Needful Things (Page 118)

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.

Scratch-scritch-scratch.

The silver ball jiggled minutely between the white cotton cup of her bra and the coverlet of the bed.

Scratchy-scri’tch-scratch.

That thing is alive, Trisha, Aunt Evvie said. That thing is alive, and you know it, Don’t be silly, Polly told her, tossing over to the other side.

How could there possibly be some creature in there? I suppose it might be able to breathe through all those tiny holes, but what in God’s name would it eat?

Maybe, Aunt Evvie replied with soft implacability, i’t’s eating You, Trisha.

"Polly," she murmured. "My name is Polly."

This time the tug at her subconscious mind was strongersomehow alarming-and for a moment she was almost able to grasp it. Then the telephone began to ring again. She gasped and sat up, her face wearing a look of tired dismay. Pride and longing were at war there.

Talk to him, Trisha-what can it hurt? Better still, listen to him.

You didn’t do much of that before, did you?

I don’t want to talk to him. Not after what he did.

But you still love him.

Yes; that was true. The only thing was, now she hated him as well.

The voice of Aunt Evvie rose once more, gusting angrily in her mind. Do you want to be a ghost all your life, Trisha? What’s the matter with you, girl?

Polly reached out for the telephone in a mockery of decisiveness.

Her hand-her limber, pain-free hand-faltered just short of the handset.

Because maybe it wasn’t Alan. Maybe it was Mr. Gaunt.

Maybe Mr. Gaunt wanted to tell her that he wasn’t finished with her yet, that she hadn’t finished paying yet.

She made another move toward the telephone-this time the tips of her fingers actually brushed the plastic casing-and then she drew back.

Her hand clutched its partner and they folded into a nervous ball on her belly. She was afraid of Aunt Evvie’s dead voice, of what she had done this afternoon, of what Mr. Gaunt (or Alan!) might tell the town about her dead son, of what yonder confusion of sirens and racing cars might mean.

But more than all of these things, she had discovered, she was afraid of Leland Gaunt himself. She felt as if someone had tied her to the clapper of a great iron bell, a bell which would simultaneously deafen her, drive her mad, and crush her to a pulp if it began to ring.

The telephone fell quiet.

Outside, another siren began to scream, and as it began to fade toward the Tin Bridge, the thunder rolled again. Closer than ever now.

Take it off, the voice of Aunt Evvie whispered. Take it off, honey. You can do it-his power is over need, not will. Take it off. Break his hold on you.

But she was looking at the telephone and remembering the night-was it less than a week ago?-when she had reached for it and struck it with her fingers, knocking it to the floor. She remembered the pain which had clawed its way up her arm like a hungry ratwith broken teeth. She couldn’tgo back to that. She just couldn’t.

Could she?

Something nasty is going on in The Rock tonight, Aunt Evvie said.

Do you want to wake up tomorrow and have to figure out how much of it was YOUR nastiness? Is that really a score you want to add up, Trisha?

"You don’t understand," she moaned. "It wasn’t on Alan, it was on Ace! Ace Merrill! And he deserves whatever he gets!"

The implacable voice of Aunt Evvie returned: Then so do you, honey. So do you.

4

At twenty minutes past six on that Tuesday evening, as the thunderheads neared and real dark began to overtake twilight, the State Police officer who had replaced Sheila Brigham in dispatch came out into the Sheriff’s Office bullpen. He skirted the large area, roughly diamond-shaped, which was marked with C R I M E – S C E N E tape and hurried over to where Henry Payton stood.

Payton looked dishevelled and unhappy. He had spent the previous five minutes with the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and he felt as he always did after one of these confrontations: as if he had been coated with honey and then forced to roll in a large pile of ant-infested hyena-shit. His statement had not been as well prepared or as unassailably vague-as he would have liked. The TV people had forced his hand. They wanted to do live updates during the six-to-six-thirty time-slot when the local news was broadcast-felt they had to do live updates-and if he didn’t throw them some kind of bone, they were apt to crucify him at eleven. They had almost crucified him anyway. He had come as close as he ever had in his entire career to admitting he didn’t have a f**king clue. He had not left this impromptu press conference; he had escaped it.

Payton found himself wishing he had listened more closely to Alan.

When he arrived, it had seemed that the job was essentially damage control. Now he wondered, because there had been another murder since he took the case-a woman named Myrtle Keeton.

Her husband was still out there someplace, probably headed over the hills and far away by now, but just possibly still galloping gaily around this weird little town. A man who had offed his wife with a hammer. A prime psyche, in other words.

The trouble was, he didn’t know these people. Alan and his deputies did, but both Alan and Ridgewick were gone. LaPointe was in the hospital, probably hoping the doctors could get his nose on straight again. He looked around for Clutterbuck and was somehow not surprised to see that he had also melted away.

You want it, Henry? he heard Alan say inside his head. Fine.

Take it. And as far as suspects go, why not try the phone hook?

"Lieutenant Payton? Lieutenant Payton!" It was the officer from dispatch.

"What?" Henry growled.

"I’ve got Dr. Van Allen on the radio. He wants to talk to you."

"About what?"

"He wouldn’t say. He only told me he had to speak to you."

Henry Payton walked into the dispatcher’s office feeling more and more like a kid riding a bike with no brakes down a steep hill with a drop-off on one side, a rock wall on the other, and a pack of hungry wolves with reporters’ faces behind him.

He picked up the mike. "This is Payton, come back."

"Lieutenant Payton, this is Dr. Van Allen. County Medical Examiner?" The voice was hollow and distant, broken up occasionally by heavy bursts of static. That would be the approaching storm, Henry knew. More fun with Dick and Jane.

"Yes, I know who you are," Henry said. "You took Mr. Beaufort to Oxford. How is he, come back?"

"He’s-" Crackle crackle buzz snacker.

"You’re breaking up, Dr. Van Allen," Henry said, speaking as patiently as he could. "We’ve got what looks to be a really firstclass electrical storm on the way here. Please say again. K."

"Dead!" Van Allen shouted through a break in the static. "He died in the ambulance, but we do not believe it was gunshot trauma which killed him. Do you understand? We do not believe this patient died of gunshot trauma. His brain first underwent atypical edema and then ruptured. The most likely diagnosis is that,some toxic substance, some extremely toxic substance, was introduced into his blood when he was shot. This same substance appears to have literally burst his heart open. Please acknowledge."

Oh Jesus, Henry Payton thought. He pulled down his tie, unbuttoned his collar, and then pressed the transmit button again.

"I acknowledge your message, Dr. Van Allen, but I’ll be damned if I understand it. K."

"The toxin was very likely on the bullets in the gun that shot him. The infection appears to spread slowly at first, then to pick up speed. We have two clear, fan-shaped areas of introduction here the cheek-wound and the chest-wound. It’s very important to-" Crackle snackle buzzzit.

"-has it? Ten-four?"

"Say again, Dr. Van Allen." Henry wished to Christ the man had simply picked up the telephone. "Please say again, come back."

"Who has that gun?" Van Allen shrieked. "Ten-four!"

"David Friedman. Ballistics. He’s taken it to Augusta. K."

"Would he have unloaded it first-ten-four?"

"Yes. That’s standard practice. Come back."

"Was it a revolver or an automatic, Lieutenant Payton? That’s of prime importance right now. Ten-four."

"An automatic. K."

"Would he have unloaded the clip? Ten-four."

"He’d do that at Augusta." Payton sat down heavily in the dispatcher’s chair. Suddenly he needed to take a heavy dump.

"Tenfour. "No! No, he mustn’t! He must not do that-do you copy?"

"I copy," Henry said. "I’ll leave a message for him at the Ballistics Lab, saying he’s to leave the goddam bullets in the goddam clip until we get this latest goddam snafu sorted the goddam hell out."

He felt a childish pleasure at the realization that this was going out on the air… and then he wondered how many of the reporters out front were monitoring him on their Bearcats. "Listen, Dr. Van Allen, we’ve got no business talking about this on the radio. Ten-four."

"Never mind the public-relations aspect," Van Allen came back harshly. "We’re talking about a man’s life here, Lieutenant PaytonI tried to get you on the telephone and couldn’t get through. Tell your man Friedman to examine his hands carefully for scratches, small nicks, even hangnails. If he has the smallest break in the skin of his hands, he’s to go to the nearest hospital immediately. I have no way of knowing if the crap we’re dealing with was on the casing of the ammunition clip as well as on the bullets themselves. And it isn’t the kind of thing he wants to take the slightest chance with.