Needful Things (84 page)

Alan thought, The bodies will be stacked in that tiny morgue over there like cordwood.

It was when he got to the Rusk home that Alan realized—in his gut as well as in his head—how completely he had been taken out of the play. Two of Henry's C.I.D. men were there ahead of him, and they made it clear that Alan could hang around only as long as he didn't try to stick in an oar and help them row. He had stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, watching them, feeling about as useful as a third wheel on a motor-scooter. Cora Rusk's responses were slow, almost doped. Alan thought it might be shock, or perhaps the ambulance attendants
who were transporting her remaining son to the hospital had given her some prescription mercy before they left. She reminded him eerily of the way Norris had looked as he had crawled from the window of his overturned VW. Whether it was because of a tranquilizer or just shock, the detectives weren't getting much of value from her. She wasn't quite weeping, but she was clearly unable to concentrate on their questions enough to make helpful responses. She didn't know anything, she told them; she had been upstairs, taking a nap. Poor Brian, she kept saying. Poor, poor Brian. But she expressed this sentiment in a drone which Alan found creepy, and she kept toying with a pair of old sunglasses which lay beside her on the kitchen table. One of the bows had been mended with adhesive tape, and one of the lenses was cracked.

Alan had left in disgust and come here, to the hospital.

Now he got up and went to the pay telephone down the hall in the main lobby. He tried Polly again, got no answer, and then dialled the Sheriff's Office. The voice which answered growled, “State Police,” and Alan felt a childish surge of jealousy. He identified himself and asked for Clut. After a wait of almost five minutes, Clut came on the line.

“Sorry, Alan. They just let the phone lay there on the desk. Lucky I came over to check, or you'd still be waiting. Darned old Staties don't care one bit about us.”

“Don't worry about it, Clut. Has anyone collared Keeton yet?”

“Well . . . I don't know how to tell you this, Alan, but . . .”

Alan felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach and closed his eyes. He had been right; it wasn't over.

“Just tell me,” he said. “Never mind the protocol.”

“Buster—Danforth, I mean—drove home and used a screwdriver to knock the doorhandle off his Cadillac. You know, where he was cuffed.”

“I know,” Alan agreed. His eyes were still shut.

“Well . . . he killed his wife, Alan. With a hammer. It wasn't a State cop that found her, because the Staties weren't much interested in Buster up to twenty minutes ago. It was Seat Thomas. He drove by Buster's house to double check. He reported in what he found, and got back
here not five minutes ago. He's having chest pains, he says, and I'm not surprised. He told me that Buster took her face 'bout right off. Said there's guts and hair everyplace. There's a platoon or so of Payton's bluejackets up there on the View now. I put Seat in your office. Figured he better sit down before he fell down.”

“Jesus Christ, Clut—take him over to Ray Van Allen, fast. He's sixty-two and been smoking Camels all his damn life.”

“Ray went to Oxford, Alan. He's trying to help the doctors patch up Henry Beaufort.”

“His P.A. then—what's his name? Frankel. Everett Frankel.”

“Not around. I tried both the office and his house.”

“Well, what does his wife say?”

“Ev's a bachelor, Alan.”

“Oh. Christ.” Someone had scrawled a bit of graffiti over the telephone.
Don't worry, be happy,
it said. Alan considered this sourly.

“I can take him to the hospital myself,” Clut offered.

“I need you right where you are,” Alan said. “Have the reporters and TV people shown up?”

“Yeah. The place is crawling with them.”

“Well, check on Seat as soon as we're done here. If he doesn't feel any better, here's what you do: go out front, grab a reporter who looks halfway bright to you, deputize him, and have him drive Seat over here to Northern Cumberland.”

“Okay.” Clut hesitated, then burst out: “I wanted to go over to the Keeton place, but the State Police . . . they won't let me onto the crime-scene! How do you like that, Alan? Those bastards won't let a County Deputy Sheriff onto the crime-scene!”

“I know how you feel. I don't like it much myself. But they're doing their job. Can you see Seat from where you are, Clut?”

“Yuh.”

“Well? Is he alive?”

“He's sitting behind your desk, smoking a cigarette and looking at this month's
Rural Law Enforcement.”

“Right,” Alan said. He felt like laughing or crying or
doing both at the same time. “That figures. Has Polly Chalmers called, Clut?”

“N . . . wait a minute, here's the log. I thought it was gone. She did call, Alan. Just before three-thirty.”

Alan grimaced. “I know about that one. Anything later?”

“Not that I see here, but that doesn't mean much. With Sheila gone and these darned old State Bears clumping around, who can tell for sure?”

“Thanks, Clut. Is there anything else I should know?”

“Yeah, a couple of things.”

“Shoot.”

“They've got the gun Hugh used to shoot Henry, but David Friedman from State Police Ballistics says he doesn't know what it is. An automatic pistol of some kind, but the guy said he's never seen one quite like it.”

“Are you sure it was David Friedman?” Alan asked.

“Friedman, yeah—that was the guy's name.”

“He
must
know. Dave Friedman's a walking
Shooter's Bible.”

“He doesn't, though. I stood right there while he was talking to your pal Payton. He said it's a little like a German Mauser, but it lacked the normal markings and the slide was different. I think they sent it to Augusta with about a ton of other evidence.”

“What else?”

“They found an anonymous note in Henry Beaufort's yard,” Clut said. “It was crumpled into a ball beside his car—you know that classic T-Bird of his? It was vandalized, too. Just like Hugh's.”

Alan felt as if a large soft hand had just whacked him across the face. “What did the note say, Clut?”

“Just a minute.” He heard a faint
whick-whick
sound as Clut paged through his notebook. “Here it is. ‘Don't you
ever
cut me off and then keep my car-keys you damn
frog.' ”

“Frog?”

“That's what it says.” Clut giggled nervously. “The word ‘ever' and the word ‘frog' have got lines drawn under them.”

“And you say the car was vandalized?”

“That's right. Tires slashed, just like Hugh's. And a big long scratch down the passenger side. Ouch!”

“Okay,” Alan said, “here's something else for you to do. Go to the barber shop, and then to the billiard parlor if you need to. Find out who it was Henry cut off this week or last.”

“But the State Police—”

“Fuck
the State Police!” Alan said feelingly. “It's
our
town. We know who to ask and where to find them. Do you want to tell me you can't lay hands on someone who'll know this story in just about five minutes?”

“Of course not,” Clut said. “I saw Charlie Fortin when I came back from Castle Hill, noodling with a bunch of guys in front of the Western Auto. If Henry was bumping heads with somebody, Charlie will know who. Hell, the Tiger's Charlie's home away from home.”

“Yes. But were the State Police questioning him?”

“Well . . . no.”

“No. So
you
question him. But I think we both already know the answer, don't we?”

“Hugh Priest,” Clut said.

“It has the unmistakable clang of a ringer to me,” Alan said. He thought, This is maybe not so different from Henry Payton's first guess after all.

“Okay, Alan. I'll get on it.”

“And call me back the minute you know for sure. The
second.
” He gave Clut the number, then made him recite it back so he could be sure Clut had copied it down correctly.

“I will,” Clut said, and then burst out furiously, “What's going on, Alan? Goddammit,
what's going on around here?”

“I don't know.” Alan felt very old, very tired . . . and angry. No longer angry at Payton for shunting him off the case, but angry at whoever was responsible for these gruesome fireworks. And he felt more and more sure that, when they got to the bottom of it, they would discover that a single agency had been at work all along. Wilma and Nettie. Henry and Hugh. Lester and John. Someone had wired them together like packets of high explosive. “I don't know, Clut, but we're going to find out.”

He hung up and dialled Polly's number again. His
urge to make things right with her to understand what had happened to make her so furious with him, was fading. The replacement feeling which had begun to creep over him was even less comforting: a deep, unfocused dread; a growing feeling that she was in danger.

Ring, ring, ring . . . but no answer.

Polly, I love you and we need to talk. Please pick up the phone. Polly, I love you and we need to talk. Please pick up the phone. Polly, I love you—

The litany ran around in his head like a wind-up toy. He wanted to call Clut back and ask him to check on her right away, before he did anything else, but couldn't. That would be very wrong when there might be other packets of explosive still waiting to explode in The Rock.

Yes, but Alan . . . suppose Polly's one of them?

That thought poked some buried association loose, but he was unable to grasp it before it floated away.

Alan slowly hung up the telephone, cutting it off in mid-ring as he settled it into its cradle.

Polly could stand it no longer. She rolled on her side, reached for the telephone . . . and it stilled in mid-ring.

Good, she thought. But was it?

She was lying on her bed, listening to the sound of approaching thunder. It was hot upstairs—as hot as the middle of July—but opening the windows was not an option, because she'd had Dave Phillips, one of the local handymen and caretakers, put on her storm windows and doors just the week before. So she had taken off the old jeans and shirt she had worn on her expedition to the country and folded them neatly over the chair by the door. Now she lay on the bed in her underwear, wanting a little nap before she got up and showered, but unable to go to sleep.

Some of it was the sirens, but more of it was Alan; what Alan had done. She could not comprehend this grotesque betrayal of all she had believed and all she had trusted, but neither could she escape it. Her mind would
turn to something else (those sirens, for instance, and how they sounded like the end of the world) and then suddenly it would be there again, how he had gone behind her back, how he had
sneaked.
It was like being poked by the splintery end of a board in some tender, secret place.

Oh Alan, how could you? she asked him—and herself—again.

The voice which replied surprised her. It was Aunt Evvie's voice, and beneath the dry lack of sentiment that had always been her way, Polly felt a disquieting, powerful anger.

If you had told him the truth in the first place, girl, he never would have had to.

Polly sat up quickly. That was a disturbing voice, all right, and the most disturbing thing about it was the fact that it was her
own
voice. Aunt Evvie was many years dead. This was her own subconscious, using Aunt Evvie to express its anger the way a shy ventriloquist might use his dummy to ask a pretty girl for a date, and—

Stop it, girl—didn't I once tell you this town is full of ghosts? Maybe it
is
me. Maybe it
is.

Polly uttered a whimpering, frightened cry and then pressed her hand against her mouth.

Or maybe it isn't. In the end, who it is don't matter much, does it? The question is this, Trisha: Who sinned first? Who lied first? Who covered up first? Who cast the first stone?

“That's not fair!” Polly shouted into the hot room, and then looked at her own frightened, wide-eyed reflection in the bedroom mirror. She waited for the voice of Aunt Evvie to come back, and when it didn't, she slowly lay back down again.

Perhaps she
had
sinned first, if omitting part of the truth and telling a few white lies was sinning. Perhaps she
had
covered up first. But did that give Alan the right to open an investigation on her, the way a law officer might open an investigation on a known felon? Did it give him the right to put her name on some interstate law-enforcement wire . . . or send out a tracer on her, if that was what they called it . . . or . . . or . . .

Never mind, Polly,
a voice—one she knew—whispered.
Stop tearing yourself apart over what was very
proper behavior on your part. I mean, after all! You heard the guilt in his
voice,
didn't you?

“Yes!” she muttered fiercely into the pillow. “That's right, I
did!
What about
that.
Aunt Evvie?” There was no answer . . . only a queer, light tugging

(the question is this Trisha)

at her subconscious mind. As if she had forgotten something, left something out

(would you like a sweet Trisha)

of the equation.

Polly rolled restlessly onto her side, and the
azka
tumbled across the fullness of one breast. She heard something inside scratch delicately at the silver wall of its prison.

No, Polly thought, it's just something shifting. Something inert. This idea that there really
is
something alive in there . . . it's just your imagination.