Outsider

by Stephen King

  The man with the horrible burns on his face and the tattoos on his hands had been wearing a yellow bandanna on his head, probably to cover more scars. But had it been a bandanna? Couldn’t it have been something else? The missing shirt, for instance? The one Terry had been wearing in the train station?

  I’m reaching, he thought, and maybe he was … except his subconscious (those thoughts behind his thoughts) had been yelling at him about it all along.

  He closed his eyes and tried to summon up exactly what he’d seen in those last few seconds of Terry’s life. The blond anchor’s unlovely sneer as she looked at the blood on her fingers. The hypodermic sign reading MAITLAND TAKE YOUR MEDICINE. The boy with the bad lip. The woman leaning forward to give Marcy the finger. And the burned man who’d looked as if God had taken a giant eraser to most of his features, leaving only lumps, raw pink skin, and holes where a nose had been before the fire had put tattoos on his face far fiercer than those on his hands. And what Ralph saw in this moment of recall was not a bandanna on that man’s head but something far bigger, something that hung all the way down to his shoulders like a headdress.

  Yes, that something could have been a shirt … but even if it was, did that mean it was the shirt? The one Terry had been wearing in the security footage? Was there a way to find out?

  He thought there was, but he needed to enlist Jeannie, who was far more computer-savvy than he was. Also, the time might have come to stop thinking of Howard Gold and Alec Pelley as enemies. Maybe we’re all on the same side here, Pelley had said last night as he stood on the Maitland stoop, and maybe that was true. Or could be.

  Ralph put his car in gear and headed home, pushing the speed limit all the way.

  3

  Ralph and his wife sat at the kitchen table with Jeannie’s laptop in front of them. There were four major TV stations in Cap City, one for each of the networks, plus Channel 81, the public access outlet that ran local news, city council meetings, and various community affairs (such as the Harlan Coben speech where Terry had appeared as an unlikely guest star). All five had been at the courthouse for Terry’s arraignment, all five had filmed the shooting, and all had at least some footage of the crowd. Once the gunfire erupted, all the cameras turned to Terry, of course – Terry bleeding down the side of his face and pushing his wife from the line of fire, then collapsing into the street when the killshot struck him. The CBS footage went entirely blank before that happened, because that was the camera Ralph’s bullet had struck, shattering it and blinding its operator in one eye.

  After they’d looked at each clip twice, Jeannie turned to him, her lips pressed tightly together. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to.

  ‘Run the Channel 81 stuff again,’ Ralph said. ‘Their camera was every whichway once the shooting started, but they got the best crowd stuff before.’

  ‘Ralph.’ She touched his arm. ‘Are you all ri—’

  ‘Fine, I’m fine.’ He wasn’t. He felt as if the world were tilting, and he might soon slide right off the edge. ‘Run it again, please. And mute it. The reporter’s running commentary is distracting.’

  She did as he asked, and they watched together. Waving signs. People yelling soundlessly, their mouths opening and closing like fish out of water. At one point the camera panned rapidly across and down, not soon enough to show the man who had spit in Terry’s face, but in time to show Ralph tripping the troublemaker, making it look like an unprovoked attack. He watched as Terry helped the spitter to his feet (like something out of the fucking Bible, Ralph remembered thinking), and then the camera returned to the crowd. He saw the two bailiffs – one plump, the other lean – doing their best to keep the steps clear. He saw the blond anchor from Channel 7 getting to her feet, still looking with disbelief at her bloody fingers. He saw Ollie Peterson with his newspaper sack and a few clumps of red hair sticking out from beneath his watch cap, still a few seconds from being the star of the show. He saw the boy with the cleft lip, the Channel 81 cameraman pausing his shot long enough to register Frank Peterson’s face on the boy’s tee-shirt before panning further—

  ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Freeze it, freeze it right there.’

  Jeannie did so, and they looked at the picture – slightly blurred from the cameraman’s rapid movement as he tried to get a little bit of everything.

  Ralph tapped the screen. ‘See this guy waving the cowboy hat?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘The burned man was standing right next to him.’

  ‘All right,’ she said … but in a strange, nervous tone of voice Ralph did not remember ever hearing from her before.

  ‘I swear to you he was. I saw him, it was like I was tripping on LSD or mescaline or something, and I saw everything. Run the other ones again. This is the best one of the crowd, but the FOX affiliate wasn’t too bad, and—’

  ‘No.’ She hit the power button and closed the laptop. ‘The man you saw isn’t in any of these, Ralph. You know it as well as I do.’

  ‘Do you think I’m crazy? Is that it? Do you think I’m having a … you know …’

  ‘A breakdown?’ Her hand was back on his arm again, now squeezing gently. ‘Of course not. If you say you saw him, you saw him. If you think he was wearing that shirt as a kind of sun protection, or do-rag, or I don’t know what, then he probably was. You’ve had a bad month, probably the worst month of your life, but I trust your powers of observation. It’s just that … you must see now …’

  She trailed off. He waited. At last she pushed ahead.

  ‘There is something very wrong with this, and the more you find, the wronger it gets. It scares me. That story Yune told you scares me. It’s basically a vampire story, isn’t it? I read Dracula in high school, and one thing I remember about it is vampires don’t cast reflections in mirrors. And a thing that can’t cast a reflection probably wouldn’t show up in TV news footage.’

  ‘That’s nuts. There’s no such things as ghosts, or witches, or vam—’

  She slapped her open hand down on the table, a flat pistol-shot sound that made him jump. Her eyes were furious, crackling. ‘Wake up, Ralph! Wake up to what’s right in front of you! Terry Maitland was in two places at the same time! If you stop trying to find a way to explain that away and just accept it—’

  ‘I can’t accept it, honey. It goes against everything I’ve believed my whole life. If I let something like that in, I really would go crazy.’

  ‘The hell you would. You’re stronger than that. But you don’t have to even consider the idea, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Terry’s dead. You can let it go.’

  ‘If I do that, and it really wasn’t Terry who killed Frankie Peterson? Where does that leave Marcy? Where does it leave her girls?’

  Jeannie got up, walked to the window over the sink, and looked out at the backyard. Her hands were clenched into fists. ‘Derek called again. He still wants to come home.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘To stick it out until the season ends in the middle of next month. Even though I’d love to have him home. I finally talked him into it, and do you know why?’ She turned back. ‘Because I don’t want him in this town while you’re still digging around in this mess. Because when it gets dark tonight, I’m going to be frightened. Suppose it really is some kind of supernatural creature, Ralph? And what if it finds out you’re looking for it?’

  Ralph took her in his arms. He could feel her trembling. He thought, Part of her actually believes this.

  ‘Yune told me that story, but Yune believes the killer is a natural man. So do I.’

  With her face against his chest, she said, ‘Then why isn’t the man with the burned face in any of the footage?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I care about Marcy, of course I do.’ She looked up, and he saw she was crying. ‘And I care about her girls. I care about Terry, for that matter … and the Petersons … but I care more about you and Derek. You guys are all I have. Can’t you let this go now? Finish y
our leave, see the shrink, and turn the page?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, when in fact he did know. He just didn’t want to say so to Jeannie while she was in her current strange state. He couldn’t turn the page.

  Not yet.

  4

  That night he sat at the picnic table in the backyard, smoking a Tiparillo and looking up at the sky. There were no stars, but he could still make out the moon behind the clouds that were moving in. The truth was often like that, he thought – a bleary circle of light behind clouds. Sometimes it broke through; sometimes the clouds thickened, and the light disappeared completely.

  One thing was sure: when night fell, the skinny, tubercular man from Yune Sablo’s fairy tale became more plausible. Not believable, Ralph could no more believe in such a creature than he could in Santa Claus, but he could picture him: a darker-skinned version of Slender Man, that bugaboo of pubescent American girls. He’d be tall and grave in his black suit, his face like a lamp, and carrying a bag big enough to hold a small child with his or her knees folded against his or her chest. According to Yune, the Mexican boogeyman prolonged his life by drinking the blood of children and rubbing their fat on his body … and while that wasn’t exactly what had happened to the Peterson boy, it was in the vicinity. Might it be possible that the killer – maybe Maitland, maybe the unsub of the blurred fingerprints – actually thought he was a vampire, or some other supernatural creature? Hadn’t Jeffrey Dahmer believed he was creating zombies when he killed all those homeless men?

  None of that addresses the question of why the burned man isn’t in the news footage.

  Jeannie called to him. ‘Come inside, Ralph. It’s going to rain. You can smoke that smelly thing in the kitchen, if you have to have it.’

  That isn’t why you want me to come inside, Ralph thought. You want me to come in because part of you can’t help thinking that Yune’s sack-man is lurking out here, just beyond the reach of the yard light.

  Ridiculous, of course, but he could sympathize with her unease. He felt it himself. What had Jeannie said? The more you find, the wronger it gets.

  Ralph came inside, doused his Tiparillo under the sink tap, then grabbed his phone off the charging stand. When Howie answered, Ralph said, ‘Can you and Mr Pelley come over here tomorrow? I have a bunch of stuff to tell you, and some of it’s pretty unbelievable. Come to lunch. I’ll go out to Rudy’s and buy some sandwiches.’

  Howie agreed at once. Ralph broke the connection and saw Jeannie in the doorway, looking at him with her arms folded over her chest. ‘Can’t let it go?’

  ‘No, honey. I can’t. I’m sorry.’

  She sighed. ‘Will you be careful?’

  ‘I’ll tread with utmost caution.’

  ‘You better, or I’ll tread on you without caution. And no need to get sandwiches from Rudy’s. I’ll make something.’

  5

  Sunday was rainy, so they convened at the Andersons’ seldom-used dining room table: Ralph, Jeannie, Howie, and Alec. Yune Sablo, at home in Cap City, joined them on Howie Gold’s laptop, via Skype.

  Ralph began by recapping the things all of them knew, then turned it over to Yune, who told Howie and Alec about what they had found in the Elfman barn. When he was finished, Howie said, ‘None of this makes sense. In fact, it’s about four time-zones from making sense.’

  ‘This person was sleeping out there in the loft of a deserted barn?’ Alec asked Yune. ‘Hiding out? That’s what you’re thinking?’

  ‘It’s the working assumption,’ Yune said.

  ‘If so, it couldn’t have been Terry,’ Howie said. ‘He was in town all day Saturday. He took the girls to the municipal pool that morning, and he was at Estelle Barga Park all that afternoon, getting the field ready – as the home field coach, doing that was his responsibility. There were plenty of witnesses in both places.’

  ‘And from Saturday til Monday,’ Alec put in, ‘he was jugged in county jail. As you well know, Ralph.’

  ‘There are all kinds of witnesses to Terry’s whereabouts almost every step of the way,’ Ralph agreed. ‘That’s always been the root of the problem, but let it go for a minute. I want to show you something. Yune’s already seen it; he reviewed the footage this morning. But I asked him something before he watched, and now I want to ask you. Did either of you notice a badly disfigured man at the courthouse? He was wearing something on his head, but I’m not going to say what it was just now. Either of you?’

  Howie said he hadn’t. All his attention had been fixed on his client and his client’s wife. Alec Pelley, however, was a different matter.

  ‘Yeah, I saw him. Looked like he got burned in a fire. And what he was wearing on his head …’ He stopped, eyes widening.

  ‘Go on,’ Yune said from his living room in Cap City. ‘Let it out, amigo. You’ll feel better.’

  Alec was rubbing his temples, as if he had a headache. ‘At the time I thought it was a bandanna or a kerchief. You know, because his hair got burned off in the fire and maybe couldn’t grow back because of the scarring and he wanted to keep the sun off his skull. Only it could have been a shirt. The one missing from the barn, is that what you’re thinking? The one Terry was wearing in the security footage from the train station?’

  ‘You win the Kewpie doll,’ Yune said.

  Howie was frowning at Ralph. ‘You’re still trying to hang this on Terry?’

  Jeannie spoke up for the first time. ‘He’s just trying to get to the truth … which I’m not sure is the world’s best idea, actually.’

  ‘Watch this, Alec,’ Ralph said. ‘And point out the burned man.’

  Ralph ran the Channel 81 footage, then the FOX footage, and then, at Alec’s request (he was now leaning so close to Jeannie’s laptop that his nose was nearly touching the screen), the Channel 81 footage again. At last he sat back. ‘He’s not there. Which is impossible.’

  Yune said, ‘He was standing next to the guy waving his cowboy hat, right?’

  ‘I think so,’ Alec said. ‘Next to him and higher up from the blond reporter who got bonked on the noggin with a sign. I see both the reporter and the sign-waver … but I don’t see him. How can that be?’

  None of them answered.

  Howie said, ‘Let’s go back to the fingerprints for a minute. How many different sets in the van, Yune?’

  ‘Forensics thinks as many as half a dozen.’

  Howie groaned.

  ‘Take it easy. We’ve eliminated at least four of those: the farmer in New York who owned the van, the farmer’s oldest son who sometimes drove it, the kid who stole it, and Terry Maitland. That leaves one clear set we haven’t identified – could have been one of the farmer’s friends or one of his younger kids, playing around inside – and those blurry ones.’

  ‘The same blurry ones you found on the belt buckle.’

  ‘Probably, but we can’t be sure. There are a few visible lines and whorls in those, but nothing like the clear points of identity you’d need to get them admitted into evidence when a case goes to court.’

  ‘Uh-huh, okay, understood. So let me ask all three of you gentlemen something. Isn’t it possible that a man who had been badly burned – hands as well as face – could leave prints like that? Ones blurred to unrecognizability?’

  ‘Yes.’ Yune and Alec said it in unison, their voices only overlapping because of the computer’s brief transmission lag.

  ‘The problem with that,’ Ralph said, ‘is the burned man at the courthouse had tattoos on his hands. If his fingertips burned off, wouldn’t the tats have burned off, too?’

  Howie shook his head. ‘Not necessarily. If I’m on fire, maybe I use my hands to try and put myself out, but I don’t do it with the backs, do I?’ He began slapping at his considerable chest to demonstrate. ‘I do it with my palms.’

  There was a moment of silence. Then, in a low, almost inaudible voice, Alec Pelley said, ‘That burned guy was there. I’d swear to it on a stack of Bibles.’

  Ralph said, ‘Presuma
bly the State Police Forensics Unit will analyze the stuff from the barn that turned the hay black, but is there anything we can do in the meantime? I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘Backtrack to Dayton,’ Alec said. ‘We know Maitland was there, and we know the van was there, too. At least some of the answers may also be there. I can’t fly up myself, too many irons currently in the fire, but I know somebody good. Let me make a call and see if he’s available.’

  That was where they left it.

  6

  Ten-year-old Grace Maitland had slept poorly ever since her father’s murder, and what sleep she had managed was haunted by nightmares. That Sunday afternoon all her weariness came down on her like a soft weight. While her mother and sister were making a cake in the kitchen, Grace crept upstairs and lay on her bed. Although the day was rainy, there was plenty of light, which was good. The dark scared her now. Downstairs she could hear Mom and Sarah talking. That was also good. Grace closed her eyes, and although it only felt like a moment or two before she opened them again, it must have been hours, because the rain was coming down harder now and the light had gone gray. Her room was full of shadows.

  A man was sitting on her bed and looking at her. He was wearing jeans and a green tee-shirt. There were tattoos on his hands and crawling up his arms. There were snakes, and a cross, and a dagger, and a skull. His face no longer looked like it had been made out of Play-Doh by an untalented child, but she recognized him, just the same. It was the man who had been outside Sarah’s window. At least now he didn’t have straws for eyes. Now he had her father’s eyes. Grace would have known those eyes anywhere. She wondered if this was happening, or if it was a dream. If so, it was better than the nightmares. A little, anyway.

  ‘Daddy?’

  ‘Sure,’ said the man. His green tee-shirt changed to her father’s Golden Dragons game shirt, and so she knew it was a dream, after all. Next, that shirt turned into a white smocky thing, then back into the green tee-shirt. ‘I love you, Gracie.’