The Dead Zone (37 page)

“Go to it,” Bannerman said. “Man, I love good chili. My ulcer hollers bloody hell about it. Fuck you, ulcer, I say. Down the hatch.”

They were quiet for a moment. Johnny worked on his chili and Bannerman watched him curiously. He supposed Smith could have found out he had a dog named Rusty. He even could have found out that Rusty was old and nearly blind. Take it a step farther: if he knew Katrina's name, he might have done that “something like Cathy but that's not quite it” routine just to add the right touch of hesitant realism. But
why?
And none of that explained that queer, zapped feeling he'd gotten in his head when Smith touched his hand. If it was a con, it was a damned good one.

Outside, the wind gusted to a low shriek that seemed to rock the small building on its foundations. A flying veil of snow lashed the Pondicherry Bowling Lanes across the street.

“Listen to that,” Bannerman said. “Supposed to keep up all night. Don't tell
me
the winters're getting milder.”

“Have you got something?” Johnny asked. “Something that belonged to the guy you're looking for?”

“We think we might,” Bannerman said, and then shook his head. “But it's pretty thin.”

“Tell me.”

Bannerman laid it out for him. The grammar school and the library sat facing each other across the town common. It was standard operating procedure to send students across when they needed a book for a project or a report. The teacher gave them a pass and the librarian initialed it before sending them back. Near the center of the common, the land dipped slightly. On the west side of the dip was the town bandstand. In the dip itself were two dozen benches where people sat during band concerts and football rallies in the fall.

“We think he just sat himself down and waited for a kid to come along. He would have been out of sight from both sides of the common. But the footpath runs along the north side of the dip, close to those benches.”

Bannerman shook his head slowly.

“What makes it worse is that the Frechette woman was killed right
on
the bandstand. I am going to face a shitstorm about that at town meeting in March—that is, if I'm still around in March. Well, I can show them a memo I wrote to the town manager, requesting adult crossing guards on the common during school hours. Not that it was this killer that I was worried about, Christ, no. Never in my wildest dreams did I think he'd go back to the same spot a second time.”

“The town manager turned down the crossing guards?”

“Not enough money,” Bannerman said. “Of course, he can spread the blame around to the town selectmen, and they'll try to spread it back on me, and the grass will grow up on Mary Kate Hendrasen's grave and . . .” He paused a moment, or perhaps choked on what he was saying. Johnny gazed at his lowered head sympathetically.

“It might not have made any difference anyhow,” Bannerman went on in a dryer voice. “Most of the crossing guards we use are women, and this fuck we're after doesn't seem to care how old or young they are.”

“But you think he waited on one of those benches?”

Bannerman did. They had found an even dozen fresh cigarette butts near the end of one of the benches, and four more behind the bandstand itself, along with an empty box. Marlboros, unfortunately—the second or third most popular brand
in the country. The cellophane on the box had been dusted for prints and had yielded none at all.

“None at all?” Johnny said. “That's a little funny, isn't it?”

“Why do you say so?”

“Well, you'd guess the killer was wearing gloves even if he wasn't thinking about prints—it was cold out—but you'd think the guy that sold him the cigarettes . . .”

Bannerman grinned. “You've got a head for this work,” he said, “but you're not a smoker.”

“No,” Johnny said. “I used to smoke a few cigarettes when I was in college, but I lost the habit after my accident.”

“A man keeps his cigarettes in his breast pocket. Take them out, get a cigarette, put the pack back. If you're wearing gloves and not leaving fresh prints every time you get a butt, what you're doing is polishing that cellophane wrapper. Get it? And you missed one other thing, Johnny. Need me to tell you?”

Johnny thought it over and then said, “Maybe the pack of cigarettes came out of a carton. And those cartons are packed by machine.”

“That's it,” Bannerman said. “You
are
good at this.”

“What about the tax stamp on the package?”

“Maine,” Bannerman said.

“So if the killer and the smoker were the same man . . .” Johnny said thoughtfully.

Bannerman shrugged. “Sure, there's the technical possibility that they weren't. But I've tried to imagine who else would want to sit on a bench in the town common on a cold, cloudy winter morning long enough to smoke twelve or sixteen cigarettes, and I come up a blank.”

Johnny sipped his tea. “None of the other kids that crossed saw anything?”

“Nothing,” Bannerman said. “I've talked to every kid that had a library pass this morning.”

“That's a lot weirder than the fingerprint business. Doesn't it strike you that way?”

“It strikes me as goddam scary. Look, the guy is sitting there, and what he's waiting for is one kid—one
girl
—by herself. He can hear the kids as they come along. And each time he fades back behind the bandstand . . .”

“Tracks,” Johnny said.

“Not this morning. There was no snow-cover this morning. Just frozen ground. So here's this crazy shitbag that ought to
have his own testicles carved off and served to him for dinner, here he is, skulking behind the bandstand. At about 8:50
A.M.,
Peter Harrington and Melissa Loggins came along. School has been in session about twenty minutes at that time. When they're gone, he goes back to his bench. At 9:15 he fades back behind the bandstand again. This time it's two little girls, Susan Flarhaty and Katrina Bannerman.”

Johnny set his mug of tea down with a bang. Bannerman had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them savagely.

“Your
daughter
crossed this morning? Jesus!”

Bannerman put his glasses on again. His face was dark and dull with fury. And he's afraid, Johnny saw. Not afraid that the voters would turn him out, or that the
Union-Leader
would publish another editorial about nitwit cops in western Maine, but afraid because, if his daughter had happened to go to the library alone this morning—

“My daughter,” Bannerman agreed softly. “I think she passed within forty feet of that . . . that animal. You know what that makes me feel like?”

“I can guess,” Johnny said.

“No, I don't think you can. It makes me feel like I almost stepped into an empty elevator shaft. Like I passed up the mushrooms at dinner and someone else died of toadstool poisoning. And it makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel
filthy.
I guess maybe it also explains why I finally called you. I'd do anything right now to nail this guy. Anything at all.”

Outside, a giant orange plow loomed out of the snow like something from a horror movie. It parked and two men got out. They crossed the street to Jon's and sat at the counter. Johnny finished his tea. He no longer wanted the chili.

“This guy goes back to his bench,” Bannerman resumed, “but not for long. Around 9:25 he hears the Harrington boy and the Loggins girl coming back from the library. So he goes back behind the bandstand again. It must have been around 9:25 because the librarian signed them out at 9:18. At 9:45 three boys from the fifth grade went past the bandstand on their way to the library. One of them thinks he might have seen ‘some guy' standing on the other side of the bandstand. That's our whole description. ‘Some guy.' We ought to put it out on the wire, what do you think? Be on the lookout for some guy.”

Bannerman uttered a short laugh like a bark.

“At 9:55 my daughter and her friend Susan go by on their
way back to school. Then, about 10:05, Mary Kate Hendrasen came along . . . by herself. Katrina and Sue met her going down the school steps as they were going up. They all said hi.”

“Dear God,” Johnny muttered. He ran his hands through his hair.

“Last of all, 10:30
A.M
. The three fifth-grade boys are coming back. One of them sees something on the bandstand. It's Mary Kate, with her leotard and her underpants yanked down, blood all over her legs, her face . . . her face . . .”

“Take it easy,” Johnny said, and put a hand on Bannerman's arm.

“No, I can't take it easy,” Bannerman said. He spoke almost apologetically. “I've never seen anything like that, not in eighteen years of police work. He raped that little girl and that would have been enough . . . enough to, you know, kill her . . . the medical examiner said the way he did it . . . he ruptured something and it . . . yeah, it probably would have, well . . . killed her . . . but then he had to go on and choke her. Nine years old and choked and left . . . left on the bandstand with her underpants pulled down.”

Suddenly Bannerman began to cry. The tears filled his eyes behind his glasses and then rolled down his face in two streams. At the counter, the two guys from the Bridgton road crew were talking about the Super Bowl. Bannerman took his glasses off again and mopped his face with his handkerchief. His shoulders shook and heaved. Johnny waited, stirring his chili aimlessly.

After a little while, Bannerman put his handkerchief away. His eyes were red, and Johnny thought how oddly naked his face looked without his glasses.

“I'm sorry, man,” he said. “It's been a very long day.”

“It's all right,” Johnny said.

“I knew I was going to do that, but I thought I could hold on until I got home to my wife.”

“Well, I guess that was just too long to wait.”

“You're a sympathetic ear.” Bannerman slipped his glasses back on. “No, you're more than that. You've got something. I'll be damned if I know just what it is, but it's something.”

“What else have you got to go on?”

“Nothing. I'm taking most of the heat, but the state police haven't exactly distinguished themselves. Neither has the attorney general's special investigator, or our pet FBI man. The county M.E. has been able to type the sperm, but that's no
good to us at this stage of the game. The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of hair or skin under the victims' fingernails. They all must have struggled, but we don't have as much as a centimeter of skin. The devil must be on this guy's side. He hasn't dropped a button or a shopping list or left a single damn track. We got a shrink from Augusta, also courtesy of the state A.G., and he tells us all these guys give themselves away sooner or later. Some comfort. What if it's later . . . say about twelve bodies from now?”

“The cigarette pack is in Castle Rock?”

“Yes.”

Johnny stood up. “Well, let's take a ride.”

“My car?”

Johnny smiled a little as the wind rose, shrieking, outside. “On a night like this, it pays to be with a policeman,” he said.

The snowstorm was at its height and it took them an hour and a half to get over to Castle Rock in Bannerman's cruiser. It was twenty past ten when they came in through the foyer of the Town Office Building and stamped the snow off their boots.

There were half a dozen reporters in the lobby, most of them sitting on a bench under a gruesome oil portrait of some town founding father, telling each other about previous night watches. They were up and surrounding Bannerman and Johnny in no time.

“Sheriff Bannerman, is it true there has been a break in the case?”

“I have nothing for you at this time,” Bannerman said stolidly.

“There's been a rumor that you've taken a man from Oxford into custody, Sheriff, is that true?”

“No. If you folks will pardon us . . .”

But their attention had turned to Johnny, and he felt a sinking sensation in his belly as he recognized at least two faces from the press conference at the hospital.

“Holy God!” one of them exclaimed. “You're John Smith, aren't you?”

Johnny felt a crazy urge to take the fifth like a gangster at a Senate committee hearing.

“Yes,” he said. “That's me.”

“The psychic guy?” another asked.

“Look, let us pass!” Bannerman said, raising his voice. “Haven't you guys got anything better to do than . . .”

“According to
Inside View,
you're a fake,” a young man in a heavy topcoat said. “Is that true?”

“All I can say about that is
Inside View
prints what they want,” Johnny said. “Look, really . . .”

“You're denying the
Inside View
story?”

“Look, I really can't say anything more.”

As they went through the frosted glass door and into the sheriff's office, the reporters were racing toward the two pay phones on the wall by the dog warden's office.

“Now the shit has truly hit the fan,” Bannerman said unhappily. “I swear before God I never thought they'd still be here on a night like this. I should have brought you in the back.”

“Oh, didn't you know?” Johnny asked bitterly. “We love the publicity. All of us psychics are in it for the publicity.”

“No, I don't believe that,” Bannerman said. “At least not of you. Well, it's happened. Can't be helped now.”

But in his mind, Johnny could visualize the headlines: a little extra seasoning in a pot of stew that was already bubbling briskly. CASTLE ROCK SHERIFF DEPUTIZES LOCAL PSYCHIC IN STRANGLER CASE. “NOVEMBER KILLER” TO BE INVESTIGATED BY SEER. HOAX ADMISSION STORY A FABRICATION, SMITH PROTESTS.