“It's snowing.”
“Just started here about an hour ago. They say John? Is it the sheriff? Is that why you sound so cold?”
“Well, he called me,” Johnny said, “and I've been sort of wondering what happened. Why you gave him my name?
Why you didn't call me and say you had… and why you didn't call me first and ask if you could.”
Weizak sighed. “Johnny, I could maybe give you a lie, but that would be no good. I didn't ask you first because I was afraid you would say no. And I didn't tell you I'd done it afterward because the sheriff laughed at me. When someone laughs at one of my suggestions, I assume, nub, that the suggestion is not going to be taken.”
Johnny rubbed at one aching temple with his free hand and closed his eyes. “But why, Sam? You know how I feel about that. You were the one who told me to keep my head down and let it blow over. You told me that yourself.”
“It was the piece in the paper,” Sam said. “I said to myself, Johnny lives down that way. And I said to myself, five dead women. Five. “His voice was slow, halting, and embarrassed. It made Johnny feel much worse to hear Sam sounding like this. He wished he hadn't called.
“Two of them teenage girls. A young mother. A teacher of young children who loved Browning. All of it so corny, nuh? So corny I suppose they would never make a movie or a TV show out of it. But nonetheless true. It was the teacher I thought about most. Stuffed into a culvert like a bag of garbage…
“You had no damn right to bring me into your guilt fantasies,” Johnny said thickly.
“No, perhaps not.”
“No perhaps about it!”
“Johnny, are you all right? You sound…”
“I'm fine! “Johnny shouted.
“You don't sound fine.”
“I've got a shitter of a headache, is that so surprising? I wish to Christ you'd left this alone. When I told you about your mother you didn't call her. Because you said…”
“I said some things are better lost than found. But that is not always true, Johnny. This man, whoever he is, has a terribly disturbed personality. He may kill himself. I am sure that when he stopped for two years the police thought he had. But a manicdepressive sometimes has long level periods-it is called a “plateau of normality” -and then goes back to the same mood-swings. He may have killed himself after murdering that teacher last month. But if he hasn't, what then? He may kill another one. Or two. Or four. Or…”
“Stop it.”
Sam said, “Why did Sheriff Bannerman call you? What made him change his mind?”
“I don't know. I suppose the voters are after him.”
“I'm sorry I called him, Johnny, and that this has u~ set you so. But even more I am sorry that I did not call you and tell you what I had done. I was wrong. God knows you have a right to live your life quietly.”
Hearing his own thoughts echoed did not make him feel better. Instead he felt more miserable and guilty than ever.
“All right,” he said. “That's okay, Sam.”
“I'll not say anything to anyone again. I suppose that is like putting a new lock on the barn door after a horse theft, but it's all I can say. I was indiscreet. In a doctor, that's bad.”
“All right,” Johnny said again. He felt helpless, and the slow embarrassment with which Sam spoke made it worse.
“I'll see you soon?”
“I'll be up in Cleaves next month to start teaching. I'll drop by.”
“Good. Again, my sincere apologies, John.”
Stop saying that!
They said their good-byes and Johnny hung up, wishing he hadn't called at all. Maybe he hadn't wanted Sam to agree so readily that what he had done was wrong. Maybe what he had really wanted Sam to say was, Sure l called him. I wanted you to get off your ass and do something.
He wandered across to the window and looked out into the blowing darkness. Stuffed into a culvert like a bag of garbage
.
God, how his head ached.
Herb got home half an hour later, took one look at Johnny's white face and said, “Headache?”
“Yeah.”
“Bad?”
“Not too bad.”
“We want to watch the national news,” Herb said. “Glad I got home in time. Bunch of people from NBC were over in Castle Rock this afternoon, filming. That lady reporter you think is so pretty was there. Cassie Mackin.”
He blinked at the way Johnny turned on him. For a moment it seemed that Johnny's face was all eyes, staring out at him and full of a nearly inhuman pain.
“Castle Rock? Another murder?”
“Yeah. They found a little girl on the town common this morning. Saddest damn thing you ever heard of. I guess she had a pass to go across the common to the library for some project she was working on. She got to the library but she never got back… Johnny, you look terrible, boy.
“How old was she?”
“Just nine,” Herb said. “A man who'd do a thing like that should be strung up by the balls. That's my view on it.”
“Nine,” Johnny said, and sat down heavily. “Stone the crows.
“Johnny, you sure you feel okay? You're white as paper.
“Fine. Turn on the news.”
Shortly, John Chancellor was in front of them, bearing his nightly satchel of political aspirations (Fred Harris's campaign was not catching much fire), government edicts (the cities of America would just have to learn common budgetary sense, according to President Ford), international incidents (a nationwide strike in France), the Dow Jones (up), and a “heartwarming” piece about a boy with cerebral palsy who was raising a 4-H cow.
“Maybe they cut it,” Herb said.
But after a commercial, Chancellor said: “In western Maine, there's a townful of frightened, angry people tonight. The town is Castle Rock, and over the last five years there have been five nasty murders-five women ranging in age from seventy-one to fourteen have been raped and strangled. Today there was a sixth murder in Castle Rock, and the victim was a nine-year-old girl. Catherine Mackin is in Castle Rock with the story.”
And there she was, looking like a figment of make-believe carefully superimposed on a real setting. She was standing across from the Town Office Building. The first of that afternoon's snow which had developed into tonight's blizzard was powdering the shoulders of her coat and her blonde hair.
“A sense of quietly mounting hysteria lies over this small New England mill town this afternoon,” she began. “The townspeople of Castle Rock have been nervous for a long time over the unknown person the local press calls “the Castle Rock Strangler” or sometimes “the November Killer”. That nervousness has changed to terror-no one here thinks that word is too strong-following the discovery of Mary Kate Hendrasen's body on the town common, not far from the bandstand where the body of the November Killer's first victim, a waitress named Alma Frechette, was discovered.”
A long panning shot of the town common, looking bleak and dead in the falling snow. This was replaced with a school photograph of Mary Kate Hendrasen, grinning brashly through a heavy set of braces. Her hair was a fine white-blonde. Her dress was an electric blue. Most likely her best dress, Johnny thought sickly. Her mother put her into her best dress for her school photo.
The report went on-now they were recapitulating the past murders-but Johnny was on the phone, first to directory assistance and then to the Castle Rock town offices. He dialed slowly, his head thudding.
Herb came out of the living room and looked at him curiously. “Who are you calling, son?”
Johnny shook his head and listened to the phone ring on the other end. It was picked up. “Castle County sheriff's office.
“I'd like to talk to Sheriff Bannerman, please.”
“Could I have your name?”
“John Smith, from Pownal.”
“Hold on, please.”
Johnny turned to look at the TV and saw Bannerman as he had been that afternoon, bundled up in a heavy parka with county sheriff patches on the shoulders. He looked uncomfortable and dogged as he fielded the reporters” questions. He was a broad-shouldered man with a big, sloping head capped with curly dark hair. The rimless glasses he wore looked strangely out of place, as spectacles always seem to look out of place on very big men.