by Stephen King
‘Tea will keep me awake.’
She drew back and looked at him with eyes as lovely and dark at fifty as they had been at twenty-five. ‘Are you going to sleep, anyway?’ And when he didn’t reply: ‘Case closed.’
Derek was away at camp in Michigan, so they had the house to themselves. She asked him if he wanted to watch the eleven o’clock news on the kitchen TV, and he shook his head. The last thing he wanted was ten minutes of coverage on how the Flint City Monster had been brought to bay. Jeannie made raisin toast to go with the tea. Ralph sat at the kitchen table, looking at his hands, and told her everything. He saved Everett Roundhill for last.
‘He was furious with all of us,’ Ralph said, ‘but since I was the one who finally called him back, I was the one who took the incoming fire.’
‘Are you saying he confirmed Terry’s story?’
‘Every word. Roundhill picked up Terry and the other two teachers – Quade and Grant – at the high school. Ten o’clock Tuesday morning, as arranged. They got to the Sheraton in Cap City around 11:45, just in time to pick up their conference IDs and be seated for the banquet lunch. Roundhill says he lost track of Terry for an hour or so after the lunch was over, but he thinks Quade was with him. In any case, they were all back together by three, which is when Mrs Stanhope saw him putting Frank Peterson’s bike – and Frank himself – into a dirty white van seventy miles south.’
‘Have you talked to Quade?’
‘Yes. On the way home. He wasn’t angry – Roundhill’s so pissed he’s threatening to call for a full-scale investigation by the AG – but he was disbelieving. Stunned. Said that he and Terry went to a used bookstore called Second Edition after the banquet lunch, browsed, then came back for Coben.’
‘And Grant? What about him?’
‘He’s a she – Debbie Grant. Haven’t reached her yet, her husband said she went out with some other women, and when she does that she always turns off her phone. I’ll get her tomorrow morning, and when I do, I have no doubt that she’ll confirm what Roundhill and Quade told me.’ He took a small bite of his toast, then put it back on the plate. ‘This is my fault. If I’d pulled Terry in for questioning Thursday night, after Stanhope and the Morris girl ID’d him, I’d have known we had a problem and this wouldn’t be all over TV and the Internet now.’
‘But by then you’d matched the fingerprints to Terry Maitland’s, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fingerprints in the van, a fingerprint on the van’s ignition key, fingerprints in the car he abandoned by the river, on the branch he used to …’
‘Yes.’
‘And then more eyewitnesses. The man behind Shorty’s Pub, and his friend. Plus the cab driver. And the bouncer at the strip club. They all knew him.’
‘Uh-huh, and now that he’s been arrested, I have no doubt we’ll get a few more eye-wits from Gentlemen, Please. Bachelors, mostly, who won’t have to explain to their wives what they were doing there. I still should have waited. Maybe I should have called the high school to check on his movements on the day of the murder, except it made no sense, being summer vacation and all. What could they have told me except “He’s not here”?’
‘And you were afraid that if you started asking questions, it would get back to him.’
That had seemed obvious at the time, but now it only seemed stupid. Worse, careless. ‘I’ve made some mistakes in my career, but nothing like this. It’s as if I went blind.’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘Do you remember what I said when you told me that was how you meant to do it?’
‘Yes.’
Go ahead. Get him away from those boys as fast as you can.
That was what she’d said.
They sat there, looking at each other across the table.
‘This is impossible,’ Jeannie said at last.
He pointed a finger at her. ‘I think you’ve reached the heart of the matter.’
She sipped her tea thoughtfully, then looked at him over the rim of her cup. ‘There’s an old saying that everyone has a double. I think Edgar Allan Poe even wrote a story about it. “William Wilson,” it was called.’
‘Poe wrote his stories before fingerprints and DNA. We don’t have the DNA yet – that’s pending – but if it comes back as his, it’s him and I’m probably okay. If it comes back as someone else’s, they’ll cart me off to the loonybin. After I lose my job and get sued for false arrest, that is.’
She lifted her own piece of toast, then lowered it again. ‘You have his fingerprints here. And you’ll have his DNA here, I’m sure of it. But Ralph … you don’t have any fingerprints or DNA from there. From whoever attended that conference in Cap City. What if Terry Maitland killed the boy and it was the double at that conference?’
‘If you’re saying Terry Maitland has a lost identical twin with the same fingerprints and DNA, it’s not possible.’
‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying that you don’t have any forensic proof that it was Terry in Cap City. If Terry was here, and the forensic evidence says he was, then the double must have been there. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
Ralph understood the logic, and in the detective novels Jeannie liked to read – the Agatha Christies, the Rex Stouts, the Harlan Cobens – it would have been the centerpiece of the final chapter, when Miss Marple, Nero Wolfe, or Myron Bolitar revealed all. There was one rock-hard fact, as unassailable as gravity: a man could not be in two places at the same time.
But if Ralph had confidence in the eyewitnesses here, he had to have equal confidence in the eyewitnesses who said they had been in Cap City with Maitland. How could he doubt them? Roundhill, Quade, and Grant all taught in the same department. They saw Maitland every day. Was he, Ralph, supposed to believe those three teachers had colluded in the rape-murder of a child? Or that they had spent two days with a double so perfect they had never even suspected? And even if he could make himself believe it, could Bill Samuels ever convince a jury, especially when Terry had a seasoned and crafty defense lawyer like Howie Gold on his side?
‘Let’s go up to bed,’ Jeanette said. ‘I’ll give you one of my Ambiens and rub your back. This will look better in the morning.’
‘You think so?’ he asked.
4
As Jeanette Anderson was rubbing her husband’s back, Fred Peterson and his older son (now, with Frankie gone, his only son) were picking up dishes and setting the living room and the den to rights. And although it had been a remembrance gathering, the remains were pretty much the same as after any large and long houseparty.
Ollie had surprised Fred. The boy was your typical self-involved teenager who ordinarily wouldn’t pick up his socks from under the coffee table unless told twice or three times, but tonight he’d been an efficient and uncomplaining helper since Arlene had at ten o’clock turned out the last of that day’s unending stream of guests. The gathering of friends and neighbours had been winding down by seven, and Fred had hoped it would be over by eight – God, he was so tired of nodding when people told him Frankie was in heaven now – but then came the news that Terence Maitland had been arrested for Frankie’s murder, and the damn thing had cranked up all over again. That second cycle almost had been a party, albeit a grim one. Again and again Fred had been told that a, it was unbelievable, that b, Coach T had always seemed so normal, and c, the needle at McAlester was too good for him.
Ollie went back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, carrying glasses and piles of dishes, loading them into the dishwasher with an efficiency Fred never would have expected. When the dishwasher was full, Ollie set it going and rinsed more dishes, stacking them in the sink for the next load. Fred brought in the dishes that had been left in the den, and found yet more on the picnic table in the backyard, where some of their visitors had gone to smoke. Fifty or sixty people must have washed through the house before it was finally over, everyone in the neighborhood, plus well-wishers from other parts of town, not to mention Father Bri
xton and his various hangers-on (his groupies, Fred thought) from St Anthony’s. On and on they had come, a stream of mourners and gawkers.
Fred and Ollie did their clean-up work silently, each wrapped up in his own thoughts and his own grief. After receiving condolences for hours – and to be fair, even those from total strangers had been heartfelt – they were unable to condole with each other. Maybe that was strange. Maybe it was sad. Maybe it was what literary types called irony. Fred was too tired and heartsick to think about it.
During all of this, the dead boy’s mother sat on the sofa in her best meet-the-public silk dress, her knees together, her hands cupping her fat upper arms as if she were cold. She’d said nothing since the last of the evening’s guests – old Mrs Gibson from next door, who had predictably held on until the bitter end – finally took her leave.
She can go now, she’s got it all stored up, Arlene Peterson had said to her husband as she locked the front door and then leaned her bulk against it.
Arlene Kelly had been a slender vision in white lace when Father Brixton’s predecessor married them. She had still been slender and beautiful after giving birth to Ollie, but that had been seventeen years ago. She had begun to put on weight after giving birth to Frank, and now she was on the verge of obesity … although she was still beautiful to Fred, who hadn’t the heart to take Dr Connolly’s advice, at his last physical: You’re good to go for another fifty years, Fred, as long as you don’t fall off a building or step in front of a truck, but your wife has type two diabetes, and needs to lose fifty pounds if she’s going to stay healthy. You need to help her. After all, you’ve both got a lot to live for.
Only with Frankie not just dead but murdered, most of the things they had to live for seemed stupid and insignificant. Only Ollie retained his former precious importance in Fred’s mind, and even in his grief, he knew that he and Arlene had to be careful about how they treated him in the weeks and months ahead. Ollie was also grieving. Ollie could shoulder his share (more than that, really) of clearing away the remains of this last act in the tribal death-rites of Franklin Victor Peterson, but tomorrow they would have to let him start going back to being a boy. It would take time, but he would get there eventually.
The next time I see Ollie’s socks under the coffee table, I will rejoice, Fred promised himself. And I will break this horrible, unnatural silence as soon as I can think of something to say.
But he could think of nothing, and as Ollie sleepwalked past him into the den, pulling their vacuum cleaner by its hose, Fred thought – with no idea of how wrong he was – that at least things could not get worse.
He went to the doorway of the den, and watched as Ollie began vacuuming the gray pile with that same eerie, unguessed-at efficiency, taking long, even strokes, first pushing the nap one way and then pulling it the other. The crumby remains of Nabs, Oreos, and Ritz crackers disappeared as if they had never been there, and Fred finally found something to say. ‘I’ll do the living room.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Ollie said. His eyes were red and swollen. Given the age difference between the two brothers – seven years – they had been amazingly close. Or maybe it wasn’t so amazing, maybe that was just enough space to keep sibling rivalry to a bare minimum. To make Ollie something like Frank’s second father.
‘I know,’ Fred said, ‘but share and share alike.’
‘Okay. Just don’t say, “It’s what Frankie would have wanted.” I’d have to strangle you with the vacuum hose.’
Fred smiled at that. Probably not his first smile since the policeman had come to the door last Tuesday, but maybe the first real one. ‘It’s a deal.’
Ollie finished the carpet and trundled the vacuum to his father. When Fred pulled it into the living room and started in on the carpet, Arlene got to her feet and trudged toward the kitchen without looking back. Fred and Ollie glanced at each other. Ollie shrugged. Fred shrugged back and began vacuuming again. People had reached out to them in their grief, and Fred supposed that was nice, but golly-willikers, what a mess they had left behind. He consoled himself with the thought that it would have been much worse if it had been an Irish wake, but Fred had quit the booze after Ollie was born, and the Petersons kept a dry house.
From the kitchen came a most unexpected sound: laughter.
Fred and Ollie stared at each other again. Ollie hurried for the kitchen, where his mother’s laughter, which had seemed natural and easy to begin with, was now rising to a hysterical pitch. Fred stepped on the vacuum cleaner’s power button, killing it, and followed.
Arlene Peterson was standing with her back to the sink, holding her considerable belly and nearly screaming with laughter. Her face had gone bright red, as if she were running a high fever. Tears coursed down her cheeks.
‘Ma?’ Ollie asked. ‘What the hell?’
Although the dishes had been cleared from the living room and den, there was still a ton of work to be done here. There were two counters on either side of the sink, and a table in the kitchen nook, where the Peterson family had taken most of their evening meals. All these surfaces were loaded with partially eaten casseroles, Tupperware containers, and leftovers wrapped in aluminum foil. Resting on top of the stove was the carcass of a partially eaten chicken and a gravy boat full of congealed brown sludge.
‘We’ve got enough leftovers for a month!’ Arlene managed. She doubled over, guffawing, then straightened up. Her cheeks had turned purple. Her red hair, which she had bequeathed to both the son standing before her and the one now underground, had come loose from the clips with which she had temporarily tamed it, and now stood out around her congested face in a frizzy corona. ‘Bad news, Frankie’s dead! Good news, I won’t have to go shopping for a long … long … time!’
She began to howl. It was a sound that belonged in an insane asylum, not in their kitchen. Fred told his legs to move, to go to her and embrace her, but at first they wouldn’t obey. It was Ollie who moved, but before he could get to her, Arlene picked up the chicken and threw it. Ollie ducked. The chicken flew end over end, shedding stuffing, and hit the wall with a horrible crunch-splat. It left a circle of grease on the wallpaper below the clock.
‘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: beat-beat, beatbeatbeat, beat-beatbeat. 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.