The Dark Half

  Best to leave ill enough alone.

  6

  Stark made a brief stop back at the East Village "efficiency" to stuff his few belongings into the packsack he had bought in an Army-Navy store on his first day in the maggoty old Big Apple. If not for the bottle of Scotch, he probably would not have bothered to return at all.

  On his way up the crumbling front steps, he passed the small bodies of three dead sparrows without noticing them.

  He left Avenue B on foot . . . but he didn't walk for long. A determined man, he had discovered, can always find a ride if he really needs one.

  Twenty

  OVER THE DEADLINE

  1

  The day Thad Beaumont's week of grace ended felt more like a day in late July than one in the third week of June. Thad drove the eighteen miles to the University of Maine under a sky the color of hazy chrome, the air-conditioner in the Suburban going full blast in spite of the havoc it wreaked on the gas mileage. There was a dark brown Plymouth behind him. It never got closer than two car-lengths and never dropped back farther than five. It rarely allowed another car to come between itself and Thad's Suburban; if one did happen to ease its way into the two-car parade at an intersection or the school-zone in Veazie, the brown Plymouth passed quickly . . . and if this didn't look almost immediatety feasible, one of Thad's guardians would pull the cover off the blue bubble on the dashboard. A few flashes from that would do the trick.

  Thad drove mostly with his right hand, using his left only when he absolutely had to. The hand was better now, but it still hurt like bell if he bent or flexed it too ruthlessly, and he found himself counting down the last few minutes of the last hour before he could swallow another Percodan.

  Liz hadn't wanted him to go up to the University today, and the State Police assigned to the Beaumonts hadn't wanted him to, either. For the State boys, the issue was simple: they hadn't wanted to split their watch team. With Liz, things were a little more complex. What she talked about was his hand; he might open the wound trying to drive, she said. What was in her eyes was quite different. Her eyes had been full of George Stark.

  Just what in the bell do you have to go up to the shop for today, anyway? she had wanted to know--and this was a question be had had to prepare himself for, because the semester was over, had been for some time now, and be wasn't teaching any summer classes. What he'd settled on, finally, were the Honors folders.

  Sixty students had applied for Eh-7A, the Department's Honors course in creative writing. This was over twice the number that had applied for the previous fall semester's Honors writing course, but (elementary, my dear Watson) last fall the world--including that part of it majoring in English at the University of Maine--had not known that boring old Thad Beaumont also just happened to be funky George Stark.

  So he had told Liz that he wanted to pull those files and start going through them, winnowing the sixty applicants down to fifteen students--the maximum he could take on (and probably fourteen more than he could actually teach) in a creative writing course.

  She had, of course, wanted to know why he couldn't put it off, at least until July, and had reminded him (also of course) that he had put it off until mid-August the year before. He had gone back to the big leap in applications, then added virtuously that he didn't want last summer's laziness to become a habit.

  At last she had stopped protesting-not because his arguments had convinced her, he thought, but because she could see he meant to go, no matter what. And she knew as well as he did that they would have to start going out again, sooner or later-biding in the house until someone killed or collared George Stark wasn't a very palatable option. But her eyes had still been full of a dull, questioning fear.

  Thad had kissed her and the twins and left quickly. She looked as if she might start crying soon, and if he was still home when she did that, he would stay home.

  It wasn't the Honors folders, of course.

  It was the deadline.

  He had awakened this morning full of his own dull fear, a feeling as unpleasant as a belly cramp. George Stark had called on the evening of June 10th and had given him a week to get going on the novel about the armored-car heist. Thad had still done nothing about starting . . . although he saw how the book could go more dearly with each passing day. He had even dreamed about it a couple of times. It made a nice break from touring his own deserted house in his sleep and having things explode when he touched them. But this morning his first thought had been, The deadline. I'm over the deadline.

  That meant it was time to talk to George again, as little as he wanted to do that. It was time to find out just how angry George was. Well . . . he supposed he knew the answer to that one. But it was just possible that, if he was very angry, out-of-control angry, and if Thad could goad him until he was all the way out of control, foxy old George might just make a mistake and let something slip.

  Losing cohesion.

  Thad had a feeling that George had already let something slip when he allowed Thad's intruding hand to write those words in his journal. If he could only be sure of what they meant, that was. He had an idea . . . but he wasn't sure. And a mistake at this point could mean more than just his life.

  So he was on his way to the University, on his way to his office in the English-Math Building. He was on his way there not to collect the Honors files--although he would--but because there was a telephone there, one that wasn't tapped, and because something had to be done. He was over the deadline.

  Glancing down at his left hand, which rested on the steering wheel, he thought (not for the first time during this long, long week) that the telephone was not the only way to get in touch with George. He had proved that. . . but the price had been very high. It was not just the excruciating agony of plunging a sharpened pencil into the back of his hand, or the horror of watching while his out-of-control body hurt itself at the command of Stark-foxy old George, who seemed to be the ghost of a man who had never been. He had paid the real price in his mind. The real price had been the coming of the sparrows; the terror of realizing that the forces at work here were much greater and even more incomprehensible than George Stark himself.

  The sparrows, he had become more and more sure, meant death. But for whom?

  He was terrified that he. might have to risk the sparrows in order to get in touch with George Stark again.

  And he could see them coming; he could see them arriving at that mystic halfway point where the two of them were linked, that place where he would eventually have to wrestle George Stark for control of the one soul they shared.

  He was afraid he knew who would win in a struggle at that place.

  2

  Alan Pangborn sat in his office at the rear of the Castle County Sheriff's Office, which occupied one wing of the Castle Rock Municipal Building. It had been a long, stressful week for him, too . . . but that was nothing new. Once summer really started to roll in The Rock, it got this way. Law-enforcement from Memorial Day to Labor Day was always insane in Vacationland.

  There had been a gaudy four-car smashup on Route 117 five days ago, a booze-inspired wreck that had left two people dead. Two days later, Norton Briggs had hit his wife with a frying pan, knocking her flat on the kitchen floor. Norton had hit his wife a great many licks during the turbulent twenty years of their marriage, but this time he apparently believed he had killed her. He wrote a brief note, long on remorse and short on grammar, then took his own life with a .38 revolver. When his wife, no Rhodes Scholar herself, woke up and found the cooling corpse of her tormentor lying beside her, she had turned on the gas oven and stuck her head into it. The paramedics from Rescue Services in Oxford had saved her. Barely.

  Two kids from New York had wandered away from their parents' cottage on Castle Lake and had gotten lost in the woods, just like Hansel and Gretel. They had been found eight hours later, scared but all right. John LaPointe, Alan's number-two deputy, was not in such good shape; he was home with a raving case of poison ivy he had contracted during
the search. There had been a fist-fight between two summer people over the last copy of the Sunday New York Times at Nan's Luncheonette; another fist-fight in the parking-lot of the Mellow Tiger; a weekend fisherman had torn off half of his right ear while trying to make a fancy cast into the lake; three cases of shoplifting; and a small dope bust at Universe, Castle Rock's billiard parlor and video game arcade.

  Just your typical small-town week in June, a sort of grand opening celebration for summer. Alan had had barely enough time to drink a whole cup of coffee at one sitting. And still, he had found his mind turning to Thad and Liz Beaumont again and again . . . to them, and to the man who was haunting them. That man had also killed Homer Gamache. Alan had made several calls to the New York City cops--there was a certain Lieutenant Reardon who was probably very sick of him by now--but they had nothing new to report.

  Alan had come in this afternoon to an unexpectedly peaceful office. Sheila Brigham had nothing to report from dispatch, and Norris Ridgewick was snoozing in his chair out in the bullpen area, feet cocked up on his desk. Alan should have wakened him--if Danforth Keeton, the First Selectman, came in and saw Norris cooping like that, he would have a cow--but he just didn't have the heart to do it. It had been a busy week for Norris, too. Norris had been in charge of scraping up the road-toads after the smash out on 117, and he had done a damned good job, fluttery stomach and all.

  Alan now sat behind his desk, making shadow animals in a patch of sun which fell upon the wall . . . and his thoughts turned once more to Thad Beaumont. After getting Thad's blessing, Dr. Hume in Orono had called Alan to tell him that Thad's neurological tests were negative. Thinking of this now, Alan's mind turned once more to Dr. Hugh Pritchard, who had operated on Thad when Thaddeus Beaumont was eleven and a long way from famous.

  A rabbit hopped across the patch of sun on the watt. It was followed by a cat; a dog chased the cat.

  Leave it alone. It's crazy.

  Sure it was crazy. And sure, he could leave it alone. There would be another crisis to handle here before long; you didn't have to be psychic to know that. It was just the way things went during the summer here in The Rock. You were kept so busy that most times you couldn't think, and sometimes it was good not to think.

  An elephant followed the dog, swinging a shadow trunk which was actually Alan Pangborn's left forefinger.

  "Ah, fuck it," he said, and pulled the telephone over to him. At the same time his other hand was digging his wallet out of his back pocket. He punched the button which automatically dialed the State Police Barracks in Oxford and asked dispatch there if Henry Payton, Oxford's O. C. and C. I. D. man, was in. It turned out he was. Alan had time to think that the State Police must also be having a slow day for a change, and then Henry was on the line.

  "Alan! What can I do for you?"

  "I was wondering," Alan said, "if you'd like to call the Head Ranger at Yellowstone National Park for me. I could give you the number." He looked at it with mild surprise. He had gotten it from directory assistance almost a whole week before, and written it on the back of a business card. His facile hands had dug it out of his wallet almost on their own.

  "Yellowstone!" Henry sounded amused. "Isn't that where Yogi Bear hangs out?"

  "Nope," Alan said, smiling. "That's Jellystone. And the bear isn't suspected of anything, anyway. At least, as far as I know. I need to talk to a man who's on a camping vacation there, Henry. Well . . . I don't know if I actually need to talk to him or not, but it would set my mind at rest. It feels like unfinished business. "

  "Does it have to do with Homer Gamache?"

  Alan shifted the phone to his other ear and walked the business card on which he had written the Yellowstone Head Ranger's number absently across his knuckles.

  "Yes," he said, "but if you ask me to explain, I'm going to sound like a fool. "

  "Just a hunch?"

  "Yes." And he was surprised to find he did have a hunch--he just wasn't sure what it was about. "The man I want to talk to is a retired doctor named Hugh Pritchard. He's with his wife. The Head Ranger probably knows where they are--I understand you have to register when you come in--and I'm guessing it's probably in a camping area with access to a telephone. They're both in their seventies. If you called the Head Ranger, he'd probably pass the message on to the guy. "

  "In other words, you think a National Park Ranger might take the Officer Commanding of a State Police Troop more seriously than a dipshit County Sheriff. "

  "You have a very diplomatic way of putting things, Henry. "

  Henry Payton laughed delightedly. "I do, don't I? Well, I'll tell you what, Alan--I don't mind doin a little business for you, as long as you don't want me to wade in any deeper, and as long as you--"

  "No, this is it," Alan said gratefully. "This is all I Want. "

  "Wait a minute, I'm not done. As long as you understand I can't use our WATS line here to make the call. The Captain looks at those statements, my friend. He looks very closely. And if he saw this one, I think he might want to know why I was spendin the taxpayer's money to stir your stew. You see what I'm sayin?"

  Alan sighed resignedly. "You can use my personal credit card number," he said, "and you can tell the Head Ranger to have Pritchard call collect. I'll red-line the call and pay for it out of my own pocket. "

  There was a pause on the other end, and when Henry spoke again, he was more serious. "This really means something to you, doesn't it, Alan?"

  "Yes. I don't know why, but it does. "

  There was a second pause. Alan could feel Henry Payton struggling not to ask questions. At last, Henry's better nature won. Or perhaps, Alan thought, it was only his more practical nature. "Okay," he said. "I'll make the call, and tell the Head Ranger that you want to talk to this Hugh Pritchard about an ongoing murder investigation in Castle County, Maine. What's his wife's name?"

  "Helga. "

  "Where they from?"

  "Fort Laramie, Wyoming. "

  "Okay, Sheriff; here comes the hard part. What's your telephone credit card number?"

  Sighing, Alan gave it to him.

  A minute later he had the shadow-parade marching across the patch of sunlight on the wall again.

  The guy will probably never call back, he thought, and if he does, he won't be able to tell me a goddam thing I can use--how could he?

  Still, Henry had been right about one thing: he had a hunch. About something. And it wasn't going away.

  3

  While Alan Pangborn was speaking to Henry Payton, Thad Beaumont was parking in one of the faculty slots behind the English-Math Building. He got out, being careful not to bang his left hand. For a moment he just stood there, digging the day and the unaccustomed dozy peace of the campus.

  The brown Plymouth pulled in next to his Suburban, and the two big men who got out dispelled any dream of peace he might have been on the verge of building.

  "I'm just going up to my office for a few minutes," Thad said. "You could stay down here, if you wanted." He eyed two girls strolling by, probably on their way to East Annex to sign up for summer courses. One was wearing a halter top and blue shorts, the other an almost non-existent mini with no back and a hem that was a strong man's heartbeat away from the swell of her buttocks. "Enjoy the scenery. "

  The two State cops had turned to follow the girls' progress as if their heads were mounted on invisible swivels. Now the one in charge-Ray Garrison or Roy Harriman, Thad wasn't sure which--turned back and said regretfully, "Sure would like to, sir, but we better come up with you. "

  "Really, it's just the second floor--"

  "We'll wait out in the hall. "

  "You guys don't know how much all of this is starting to depress me," Thad said.

  "Orders," Garrison-or-Harriman said. It was dear that Thad's depression--or happiness, for that matter-meant less than zero to him.

  "Yeah," Thad said, giving it up. "Orders. "

  He headed for the side door. The two cops followed him at a distance of a dozen
paces, looking more like cops in their streetclothes than they ever had in their uniforms, Thad suspected.

  After the still, humid heat, the air conditioning struck Thad with a wallop. All at once his shirt felt as if it were freezing to his skin. The building, so full of life and racket during the September-to-May academic year, felt a little creepy on this weekend afternoon at the end of spring. It would fill up to maybe a third of its usual hustle and bustle on Monday, when the first three-week summer session started, but for today, Thad found himself feeling a trifle relieved to have his police guard with him. He thought the second floor, where his office was, might be entirely deserted, which would at least allow him to avoid the necessity of explaining his large, watchful friends.

  It turned out not to be entirely deserted, but he got off easily just the same. Rawlie DeLesseps was wandering down the hallway from the Department common room toward his own office, drifting in his usual Rawlie DeLesseps way . . . which meant he looked as if he might have recently sustained a hard blow to the head which had disrupted both his memory and his motor control. He moved dreamily from one side of the corridor to the other in mild loops, peering at the cartoons, poems, and announcements tacked to the bulletin boards on the locked doors of his colleagues. He might have been on his way to his office--it looked that way--but even someone who knew him well would probably have declined to make book on it. The stem of an enormous yellow pipe was damped between his dentures. The dentures were not quite as yellow as the pipe, but they were dose. The pipe was dead, had been since late 1985, when his doctor had forbidden him to smoke it following a mild heart attack. I never liked to smoke that much anyway, Rawlie would explain in his gentle, distracted voice when someone asked him about the pipe. But without the bit in my teeth . . . gentlemen, I would not know where to go or what to do if I were lucky enough to arrive there. Most times he gave the impression of not knowing where to go or what to do anyway . . . as he did now. Some people knew Rawlie for years before discovering he was not at all the absent-minded educated fool he seemed to be. Some never discovered it at all.