by Stephen King
"I must be, because there's no one else here."
"I am," she said. "Are you okay?"
"Not really," he said, and then told her about Fred Peterson. She sagged visibly.
"My God. That finishes that family. Unless he recovers."
"They're finished whether he recovers or not." Ralph got to his feet. "I'll go down to the station a little later, take a look at that scrap of paper. Menu or whatever it is."
"Shower first. You smell like oil and grass."
He made a smile and gave her a salute. "Yes, sir."
She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "Ralph? You'll get through this. You will. Trust me."
8
There were plenty of things Ralph didn't know about administrative leave, never having been on it before. One was whether or not he was even allowed in the cop shop. With that in mind he waited until mid-afternoon to go there, because the daily pulse of the station was slowest then. When he arrived, there was no one in the big main room except for Stephanie Gould, still in civvies, filling out reports on one of the old PCs the city council kept promising to replace, and Sandy McGill at the dispatch desk, reading People. Chief Geller's office was empty.
"Hey, Detective," Stephanie said, looking up. "What are you doing here? I heard you were on paid vacation."
"Trying to stay occupied."
"I could help you with that," she said, and patted the stack of files beside her computer.
"Maybe another time."
"I'm sorry about the way things went down. We all are."
"Thanks."
He went to the dispatch desk and asked Sandy for the key to the evidence room. She gave it to him without hesitation, hardly looking up from her magazine. Hanging from a hook beside the evidence room door was a clipboard and a ballpoint. Ralph thought about skipping the sign-in, then went ahead and entered name, date, and time: 1530 hours. No choice, really, when both Gould and McGill knew he was here and why he'd come. If anyone asked about what he'd wanted to look at, he would flat-out tell them. It was administrative leave he was on, after all, not a suspension.
The room, not much bigger than a closet, was hot and stuffy. The overhead fluorescent bars flickered. Like the ancient PCs, they needed to be replaced. Flint City, aided by federal dollars, made sure the PD had all the weaponry it needed, and more. So what if the infrastructure was falling apart?
Had Frank Peterson's murder been committed back when Ralph first came on the force, there might have been four boxes of Maitland evidence, maybe even half a dozen, but the computer age had done wonders for compression, and today there were only two, plus the toolbox that had been in the back of the van. That had contained the standard array of wrenches, hammers, and screwdrivers. Terry's prints had been on none of the tools, nor on the box itself. To Ralph that suggested that the toolbox had been in the van when it was stolen, and Terry had never examined the contents after stealing the van for his own purposes.
One of the evidence boxes was marked MAITLAND HOME. The second box was labeled VAN/SUBARU. This was the one Ralph wanted. He cut the tape. No reason not to, with Terry dead.
After a brief hunt, he came up with a plastic evidence bag containing the scrap of paper he remembered. It was blue, and roughly triangular. At the top, in bold black letters, was TOMMY AND TUP. Whatever came after TUP was gone. In the upper corner was a little drawing of a pie, with steam rising from its crust. Although Ralph hadn't remembered that specifically, it must have been the reason he'd thought this scrap had been part of a take-out menu. What had Jeannie said when they were talking early this morning? I believe there's another dozen thoughts lined up behind each one I'm aware of. If it was true, Ralph would have given a fair amount of money to get hold of the one lurking behind that yellow bra strap. Because there was one, he was almost sure of it.
Another thing he was almost sure of was how this scrap had happened to be lying on the van's floor. Someone had put menus under the windshield wipers of all the vehicles in the area where the van had been parked. The driver--maybe the kid who'd stolen it in New York, maybe whoever had stolen it after the kid dumped it--had torn it off rather than just lifting the wiper, leaving that triangular corner. The driver hadn't noticed then, but once he was rolling, he would have. Maybe he'd reached around and pulled it free, dropping it on the floor instead of just letting it fly away. Possibly because he wasn't a litterbug by nature, just a thief. Possibly because there'd been a cop car behind him, and he hadn't wanted to do anything, not even a little thing, that might attract attention. It was even possible that he'd tried to throw it out the window, and a vagary of wind had blown it right back into the cab. Ralph had investigated road accidents, one of them quite nasty, where that had happened with cigarette butts.
He took his notebook from his back pocket--carrying it was second nature, administrative leave or not--and printed TOMMY AND TUP on a blank sheet. He replaced the VAN/SUBARU box on the shelf it had come from, left the evidence room (not neglecting to jot down his out time), and re-locked the door. When he gave the key back to Sandy, he held his notebook open in front of her. She glanced up from the latest adventures of Jennifer Aniston to glance at it.
"Mean anything to you?"
"Nope."
She went back to her mag. Ralph went to Officer Gould, who was still entering hard copy info into some database and swearing under her breath when she hit a wrong key, which seemed to be often. She glanced at his notebook.
"Tup is old-timey British slang for screwing, I think--as in 'I tupped me girlfriend last night, mate'--but I can't think of anything else. Is it important?"
"I don't know. Probably not."
"Google it, why don't you?"
While he waited for his own out-of-date computer to boot up, he decided to try the database he was married to. Jeannie answered on the first ring, and didn't even need to think when he asked her. "It could be Tommy and Tuppence. They were cutie-poo detectives Agatha Christie wrote about when she wasn't writing about Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. If that's the case, you'll probably find a restaurant run by a couple of British expats and specializing in things like bubble-and-squeak."
"Bubble and what?"
"Never mind."
"It probably means nothing," he repeated. But maybe it did. You chased this shit to make sure, one way or the other; chasing shit was, apologies to Sherlock Holmes, what most detective work was about.
"I'm curious, though. Tell me when you get home. Oh, and we're all out of orange juice."
"I'll stop by Gerald's," he said, and hung up.
He went to Google, typed in TOMMY AND TUPPENCE, then added RESTAURANT. The PD computers were old, but the Wi-Fi was new, and fast. He had what he was looking for in a matter of seconds. The Tommy and Tuppence Pub and Cafe was on Northwoods Boulevard in Dayton, Ohio.
Dayton. What was it about Dayton? Hadn't that come up once before in this sorry business? If so, where? He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Whatever connection he was trying to make courtesy of that yellow bra strap continued to elude him, but this new one he got. Dayton had come up during his last real conversation with Terry Maitland. They'd been talking about the van, and Terry had said he hadn't been in New York since he honeymooned there with his wife. The only trip Terry had taken recently had been to Ohio. To Dayton, in fact.
The girls' spring vacation. I wanted to see my dad. And when Ralph had asked if his father lived there, Terry had said, If you can call what he's doing these days living.
He called Sablo. "Hey, Yune, it's me."
"Hey, Ralph, how's retirement treating you?"
"It's good. You should see my lawn. I heard you're getting a commendation for covering that dipshit reporter's delectable body."
"So they say. Tell you what, life has been good for this son of a poor Mexican farming family."
"I thought you told me your father ran the biggest car dealership in Amarillo."
"I might have said that, I suppose. But when you have to decide between tru
th and legend, ese, print the legend. The wisdom of John Ford in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. What can I do for you?"
"Did Samuels tell you about the kid who originally stole the van?"
"Yeah. That's some story. Kid's name was Merlin, did you know that? And he sure must have been some kind of wizard to get all the way down to south Texas."
"Can you reach out to El Paso? That's where his run ended, but I know from Samuels that the kid ditched the van in Ohio. What I want to know is if it was somewhere near a pub and cafe called Tommy and Tuppence, on Northwoods Boulevard in Dayton."
"I could take a shot at that, I guess."
"Samuels told me this Merlin the Magician was on the road a long time. Can you also try to find out when he ditched the van? If maybe it was in April?"
"I can try to do that, too. Do you want to tell me why?"
"Terry Maitland was in Dayton in April. Visiting his father."
"Really?" Yune sounded totally engaged now. "Alone?"
"With his family," Ralph admitted, "and they flew both ways."
"So there goes that."
"Probably, but it still exercises a certain particular fascination over my consciousness."
"You'll have to 'splain that, Detective, for I am just the son of a poor Mexican farmer."
Ralph sighed.
"Let me see what I can find out."
"Thanks, Yune."
Just as he hung up, Chief Geller came in, toting a gym bag and looking freshly showered. Ralph tipped him a wave, and got a scowl in return. "You're not supposed to be here, Detective."
Ah, so that answered that question.
"Go home. Mow the lawn, or something."
"I already did that," Ralph said, getting up. "Cleaning out the cellar comes next."
"Fine, better get to it." Geller paused at his office door. "And Ralph . . . I'm sorry about all this. Sorry as hell."
People keep saying that, Ralph thought as he went out into the afternoon heat.
9
Yune called at quarter past nine that evening, while Jeannie was in the shower. Ralph wrote everything down. It wasn't much, but enough to be interesting. He went to bed an hour later, and fell into real sleep for the first time since Terry had been shot at the foot of the courthouse steps. He awoke at four on Friday morning from a dream of the teenage girl sitting on her boyfriend's shoulders and pumping her fists at the sky. He sat bolt upright in bed, still more asleep than awake, and unaware he was shouting until his frightened wife sat up beside him and grabbed him by the shoulders.
"What? Ralph, what?"
"Not the strap! The color of the strap!"
"What are you talking about?" She shook him. "Was it a dream, honey? A bad dream?"
I believe there's another dozen thoughts in my head lined up behind each one I'm aware of. That was what she had said. And that was what the dream--already dissolving, as dreams do--had been. One of those thoughts.
"I had it," he said. "In the dream I had it."
"Had what, honey? Something about Terry?"
"About the girl. Her bra strap was bright yellow. Only something else was, too. I knew what it was in the dream, but now . . ." He swung his feet out of bed and sat with his hands grasping his knees below the baggy boxers he slept in. "It's gone."
"It will come back. Lie down. You scared the hell out of me."
"I'm sorry." Ralph lay down again.
"Can you go back to sleep?"
"I don't know."
"What did Lieutenant Sablo say when he called?"
"I didn't tell you?" Knowing he hadn't.
"No, and I didn't want to push. You had your think-face on."
"I'll tell you in the morning."
"Since you scared me wide awake, might as well do it now."
"Not much to tell. Yune tracked the boy down through the officer who arrested him--the cop liked the kid, kind of took an interest, has been keeping track. For the time being, young Mr. Cassidy is in the foster care system down there in El Paso. He's got to face some kind of hearing in juvenile court for car theft, but nobody knows exactly where that will be yet. Dutchess County in New York seems the most likely, but they're not exactly champing at the bit to get him, and he's not champing at the bit to go back. So for the time being, he's in a kind of legal limbo, and according to Yune, he likes that fine. Stepfather tuned up on him pretty frequently, is the kid's story. While Mom pretended it wasn't happening. Pretty standard cycle of abuse."
"Poor kid, no wonder he ran away. What will happen to him?"
"Oh, eventually he'll be sent back. The wheels of justice grind slow, but exceedingly fine. He'll get a suspended sentence, or maybe they'll work out something about time served while in foster care. The cops in his town will be alerted to his home situation, but eventually the whole thing will start up again. Kid beaters sometimes hit pause, but they rarely hit stop."
He put his hands behind his head and thought of Terry, who had shown no previous signs of violence, not so much as bumping an umpire.
"The kid was in Dayton, all right," Ralph said, "and by then he was getting nervous about the van. He parked in a public lot because it was free, because there was no attendant, and because he saw the Golden Arches a few blocks up. He doesn't remember passing the Tommy and Tuppence cafe, but he does remember a young guy in a shirt that said Tommy something-or-other on the back. The guy had a stack of blue papers that he was putting under the windshield wipers of cars parked at the curb. He noticed the kid--Merlin--and offered him two bucks to put menus under the wipers of the vehicles in the parking lot. The kid said no thanks and went on up to Mickey D's to get his lunch. When he came back, the leaflet guy was gone, but there were menus on every car and truck in the lot. The kid was skittish, took it as a bad omen for some reason, God knows why. Anyway, he decided the time had come to switch rides."
"If he hadn't been skittish, he probably would have been caught a lot sooner," Jeannie observed.
"You're right. Anyway, he strolled around the lot, checking for cars that were unlocked. He told Yune he was surprised at how many were."
"I bet you weren't."
Ralph smiled. "People are careless. Fifth or sixth one he found unlocked, there was a spare key tucked behind the sun visor. It was perfect for him--a plain black Toyota, thousands of them on the road every day. Before our boy Merlin headed out in it, though, he put the van's key back in the ignition. He told Yune he hoped someone else would steal it because, and I quote, 'It might throw the po-po off my trail.' You know, like he was wanted for murder in six states instead of just being a runaway kid who never forgot to use his turn-signal."
"He said that?" She sounded amused.
"Yes. And by the way, he had to go back to the van for something else. A stack of smashed-down cartons he was sitting on to make him look taller behind the wheel."
"I kind of like this kid. Derek never would have thought of that."
We've never given him reason to, Ralph thought.
"Do you know if he left the menu under the van's windshield wiper?"
"Yune asked, and the kid said sure he did, why would he take it?"
"So the person who tore it off--and left the scrap which ended up inside--was the person who stole it from the parking lot in Dayton."
"Almost had to be. Now here's what had me wearing my think-face. The kid said he thought it was in April. I take that with a grain of salt, because I doubt if keeping track of dates was very important to him, but he told Yune it was spring, with all the leaves pretty much out on the trees, and not real hot yet. So it probably was. And April is when Terry was in Dayton, visiting his father."
"Only he was with his family, and they flew round-trip."
"I know that. You could call it a coincidence. Only then the same van ends up here in Flint City, and it's hard for me to believe in two coincidences involving the same Ford Econoline van. Yune floated the idea that maybe Terry had an accomplice."
"One who looked exactly like him?" Jeannie hoisted an
eyebrow. "A twin brother named William Wilson, maybe?"
"I know, the idea is ridiculous. But you see how weird it is, don't you? Terry is in Dayton, the van is in Dayton. Terry comes home to Flint City, and the van turns up in Flint City. There's a word for that, but I can't remember what it is."
"Confluence might be the one you're looking for."
"I want to talk to Marcy," he said. "I want to ask her about the trip the Maitlands made to Dayton. Everything she remembers. Only she won't want to talk to me, and I have absolutely no way of compelling her."
"Will you try?"
"Oh yes, I'll try."
"Can you sleep now?"
"I think so. Love you."
"Love you, too."
He was drifting away when she spoke into his ear, firm and almost harsh, trying to shock it out of him. "If it wasn't the bra strap, what was it?"
For a moment, clearly, Ralph saw the word CANT. Only the letters were bluey-green, not yellow. Something was there. He grasped for it, but it slipped away.
"Can't," he said.
"Not yet," Jeannie replied, "but you will. I know you."
They went to sleep. When Ralph woke up, it was eight o'clock and all the birds were singing.
10
By ten on that Friday morning, Sarah and Grace had reached the Hard Day's Night album, and Marcy thought she might actually lose her mind.
The girls had found Terry's record player--a steal on eBay, he had assured Marcy--in his garage workshop, along with his carefully assembled collection of Beatles albums. They had taken the player and the albums up to Grace's room and had begun with Meet the Beatles! "We're going to play all of them," Sarah told her mother. "To remember Daddy. If it's okay."
Marcy told them it was fine. What else could she say when looking at their pale, solemn faces and red-rimmed eyes? Only she hadn't realized how hard those songs would hit her. The girls knew them all, of course; when Terry was in the garage, the record player's turntable was always spinning, filling his workshop with the British invasion groups he'd been born a little too late to have heard firsthand, but which he loved just the same: the Searchers, the Zombies, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, T. Rex, and--of course--the Beatles. Mostly them.
The girls loved those groups and those songs because their father did, but there was a whole emotional spectrum of which they were unaware. They hadn't heard "I Call Your Name" while making out in the back of Terry's father's car, Terry's lips on her neck, Terry's hand under her sweater. They hadn't heard "Can't Buy Me Love," the current track coming down from upstairs, while sitting on the couch in the first apartment where they'd lived together, holding hands, watching A Hard Day's Night on the battered VHS they'd picked up at a rummage sale for twenty dollars, the Fab Four young and running amok in black-and-white, Marcy knowing she was going to marry the young man sitting next to her even if he didn't know it yet. Had John Lennon already been dead when they watched that old tape? Shot down in the street just as her husband had been?