The bell over the door jingled as Nettle left the shop.
Mr. Gaunt observed all of this with great interest.
He walked over to Rosalie and said, “Mrs. Cobb has left without you, I’m afraid.”
Rosalie looked startled. “Why-” she began, and then her eyes settled on the newcomer with the Casino Nite button pinned adamantly between her breasts. She was studying the Turkish rug hung on the wall with the fixed interest of an art student in a gallery.
Her hands were planted on her vast hips. “Oh, “Rosalie said.
“Excuse me, I really ought to go along.”
“No love lost between those two, I’d say,” Mr. Gaunt remarked.
Rosalie smiled distractedly.
Gaunt glanced at the woman in the kerchief again. “Who is she?”
Rosalie wrinkled her nose. “Wilma Jersyck,” she said. “Excuse me… I really ought to catch up with Nettle. She’s high-strung, you know.”
“Of course,” he said, and watched Rosalie out the door. To himself he added, Aren’t we all.”
Then Cora Rusk was tapping him on the shoulder. “How much is that picture of The King?” she demanded.
Leland Gaunt turned his dazzling smile upon her. “Well, let’s talk about it,” he said. “How much do you think it’s worth?”
CHAPTER THREE
1
Castle Rock’s newest port of commerce had been closed for nearly two hours when Alan Pangborn rolled slowly down Main Street toward the Municipal Building, which housed the Sheriff’s Office and Castle Rock Police Department. He was behind the wheel of the ultimate unmarked car: a 1986 Ford station wagon. The family car. He felt low and half-drunk. He’d only had three beers, but they had hit him hard.
He glanced at Needful Things as he drove past, approving of the dark-green canopy which jutted out over the street, just as Brian Rusk had done. He knew less about such things (having no relations who worked for the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company in South Paris), but he thought it did lend a certain touch of class to Main Street, where most shopowners had added false fronts and called it good. He didn’t know yet what the new place sold-Polly would, if she had gone over this morning as she had planned-but it looked to Alan like one of those cozy French restaurants where you took the girl of your dreams before trying to sweet-talk her into bed.
The place slipped from his mind as soon as he passed it. He signalled right two blocks farther down, and turned up the narrow passage between the squat brick block of the Municipal Building and the white clapboard Water District building. This lane was marked OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY.
The Municipal Building was shaped like an upside-down L, and there was a small parking lot in the angle formed by the two wings.
Three of the slots were marked SHERIFF’s OFFICE. Norris Ridgewick’s bumbling old VW Beetle was parked in one of them.
Alan parked in another, cut the headlights and the motor, reached for the doorhandle.
The depression which had been circling him ever since he left The Blue Door in Portland, circling the way wolves often circled campfires in the adventure stories he had read as a boy, suddenly fell upon him.
He let go of the doorhandle and just sat behind the wheel of the station wagon, hoping it would pass.
He had spent the day in Portland’s District Court, testifying for the prosecution in four straight trials. The district encompassed four counties-York, Cumberland, Oxford, Castle-and of all the lawmen who served in those counties, Alan Pangborn had the farthest to travel.
The three District judges therefore tried as best they could to schedule his court cases in bunches, so he would have to make the trip only once or twice a month. This made it possible for him to actually spend some time in the county which he had sworn to protect, instead of on the roads between Castle Rock and Portland, but it also meant that, after one of his court days, he felt like a high school kid stumbling out of the auditorium where he has just taken the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. He should have known better than to drink on top of that, but Harry Cross and George Crompton had just been on their way down to The Blue Door, and they had insisted that Alan join them. There had been a good enough reason to do so: a string of clearly related burglaries which had occurred in all of their areas. But the real reason he’d gone was the one most bad decisions have in common: it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now he sat behind the wheel of what had been the family car, reaping what he had sown of his own free will. His head ached gently.
He felt more than a touch of nausea. But the depression was the worst-it was back with a vengeance.
Hello! it cried merrily from its stronghold inside his head.
Here I am, Alan! Good to see you! Guess what? Here it is, end of a long hard day, and Annie and Todd are still dead! Remember the Saturday afternoon when Todd spilled his milkshake on the front seat?
Right under where Your briefcase is now, wasn’t it? And you shouted at him?
Wow! Didn’t forget that, did you? You did? Well, that’s okay, Alan, because I’m here to remind you! And remind you! And remind you!
He lifted his briefcase and looked fixedly at the seat. Yes, the stain was there, and yes, he had shouted at Todd. Todd, why do you always have to be so clumsy? Something like that, no big deal, but not the sort of thing you would ever say if you knew your kid had less than a month left to live.
It occurred to him that the beers weren’t the real problem; it was this car, which had never been properly cleaned out. He had spent the day riding with the ghosts of his wife and his younger son.
He leaned over and popped the glove compartment to get his citation book-carrying that, even when he was headed down to Portland to spend the day testifying in court, was an unbreakable habit-and reached inside. His hand struck some tubular object, and it fell out onto the floor of the station wagon with a little thump.
He put his citation book on top of his briefcase and then bent over to get whatever it was he had knocked out of the glove compartment. He held it up so it caught the glow of the arc-sodium light and stared at it a long time, feeling the old dreadful ache of loss and sorrow steal into him. Polly’s arthritis was in her hands; his, it seemed, was in his heart, and who could say which of them had gotten the worst of it?
The can had belonged to Todd, of course-Todd, who would have undoubtedly lived in the Auburn Novelty Shop if he had been allowed.
The boy had been entranced with the cheapjack arcana sold there: joy buzzers, sneezing powder, dribble glasses, soap that turned the user’s hands the color of volcanic ash, plastic dog turds.
This thing is still here. Nineteen months they’ve been dead, and it’s still here. How in the hell did I miss i’t? Christ.
Alan turned the round can over in his hands, remembering how the boy had pleaded to be allowed to buy this particular item with his allowance money, how Alan himself had demurred, quoting his own father’s proverb: the fool and his money soon parted. And how Annie had overruled him in her gentle way.
Listen to you, Mr. Amateur Magician, sounding like a Puritan. I love it! Where do you think he got this?” nsane love of gags and tricks in the first place? No one in my family ever kept a framed picture of Houdiny’ on the wall, believe me. Do you want to tell me you didn’t buy a dribble glass or two in the hot, wild days of your youth? That you wouldn’t have just about died to own the old snake-in-the-can-of-nuts trick if you’d come across one in a display case somewhere?
He, hemming and hawing, sounding more and more like a pompous stuffed-shirt windbag. Finally he’d had to raise a hand to his mouth to hide a grin of embarrassment. Annie had seen it, however. Annie always did. That had been her gift… and more than once it had been his salvation. Her sense of humor-and her sense of perspective as well-had always been better than his.