Needful Things (Page 63)

Also, those silent bunches of people standing on the lawns across the street were goddam spooky. They reminded Alan of the mallzombies in Dawn of the Dead.

He got the battery-powered bullhorn out of the back seat of his cruiser and told them he wanted them to go inside, right away.

They began to do it. He then reviewed the protocol in his head one more time, and radioed dispatch. Sandra McMillan had come in to handle the chores there. She wasn’t as steady as Sheila Brigham, but beggars could not be choosers… and Alan guessed Sheila would hear what had happened and come in before much longer.

If her sense of duty didn’t bring her, curiosity would.

Alan told Sandy to track down Ray Van Allen. Ray was Castle County’s On-Call Medical Examiner-also the county coronerand Alan wanted him here when CID arrived, if that was possible.

"Roger, Sheriff," Sandy said self-importantly. "Base is clear."

Alan went back to his officers on the scene. "Which one of you verified that the women are dead?"

Clut and Seat Thomas looked at each other in uneasy surprise, and Alan felt his heart sink. One point for the Monday-morning quarterbacks-or maybe not. The first Crime Investigation Unit wasn’t here yet, although he could hear more sirens approaching.

Alan ducked under the tape and approached the stop-sign, walking on tiptoe like a kid trying to sneak out of the house after curfew.

The spilled blood was mostly pooled between the victims and in the leaf-choked gutter beside them, but a fine spray of dropletswhat the forensics boys called [email protected] the area around them in a rough circle. Alan dropped on one knee just outside this circle, stretched out a hand, and found he could reach the corpses-he had no doubt that was what they were-by leaning forward to the very edge of balance with one arm stretched out.

He looked back at Seat, Norris, and Clut. They were clustered together in a knot, staring at him with big eyes.

"Photograph me," he said.

Clut and Seaton only looked at him as if he had given an order in Tagalog, but Norris ran to Alan’s cruiser and rooted around in back until he found the old Polaroid there, one of two they used for taking crime-scene photographs. When the appropriations committee met, Alan was planning to ask for at least one new camera, but this afternoon the appropriations committee meeting seemed very unimportant.

Norris hurried back with the camera, aimed, and triggered it.

The drive whined.

"Better take another one just to be safe," Alan said. "Get the bodies, too. I’m not going to have those guys saying we broke the chain of evidence. Be damned if I will." He was aware that his voice sounded a shade querulous, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Norris took another Polaroid, documenting Alan’s position outside the circle of evidence and the way the bodies were lying at the foot of the stop-sign. Then Alan leaned cautiously forward again and placed his fingers against the bloodstained neck of the woman lying on top.

There was no pulse, of course, but after a second the pressure of his fingers caused her head to fall away from the signpost and turn sideways. Alan recognized Nettle at once, and it was Polly he thought of.

Oh jesus, he thought dolefully. Then he went through the motions of feeling for Wilma’s pulse, even though there was a meatcleaver buried in her skull. Her cheeks and forehead were printed with small dots of blood. They looked like heathen tattoos.

Alan got up and returned to where his men were standing on the other side of the tapes. He couldn’t seem to stop thinking of Polly, and he knew that was wrong. He had to get her off his mind or he was going to bitch this up for sure. He wondered if any of the gawkers had ID’d Nettle already. if so, Polly would surely hear before he could call her. He hoped desperately that she wouldn’t come down to see for herself.

You can’t worry about that now, he admonished himself You’ve got a double murder on your hands, from the look.

"Get out your book," he told Norris. "You’re club secretary."

It Jesus, Alan, you know how lousy my spelling is."

"Just write."

Norris gave the Polaroid to Clut and got his notebook out of his back pocket. A pad of Traffic Warnings with his name rubberstamped at the bottom of each sheet fell out with it. Norris bent, picked the pad up off the sidewalk, and stuffed it absently into his pocket again.

I want you to note that the head of the woman on top, designated Victim 1, was resting against the post of the stop-sign. I inadvertently pushed it off, checking for pulse."

How easy it is to slip into Police Speak, Alan thought, where cars become "vehicles" and crooks become "perpetrators" and dead townspeople become "designated victims." Police Speak, the wonderful sliding glass barrier.

He turned to Clut and told him to photograph this second configuration of the bodies, feeling extremely grateful that he’d had Norris document the original position before he touched the women.

Clut took the picture.

Alan turned back to Norris. "I want you to further note that when the head of Victim 1 moved, I was able to identify her as Netitia Cobb."

Seaton whistled. "You mean it’s [email protected]"

"Yes. That’s what I mean."

Norris wrote the information down on his pad. Then he asked, "What do we do now, Alan?"

"Wait for CID’s Investigation Unit and try to look alive when they get here," Alan said.

The CID arrived less than three minutes later in two cars, followed by Ray Van Allen in his cranky old Subaru Brat. Five minutes later a State Police ID team arrived in a blue station wagon. All the members of the State Police team then lit cigars. Alan had known they would do this. The bodies were fresh and they were outdoors, but the ritual of the cigars was immutable.

The unpleasant work known in Police Speak as "securing the scene" began. It went on until after dark. Alan had worked with Henry

Payton, head of the Oxford Barracks (and thus in nominal charge of this case and the CID guys working it), on several other occasions. He had never seen the slightest hint of imagination in Henry. The man was a plodder, but a thorough, conscientious plodder.

It was because Henry had been assigned that Alan had felt safe to creep off for a bit and call Polly.

When he returned, the hands of the victims were being secured in gallon-sized Ziploc Baggies. Wilma jerzyck had lost one of her shoes, and her stockinged foot was accorded the same treatment.

The ID team moved in and took close to three hundred photos.

More State Police had arrived by then. Some held back the crowd, which was trying to draw closer again, and others shunted the arriving TV people down to the Municipal Building. A police artist did a quick sketch on a Crime-Scene Grid.

At last the bodies themselves were taken care of-except, that was, for one final matter. Payton gave Alan a pair of disposable surgical gloves and a Ziploc Baggie. "The cleaver or the knife?"

"I’ll take the cleaver," Alan said. It would be the messier of the two implements, still clotted with Wilma jerzyck’s brains, but he didn’t want to touch Nettle. He had liked her.

With the murder weapons removed, tagged, bagged, and on their way to Augusta, the two CID teams moved in and began to search the area around the bodies, which still lay in their terminal embrace with the blood pooled between them now hardening to a substance like enamel.

When Ray Van Allen was finally allowed to load them into the Medical Assistance van, the scene was lit with police cruiser high beams and the orderlies first had to peel Wilma and Nettle apart.

During most of this, Castle Rock’s Finest stood around feeling like bumps on a log.

Henry Payton joined Alan on the sidelines during the conclusion of the oddly delicate ballet known as On-Scene Investigation.

"Lousy damned way to spend a Sunday afternoon," he said.

Alan nodded.

"I’m sorry the head moved on you. That was bad luck."

Alan nodded again.

"I don’t think anyone’s going to bother you about it, though.

You’ve got at least one good pic of the original position." He looked toward Norris, who was talking with Clut and the newly arrived John LaPointe. "You’re just lucky that old boy there didn’t put his finger over the lens."

"Aw, Norris is all right."

"So’s K-Y jelly… in its place. Anyway, the whole thing looks pretty simple."

Alan agreed. That was the trouble; he had known that long before he and Norris finished their Sunday tour of duty in an alley behind Kennebec Valley Hospital. The whole thing was too pretty simple, maybe.

"You planning to attend the cutting party?" Henry asked.

"Yes. Is Ryan going to do it?"

"That’s what I understand."

"I thought I might take Norris with me. The bodies will go to Oxford first, won’t they?"

"Uh-huh. That’s where we log them in."

"If Norris and I left now, we could be in Augusta before they get there."

Henry Payton nodded. "Why not? I think it’s buttoned up here."

"I’d like to send one of my men with each of your CID teams.

As observers. Do you have a problem with that?"

Payton thought it over. "Nope-but who’s going to keep the peace?

Ole Scat Thomas?"

Alan felt a sudden flash of something which was a little too hot to be dismissed as mere annoyance. It had been a long day, he’d listened to Henry rag on his deputies about as much as he wanted to… yet he needed to stay on Henry’s good side in order to hitch a ride on what was technically a State Police case, and so he held his tongue.