Needful Things (Page 117)

"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 Nettle. 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.

3

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, andStop it, girl-didn’t I once tell you this town "sfull 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.