling like pistons; she passed How Do? and Broken Field, who was flagging badly, right where Keeton and Frazier were standing. She was still widening her lead when she crossed the finish line.
When the numbers went up on the tote-board, Keeton had to ask Frazier what they meant. Frazier had looked at his ticket, then at the board. He whistled soundlessly.
"Did I make my money back?" Keeton asked anxiously.
"Buster, you did a little better than that. Absolutely was a thirty-to-one shot."
Before he left the track that night, Keeton had made just over three hundred dollars. That was how his obsession was born.
3
He took his overcoat from the tree in the corner of his office, drew it on, started to leave, then stopped, holding the doorknob in his hand. He looked back across the room. There was a mirror on the wall opposite the window. Keeton looked at it for a long, speculative moment, then walked across to it. He had heard about how They used mirrors--he hadn't been born yesterday.
He put his face against it, ignoring the reflection of his pallid skin and bloodshot eyes. He cupped a hand to either cheek, cutting off the glare, narrowing his eyes, looking for a camera on the other side. Looking for Them.
He saw nothing.
After a long moment he stepped away, swabbed indifferently at the smeared glass with the sleeve of his overcoat, and left the office. Nothing yet, anyway. That didn't mean They wouldn't come in tonight, pull out his mirror, and replace it with one-way glass. Spying was just another tool of the trade for the Persecutors. He would have to check the mirror every day now.
"But I can," he said to the empty upstairs hallway. "I can do that. Believe me."
Eddie Warburton was mopping the lobby floor and didn't look up as Keeton stepped out onto the street.
His car was parked around back, but he didn't feel like driving. He felt too confused to drive; he would probably put the Caddy through someone's store window if he tried. Nor was he aware, in the depths of his confused mind, that he was walking away from his house rather than toward it. It was seven-fifteen on Saturday morning, and he was the only person out in Castle Rock's small business district.
His mind went briefly back to that first night at Lewiston Raceway. He couldn't do anything wrong, it seemed. Steve Frazier had lost thirty dollars and said he was leaving after the ninth race. Keeton said he thought he would stay awhile longer. He barely looked at Frazier, and barely noticed when Frazier was gone. He did remember thinking it was nice not to have someone at his elbow saying Buster This and Buster That all the time. He hated the nickname, and of course Steve knew it--that was why he used it.
The next week he had come back again, alone this time, and had lost sixty dollars' worth of previous winnings. He hardly cared. Although he thought often of those huge stacks of banded currency, it wasn't the money, not really; the money was just the symbol you took away with you, something that said you had been there, that you had been, however briefly, part of the big show. What he really cared about was the tremendous, walloping excitement that went through the crowd when the starter's bell rang, the gates opened with their heavy, crunching thud, and the announcer yelled, "Theyyy'rrre OFF!" What he cared about was the roar of the crowd as the pack rounded the third turn and went hell-for-election down the backstretch, the hysterical camp-meeting exhortations from the stands as they rounded the fourth turn and poured on the coal down the homestretch. It was alive, oh, it was so alive. It was so alive that--
--that it was dangerous.
Keeton decided he'd better stay away. He had the course of his life neatly planned. He intended to become Castle Rock's Head Selectman when Steve Frazier finally pulled the pin, and after six or seven years of that, he intended to stand for the State House of Representatives. After that, who knew? National office was not out of reach for a man who was ambitious, capable ... and sane.
That was the real trouble with the track. He hadn't recognized it at first, but he had recognized it soon enough. The track was a place where people paid their money, took a ticket ... and gave up their sanity for a little while. Keeton had seen too much insanity in his own family to feel comfortable with the attraction Lewiston Raceway held for him. It was a pit with greasy sides, a snare with hidden teeth, a loaded gun with the safety removed. When he went, he was unable to leave until the last race of the evening had been run. He knew. He had tried. Once he had made it almost all the way to the exit turnstiles before something in the back of his brain, something powerful, enigmatic, and reptilian, had arisen, taken control, and turned his feet around. Keeton was terrified of fully waking that reptile. Better to let it sleep.
For three years he had done just that. Then, in 1984, Steve Frazier had retired, and Keeton had been elected Head Selectman. That was when his real troubles began.
He had gone to the track to celebrate his victory, and since he was celebrating, he decided to go whole hog. He bypassed the two-and five-dollar windows, and went straight to the ten-dollar window. He had lost a hundred and sixty dollars that night, more than he felt comfortable losing (he told his wife the next day that it had been forty), but not more than he could afford to lose. Absolutely not.
He returned a week later, meaning to win back what he had lost so he could quit evens. And he had almost made it. Almost--that was the key word. The way he had almost made it to the exit turnstiles. The week after, he had lost two hundred and ten dollars. That left a hole in the checking account Myrtle would notice, and so he had borrowed a little bit from the town's petty-cash fund to cover the worst of the shortfall. A hundred dollars. Peanuts, really.
Past that point, it all began to blur together. The pit had greased sides, all right, and once you started sliding you were doomed. You could expend your energy clawing at the sides and succeed in slowing your fall ... but that, of course, only drew out the agony.
If there had been a point of no return, it had been the summer of 1989. The pacers ran nightly during the summer, and Keeton was in attendance constantly through the second half of July and all of August. Myrtle had thought for a while that he was using the racetrack as an excuse, that he was actually seeing another woman, and that was a laugh--it really was. Keeton couldn't have got a hard-on if Diana herself had driven down from the moon in her chariot with her toga open and a FUCK ME DANFORTH sign hung around her neck. The thought of how deep he'd dipped into the town treasury had caused his poor dick to shrivel to the size of a pencil eraser.
When Myrtle finally became convinced of the truth, that it was only horse racing after all, she had been relieved. It kept him out of the house, where he tended to be something of a tyrant, and he couldn't be losing too badly, she had reasoned, because the checkbook balance didn't fluctuate that much. It was just that Danforth had found a hobby to keep him amused in his middle age.
Only horse racing after all, Keeton thought as he walked down Main Street with his hands plunged deep into his overcoat pockets. He uttered a strange, wild laugh that would have turned heads if there had been anyone on the street. Myrtle kept her eye on the checking account. The thought that Danforth might have plundered the T-bills which were their life savings never occurred to her. Likewise, the knowledge that Keeton Chevrolet was tottering on the edge of extinction belonged to him alone.
She balanced the checkbook and the house accounts.
He was a CPA.
When it comes to embezzlement, a CPA can do a better job than most ... but in the end the package always comes undone. The string and tape and wrapping paper on Keeton's package had begun to fall apart in the autumn of 1990. He had held things together as well as he could, hoping to recoup at the track. By then he had found a bookie, which enabled him to make bigger bets than the track would handle.
It hadn't changed his luck, however.
And then, this summer, the persecution had begun in earnest. Before, They had only been toying with him. Now They were moving in for the kill, and the Day of Armageddon was less than a week away.
I'll get Them, Keeton thought. I'm not done yet. I've still got a trick or two up my sleeve.
He didn't know what those tricks were, though; that was the trouble.
Never mind. There's a way. I know there's a w--
Here his thoughts ceased. He was standing in front of the new store, Needful Things, and what he saw in the window drove everything else slap out of his mind for a moment or two.
It was a rectangular cardboard box, brightly colored, with a picture on the front. A board game, he supposed. But it was a board game about horse racing, and he could have sworn that the painting, which showed two pacers sweeping down on the finish line neck-and-neck, was of the Lewiston Raceway. If that wasn't the main grandstand in the background, he was a monkey.
The name of the game was WINNING TICKET.
Keeton stood looking at it for almost five minutes, as hypnotized as a kid looking at a display of electric trains. Then, slowly, he walked under the dark-green canopy to see if the place kept Saturday hours. There was a sign hanging inside the door, all right, but it bore only one word, and the word, naturally, was