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 fucking 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.
This stuff is deadly. Ten-four?”
“I acknowledge,” Henry heard himself say. He found himself wishing he were anywhere but here-but since he was here, he wished that Alan Pangborn were here beside him. Since arriving in Castle Rock, he had come more and more to feel like Brer Rabbit stuck in the Tar Baby.
“What is it? K?”
“We don’t know yet. Not curare, because there was no paralysis until the very end. Also, curare is relatively painless, and Mr.
Beaufort suffered a great deal. All we know right now is that it started slowly and then moved like a freight-train. Ten-four.”
“That’s all? Ten-four.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ray Van Allen ejaculated. “Isn’t it enough?
Tenfour.”
“Yes. I guess it is. K.”
“Just be glad-” Crackle crackle brrack!
“Say again, Dr. Van Allen. Say again. Ten-four.”
Through the swelling ocean of static he heard Dr. Van Allen say, “Just be glad you’ve got the gun in custody. That you don’t have to worry about it doing any more damage. Ten-four.”
“You got that right, buddy. Ten-forty, out.”
5
Cora Rusk turned onto Main Street and walked slowly toward Needful Things. She passed a bright yellow Ford Econoline van with WPTD CHANNEL 5 ACTION NEWS emblazoned on the side, but did not see Danforth “Buster” Keeton looking out of the driver’s window at her with unblinking eyes. She probably wouldn’t have recognized him in any case; Buster had become, in a manner of speaking, a new man. And even if she had seen and recognized him, it would have meant nothing to Cora. She had her own problems and sorrows. Most of all, she had her own anger. And none of this concerned her dead son.
In one hand, Cora Rusk held a pair of broken sunglasses.
It had seemed to her that the police were going to question her forever… or at least until she went mad. Go away! she wanted to scream at them. Stop asking me all these stupid questions about Brian!