by Stephen King
"Mom, stop. Stop it."
Ollie tried to take her by the shoulders and pull her into a hug, but Arlene slipped under his hands and darted toward one of the counters, still laughing and howling. She grabbed a serving dish of lasagna in both hands--it had been brought by one of Father Brixton's sycophants--and dumped it on her head. Cold pasta fell into her hair and onto her shoulders. She heaved the dish into the living room.
"Frankie is dead and we've got a fucking Italian buffet!"
Fred got moving then, but Arlene slid away from him, too. She was laughing like an overexcited girl playing a spirited game of tag. She grabbed a Tupperware container full of Marshmallow Delite. She started to raise it, then dropped it between her feet. The laughter stopped. One hand cupped her large left breast. The other lay flat on her chest above it. She looked at her husband with wide eyes that were still swimming with tears.
Those eyes, Fred thought. Those are what I fell in love with.
"Mom? Mom, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," she said, and then: "I think my heart." She bent to look at the chicken and the marshmallow dessert. Pasta fell from her hair. "Look what I did."
She gave a long, whooping, rattling gasp. Fred grabbed her, but she was too heavy, and slithered through his arms. Before she went down on her side, Fred saw that the color was already fading from her cheeks.
Ollie screamed and dropped to his knees beside her. "Mom! Mom! Mom!" He looked up at his father. "I don't think she's breathing!"
Fred pushed his son aside. "Call 911."
Without looking to see if Ollie was doing it, Fred slipped a hand around his wife's big neck, feeling for a pulse. He got one, but it was disorganized, chaotic: beatbeat, beatbeatbeat, beatbeatbeat. He straddled her, gripped his left wrist in his right hand, and began to push down in a steady rhythm. Was he doing it right? Was it even CPR? He didn't know, but when her eyes opened, his own heart seemed to give an upward leap in his chest. There she was, she was back.
It wasn't really a heart attack. She overexerted herself, that's all. Fainted. I think they call that a syncope. But we're getting you on a diet, my dear, and your birthday present is going to be one of those wristbands that measure your--
"Made a mess," Arlene whispered. "Sorry."
"Don't try to talk."
Ollie was on their kitchen wall phone, talking fast and loud, almost shouting. Giving their address. Telling them to hurry.
"You'll have to clean up the living room again," she said. "I'm sorry. Fred, I'm so, so sorry."
Before Fred could tell her again to stop talking, to just lie still until she felt better, Arlene drew another of those great, rattling breaths. As she let it out, her eyes rolled up in her head. The bloodshot whites bulged, turning her into a horror-movie deathmask Fred would afterwards try to erase from his mind. He would fail.
"Dad? They're on their way. Is she all right?"
Fred didn't reply. He was too busy applying more half-assed CPR and wishing he had taken a class--why had he never found time to do that? There were so many things he wished for. He would have traded his immortal soul to be able to turn the calendar back one lousy week.
Press and release. Press and release.
You'll be all right, he told her. You have to be all right. Sorry cannot be your last word on this earth. I will not allow it.
Press and release. Press and release.
5
Marcy Maitland was glad to take Grace into bed with her when Grace asked, but when she asked Sarah if she wanted to join them, her older daughter shook her head.
"All right," Marcy said, "but if you change your mind, I'll be here."
An hour passed, then another. The worst Saturday of her life became the worst Sunday. She thought of Terry, who should have been beside her now, fast asleep (perhaps dreaming about the upcoming City League championship, now that the Bears had been disposed of), and was instead in a jail cell. Was he also awake? Of course he was.
She knew there were going to be some hard days ahead, but Howie would put things right. Terry had once told her that his old Pop Warner co-coach was the best defense lawyer in the southwest, and might someday sit on the state's supreme court. Given Terry's cast-iron alibi, there was no way Howie could fail. But each time she drew almost enough comfort from this idea to drop off, she thought of Ralph Anderson, the Judas sonofabitch she'd thought of as a friend, and she came wide awake again. As soon as this was over, they would sue the Flint City PD for false arrest, defamation of character, anything else Howie Gold could think of, and when Howie began dropping his legal smart-bombs, she would make sure Ralph Anderson was standing on ground zero. Could they sue him personally? Strip him of everything he owned? She hoped so. She hoped they could send him, his wife, and the son with whom Terry had taken such pains, out into the street, barefoot and dressed in rags, with begging bowls in their hands. She guessed such things were not likely in this advanced and supposedly enlightened day and age, but she could see the three of them that way with utter clarity--mendicants in the streets of Flint City--and each time she did, the vision brought her wide awake again, vibrating with rage and satisfaction.
It was quarter past two by the clock on the nightstand when her older daughter appeared in the doorway, only her legs clearly visible below the oversized Okie City Thunder tee she wore as a nightshirt.
"Mom? Are you awake?"
"I am."
"Can I get in with you and Gracie?"
Marcy threw back the sheet and moved over. Sarah got in, and when Marcy hugged her and kissed the nape of her neck, Sarah began to cry.
"Shh, you'll wake your sister."
"I can't help it. I keep thinking about the handcuffs. I'm sorry."
"Quietly, then. Quietly, hon."
Marcy held her until Sarah had gotten it all out. When she was quiet for five minutes or so, Marcy thought the girl had gone to sleep, and felt that now, with both of her girls here, bookending her, she might be able to sleep herself. But then Sarah rolled over to look at her. Her wet eyes shone in the dark.
"He won't go to prison, will he, Mom?"
"No," she said. "He didn't do anything."
"But innocent people do go to prison. Sometimes for years, until someone finds out they were innocent after all. Then they get out, but they're old."
"That isn't going to happen to your father. He was in Cap City when the thing happened that they arrested him for--"
"I know what they arrested him for," Sarah said. She wiped her eyes. "I'm not stupid."
"I know you're not, honey."
Sarah stirred restlessly. "They must have had a reason."
"They probably think so, but their reasons are wrong. Mr. Gold will explain where he was, and they'll have to let him go."
"All right." A long pause. "But I don't want to go back to community camp until this is over, and I don't think Gracie should, either."
"You won't have to. And when fall comes around, all of this will just be a memory."
"A bad one," Sarah said, and sniffled.
"Agreed. Now go to sleep."
Sarah did. And with her girls to warm her, so did Marcy, although her dreams were bad ones in which Terry was marched away by those two policemen, while the crowd watched and Baibir Patel cried and Gavin Frick stared in disbelief.
6
Until midnight, the county jail sounded like a zoo at feeding time--drunks singing, drunks crying, drunks standing at the bars of their cells and holding shouted conversations. There was even what sounded like a fistfight, although since all the cells were singles, Terry didn't see how that could be, unless there were two guys punching at each other through the bars. Somewhere, at the far end of the corridor, a guy was bellowing the first phrase of John 3:16 over and over at the top of his lungs: "For God so loved the world! For God so loved the world! For God so loved THE WHOLE FUCKIN WORLD!" The stench was piss, shit, disinfectant, and whatever sauce-soaked pasta had been served for supper.
My first time in jail, Terry marve
led. After forty years of life, I have landed in stir, the calaboose, the joint, the old stone hotel. Think of that.
He wanted to feel anger, righteous anger, and he supposed that feeling might arise with daylight, when the world came back into focus, but now, at three o'clock on Sunday morning, as the shouts and singing subsided to snores, farts, and the occasional groan, all he felt was shame. As if he really had done something. Except he would have felt nothing of the kind if he had really done what he was accused of doing. If he had been sick and evil enough to commit such an obscene act upon a child, he would have felt nothing but the desperate cunning of an animal in a trap, willing to say anything or do anything in order to get out. Or was that true? How did he know what a man like that would think or feel? It was like trying to guess what might be in the mind of an alien from space.
He had no doubt that Howie Gold would get him out of this; even now, in the darkest ditch of the night, with his mind still trying to get a grip on the way his whole life had changed in a matter of minutes, he didn't doubt it. But he also knew that not all of the shit would wash off. He would be released with an apology--if not tomorrow, then at the arraignment, if not at the arraignment, then at the next step, which would probably be a grand jury hearing in Cap City--but he knew what he would see in the eyes of his students the next time he stepped in front of a class, and his career as a youth sports coach was probably finished. The various governing bodies would find some excuse if he wouldn't do what they'd see as the honorable thing and step down himself. Because he was never going to be completely innocent again, not in the eyes of his neighbors on the West Side, or in those of Flint City as a whole. He would always be the man who was arrested for the murder of Frank Peterson. He would always be the man of whom people would say, No smoke without fire.
If it was just him, he thought he could deal with it. What did he tell his boys when they whined that a call was unfair? Suck it up and get back in there. Play the game. But it wasn't just him who would have to suck this up, not just him who would have to play the game. Marcy would be branded. The whispers and sidelong looks at work and at the grocery store. The friends who would no longer call. Jamie Mattingly might be an exception, but he had his doubts even about her.
Then there were the girls. Sarah and Gracie would be subjected to the sort of vicious gossip and wholesale shunning of which only kids their age were capable. He guessed Marcy would have sense enough to keep them close until this was sorted out, if only to keep them away from the reporters who would otherwise hound them, but even in the fall, even after he was cleared, they would be marked. See that girl over there? Her father was arrested for killing a kid and shoving a stick up his ass.
Lying on his bunk. Staring up into the dark. Smelling the jailhouse stench. Thinking, We'll have to move. Maybe to Tulsa, maybe to Cap City, maybe down to Texas. Somebody will give me a job, even if they won't allow me within a country mile of boys' baseball, football, or basketball practice. My references are good, and they'll be afraid of a discrimination suit if they say no.
Only the arrest--and the reason for the arrest--would follow them like this jailhouse stink. Especially the girls. Facebook alone would be enough to hunt them down and single them out. These are the girls whose father got away with murder.
He had to stop thinking this way and get some sleep, and he had to stop feeling ashamed of himself because someone else--Ralph Anderson, to be specific--had made a horrible mistake. These things always looked worse in the small hours, that was what he had to remember. And given his current position, in a cell and wearing a baggy brown uniform with DOC on the back of the shirt, it was inevitable that his fears would grow as big as the floats in a holiday parade. Things would look better in the morning. He was sure of it.
Yes.
But still, the shame.
Terry covered his eyes.
7
Howie Gold slipped from bed at six thirty on Sunday morning, not because there was anything he could do at that hour, and not from personal preference. Like many men in their early sixties, his prostate had grown along with his IRA, and his bladder seemed to have shrunk along with his sexual aspirations. Once he was awake, his brain slipped from park into drive, and going back to sleep was an impossibility.
He left Elaine to dream what he hoped were pleasant dreams, and padded barefoot into the kitchen to start the coffee and check his phone, which he'd silenced and left on the counter before going to bed. He had a text from Alec Pelley, delivered at 1:12 AM.
Howie drank his coffee, and was eating a bowl of Raisin Bran when Elaine came into the kitchen, knotting the belt of her robe and yawning. "What's up, powderpuff?"
"Time will tell. In the meantime, do you want some scrambled eggs?"
"Breakfast, he offers me." She was pouring her own cup of coffee. "Since it's not Valentine's Day or my birthday, should I find that suspicious?"
"I'm killing time. Got a text from Alec, but I can't call him until seven."
"Good news or bad?"
"No idea. So do you want some eggs?"
"Yes. Two. Fried, not scrambled."
"You know I always break the yolks."
"Since I get to sit and watch, I will restrain my criticism. Wheat toast, please."
For a wonder, only one of the yolks broke. As he set the plate in front of her, she said, "If Terry Maitland killed that child, the world has gone insane."
"The world is insane," Howie said, "but he didn't do it. He has an alibi as strong as the S on Superman's chest."
"Why did they arrest him, then?"
"Because they believe they have proof as strong as the S on Superman's chest."
She considered this. "Unstoppable force meets immovable object?"
"There is no such thing, sweetheart."
He looked at his watch. Five minutes of seven. Close enough. He called Alec's cell.
His investigator answered on the third ring. "You're early, and I'm shaving. Can you call back in five minutes? At seven, in other words, as I suggested?"
"No," Howie said, "but I'll wait until you wipe the shaving cream off the phone side of your face, how's that?"
"You're a tough boss," Alec said, but he sounded good-humored in spite of the hour, and in spite of being interrupted at a task most men preferred to do while occupied by nothing but their own thoughts. Which gave Howie hope. He had a lot to work with already, but he could always use more.
"Is it good news or bad news?"
"Give me a second, will you? I'm getting this shit all over my phone."
It was more like five, but then Alec was back. "The news is good, boss. Good for us and bad for the DA. Very bad."
"You saw the security footage? How much is there, and from how many cameras?"
"I saw the footage, and there's plenty." Alec paused, and when he spoke again, Howie knew he was smiling; he could hear it in the man's voice. "But there's something better. Much better."
8
Jeanette Anderson rose at quarter of seven and found her husband's side of the bed empty. The kitchen smelled of fresh coffee, but Ralph wasn't there, either. She looked out the window and saw him sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, still in his striped pajamas and sipping from the joke cup Derek had given him last Father's Day. On the side, in big blue letters, it said YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT UNTIL I DRINK MY COFFEE. She got her own cup, went out to him, and kissed his cheek. The day was going to be a hot one, but now this early morning was cool and quiet and pleasant.
"Can't let go of it, can you?" she asked.
"None of us will be letting go of this one," he said. "Not for awhile."
"It's Sunday," she said. "Day of rest. And you need it. I don't like the way you look. According to an article I read in the New York Times Health section last week, you have entered heart attack country."
"That's cheering."
She sighed. "What's first on your list?"
"Checking with that other teacher, Deborah Grant. Just a t to cross. I hav
e no doubt she'll confirm that Terry was on the trip to Cap City, although there's always a chance that she noticed something off about him that Roundhill and Quade missed. Women can be more observant."
Jeannie considered this idea doubtful, perhaps even sexist, but it wasn't the time to say so. She reverted to their discussion of the night before, instead. "Terry was here. He did do it. What you need is some forensic evidence from there. I guess DNA is out of the question, but fingerprints?"
"We can dust the room where he and Quade stayed, but they checked out Wednesday morning, and the room will have been cleaned and occupied since then. Almost certainly more than once."
"But it's still possible, isn't it? Some hotel maids are conscientious, but plenty just make the beds and wipe the rings and smudges off the coffee table and call it good. What if you found Mr. Quade's fingerprints, but not Terry Maitland's?"
He liked the flush of Junior Detective excitement on her face, and wished he didn't have to dampen it. "It wouldn't prove anything, hon. Howie Gold would tell the jury they couldn't convict anyone on the absence of prints, and he'd be right."
She considered this. "Okay, but I still think you should gather prints from that room, and identify as many as possible. Can you do that?"
"Yes. And it's a good idea." It was at least another t to cross. "I'll find out which room it was, and try to have the Sheraton move out whoever is in there now. I think they'll cooperate, given the play this is going to have in the media. We'll dust it top to bottom and side to side. But what I really want is to see the security footage from the days that convention was in session, and since Detective Sablo--he's the State Police's lead on this--won't be back until later today, I'm going to take a run up there myself. I'll be hours behind Gold's investigator, but that can't be helped."
She put a hand over his. "Just promise me you'll stop every once in a while and acknowledge the day, honey. It's the only one you'll have until tomorrow."