by Stephen King
“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 reporter 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.
“We’re following up a number of leads,” Bannerman said.
“Hello? Mr. Smith?” Bannerman said.
Again that queer sense of doubling. Bannerman was in two places at one time. Two times at one time, if you wanted to look at it that way. Johnny felt an instant of helpless vertigo. He felt the way, God help him, you felt on one of those cheap carnival rides, the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Crack-The-Whip.
“Mr. Smith? Are you there, man?”
“Yes, I’m here.” He swallowed. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“Good boy! I’m damned glad to hear it.”
“I still may not be able to help you, you know.”
“I know that. But ... no venture, no gain.” Bannerman cleared his throat. “They’d run me out of this town on a rail if they knew I was down to consulting a psychic.”
Johnny’s face was touched with a ghost of a grin. “And a discredited psychic, at that.”
“Do you know where Jon’s in Bridgton is?”
“I can find it.”
“Can you meet me there at eight o’clock?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Thank you, Mr. Smith.”
“All right.”
He hung up. Herb was watching him closely. Behind him, the “Nightly News” credits were rolling.
“He called you earlier, huh?”
“Yeah, he did. Sam Weizak told him I might be able to help.”
“Do you think you can?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny said, “but my headache feels a little better.”
6
He was fifteen minutes late getting to Jon’s Restaurant in Bridgton; it seemed to be the only business establishment on Bridgton’s main drag that was still open. The plows were falling behind the snow, and there were drifts across the road in several places. At the junction of Routes 302 and 117, the blinker light swayed back and forth in the screaming wind. A police cruiser with CASTLE COUNTY SHERIFF in gold leaf on the door was parked in front of Jon’s. He parked behind it and went inside.
Bannerman was sitting at a table in front of a cup of coffee and a bowl of chili. The TV had misled. He wasn’t a big man; he was a huge man. Johnny walked over and introduced himself.
Bannerman stood up and shook the offered hand. Looking at Johnny’s white, strained face and the way his thin body seemed to float inside his Navy pea jacket, Bannerman’s first thought was: This guy is sick—he’s maybe not going to live too long. Only Johnny’s eyes seemed to have any real life—they were a direct, piercing blue, and they fixed firmly on Bannerman’s own with sharp, honest curiosity. And when their hands clasped, Bannerman felt a peculiar kind of surprise, a sensation he would later describe as a draining. It was a little like getting a shock from a bare electrical wire. Then it was gone.
“Glad you could come,” Bannerman said. “Coffee?”
“Yes.”
“How about a bowl of chili? They make great damn chili here. I’m not supposed to eat it because of my ulcer, but I do anyway.” He saw the look of surprise on Johnny’s face and smiled. “I know, it doesn’t seem right, a great big guy like me having an ulcer, does it?”
“I guess anyone can get one.”
“You’re damn tooting,” Bannerman said. “What changed your mind?”
“It was the news. The little girl. Are you sure it was the same guy?”
“It was the same guy. Same M.O. And the same sperm type.”
He watched Johnny’s face as the waitress came over. “Coffee?” she asked.
“Tea,” Johnny said.
“And bring him a bowl of chili, Miss,” Bannerman said. When the waitress had gone he said, “This doctor, he says that if you touch something, sometimes you get ideas about where it came’ from, who might have owned it, that sort of thing.”
Johnny smiled. “Well,” he said, “I just shook your hand and I know you’ve got an Irish setter named Rusty. And I know he’s old and going blind and you think it’s time he was put to sleep, but you don’t know how you’d explain it to your girl.”
Bannerman dropped his spoon back into his chili—plop. He stared at Johnny with his mouth open. “By God,” he said. “You got that from me? Just now?”
Johnny nodded.
Bannerman shook his head and muttered, “It’s one thing to hear something like that and another to ... doesn’t it tire you out?”
Johnny looked at Bannerman, surprised. It was a question he had never been asked before. “Yes. Yes, it does.”
“But you knew. I’ll be damned.”
“But look, Sheriff.”
“George. Just plain George.”
“Okay, I’m Johnny, just Johnny. George, what I don’t know about you would fill about five books. I don’t know where you grew up or where you went to police school or who your friends are or where you live. I know you’ve got a little girl, and her name’s something like Cathy, but that’s not quite it. I don’t know what you did last week or what beer you favor or what your favorite TV program is.”
“My daughter’s name is Katrina,” Bannerman said softly. “She’s nine, too. She was in Mary Kate’s class.”
“What I’m trying to say is that the ... the knowing is sometimes a pretty limited thing. Because of the dead zone.”
“Dead zone?”
“It’s like some of
the signals don’t conduct,” Johnny said. “I can never get streets or addresses. Numbers are hard but they sometimes come.” The waitress returned with Johnny’s tea and chili. He tasted the chili and nodded at Bannerman. “You’re right. It’s good. Especially on a night like this.”
“Go to it,” Bannerman said. “Man, I love good chili. My ulcer hollers bloody hell about it. Fuck you, ulcer, I say. Down the hatch.”
They were quiet for a moment. Johnny worked on his chili and Bannerman watched him curiously. He supposed Smith could have found out he had a dog named Rusty. He even could have found out that Rusty was old and nearly blind. Take it a step farther: if he knew Katrina’s name, he might have done that “something like Cathy but that’s not quite it” routine just to add the right touch of hesitant realism. But why? And none of that explained that queer, zapped feeling he’d gotten in his head when Smith touched his hand. If it was a con, it was a damned good one.
Outside, the wind gusted to a low shriek that seemed to rock the small building on its foundations. A flying veil of snow lashed the Pondicherry Bowling Lanes across the street.
“Listen to that,” Bannerman said. “Supposed to keep up all night. Don’t tell me the winters’re getting milder.”
“Have you got something?” Johnny asked. “Something that belonged to the guy you’re looking for?”
“We think we might,” Bannerman said, and then shook his head. “But it’s pretty thin.”
“Tell me.”
Bannerman laid it out for him. The grammar school and the library sat facing each other across the town common. It was standard operating procedure to send students across when they needed a book for a project or a report. The teacher gave them a pass and the librarian initialed it before sending them back. Near the center of the common, the land dipped slightly. On the west side of the dip was the town bandstand. In the dip itself were two dozen benches where people sat during band concerts and football rallies in the fall.
“We think he just sat himself down and waited for a kid to come along. He would have been out of sight from both sides of the common. But the footpath runs along the north side of the dip, close to those benches.”
Bannerman shook his head slowly.
“What makes it worse is that the Frechette woman was killed right on the bandstand. I am going to face a shitstorm about that at town meeting in March—that is, if I’m still around in March. Well, I can show them a memo I wrote to the town manager, requesting adult crossing guards on the common during school hours. Not that it was this killer that I was worried about, Christ, no. Never in my wildest dreams did I think he’d go back to the same spot a second time.”
“The town manager turned down the crossing guards?”
“Not enough money,” Bannerman said. “Of course, he can spread the blame around to the town selectmen, and they’ll try to spread it back on me, and the grass will grow up on Mary Kate Hendrasen’s grave and ...” He paused a moment, or perhaps choked on what he was saying. Johnny gazed at his lowered head sympathetically.
“It might not have made any difference anyhow,” Bannerman went on in a dryer voice. “Most of the crossing guards we use are women, and this fuck we’re after doesn’t seem to care how old or young they are.”
“But you think he waited on one of those benches?”
Bannerman did. They had found an even dozen fresh cigarette butts near the end of one of the benches, and four more behind the bandstand itself, along with an empty box. Marlboros, unfortunately—the second or third most popular brand in the country. The cellophane on the box had been dusted for prints and had yielded none at all.
“None at all?” Johnny said. “That’s a little funny, isn’t it?”
“Why do you say so?”
“Well, you’d guess the killer was wearing gloves even if he wasn’t thinking about prints—it was cold out—but you’d think the guy that sold him the cigarettes ...”
Bannerman grinned. “You’ve got a head for this work,” he said, “but you’re not a smoker.”
“No,” Johnny said. “I used to smoke a few cigarettes when I was in college, but I lost the habit after my accident.”
“A man keeps his cigarettes in his breast pocket. Take them out, get a cigarette, put the pack back. If you’re wearing gloves and not leaving fresh prints every time you get a butt, what you’re doing is polishing that cellophane wrapper. Get it? And you missed one other thing, Johnny. Need me to tell you?”
Johnny thought it over and then said, “Maybe the pack of cigarettes came out of a carton. And those cartons are packed by machine.”
“That’s it,” Bannerman said. “You are good at this.”
“What about the tax stamp on the package?”
“Maine,” Bannerman said.
“So. if the killer and the smoker were the same man ...” Johnny said thoughtfully.
Bannerman shrugged. “Sure, there’s the technical possibility that they weren’t. But I’ve tried to imagine who else would want to sit on a bench in the town common on a cold, cloudy winter morning long enough to smoke twelve or sixteen cigarettes, and I come up a blank.”
Johnny sipped his tea. “None of the other kids that crossed saw anything?”
“Nothing,” Bannerman said. “I’ve talked to every kid that had a library pass this morning.”
“That’s a lot weirder than the fingerprint business. Doesn’t it strike you that way?”
“It strikes me as goddam scary. Look, the guy is sitting there, and what he’s waiting for is one kid—one girl—by herself. He can hear the kids as they come along. And each time he fades back behind the bandstand ...”
“Tracks,” Johnny said.
“Not this morning. There was no snow-cover this morning. Just frozen ground. So here’s this crazy shitbag that ought to have his own testicles carved off and served to him for dinner, here he is, skulking behind the bandstand. At about 8:50 A.M., Peter Harrington and Melissa Loggins came along. School has been in session about twenty minutes at that time. When they’re gone, he goes back to his bench. At 9:15 he fades back behind the bandstand again. This time it’s two little girls, Susan Flarhaty and Katrina Bannerman.”
Johnny set his mug of tea down with a bang. Bannerman had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them savagely.
“Your daughter crossed this morning? Jesus!”
Bannerman put his glasses on again. His face was dark and dull with fury. And he’s afraid, Johnny saw. Not afraid that the voters would turn him out, or that the Union-Leader would publish another editorial about nitwit cops in western Maine, but afraid because, if his daughter had happened to go to the library alone this morning—
“My daughter,” Bannerman agreed softly. “I think she passed within forty feet of that ... that animal. You know what that makes me feel like?”
“I can guess,” Johnny said.
“No, I don’t think you can. It makes me feel like I almost stepped into an empty elevator shaft. Like I passed up the mushrooms at dinner and someone else died of toadstool poisoning. And it makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel filthy. I guess maybe it also explains why I finally called you. I’d do anything right now to nail this guy. Anything at all.”
Outside, a giant orange plow loomed out of the snow like something from a horror movie. It parked and two men got out. They crossed the street to Jon’s and sat at the counter. Johnny finished his tea. He no longer wanted the chili.
“This guy goes back to his bench,” Bannerman resumed, “but not for long. Around 9:25 he hears the Harrington boy and the Loggins girl coming back from the library. So he goes back behind the bandstand again. It must have been around 9:25 because the librarian signed them out at 9:18. At 9:45 three boys from the fifth grade went past the bandstand on their way to the library. One of them thinks he might have seen ‘some guy’ standing on the other side of the bandstand. That’s our whole description. ‘Some guy.’ We ought to put it out on the wire, what do you think? Be on the lookout fo
r some guy.”
Bannerman uttered a short laugh like a bark.
“At 9:55 my daughter and her friend Susan go by on their way back to school. Then, about 10:05, Mary Kate Hendrasen came along ... by herself. Katrina and Sue met her going down the school steps as they were going up. They all said hi.”
“Dear God,” Johnny muttered. He ran his hands through his hair.
“Last of all, 10:30 A.M. The three fifth-grade boys are coming back. One of them sees something on the bandstand. It’s Mary Kate, with her leotard and her underpants yanked down, blood all over her legs, her face ... her face ...”
“Take it easy,” Johnny said, and put a hand on Bannerman’s arm.
“No, I can’t take it easy,” Bannerman said. He spoke almost apologetically. “I’ve never seen anything like that, not in eighteen years of police work. He raped that little girl and that would have been enough ... enough to, you know, kill her ... the medical examiner said the way he did it ... he ruptured something and it ... yeah, it probably would have, well ... killed her ... but then he had to go on and choke her. Nine years old and choked and left ... left on the bandstand with her underpants pulled down.”
Suddenly Bannerman began to cry. The tears filled his eyes behind his glasses and then rolled down his face in two streams. At the counter, the two guys from the Bridgton road crew were talking about the Super Bowl. Bannerman took his glasses off again and mopped his face with his handkerchief. His shoulders shook and heaved. Johnny waited, stirring his chili aimlessly.
After a little while, Bannerman put his handkerchief away. His eyes were red, and Johnny thought how oddly naked his face looked without his glasses.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “It’s been a very long day.”
“It’s all right,” Johnny said.
“I knew I was going to do that, but I thought I could hold on until I got home to my wife.”