by Stephen King
Told by whom? she wondered.
"If the azka is removed, however, the wearer reverts to his or her former painful state not slowly but at once, and then has to wait for days or perhaps weeks in order to regain the lost ground once the azka is put back on."
Polly laughed a little. She couldn't help it, and was relieved when Leland Gaunt joined her.
"I know how it sounds," he said, "but I only want to help if I can. Do you believe that?"
"I do," she said, "and I thank you."
But as she allowed him to usher her from the shop, she found herself wondering about other things, too. There was the near trance-state she'd been in when he slipped the chain over her head, for instance. Then there was her strong dislike of being touched by him. Those things were very much at odds with the feelings of friendship, regard, and compassion which he projected like an almost visible aura.
But had he mesmerized her somehow? That was a foolish idea ... wasn't it? She tried to remember exactly what she had felt like when they were discussing the azka, and couldn't do it. If he had done such a thing, it had no doubt been by accident, and with her help. More likely she had just entered the dazed state which too many Percodans sometimes induced. It was the thing she disliked most about the pills. No, she guessed that was the thing she disliked second to the most. What she really hated about them was that they didn't always work the way they were supposed to anymore.
"I'd drive you home, if I drove," Mr. Gaunt said, "but I'm afraid I never learned."
"Perfectly all right," Polly said. "I appreciate your kindness a great deal."
"Thank me if it works," he replied. "Have a lovely afternoon, Polly."
More sirens rose in the air. They were on the east side of town, over toward Elm, Willow, Pond, and Ford streets. Polly turned in that direction. There was something about the sound of sirens, especially on such a quiet afternoon, which conjured up vaguely threatening thoughts--not quite images--of impending doom. The sound began to die out, unwinding like an invisible clockspring in the bright autumn air.
She turned back to say something about this to Mr. Gaunt, but the door was shut. The sign reading
CLOSED
hung between the drawn shade and the glass, swinging gently back and forth on its string. He had gone back inside while her back was turned, so quietly she hadn't even heard him.
Polly began to walk slowly home. Before she got to the end of Main Street another police car, this one a State Police cruiser, blasted past her.
19
"Danforth?"
Myrtle Keeton stepped through the front door and into the living room. She balanced the fondue pot under her left arm as she struggled to remove the key Danforth had left in the lock.
"Danforth, I'm home!"
There was no answer, and the TV wasn't on. That was strange; he had been so determined to get home in time for the kick-off. She wondered briefly if he might have gone somewhere else, up to the Garsons', perhaps, to watch it, but the garage door was down, which meant he had put the car away. And Danforth didn't walk anywhere if he could possibly avoid it. Especially not up the View, which was steep.
"Danforth? Are you here?"
Still no answer. There was an overturned chair in the dining room. Frowning, she set the fondue pot on the table and righted the chair. The first threads of worry, fine as cobweb, drifted through her mind. She walked toward the study door, which was closed. When she reached it, she tipped her head against the wood and listened. She was quite sure she could hear the soft squeak of his desk chair.
"Danforth? Are you in there?"
No answer ... but she thought she heard a low cough. Worry became alarm. Danforth had been under a great deal of strain lately--he was the only one of the town's selectmen who worked really hard--and he weighed more than was good for him. What if he'd had a heart attack? What if he was in there lying on the floor? What if the sound she had heard was not a cough but the sound of Danforth trying to breathe?
The lovely morning and early afternoon they had spent together made such a thought seem horridly plausible : first the sweet build-up, then the crashing let-down. She reached for the knob of the study door ... then drew her hand back and used it to pluck nervously at the loose skin under her throat instead. It had taken only a few blistering occasions to teach her that one did not disturb Danforth in his study without knocking ... and that one never, never, never entered his sanctum sanctorum uninvited.
Yes, but if he's had a heart attack ... or . . . or ...
She thought of the overturned chair and fresh alarm coursed through her.
Suppose he came home and surprised a burglar? What if the burglar conked Danforth over the head, knocked him out, and dragged him into his study?
She rapped a flurry of knuckles on the door. "Danforth ? Are you all right?"
No answer. No sound in the house but the solemn tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the living room, and ... yes, she was quite sure of it: the creak of the chair in Danforth's study.
Her hand began to creep toward the knob again.
"Danforth, are you ..."
The tips of her fingers were actually touching the knob when his voice roared out at her, making her leap back from the door with a thin scream.
"Leave me alone! Can't you leave me alone, you stupid bitch?"
She moaned. Her heart was jackhammering wildly in her throat. It was not just surprise; it was the rage and unbridled hate in his voice. After the calm and pleasant morning they had spent, he could not have hurt her more if he had caressed her cheek with a handful of razor-blades.
"Danforth ... I thought you were hurt ..." Her voice was a tiny gasp she could hardly hear herself.
"Leave me alone!" Now he was right on the other side of the door, by the sound.
Oh my God, he sounds as if he's gone crazy. Can that be? How can that be? What's happened since he dropped me off at Amanda's?
But there were no answers to these questions. There was only ache. And so she crept away upstairs, got her beautiful new doll from the closet in the sewing room, then went into the bedroom. She eased off her shoes and then lay down on her side of their bed with the doll in her arms.
Somewhere, far off, she heard conflicting sirens. She paid them no attention.
Their bedroom was lovely at this time of day, full of bright October sunshine. Myrtle did not see it. She saw only darkness. She felt only misery, a deep, sick misery that not even the gorgeous doll could alleviate. The misery seemed to fill her throat and block her breathing.
Oh she had been so happy today--so very happy. He had been happy, too. She was sure of it. And now things were worse than they had been before. Much worse.
What had happened?
Oh God, what had happened and who was responsible ?
Myrtle hugged the doll and looked up at the ceiling and after a while she began to weep in large, flat sobs that made her whole body quake.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
At fifteen minutes to midnight on that long, long Sunday in October, a door in the basement of Kennebec Valley Hospital's State Wing opened and Sheriff Alan Pangborn stepped through. He walked slowly, with his head down. His feet, clad in elasticized hospital slippers, shuffled on the linoleum. The sign on the door behind him could be read as it swung shut:
MORGUE
UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED
At the far end of the corridor, a janitor in gray fatigues was using a buffer to polish the floor in slow, lazy sweeps. Alan walked toward him, stripping the hospital cap off his head as he went. He lifted the green-gown he was wearing and stuffed the cap in a back pocket of the blue-jeans he wore beneath. The soft drone of the buffer made him feel sleepy. A hospital in Augusta was the last place on earth he wanted to be tonight.
The janitor looked up as he approached, and switched off his machine.
"You don't look so well, my friend," he greeted Alan.
"I'm not surprised. Do you have a cigarette?"
&nb
sp; The janitor took a pack of Luckies from his breast pocket and shook one out for Alan. "You can't smoke it in here, though," he said. He nodded his head toward the morgue door. "Doc Ryan throws a fit."
Alan nodded. "Where?"
The janitor took him to an intersecting corridor and pointed to a door about halfway down. "That goes to the alley beside the building. Prop it open with something, though, or you'll have to go all the way around to the front to get back in. You got matches?"
Alan started down the corridor. "I carry a lighter. Thanks for the smoke."
"I heard it was a double feature in there tonight," the janitor called after him.
"That's right," Alan said without turning around.
"Autopsies are bastards, ain't they?"
"Yes," Alan said.
Behind him, the soft drone of the floor-buffer recommenced. They were bastards, all right. The autopsies of Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck had been the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of his career, and they had all been bastards, but these two had been the worst by far.
The door the janitor had pointed out was the sort equipped with a panic-bar. Alan looked around for something he could use to prop it open and saw nothing. He pulled the green-gown off, wadded it up, and opened the door. Night air washed in, chilly but incredibly refreshing after the stale alcohol smell of the morgue and adjoining autopsy room. Alan placed the wadded-up gown against the door-jamb and stepped out. He carefully let the door swing back, saw that the gown would keep the latch from engaging, and forgot about it. He leaned against the cinderblock wall next to the pencil-line of light escaping through the slightly ajar door and lit his cigarette.
The first puff made his head feel swimmy. He had been trying to quit for almost two years and kept almost making it. Then something would come up. That was both the curse and the blessing of police work; something always came up.
He looked up at the stars, which he usually found calming, and couldn't see many--the high-intensity lights which ringed the hospital dulled them out. He could make out the Big Dipper, Orion, and a faint reddish point that was probably Mars, but that was all.
Mars, he thought. That's it. That's undoubtedly it. The warlords of Mars landed in Castle Rock around noon, and the first people they met were Nettie and the Jerzyck bitch. The warlords bit them and turned them rabid. It's the only thing that fits.
He thought about going in and telling Henry Ryan, the State of Maine's Chief Medical Examiner, It was a case of alien intervention, Doc. Case closed. He doubted if Ryan would be amused. It had been a long night for him, too.
Alan dragged deeply on the cigarette. It tasted absolutely grand, swimmy head or no swimmy head, and he felt he could understand perfectly why smoking was now off-limits in the public areas of every hospital in America. John Calvin had been dead right: nothing that made you feel this way could possibly be good for you. In the meantime, though, hit me wid dat nicotine, boss--it feel so fine.
He thought idly of how nice it would be to buy an entire carton of these selfsame Luckies, rip off both ends, and then light up the whole goddam thing with a blow-torch. He thought how nice it would be to get drunk. This would be a very bad time to get drunk, he supposed. Another inflexible rule of life--When you really need to get drunk, you can never afford to do it. Alan wondered vaguely if maybe the alcoholics of the world weren't the only ones who really had their priorities straight.
The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick. Norris stepped out and leaned against the wall next to Alan. He was still wearing his green cap, but it was askew and the tie-ribbons hung down over the back of his gown. His complexion matched his gown.
"Jesus, Alan."
"They were your first ones, weren't they?"
"No, I saw an autopsy once when I was in North Wyndham. Smoke-inhalation case. But these ... Jesus, Alan."
"Yeah," he said, and exhaled smoke. "Jesus."
"You got another cigarette?"
"No--sorry. I bummed this one from the janitor." He looked at the Deputy with mild curiosity. "I didn't know you smoked, Norris."
"I don't. I thought I might start."
Alan laughed softly.
"Man, I can't wait to get out fishing tomorrow. Or are off-days on hold while we sort this mess out?"
Alan thought about it, then shook his head. It hadn't really been the warlords of Mars; this business actually looked quite simple. In a way, that was what made it so horrible. He saw no reason to cancel Norris's off-days.
"That's great," Norris said, and then added, "But I'll come in if you want, Alan. No problem."
"Shouldn't need you to, Norris," he said. "John and Clut have both been in touch with me--Clut went with the CID guys to talk with Pete Jerzyck, and John went with the team investigating Nettie's end. They've both been in touch. It's pretty clear. Nasty, but clear."
And it was ... yet he was troubled about it, just the same. On some deep level, he was very troubled indeed.
"Well, what happened? I mean, the Jerzyck bitch has been asking for it for years, but when somebody finally called her bluff, I thought she'd end up with a black eye or a broken arm ... nothing like this. Was it just a case of picking on the wrong person?"
"I think that pretty well covers it," Alan said. "Wilma couldn't have picked a worse person in Castle Rock to start a feud with."
"Feud?"
"Polly gave Nettie a puppy last spring. It barked a little at first. Wilma did a lot of bitching about it."
"Really? I don't remember a complaint sheet."
"She only made one official complaint. I caught it. Polly asked me if I would. She felt partly responsible, since she gave Nettie the dog in the first place. Nettie said she'd keep him inside as much as she could, and that finished it for me.
"The dog stopped the barking, but Wilma apparently went on bitching to Nettie. Polly says that Nettie'd cross the street when she saw Wilma coming, even if Wilma was two blocks away. Nettie did everything but fork the sign of the evil eye at her. Then, last week, she crossed the line. She went over to the Jerzycks' while Pete and Wilma were at work, saw the sheets hanging on the line, and covered them with mud from the garden."
Norris whistled. "Did we catch that complaint, Alan?"
Alan shook his head. "From then until this afternoon, it was all between the ladies."
"What about Pete Jerzyck?"
"Do you know Pete?"
"Well ..." Norris stopped. Thought about Pete. Thought about Wilma. Thought about the two of them together. Slowly nodded his head. "He was afraid Wilma would chew him up one side and down the other if he tried playing referee ... so he stood aside. Is that it?"
"Sort of. He actually may have headed things off, at least for a while. Clut says Pete told the CID guys that Wilma wanted to go over to Nettie's as soon as she got a look at her sheets. She was ready to rock and roll. She apparently called Nettie on the phone and told her she was going to rip off her head and shit down her neck."
Norris nodded. Between the autopsy on Wilma and the autopsy on Nettie, he had called dispatch in Castle Rock and asked for a list of complaints involving each of the two women. Nettie's list was short--one item. She had snapped and killed her husband. End of story. No flare-ups before and none since, including the last few years she'd spent back in town. Wilma was a different kettle of tripe entirely. She had never killed anyone, but the list of complaints--those made by her and those made about her--was a long one, and went back to what had then been Castle Rock Junior High, where she had punched a substitute teacher in the eye for giving her detention. On two occasions, worried women who'd had the ill luck or judgment to get into Wilma's bad books had requested police protection. Wilma had also been the subject of three assault complaints over the years. Ultimately all charges had been dropped, but it didn't take much study to figure out that no one in his or her right mind would have chosen Wilma Jerzyck to fuck with.
"They were bad medicine for each other," Norris murmure
d.
"The worst."
"Her husband talked Wilma out of going over there the first time she wanted to go?"
"He knew better than to even try. He told Clut he dropped two Xanax into a cup of tea and that lowered her thermostat. In fact, Jerzyck says he thought it was all over."
"Do you believe him, Alan?"
"Yeah--as much as I can believe anyone without actually talking to them face-to-face, that is."
"What's the stuff he dropped into her tea? Dope?"
"A tranquilizer. Jerzyck told CID he'd used it a couple of times before when she got hot, and it cooled her out pretty well. He said he thought it did this time, too."
"But it didn't."
"I think it did at first. Wilma didn't just go over and start chewing Nettie's ass, at least. But I'm pretty sure she went on harassing Nettie; it's the pattern she established when it was just the dog they were fighting over. Making phone-calls. Doing drive-bys. That sort of thing. Nettie's skin was pretty thin. Stuff like that would have really gotten to her. John LaPointe and the CID team I stuck him with went to see Polly around seven o'clock. Polly said she was pretty sure that Nettie was worried about something. She was over to see Polly this morning, and let something slip then. Polly didn't understand it at the time." Alan sighed. "I guess now she wishes she'd listened a little more closely."
"How's Polly taking it, Alan?"
"Pretty well, I think." He had spoken to her twice, once from a house near the crime scene, and a second time from here at K.V.H., just after he and Norris had arrived. On both occasions her voice had been calm and controlled, but he had sensed the tears and confusion just under the carefully maintained surface. He wasn't entirely surprised during the first call to find she already knew most of what had happened; news, particularly bad news, travels fast in small towns.
"What set off the big bang?"
Alan looked at Norris, surprised, and then realized he didn't know yet. Alan had gotten a more or less complete report from John LaPointe between the autopsies, while Norris had been on another phone, talking to Sheila Brigham and compiling lists of complaints involving the two women.
"One of them decided to escalate," he said. "My guess-is Wilma, but the details of the picture are still hazy. Apparently Wilma went over to Nettie's while Nettie was visiting Polly this morning. Nettie must have left without locking her door, or even latching it securely, and the wind blew it open--you know how windy it was today."