Needful Things

by Stephen King

  "Hello, Alan," Henry said. "I'm afraid I've got some bad news about your double murder."

  "Oh, so all at once it's my double murder," Alan said. He closed his fist around the four cartwheels, squeezed, and opened his hand again. Now there were three. He leaned back in his chair and cocked his feet up on his desk. "It really must be bad news."

  "You don't sound surprised."

  "Nope." He squeezed his fist shut again and used his pinky finger to "force" the lowest silver dollar in the stack. This was an operation of some delicacy ... but Alan was more than equal to the challenge. The silver dollar slipped from his fist and tumbled down his sleeve. There was a quiet chink! sound as it struck the first one, a sound that would be covered by the magician's patter in an actual performance. Alan opened his hand again, and now there were only two cartwheels.

  "Maybe you wouldn't mind telling me why not," Henry said. He sounded slightly testy.

  "Well, I've spent most of the last two days thinking about it," Alan said. Even this was an understatement. From the moment on Sunday afternoon when he had first seen that Nettie Cobb was one of the two women lying dead at the foot of the stop-sign, he had thought of little else. He even dreamed about it, and the feeling that all the numbers added up short had become a nagging certainty. This made Henry's call not an annoyance but a relief, and saved Alan the trouble of calling him.

  He squeezed the two silver dollars in his hand.

  Chink.

  Opened his hand. Now there was one.

  "What bothers you?" Henry asked.

  "Everything," Alan said flatly. "Starting with the fact that it happened at all. I suppose the thing that itches the worst is the way the time-table of the crime works ... or doesn't work. I keep trying to see Nettie Cobb finding her dog dead and then sitting down to write all those notes. And do you know what? I keep not being able to do it. And every time I can't do it, I wonder how much of this stupid goddam business I'm not seeing."

  Alan squeezed his fist viciously shut, opened it, and then there were none.

  "Uh-huh. So maybe my bad news is your good news. Someone else was involved, Alan. We don't know who killed the Cobb woman's dog, but we can be almost positive that it wasn't Wilma Jerzyck."

  Alan's feet came off the desk in a hurry. The cartwheels slid out of his sleeve and hit the top of his desk in a little silver runnel. One of them came down on edge and rolled for the side of the desk. Alan's hand flicked out, spooky-quick, and snatched it back before it could get away. "I think you better tell me what you got, Henry."

  "Uh-huh. Let's start with the dog. The body was turned over to John Palin, a D.V.M. in South Portland. He is to animals what Henry Ryan is to people. He says that because the corkscrew penetrated the dog's heart and it died almost instantly, he can give us a fairly restricted time of death."

  "That's a nice change," Alan said. He was thinking of the Agatha Christie novels which Annie had read by the dozen. In those, it seemed there was always some doddering village doctor who was more than willing to set the time of death as between 4:30 p.m. and quarter past five. After almost twenty years as a law-enforcement officer, Alan knew a more realistic response to the time-of-death question was "Sometime last week. Maybe."

  "It is, isn't it? Anyway, this Dr. Palin says the dog died between ten o'clock and noon. Peter Jerzyck says that when he came into the master bedroom to get ready for church--at a little past ten--his wife was in the shower."

  "Yes, we knew it was tight," Alan said. He was a little disappointed. "But this guy Palin must allow for a margin of error, unless he's God. Fifteen minutes is all it takes to make Wilma look good for it."

  "Yeah? How good does she look to you, Alan?"

  He considered the question, then said heavily: "To tell you the truth, old buddy, she doesn't look that good. She never did." Alan forced himself to add: "Just the same, we'd look pretty silly keeping this case open on the basis of some dog-doctor's report and a gap of--what?--fifteen minutes?"

  "Okay, let's talk about the note on the corkscrew. You remember the note?"

  " 'Nobody slings mud at my clean sheets. I told you I'd get you.' "

  "The very one. The handwriting expert in Augusta is still mooning over it, but Peter Jerzyck provided us with a sample of his wife's handwriting, and I've got Xerox copies of both the note and the sample on the desk in front of me. They don't match. No way do they match."

  "The hell you say!"

  "The hell I don't. I thought you were the guy who wasn't surprised."

  "I knew something was wrong, but it's been those rocks with the notes on them that I haven't been able to get out of my mind. The time sequence is screwy, and that's made me uncomfortable, yeah, but on the whole I guess I was willing to sit still for it. Mostly because it seems like such a Wilma Jerzyck thing to do. You're sure she didn't disguise her handwriting?" He didn't believe it--the idea of travelling incognito had never been Wilma Jerzyck's style--but it was a possibility that had to be covered.

  "Me? I'm positive. But I'm not the expert, and what I think won't stand up in court. That's why the note's in graphanalysis."

  "When will the handwriting guy file his report?"

  "Who knows? Meantime, take my word for it, Alan--they're apples and oranges. Nothing alike."

  "Well, if Wilma didn't do it, someone sure wanted Nettie to believe she did. Who? And why? Why, for God's sake?"

  "I dunno, scout--it's your town. In the meantime, I have two more things for you."

  "Shoot." Alan put the silver dollars back into his drawer, then made a tall, skinny man in a top-hat walk across the wall. On the return trip, the top-hat became a cane.

  "Whoever killed the dog left a set of bloody fingerprints on the inner knob of Nettie's front door--that's big number one."

  "Hot damn!"

  "Warm damn at the best, I'm afraid. They're blurry. The perp probably left them grasping the doorknob to go out."

  "No good at all?"

  "We've got some fragments that might be useful, although there isn't much chance that they'd stand up in court. I've sent them to FBI Print-Magic in Virginia. They're doing some pretty amazing reconstructive work on partials these days. They're slower than cold molasses--it'll probably be a week or even ten days before I hear back--but in the meantime, I compared the partials with the Jerzyck woman's prints, which were delivered to me by the ever-thoughtful Medical Examiner's office last evening."

  "No match?"

  "Well, it's like the handwriting, Alan--it's comparing partials to totals, and if I testified in court on something like that, the defense would chew me a new asshole. But since we're sitting at the bullshit table, so to speak, no--they're nothing alike. There's the question of size, for one thing. Wilma Jerzyck had small hands. The partials came from someone with big hands. Even when you allow for the blurring, they are damned big hands."

  "A man's prints?"

  "I'm sure of it. But again, it'd never stand up in court."

  "Who gives a fuck?" On the wall, a shadow lighthouse suddenly appeared, then turned into a pyramid. The pyramid opened like a flower and became a goose flying through the sunshine. Alan tried to see the face of the man--not Wilma Jerzyck but some man--who had gone into Nettie's house after Nettie had left on Sunday morning. The man who had killed Nettie's Raider with a corkscrew and then framed Wilma for it. He looked for a face and saw nothing but shadows. "Henry, who would even want to do something like this, if it wasn't Wilma?"

  "I don't know. But I think we might have a witness to the rock-throwing incident."

  "What? Who?"

  "I said might, remember."

  "I know what you said. Don't tease me. Who is it?"

  "A kid. The woman who lives next door to the Jerzycks heard noises and came out to try and see what was going on. She said she thought maybe 'that bitch'--her words--had finally gotten mad enough at her husband to throw him out a window. She saw the kid pedaling away from the house, looking scared. She asked him what was going on. He said he t
hought maybe Mr. and Mrs. Jerzyck were having a fight. Well, that was what she thought, too, and since the noises had stopped by then, she didn't think any more about it."

  "That must have been Jillian Mislaburski," Alan said. "The house on the other side of the Jerzyck place is empty--up for sale."

  "Yeah. Jillian Misla-whatski. That's what I've got here."

  "Who was the kid?"

  "Dunno. She recognized him but couldn't come up with the name. She says he's from the neighborhood, though--probably from right there on the block. We'll find him."

  "How old?"

  "She said between eleven and fourteen."

  "Henry? Be a pal and let me find him. Would you do that?"

  "Yep," Henry said at once, and Alan relaxed. "I don't understand why we have to roll these investigations when the crime happens right in the county seat, anyway. They let them fry their own fish in Portland and Bangor, so why not Castle Rock? Christ, I wasn't even sure how to pronounce that woman's name until you said it out loud!"

  "There are a lot of Poles in The Rock," Alan said absently. He tore a pink Traffic Warning form from the pad on his desk and jotted Jill Mistaburski and Boy, 11-14 on the back.

  "If my guys find this kid, he's gonna see three big State Troops and be so scared everything goes out of his head," Henry said. "He probably knows you--don't you go around and talk at the schools?"

  "Yes, about the D.A.R.E. program and on Law and Safety Day," Alan said. He was trying to think of families with kids on the block where the Jerzycks and the Mislaburskis lived. If Jill Mislaburski recognized him but didn't know his name, that probably meant the kid lived around the corner, or maybe on Pond Street. Alan wrote three names quickly on the sheet of scrap paper: DeLois, Rusk, Bellingham. There were probably other families with boys in the right age-group that he couldn't remember right off the bat, but those three would do for a start. A quick canvass would almost certainly turn the kid up.

  "Did Jill know what time she heard the ruckus and saw the boy?" Alan asked.

  "She's not sure, but she thinks it was after eleven."

  "So it wasn't the Jerzycks fighting, because the Jerzycks were at Mass."

  "Right."

  "Then it was the rock-thrower."

  "Right again."

  "This one's real weird, Henry."

  "That's three in a row. One more and you win the toaster oven."

  "I wonder if the kid saw who it was?"

  "Ordinarily I'd say 'too good to be true,' but the Mislaburski woman said he looked scared, so maybe he did. If he did see the perp, I'll bet you a shot and a beer it wasn't Nettie Cobb. I think somebody played them off against each other, scout, and maybe just for the kick of the thing. Just for that."

  But Alan, who knew the town better than Henry ever would, found this fantastical. "Maybe the kid did it himself," he said. "Maybe that's why he looked scared. Maybe what we've got here is a simple case of vandalism."

  "In a world where there's a Michael Jackson and an asshole like Axl Rose, anything's possible, I suppose," Henry said, "but I'd like the possibility of vandalism a lot better if the kid was sixteen or seventeen, you know?"

  "Yes," Alan said.

  "And why speculate at all, if you can find the kid? You can, can't you?"

  "I'm pretty sure, yeah. But I'd like to wait until school lets out, if that's okay with you. It's like you said--scaring him won't do any good."

  "Fine by me; the two ladies aren't going anywhere but into the ground. The reporters are around here, but they're only a nuisance--I swat em like flies."

  Alan looked out the window in time to see a newsvan from WMTW-TV go cruising slowly past, probably bound for the main courthouse entrance around the corner.

  "Yeah, they're here, too," he said.

  "Can you call me by five?"

  "By four," Alan said. "Thanks, Henry."

  "Don't mention it," Henry Payton said, and hung up.

  Alan's first impulse was to go get Norris Ridgewick and tell him all about this--Nonis made a hell of a good sounding-board, if nothing else. Then he remembered that Norris was probably parked in the middle of Castle Lake with his new fishing rod in his hand.

  He made a few more shadow-animals on the wall, then got up. He felt restless, oddly uneasy. It wouldn't hurt to cruise around the block where the murders had taken place. He might remember a few more families with kids in the right age-brackets if he actually looked at the houses ... and who knew? Maybe what Henry had said about kids also held true for middle-aged Polish ladies who bought their clothes at Lane Bryant. Jill Mislaburski's memory might improve if the questions were coming from someone with a familiar face.

  He started to grab his uniform hat off the top of the coat tree by the door and then left it where it was. It might be better today, he decided, if I only look semi-official. As far as that goes, it wouldn't kill me to take the station wagon.

  He left the office and stood in the bullpen for a moment, bemused. John LaPointe had turned his desk and the space around it into something that looked in need of Red Cross flood-relief. Papers were stacked up everywhere. The drawers were nested inside each other, making a Tower of Babel on John's desk-blotter. It looked ready to fall over at any second. And John, ordinarily the most cheerful of police officers, was red-faced and cursing.

  "I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap, Johnny," Alan said, grinning.

  John jumped, then turned around. He answered Alan with a grin of his own, one which was both shamefaced and distracted. "Sorry, Alan. I--"

  Then Alan was moving. He crossed the room with the same liquid, silent speed that had so struck Polly Chalmers on Friday evening. John LaPointe's mouth fell open. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw what Alan was up to --the two drawers on top of the stack he had made were starting to tumble.

  Alan was fast enough to avert an utter disaster, but not fast enough to catch the first drawer. It landed on his feet, scattering papers, paper-clips, and loose bunches of staples everywhere. He pinned the other two against the side of John's desk with his palms.

  "Holy Jesus! That was lickety-split, Alan!" John exclaimed.

  "Thank you, John," Alan said with a pained smile. The drawers were starting to slip. Pushing harder did no good; it only made the desk start to move. Also, his toes hurt. "Toss all the compliments you want, by all means. But in between, maybe you could take the goddam drawer off my feet."

  "Oh! Shit! Right! Right!" John hurried to do it. In his eagerness to remove the drawer, he bumped Alan. Alan lost his tenuous pressure-hold on the two drawers he had caught in time. They also landed on his feet.

  "Ouch!" Alan yelled. He started to grab his right foot and then decided the left one hurt worse. "Bastard!"

  "Holy Jesus, Alan, I'm sorry!"

  "What have you got in there?" Alan asked, hopping away with his left foot in his hand. "Half of Castle Land Quarry?"

  "I guess it has been awhile since I cleaned em out." John smiled guiltily and began stuffing papers and office supplies helter-skelter back into the drawers. His conventionally handsome face was flaming scarlet. He was on his knees, and when he pivoted to get the paper-clips and staples which had gone under Clut's desk, he kicked over a tall stack of forms and reports that he had stacked on the floor. Now the bullpen area of the Sheriff's Office was beginning to resemble a tornado zone.

  "Whoops!" John said.

  "Whoops," Alan said, sitting on Norris Ridgewick's desk and trying to massage his toes through his heavy black police-issue shoes. "Whoops is good, John. A very accurate description of the situation. This is a whoops if I ever saw one."

  "Sorry," John said again, and actually wormed under his desk on his stomach, sweeping errant clips and staples toward him with the sides of his hands. Alan was not sure if he should laugh or cry. John's feet were wagging back and forth as he moved his hands, spreading the papers on the floor widely and evenly.

  "John, get out of there!" Alan yelled. He was trying hard not to laugh, but he could tell alr
eady it was going to be a lost cause.

  LaPointe jerked. His head bonked briskly against the underside of his desk. And another stack of papers, one which had been deposited on the very edge of gravity to make room for the drawers, fell over the side. Most floomped straight to the floor, but dozens went seesawing lazily back and forth through the air.

  He's gonna be filing those all day, Alan thought resignedly. Maybe all week.

  Then he could hold on no longer. He threw back his head and bellowed laughter. Andy Clutterbuck, who had been in the dispatcher's office, came out to see what was going on.

  "Sheriff?" he asked. "Everything okay?"

  "Yeah," Alan said. Then he looked at the reports and forms, scattered hell to breakfast, and began to laugh again. "John's doing a little creative paperwork here, that's all."

  John crawled out from under his desk and stood up. He looked like a man who wishes mightily that someone would ask him to stand at attention, or maybe hit the deck and do forty pushups. The front of his previously immaculate uniform was covered with dust, and in spite of his amusement, Alan made a mental note--it had been a long time since Eddie Warburton had taken care of the floor under these bullpen desks. Then he began laughing again. There was simply no help for it. Clut looked from John to Alan and then back to John again, puzzled.

  "Okay," Alan said, getting himself under control at last. "What were you looking for, John? The Holy Grail? The Lost Chord? What?"

  "My wallet," John said, brushing ineffectually at the front of his uniform. "I can't find my goddam wallet."

  "Did you check your car?"

  "Both of them," John said. He passed a disgusted glance over the asteroid belt of junk around his desk. "The cruiser I was driving last night and my Pontiac. But sometimes when I'm here I stick it in a desk drawer because it makes a lump against my butt when I sit down. So I was checking--"

  "It wouldn't bust your ass like that if you didn't keep your whole goddam life in there, John," Andy Clutterbuck said reasonably.

  "Clut," Alan said, "go play in the traffic, would you?"