Needful Things

  4

  Alan pulled in behind the Municipal Building and got out of the cruiser. His station wagon was parked next to Norris's dilapidated VW Beetle on the far side of the lot.

  "You headed right home?" he asked Norris. Norris offered a small, embarrassed grin and dropped his eyes. "Soon's I change into my civvies."

  "Norris, how many times have I told you about using the men's room as a changing booth?"

  "Come on, Alan--I don't do it all the time." They both knew, however, that Norris did just that.

  Alan sighed. "Never mind--it's been a hell of a long day for you. I'm sorry."

  Norris shrugged. "It was murder. They don't happen around here very often. When they do, I guess everybody pulls together."

  "Get Sandy or Sheila to write you up an overtime chit if either of them is still here."

  "And give Buster something else to bitch about?" Norris laughed with some bitterness. "I think I'll pass. This one's on me, Alan."

  "Has he been giving you shit?" Alan had forgotten all about the town's Head Selectman these last couple of days.

  "No--but he gives me a real hairy eyeball when we pass on the street. If looks could kill, I'd be as dead as Nettie and Wilma."

  "I'll write up the chit myself tomorrow morning."

  "If your name's on it, that's okay," Norris said, starting for the door marked TOWN EMPLOYEES ONLY. "Goodnight, Alan."

  "Good luck with the fishing."

  Norris brightened at once. "Thanks--you should see the rod I got down at the new store, Alan--it's a dandy."

  Alan grinned. "I bet it is. I keep meaning to go see that fellow--he seems to have something for everyone else in town, so why not something for me?"

  "Why not?" Norris agreed. "He's got all kinds of stuff, all right. You'd be surprised."

  "Goodnight, Norris. And thanks again."

  "Don't mention it." But Norris was clearly pleased.

  Alan got into his car, backed out of the lot, and turned down Main Street. He checked the buildings on both sides automatically, not even registering his own examination ... but storing the information just the same. One of the things he noticed was the fact that there was a light on in the living area above Needful Things. It was mighty late for small-town folks to be up. He wondered if Mr. Leland Gaunt was an insomniac, and reminded himself again that he had that call to make--but it would keep, he reckoned, until he had the sad business of Nettie and Wilma sorted out to his satisfaction.

  He reached the corner of Main and Laurel, signalled a left turn, then halted in the middle of the intersection and turned right instead. To hell with going home. That was a cold and empty place with his remaining son living it up with his friend on Cape Cod. There were too many closed doors with too many memories lurking behind them in that house. On the other side of town there was a live woman who might need someone quite badly just now. Almost as badly, perhaps, as this live man needed her.

  Five minutes later Alan killed the headlights and rolled quietly up Polly's driveway. The door would be locked, but he knew which corner of the porch steps to look under.

  5

  "What are you still doing here, Sandy?" Norris asked as he walked in, loosening his tie.

  Sandra McMillan, a fading blonde who had been the county's part-time dispatcher for almost twenty years, was slipping into her coat. She looked very tired.

  "Sheila had tickets to see Bill Cosby in Portland," she told Norris. "She said she'd stay here, but I made her go--practically pushed her out the door. I mean, how often does Bill Cosby come to Maine?"

  How often do two women decide to cut each other to pieces over a dog that probably came from the Castle County Animal Shelter in the first place? Norris thought ... but did not say. "Not that often, I guess."

  "Hardly ever." Sandy sighed deeply. "Tell you a secret, though--now that it's all over, I almost wish I'd said yes when Sheila offered to stay. It's been so crazy tonight--I think every TV station in the state called at least nine times, and until eleven o'clock or so, this place looked like a department store Christmas Eve sale."

  "Well, go on home. You have my permission. Did you power up The Bastard?"

  The Bastard was the machine which switched calls to Alan's home when no dispatcher was on duty at the station. If no one picked up at Alan's after four rings, The Bastard cut in and told callers to dial the State Police in Oxford. It was a jury-rig system that wouldn't have worked in a big city, but in Castle County, which had the smallest population of all Maine's sixteen counties, it worked fine.

  "It's on."

  "Good. I have a feeling that Alan might not have been going straight home."

  Sandy raised her eyebrows knowingly.

  "Hear anything from Lieutenant Payton?" Norris asked.

  "Not a thing." She paused. "Was it awful, Norris? I mean ... those two women?"

  "It was pretty awful, all right," he agreed. His civvies were hung neatly on a hanger he had hooked over a filing-cabinet handle. He removed it and started for the men's room. It had been his habit to change in and out of his uniforms at work for the last three years or so, although the changes rarely came at such an outrageous hour as this. "Go home, Sandy--I'll lock up when I'm done."

  He pushed through the bathroom door and hooked the hanger over the top of the door to the toilet stall. He was unbuttoning his uniform shirt when there was a light knock on the door.

  "Norris?" Sandy called.

  "I think I'm the only one here," he called back.

  "I almost forgot--someone left a present for you. It's on your desk."

  Norris paused in the act of unbuckling his pants. "A present? Who from?"

  "I don't know--the place really was a madhouse. But it's got a card on it. Also a bow. It must be your secret lover."

  "My lover's so secret even I don't know about her," Norris said with real regret. He stepped out of his pants and laid them over the stall door while he put on his jeans.

  Outside, Sandy McMillan smiled with a touch of malice. "Mr. Keeton was by tonight," she said. "Maybe he left it. Maybe it's a kiss-and-make-up present."

  Norris laughed. "That'll be the day."

  "Well, make sure you tell me tomorrow--I'm dying to know. It's a pretty package. Goodnight, Norris."

  "Night."

  Who could have left me a present? he wondered, zipping up his fly.

  6

  Sandy left, pulling the collar of her coat up as she went out--the night was very cold, reminding her that winter was on its way. Cyndi Rose Martin, the lawyer's wife, was one of the many people she had seen that night--Cyndi Rose had turned up early in the evening. Sandy never thought of mentioning her to Norris, however; he did not move in the Martins' more rarefied social and professional circles. Cyndi Rose said she was looking for her husband, which made a certain amount of sense to Sandy (although the evening had been so harum-scarum that Sandy probably wouldn't have thought it odd if the woman had said she was looking for Mikhail Baryshnikov), because Albert Martin did some of the town's legal work.

  Sandy said she hadn't seen Mr. Martin that evening, although Cyndi Rose was welcome to check upstairs and see if he was in with Mr. Keeton, if she wanted. Cyndi Rose said she thought she would do that, as long as she was here. By then the switchboard was lit up like a Christmas tree again, and Sandy did not see Cyndi Rose take the rectangular package with the bright foil paper and the blue velvet bow from her large handbag and put it on Norris Ridgewick's desk. Her pretty face had been lit with a smile as she did it, but the smile itself was not pretty at all. It was, in fact, rather cruel.

  7

  Norris heard the outer door shut and, dimly, the sound of Sandy starting her car. He tucked his shirt into his jeans, stepped into his loafers, and arranged his uniform carefully on its hanger. He sniffed the shirt at the armpits and decided it didn't have to go to the cleaners right away. That was good; a penny saved was a penny earned.

  When he left the men's room, he put the hanger back on the same file-cabinet hand
le, where he could not help seeing it on his way out. That was also good, because Alan got pissed like a bear when Norris forgot and left his duds hanging around the police station. He said it made the place look like a laundrymat.

  He went over to his desk. Someone really had left him a present--it was a box done up in light-blue foil wrapping paper and blue velvet ribbon exploding into a fluffy bow on top. There was a square white envelope tucked under the ribbon. Very curious now, Norris removed the envelope and tore it open. There was a card inside. Typed on it in capital letters was a short, enigmatic message:

  !!!!!JUST A REMINDER!!!!!

  He frowned. The only two persons he could think of who were always reminding him of things were Alan and his mother ... and his mother had died five years ago. He picked up the package, broke the ribbon, and set the bow carefully aside. Then he took off the paper, revealing a plain white cardboard box. It was about a foot long, four inches wide, and four inches deep. The lid was taped shut.

  Norris broke the tape and opened the box. There was a layer of white tissue paper over the object inside, thin enough to indicate a flat surface with a number of raised ridges running across it, but not thin enough to allow him to see what his present was.

  He reached in to pull the tissue paper out, and his forefinger struck something hard--a protruding tongue of metal. A heavy steel jaw closed on the tissue paper and also on Norris Ridgewick's first three fingers. Pain ripped up his arm. He screamed and stumbled backward, grabbing his right wrist with his left hand. The white box tumbled to the floor. Tissue-paper crinkled.

  Oh, son of a bitch, it hurt! He grabbed at the tissue, which hung down in a wrinkled ribbon, and tore it free. What he revealed was a large Victory rat-trap. Someone had armed it, stuck it in a box, put tissue-paper over it to hide it, and then wrapped it in pretty blue paper. Now it was clamped on the first three fingers of his right hand. It had torn the nail of his index finger right off, he saw; all that remained was a bleeding crescent of raw flesh.

  "Whoremaster!" Norris cried. In his pain and shock, he at first beat the trap against the side of John LaPointe's desk instead of just prying back the steel bar. All he managed to do was bang his hurt fingers against the desk's metal comer and send a fresh snarl of pain up his arm. He screamed again, then grabbed the trap's bar and pulled it back. He released his fingers and dropped the trap. The steel bar snapped down again on the trap's wooden base as it fell to the floor.

  Norris stood trembling for a moment, then bolted back into the men's room, turned on the cold water with his left hand, and thrust his right hand under the tap. It throbbed like an impacted wisdom tooth. He stood with his lips drawn back in a grimace, watching thin threads of blood swirl down the drain, and thought of what Sandy had said: Mr. Keeton was by ... maybe it's a kiss-and-make-up present.

  And the card: JUST A REMINDER.

  Oh, it had been Buster, all right. He didn't doubt it a bit. It was just Buster's style.

  "You son of a bitch," Norris groaned.

  The cold water was numbing his fingers, damping down that sick throbbing, but he knew it would be back by the time he arrived home. Aspirin might dull it a little, but he still thought he could forget getting any real sleep tonight. Or any fishing tomorrow, for that matter.

  Oh yes I will--I'll go fishing even if my fucking hand falls fucking off. I had it planned, I've been looking forward to it, and Danforth Fucking Buster Keeton isn't going to stop me.

  He turned off the water and used a paper towel to blot his hand gently dry. None of the fingers which had been caught in the trap were broken--at least he didn't think so--but they were already beginning to swell, cold water or no cold water. The arm of the trap had left a dark red-purple weal which ran across the fingers between the first and second knuckles. The exposed flesh beneath what had been .the nail of his index finger was sweating small beads of blood, and that sick throbbing was already beginning again.

  He went back into the deserted bullpen and looked at the sprung trap, lying on its side by John's desk. He picked it up and went over to his own desk. He put the trap inside the gift-box and put it in the top drawer of his desk. He took his aspirin out of the lower drawer and shook three of them into his mouth. Then he got the tissue-paper, the wrapping paper, the ribbon, and the bow. These he stuffed into the trash basket, covering them with balls of discarded paper.

  He had no intention of telling Alan or anyone else about the nasty trick Buster had played on him. They wouldn't laugh, but Norris knew what they would think ... or thought he did: Only Norris Ridgewick would fall for something like that--stuck his hand right into a loaded rat-trap, can you believe it?

  It must be your secret lover... Mr. Keeton was by tonight... maybe it's a kiss-and-make-up present.

  "I'll take care of this myself," Norris said in a low, grim voice. He was holding his wounded hand against his chest. "In my own way, and in my own time."

  Suddenly a new and urgent thought came to him: what if Buster hadn't been content with the rat-trap, which, after all, might not have worked? What if he had gone up to Norris's house? The Bazun fishing rod was there, and it wasn't even locked up; he had just leaned it in the comer of the shed, next to his creel.

  What if Buster knew about it and had decided to break it in two?

  "If he did that, I'd break him in two," Norris said. He spoke in a low, angry growl Henry Payton--nor many of his other law-enforcement colleagues, for that matter--would not have recognized. He forgot all about locking up when he left the office. He had even temporarily forgotten the pain in his hand. The only thing that mattered was getting home. Getting home and making sure the Bazun rod was stiff all right.

  8

  The shape under the blankets didn't move when Alan eased into the room, and he thought Polly was asteep--probably with the help of a Percodan at bedtime. He undressed quietly and slid into bed beside her. As his head settled on the pillow, he saw that her eyes were open, watching him. It gave him a momentary start and he jerked.

  "What stranger comes to this maiden's bed?" she asked softly.

  "Only I," he replied, smiling a little. "I apologize for waking you, maiden."

  "I was awake," she said, and put her arms around his neck. He slipped his own about her waist. The deep bed-warmth of her pleased him--she was like a sleepy furnace. He felt something hard against his chest for a moment, and it almost registered that she was wearing something under her cotton nightgown. Then it shifted, tumbling down between her left breast and her armpit on its fine silver chain.

  "Are you okay?" he asked her.

  She pressed the side of her face against his cheek, still holding him. He could feel her hands locked together at the nape of his neck. "No," she said. The word came out in a trembling sigh, and then she began to sob.

  He held her while she cried, stroking her hair.

  "Why didn't she tell me what that woman was doing, Alan?" Polly asked at last. She drew away from him a little. Now his eyes had adjusted to the dark, and he could see her face--dark eyes, dark hair, white skin.

  "I don't know," he said.

  "If she'd told me, I would have taken care of it! I would have gone to see Wilma Jerzyck myself, and ... and ..."

  It was not the moment to tell her that Nettie had apparently played the game with almost as much vigor and malice as Wilma herself. Nor was it the moment to tell her that there came a time when the Nettie Cobbs of the world--and the Wilma Jerzycks, too, he supposed--could no longer be fixed. There came a time when they went beyond anyone's ability to repair.

  "It's three-thirty in the morning," he said. "That's a bad time to talk about should-haves and would-haves." He hesitated for a moment before speaking again. "According to John LaPointe, Nettie said something to you about Wilma this morning--yesterday morning, now. What was it?"

  Polly thought it over. "Well, I didn't know it was about Wilma--not then, anyway. Nettie brought over a lasagna. And my hands ... my hands were really bad. She saw it right away. Nettie is--was
--may have been--I don't know--vague about some things, but I couldn't hide a thing from her."

  "She loved you very much," Alan said gravely, and this brought on a fresh spate of sobbing. He had known it would, just as he knew that some tears have to be cried no matter what the hour--until they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

  After a while, Polly was able to go on. Her hands crept back around Alan's neck as she spoke.

  "She got those stupid thermal gloves out, only this time they really helped--the current crisis seems to have passed, anyway--and then she made coffee. I asked her if she didn't have things to do at home and she said she didn't. She said Raider was on guard and then she said something like, 'I think she'll leave me alone, anyway. I haven't seen her or heard from her, so I guess she finally got the message.' That isn't exact, Alan, but it's pretty close."

  "What time did she come by?"

  "Around quarter past ten. It might have been a little earlier or a little later, but not much. Why, Alan? Does it mean anything?"

  When Alan slid between the sheets, he felt that he would be asleep ten seconds after his head hit the pillow. Now he was wide awake again, and thinking hard.

  "No," he said after a moment. "I don't think it means anything, except that Nettie had Wilma on her mind."

  "I just can't believe it. She seemed so much better--she really did. Remember me telling you about how she got up the courage to go into Needful Things all on her own last Thursday?"

  "Yes."

  She released him and rolled fretfully onto her back. Alan heard a small metallic chink! as she did so, and again thought nothing of it. His mind was still examining what Polly had just told him, turning it this way and that, like a jeweller examining a suspect stone.

  "I'll have to make the funeral arrangements," she said. "Nettie has got people in Yarmouth--a few, anyway--but they didn't want to have anything to do with her when she was alive, and they'll want to have even less to do with her now that she's dead. But I'll have to call them in the morning. Will I be able to go into Nettie's house, Alan? I think she had an address book."