Needful Things

  "I'm fine," Lester said thickly. "Go home, Slopey. You don't have any business with that skateboard in the faculty parking lot."

  He bent down to pick up the dropped wallet, but Slopey was two feet closer to the ground and beat him to it. He looked curiously at LaPointe's driver's-license photo before handing the wallet back to Coach Pratt. "Yep," Slopey said. "That's the same guh-guh-guy, all r-right."

  He hopped onto his board and prepared to ride away. Lester grabbed him by the shirt before he could do so. The board squirted out from under Slopey's foot, rolled away on its own, hit a pothole and turned over. Slopey's AC/DC shirt--for THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK, WE SALUTE YOU, it said--tore at the neck, but Slopey didn't seem to mind; didn't even seem to be much surprised by Lester's actions, let alone frightened. Lester didn't notice. Lester was beyond noticing nuances. He was one of those large and normally placid men who own a short, nasty temper beneath that placidity, a damaging emotional tornado-in-waiting. Some men go through their entire lives without ever discovering that ugly storm-center. Lester, however, had discovered his (or rather it had discovered him) and he was now completely in its grip.

  Holding a swatch of Slopey's tee-shirt in a fist which was nearly the size of a Daisy canned ham, he bent his sweating face down to Slopey's. The vein in the center of his forehead was pulsing faster than ever.

  "What do you mean, 'that's the same guy, all right'?"

  "He's the same g-g-guy who muh-met M-Miss Ruh-Ruh-Ratcliffe after school last Fun-Friday."

  "He met her after school?" Lester asked hoarsely. He gave Slopey a shake brisk enough to rattle the boy's teeth in his head. "Are you sure of that?"

  "Yeah," Slopey said. "They w-went off in your cuh-cuh-har, Coach P-Pratt. The guh-guy was d-d-driving."

  "Driving? He was driving my car? John LaPointe was driving my car with Sally in it?"

  "Well, that g-g-guy," Slopey said, pointing at the driver's-license photograph again. "B-But before they g-g-got ih-in, he g-gave her a kuh-kuh-kiss."

  "Did he," Lester said. His face had become very still. "Did he, now."

  "Oh, shuh-shuh-shore," Slopey said. A wide (and rather salacious) grin lit his face.

  In a soft, silky tone utterly unlike his usual rough hey-guys-let's -go-get-em voice, Lester asked: "And did she kiss him back? What do you think, Slopey?"

  Slopey rolled his eyes happily. "I'll suh-say she d-d-did ! They were r-really suh-suh-huckin face, C-Coach Puh-Pratt!"

  "Sucking face," Lester mused in his new soft and silky voice.

  "Yep."

  "Really sucking face," Lester marvelled in his new soft and silky voice.

  "You b-b-bet."

  Lester let go of the Slopester (as his few friends called him) and straightened up. The vein in the center of his forehead was pulsing and pumping away. He had begun to grin. It was an unpleasant grin, exposing what seemed like a great many more white, square teeth than a normal man should have. His blue eyes had become small, squinty triangles. His crewcut screamed off his head in all directions.

  "Cuh-Cuh-Coach Pratt?" Slopey asked. "Is something ruh-ruh-hong?"

  "Nope," Lester Pratt said in his new soft and silky voice. His grin never wavered. "Nothing I can't put right." In his mind, his hands were already locked around the neck of that lying, Pope-loving, teddy-bear-winning, girl-stealing, shit-eating French frog of a John LaPointe. The asshole that walked like a man. The asshole who had apparently taught the girl Lester loved, the girl who would do no more than part her lips the tiniest bit when Lester kissed her, how to really suck face.

  First he would take care of John LaPointe. No problem there. Once that was done, he'd have to talk to Sally.

  Or something.

  "Not a thing in the world I can't put right," he repeated in his new soft and silky voice, and slid back behind the Mustang's wheel. The car leaned appreciably to the left as Lester's two hundred and twenty pounds of solid hock and loin settled into the bucket seat. He started the engine, gunned it in a series of hungry tiger-cage roars, then drove away in a screech of rubber. The Slopester, coughing and theatrically waving dust away from his face, walked over to where his skateboard lay.

  The neck of his old tee-shirt had been torn completely away from the shirt's body, leaving what looked like a round black necklace lying over Slopey's prominent collarbones. He was grinning. He had done just what Mr. Gaunt had asked him to do, and it had gone like gang-busters. Coach Pratt had looked madder than a wet hen.

  Now he could go home and look at his teapot.

  "I j-j-just wish I didn't have to stuh-stuh-hutter," he remarked to no one in particular.

  Slopey mounted his skateboard and rode away.

  15

  Sheila had a hard time connecting Alan with Henry Payton--once she was positive she'd lost Henry, who sounded really excited, and would have to call him back--and she had no more than accomplished this technological feat when Alan's personal line lit up. Sheila put aside the cigarette she'd been about to light and answered it. "Castle County Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Pangborn's line."

  "Hello, Sheila. I want to talk to Alan."

  "Polly?" Sheila frowned. She was sure that was who it was, but she had never heard Polly Chalmers sound exactly as she did now--cold and clipped, like an executive secretary in a big company. "Is that you?"

  "Yes," Polly said. "I want to talk to Alan."

  "Gee, Polly, you can't. He's talking with Henry Payton right n--"

  "Put me on hold," Polly interrupted. "I'll wait."

  Sheila began to feel flustered. "Well ... uh ... I would, but it's a little more complicated than that. You see, Alan's ... you know, in the field. I had to patch Henry through."

  "If you can patch Henry Payton through, you can patch me through," Polly said coldly. "Right?"

  "Well, yes, but I don't know how long they'll be--"

  "I don't care if they talk until hell freezes over," Polly said. "Put me on hold, and when they're done, patch me through to Alan. I wouldn't ask you to do it if it weren't important--you know that, Sheila, don't you?"

  Yes--Sheila knew it. And she knew something else, too: Polly was beginning to scare her. "Polly, are you okay?"

  There was a long pause. Then Polly answered with a question of her own. "Sheila, did you type any correspondence for Sheriff Pangborn that was addressed to the Department of Child Welfare in San Francisco? Or see any envelopes addressed that way go out?"

  Red lights--a whole series of them--suddenly went on in Sheila's mind. She nearly idolized Alan Pangborn, and Polly Chalmers was accusing him of something. She wasn't sure what, but she knew the tone of accusation when she heard it. She knew it very well.

  "That isn't the sort of information I could give out to anyone," she said, and her own tone had dropped twenty degrees. "I suppose you'd better ask the Sheriff, Polly."

  "Yes--I guess I'd better. Put me on hold and connect me when you can, please."

  "Polly, what's wrong? Are you angry at Alan? Because you must know he'd never do anything that was--"

  "I don't know anything anymore," Polly said. "If I asked you something that was out of line, I'm sorry. Now will you put me on hold and connect me as soon as you can, or do I have to go out and find him for myself?"

  "No, I'll connect you," Sheila said. Her heart felt strangely troubled, as if something terrible had happened. She, like many of the women in Castle Rock, had believed Alan and Polly were deeply in love, and, like many of the other women in town, Sheila tended to see them as characters in a dark-tinged fairy-tale where everything would come right in the end . . . somehow love would find a way. But now Polly sounded more than angry; she sounded full of pain, and something else as well. To Sheila, the something else sounded almost like hate. "You're going on hold now, Polly--it may be awhile."

  "That's fine. Thanks, Sheila."

  "Welcome." She pushed the hold button and then found her cigarette. She lit it and dragged deeply, looking at the small flickering light with a frown.

  16 r />
  "Alan?" Henry Payton called. "Alan, you there?" He sounded like an announcer broadcasting from inside a large empty Saltines box.

  "Right here, Henry."

  "I got a call from the FBI just half an hour ago," Henry said from inside his cracker-box. "We caught an incredibly lucky break on those prints."

  Alan's heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. "The ones on the doorknob of Nettie's house? The partials?"

  "Right. We have a tentative match with a fellow right there in town. One prior--petty larceny in 1977. We've also got his service prints."

  "Don't keep me hanging--who is it?"

  "The name of the individual is Hugh Albert Priest."

  "Hugh Priest!" Alan exclaimed. He could not have been more surprised if Payton had named J. Danforth Quayle. To the best of Alan's knowledge, the two men had known Nettie Cobb equally well. "Why would Hugh Priest kill Nettie's dog? Or break Wilma Jerzyck's windows, for that matter?"

  "I don't know the gentleman, so I can't say," Henry replied. "Why don't you pick him up and ask him? In fact, why don't you do it right away, before he gets nervous and decides to visit relatives in Dry Hump, South Dakota?"

  "Good idea," Alan said. "I'll talk to you later, Henry. Thanks."

  "Just keep me updated, scout--this is supposed to be my case, you know."

  "Yeah. I'll talk to you."

  There was a sharp metallic sound--bink!--as the connection broke, and then Alan's radio was transmitting the open hum of a telephone line. Alan wondered briefly what Nynex and AT&T would think of the games they were playing, then bent to rack the mike. As he did so, the telephone-line hum was broken by Sheila Brigham's voice--her uncharacteristically hesitant voice.

  "Sheriff, I have Polly Chalmers on hold. She's asked to be patched through to you as soon as you're available. Ten-four?"

  Alan blinked. "Polly?" He was suddenly afraid, the way you're afraid when the telephone rings at three in the morning. Polly had never requested such a service before, and if asked, Alan would have said she never would--it would have gone against her idea of correct behavior, and to Polly, correct behavior was very important. "What is it, Sheita--did she say? Ten-four."

  "No, Sheriff. Ten-four."

  No. Of course she hadn't. He had known that, too. Polly didn't spread her business around. The fact that he'd even asked showed how surprised he was.

  "Sheriff?"

  "Patch her through, Sheila. Ten-four."

  "Ten-forty, Sheriff."

  Bink!

  He stood there in the sunshine, his heart beating too hard and too fast. He didn't like this.

  The bink! sound came again, followed by Sheila's voice--distant, almost lost. "Go ahead, Potty--you should be connected."

  "Alan?" The voice was so loud he recoiled. It was the voice of a giant ... an angry giant. He knew that much already; one word was enough.

  "I'm here, Polly--what is it?"

  For a moment there was only silence. Somewhere, deep within it, was the faint mutter of other voices on other calls. He had time to wonder if he had lost the connection ... time to almost hope he had.

  "Alan, I know this line is open," she said, "but you'll know what I'm talking about. How could you? How could you?"

  Something was familiar about this conversation. Something.

  "Polly, I'm not understanding you--"

  "Oh, I think you are," she replied. Her voice was growing thicker, harder to understand, and Alan realized that if she wasn't crying, she soon would be. "It's hard to find out you don't know a person the way you thought you did. It's hard to find out the face you thought you loved is only a mask."

  Something familiar, right, and now he knew what it was. This was like the nightmares he'd had following the deaths of Annie and Todd, the nightmares in which he stood on the side of the road and watched them go past in the Scout. They were on their way to die. He knew it, but he was helpless to change it. He tried to wave his arms but they were too heavy. He tried to shout and couldn't remember how to open his mouth. They drove by him as if he were invisible, and this was like that, too--as if he had become invisible to Polly in some weird way.

  "Annie--" He realized with horror whose name he had said, and backtracked. "Polly. I don't know what you're talking about, Polly, but--"

  "You do!" she screamed at him suddenly. "Don't say you don't when you do! Why couldn't you wait for me to tell you, Alan? And if you couldn't wait, why couldn't you ask? Why did you have to go behind my back? How could you go behind my back?"

  He shut his eyes tight in an effort to catch hold of his racing, confused thoughts, but it did no good. A hideous picture came instead: Mike Horton from the Norway Journal-Register, bent over the newspaper's Bearcat scanner, furiously taking notes in his pidgin shorthand.

  "I don't know what it is you think I've done, but you've got it wrong. Let's get together, talk--"

  "No. I don't think I can see you now, Alan."

  "Yes. You can. And you're going to. I'll be--"

  Then Henry Payton's voice cut in. Why don't you do it right away, before he gets nervous and decides to visit relatives in Dry Hump, South Dakota?

  "You'll be what?" she was asking. "You'll be what?"

  "I just remembered something," Alan said slowly.

  "Oh, did you? Was it a letter you wrote at the beginning of September, Alan? A letter to San Francisco?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about, Polly. I can't come now because there's been a break in ... in the other thing. But later--"

  She spoke to him through a series of gasping sobs that should have made her hard to understand but didn't. "Don't you get it, Alan? There is no later, not anymore. You--"

  "Polly, please--"

  "No! Just leave me alone! Leave me alone, you snooping, prying son of a bitch!"

  Bink!

  And suddenly Alan was listening to that open telephone line hum again. He looked around the intersection of Main and School like a man who doesn't know where he is and has no clear understanding of how he got there. His eyes had the faraway, puzzled expression often seen in the eyes of fighters in the last few seconds before their knees come unhinged and they go sprawling to the canvas for a long winter's nap.

  How had this happened? And how had it happened so quickly?

  He hadn't the slightest idea. The whole town seemed to have gone slightly nuts in the last week or so ... and now Polly was infected, too.

  Bink!

  "Um ... Sheriff?" It was Sheila, and Alan knew from her hushed, tentative tone that she'd had her ears on during at least part of his conversation with Polly. "Alan, are you there? Come back?"

  He felt a sudden urge, amazingly strong, to rip the mike out of its socket and throw it into the bushes beyond the sidewalk. Then drive away. Anywhere. Just stop thinking about everything and drive down the sun.

  Instead he gathered all of his forces and made himself think of Hugh Priest. That's what he had to do, because it now looked as if maybe Hugh had brought about the deaths of two women. Hugh was his business right now, not Polly ... and he discovered a great sense of relief hiding in that.

  He pushed the TRANSMIT button. "Here, Sheila. Ten-four."

  "Alan, I think I lost the connection with Polly. I ... um ... I didn't mean to listen, but--"

  "That's okay, Sheila; we were done." (There was something horrible about that, but he refused to think of it now.) "Who's there with you right now? Ten-four?"

  "John's catching," Sheila said, obviously relieved at the turn in the conversation. "Clut's out on patrol. Near Castle View, according to his last ten-twenty."

  "Okay." Polly's face, suffused with alien anger, tried to swim to the surface of his mind. He forced it back and concentrated on Hugh Priest again. But for one terrible second he could see no faces at all; only an awful blankness.

  "Alan? You there? Ten-four?"

  "Yes. You bet. Call Clut and tell him to get on over to Hugh Priest's house near the end of Castle Hill Road. He'll know where. I imagine Hugh's a
t work, but if he does happen to be taking the day off, I'll want Clut to pick him up and bring him in for questioning. Ten-four?"

  "Ten-four, Alan."

  "Tell him to proceed with extreme caution. Tell him Hugh is wanted for questioning in the deaths of Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck. He should be able to fill in the rest of the blanks for himself. Ten-four."

  "Oh!" Sheila sounded both alarmed and excited. "Ten-four, Sheriff."

  "I'm on my way to the town motor pool. I expect to find Hugh there. Ten-forty over and out."

  As he racked the mike (it felt as if he had been holding it for at least four years) he thought: If you'd told Polly what you just put on the air to Sheila, this situation you've got on your hands might be a little less nasty.

  Or it might not--how could he tell such a thing when he didn't know what the situation was? Polly had accused him of prying ... of snooping. That covered a lot of territory, none of it mapped. Besides, there was something else. Telling the dispatcher to put out a pick-up-and-hold was part of what the job was all about. So was making sure your field officers knew that the man they were after might be dangerous. Giving out the same information to your girlfriend on an open radio/telephone patch was a different matter entirely. He had done the right thing and he knew it.

  This did not quiet the ache in his heart, however, and he made another effort to focus his mind on the business ahead--finding Hugh Priest, bringing him in, getting him a goddam lawyer if he wanted one, and then asking him why he had stuck a corkscrew into Nettie's dog, Raider.

  For a moment it worked, but as he started the station wagon's engine and pulled away from the curb, it was still Polly's face--not Hugh's--he saw in his mind.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1

  At about the same time Alan was heading across town to arrest Hugh Priest, Henry Beaufort was standing in his driveway and looking at his Thunderbird. The note he'd found under the windshield wiper was in one hand. The damage the chickenshit bastard had done to the tires was bad, but the tires could be replaced. It was the scratch he had drawn along the car's right-hand side that really toasted Henry's ass.

  He looked at the note again and read it aloud. "Don't you ever cut me off and then keep my car-keys you damn frog!"

  Who had he cut off lately? Oh, all kinds of people. A night when he didn't have to cut someone off was a rare night, indeed. But cut off and car-keys kept on the board behind the bar? Only one of those just lately.