Outsider

by Stephen King

  There would be no Brady Hartsfield or Morris Bellamy waiting for her in Dayton, which was good, because Pete was on vacation in Minnesota, and her young friend Jerome was on vacation with his family in Ireland.

  ‘I’ll kiss the Blarney Stone for ye, darlin,’ he had said at the airport, employing an Irish brogue every bit as awful as his Amos ’n Andy accent, which he still put on occasionally, mostly to offend her.

  ‘You better not,’ she’d said. ‘Think of the germs on that thing. Oough.’

  Alec Pelley thought I’d be put off by the strangeness, she thought, smiling a little. He thought I’d just say, ‘This is impossible, people can’t be in two places at the same time, and people can’t disappear from archived news footage. It’s either a practical joke, or a hoax.’ Only what Alec Pelley doesn’t know – and I won’t tell him – is that people can be in two places at the same time. Brady Hartsfield did it, and when Brady finally died, he was in another man’s body.

  ‘Anything is possible,’ she said to the empty room. ‘Anything at all. The world is full of strange nooks and crannies.’

  She booted up Firefox and found the address of the Tommy and Tuppence Pub. The closest lodging was the Fairview Hotel, on Northwoods Boulevard. Was it the same hotel the Maitland family had stayed in? She would ask Alec Pelley via email, but it seemed likely, bearing in mind what the older Maitland daughter had said. Holly checked Trivago and saw she could get an acceptable room for ninety-two dollars per night. She considered upgrading to a small suite, but only for a moment. That would be padding the expense account, a shoddy business practice and a slippery slope.

  She called the Fairview (on the office phone, since this was a legitimate expense), made a reservation for three nights starting tomorrow, then opened Math Cruncher on her computer. In her opinion it was the best program for solving everyday problems. Check-in time at the Fairview was three o’clock, and the turnpike speed at which her Prius got optimum gas mileage was 63 MPH. She figured in one stop to top up the tank and get a no doubt substandard meal at a roadside rest … added forty-five minutes for the inevitable slowdown due to roadwork …

  ‘I’ll leave at ten o’clock,’ she said. ‘No, better make it nine fifty, just to be safe.’ And to be even safer, she used her Waze app to suss out an alternate route, should that be necessary.

  She showered (so she wouldn’t have to do it in the morning), put on her nightie, brushed her teeth, flossed (the latest studies said flossing was not useful in protecting against dental decay, but it was part of Holly’s routine, and she would be content to floss until she died), took out her hair clips and put them in a line, then went into the spare bedroom, padding in her bare feet.

  The room was her film library. The shelves were lined with DVDs, some in colorful store cases, most homemade courtesy of Holly’s state-of-the-art disc burner. There were thousands (4,375, currently), but the one she wanted was easy to find, because the discs were alphabetized. She took it down and placed it on her nightstand, where she would be sure to see it when she packed in the morning.

  With that taken care of, she got down on her knees, closed her eyes, and folded her hands. Morning and evening prayers had been her analyst’s idea, and when Holly protested that she did not exactly believe in God, her analyst said that a vocalizing of her concerns and plans to a hypothetical higher power would help even if she didn’t. And that actually seemed to be the case.

  ‘It’s Holly Gibney again, and I am still trying to do my best. If you’re there, please bless Pete while he’s fishing, because only an idiot goes out in a boat when he doesn’t know how to swim. Please bless the Robinsons over there in Ireland, and if Jerome really is thinking about kissing the Blarney Stone, I wish you’d make him think better of it. I am drinking Boost to try and put on a little weight, because Dr Stonefield says I’m too thin. I don’t like it, but each can has two hundred and forty calories, according to the label. I’m taking my Lexapro, and I’m not smoking. Tomorrow I’m going to Dayton. Please help me to stay safe in my car, obey all traffic rules, and help me to do the best I can with the facts at hand. Which are interesting.’ She considered. ‘I still miss Bill. I guess that’s all for tonight.’

  She got into bed and was asleep five minutes later.

  2

  Holly arrived at the Fairview Hotel at 3:17 PM, not quite optimum but not bad. She reckoned it would have been 3:12, had not every fracking traffic light been against her once she left the turnpike. The room was fine. The bath towels on the shower door had been hung a bit crooked, but she set that situation to rights after using the toilet and washing her hands and face. There was no DVD player attached to the television but at ninety-two dollars a night, she hadn’t expected one. If she felt a need to watch the film she had brought, her laptop would be perfectly adequate. Made on the cheap, and shot in probably no more than ten days, it wasn’t the sort of movie that required high resolution and Dolby sound.

  Tommy and Tuppence was less than a block from the hotel. Holly could see the sign as soon as she stepped from beneath the hotel awning. She walked down and studied the menu posted in the window. In the upper lefthand corner was a pie with steam rising from its crust. Printed below this was STEAK & KIDNEY PIE IS OUR SPECIALTY.

  She strolled down another block and came to a parking lot, which was about three-quarters full. CITY PARKING, said the sign out front. 6-HOUR LIMIT. She went in, looking for tickets on windshields or a traffic warden’s chalk marks on tires. She saw neither, which meant that no one was enforcing the six-hour limit. It was strictly honor system. It wouldn’t work in New York, but it probably worked just fine in Ohio. With no monitoring, there was no way to tell how long the van had been here after Merlin Cassidy had abandoned it, but she guessed that with the doors unlocked and the keys dangling invitingly from the ignition, it probably hadn’t lasted too long.

  She walked back to Tommy and Tuppence, introduced herself to the hostess, and said she was an investigator working a case that had to do with a man who had stayed nearby last spring. It turned out the hostess was also part-owner, and with the evening rush still an hour away, she was perfectly willing to talk. Holly asked if she happened to remember just when the restaurant had leafleted the area with menus.

  ‘What did the guy do?’ the hostess asked. Her name was Mary, not Tuppence, and her accent was New Jersey rather than Newcastle.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ Holly told her. ‘It’s a legal matter. You understand.’

  ‘Well, I do remember,’ Mary said. ‘It’d be funny if I didn’t.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘When we first opened two years ago, this was Fredo’s Place. You know, like in The Godfather?’

  ‘Yes,’ Holly said, ‘although Fredo is best remembered for Godfather II, especially for the sequence where his brother Michael kisses him and says “I know it was you, Fredo, you broke my heart.”’

  ‘I don’t know about that, but I do know that there are about two hundred Italian restaurants in Dayton, and we were getting killed. So we decided to try British food, you can’t exactly call it cuisine – fish and chips, bangers and mash, even beans on toast – and changed the name to Tommy and Tuppence, like in the Agatha Christie books. We figured we had nothing to lose at that point. And you know what, it worked. I was shocked, but in a good way, believe me. We fill this place for lunch, and most nights for dinner.’ She leaned forward and Holly could smell gin on her breath, bright and clear. ‘Want to know a secret?’

  ‘I love secrets,’ Holly said truthfully.

  ‘The steak and kidney pie comes frozen from a company in Paramus. We just heat it up in the oven. And you know what? The restaurant critic from the Dayton Daily News loved it. He gave us five stars! I shit you not!’ She leaned forward a little more and whispered, ‘If you tell anyone that, I’d have to kill you.’

  Holly zipped a thumb across her thin lips and turned an invisible key, a gesture she’d seen Bill Hodges make on many occasions. ‘So when you re-ope
ned with the new name and the new menu … or maybe just before …’

  ‘Johnny, he’s my hubby, wanted to paper the neighborhood a week before, but I told him that was no good, people would forget, so we did it the day before. We hired a kid, and printed enough menus for him to cover a nine-block area.’

  ‘Including the parking lot up the street.’

  ‘Yes. Is that important?’

  ‘Would you check your calendar and tell me what day that was?’

  ‘Don’t need to. It’s engraven on my memory.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘April nineteenth. A Thursday. We opened – re-opened, actually – on Friday.’

  Holly restrained an urge to correct Mary’s grammar, thanked her, and turned to go.

  ‘Sure you can’t tell me what the guy did?’

  ‘Very sorry, but I’d lose my job.’

  ‘Well, at least come in for dinner, if you’re staying in town.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Holly said, but she wouldn’t. God knew what else on the menu had been shipped frozen from Paramus.

  3

  The next step was a visit to the Heisman Memory Unit, and a talk with Terry Maitland’s father, if he was having a good day (presuming he had good days anymore). Even if he was off in the clouds, she might be able to talk to some of the people who worked there. In the meantime, here she was in her pretty-good hotel room. She powered up her laptop and sent Alec Pelley an email titled GIBNEY REPORT #1.

  Tommy & Tuppence menus were leafleted in 9-block area on Thursday, April 19th. Based on interview w/ co-owner MARY HOLLISTER, I am confident this date is correct. Such being the case, we can be sure it was the date MERLIN CASSIDY abandoned the van in nearby parking lot. Note that MAITLAND FAMILY arrived Dayton around noon on Saturday, April 21st. I am almost positive the van was gone by then. I will check w/ local police tomorrow, hoping to close off one more possibility, and will then visit the Heisman Memory Unit. If questions, email or call my cell.

  Holly Gibney

  Finders Keepers

  With that taken care of, Holly went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a light meal (she never even considered room service, which was always ridiculously expensive). She found a Mel Gibson film she hadn’t seen on the in-room movie menu, and ordered it – $9.99, which she would deduct from her report of expenses when she filed it. The picture wasn’t great, but Gibson did the best he could with what he had. She noted the title and the running time in her current movie log-book (Holly had already filled over two dozen others), giving it three stars. With that taken care of, she made sure both of the room’s door locks were engaged, said her prayers (finishing, as she always did, by telling God that she missed Bill), and went to bed. Where she slept for eight hours, with no dreams. At least none that she remembered.

  4

  The next morning, after coffee, a brisk three-mile walk, breakfast at a nearby café, and a hot shower, Holly called the Dayton Police Department and asked for Traffic Division. Following a refreshingly brief interval on hold, an Officer Linden came on the line and asked how he could help her. Holly found this delightful. A polite policeman always brightened her day. Although to be fair, most of them were in the Midwest.

  She identified herself, said she was interested in a white Econoline van that had been left in a public parking lot on Northwoods Boulevard in April, and asked if DPD regularly checked the city’s honor lots.

  ‘Sure,’ Officer Linden said, ‘but not to enforce the six-hour limit. They’re cops, not meter maids.’

  ‘I understand,’ Holly said, ‘but they must keep an eye out for possible dump-offs, don’t they?’

  Linden laughed. ‘Your company must do a lot of repos and retrievals.’

  ‘Along with bail-jumpers, they’re our bread and butter.’

  ‘Then you know how it works. We’re especially interested in expensive cars that have been hanging around those lots for awhile, both in town and in long-term parking at the airport. Your Denalis, your Escalades, your Jags and Beemers. You say this van you’re interested in had New York plates?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘A van like that probably wouldn’t have drawn much attention the first day – people from New York do come to Dayton, strange as it may seem – but if it was still there on the second day? Probably.’

  Which still would have been a full day before the Maitlands arrived. ‘Thank you, Officer.’

  ‘I could check the impound yard, if you want.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. The van next showed up a thousand miles south of here.’

  ‘What’s your interest in it, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Holly said. This was a police officer, after all. ‘It was used to abduct a child who was subsequently murdered.’

  5

  Now ninety-nine per cent sure the van had been gone well before Terry Maitland arrived in Dayton with his wife and daughters on April 21st, Holly drove her Prius to the Heisman Memory Unit. It was a long, low sandstone building in the middle of at least four acres of well-kept grounds. A grove of trees separated it from Kindred Hospital, which probably owned it, operated it, and made a tidy profit thereby; it certainly didn’t look cheap. Either Peter Maitland had a large nest egg, good insurance, or both, Holly thought approvingly. There were plenty of empty guest spaces at this hour of the morning, but Holly chose one at the far end of the lot. Her Fitbit goal was 12,000 steps a day, and every little bit helped.

  She paused for a minute to watch three orderlies walking three residents (one of the latter actually looked as if he might know where he was), then went inside. The lobby was high-ceilinged and pleasant, but beneath the smells of floor wax and furniture polish, Holly could detect a faint odor of pee wafting out from deeper in the building. And something else, something heavier. It would have been foolish and melodramatic to call it the smell of lost hope, but that was what it smelled like to Holly, just the same. Probably because I spent so much of my early life staring at the hole instead of the doughnut, she thought.

  The sign on the main desk read ALL VISITORS MUST CHECK IN. The woman behind the desk (Mrs Kelly, according to the little plaque on the counter) gave Holly a welcoming smile. ‘Hello, there. How may I help?’

  To this point, all was ordinary and unremarkable. Things only went off the rails when Holly asked if she could visit Peter Maitland. Mrs Kelly’s smile remained on her lips, but disappeared from her eyes. ‘Are you a member of the family?’

  ‘No,’ Holly said. ‘I’m a friend of the family.’

  This, she told herself, was not exactly a lie. She was working for Mrs Maitland’s lawyer, after all, and the lawyer was working for Mrs Maitland, and that qualified as a kind of friendship, didn’t it, if she had been hired to clear the name of the widow’s late husband?

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t do,’ said Mrs Kelly. What remained of her smile was now purely perfunctory. ‘If you’re not family, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave. Mr Maitland wouldn’t know you, anyway. His condition has deteriorated this summer.’

  ‘Just this summer, or since Terry came to visit him in the spring?’

  Now the smile was gone entirely. ‘Are you a reporter? If you are, you are required by law to tell me, and I will ask you to leave the premises at once. If you refuse, I’ll call security and have you escorted. We’ve had quite enough of your kind.’

  This was interesting. It might not have anything to do with the matter she had come here to investigate, but maybe it did. The woman hadn’t gone all poopy, after all, until Holly mentioned Peter Maitland’s name. ‘I’m not a reporter.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for that, but if you’re not a relative, I still must ask you to leave.’

  ‘All right,’ Holly said. She took a step or two away from the desk, then had an idea and turned back. ‘Suppose I had Mr Maitland’s son, Terry, call and vouch for me. Would that help?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Mrs Kelly said. She looked grudging about it. ‘He would have to answer a few que
stions, though, to satisfy me that it wasn’t one of your colleagues pretending to be Mr Maitland. That might sound a trifle paranoid to you, Ms Gibney, but we have been through a lot here, a lot, and I take my responsibilities very seriously.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but it wouldn’t do you any good to speak to Peter, in any case. The police found that out. He’s in end-stage Alzheimer’s. If you talk to the younger Mr Maitland, he’ll tell you.’

  The younger Mr Maitland won’t tell me anything, Mrs Kelly, because he’s been dead for a week. But you don’t know that, do you?

  ‘When was the last time the police tried to talk to Peter Maitland? I’m asking as a friend of the family.’

  Mrs Kelly considered this, then said: ‘I don’t believe you, and I’m not answering your questions.’

  Bill would have gotten all chummy and confidential at this point, he and Mrs Kelly might even have ended by exchanging email addresses and promising to stay in touch on Facebook, but although Holly was an excellent deductive thinker, she was still working on what her analyst called ‘people skills.’ She left, a bit disheartened but not discouraged.

  This kept getting more interesting.

  6

  At eleven o’clock on that bright and sunny Tuesday morning, Holly sat on a shady bench in Andrew Dean Park, sipping a latte from a nearby Starbucks and thinking about her queer interview with Mrs Kelly.

  The woman hadn’t known Terry was dead, probably none of the Heisman staff knew, and that didn’t surprise Holly very much. The murders of Frank Peterson and Terry Maitland had happened in a small city hundreds of miles away; if it had made the national news at all during a week when an ISIL sympathizer had shot eight people in a Tennessee shopping mall and a tornado had leveled a small Indiana town, it would only have been as a blip far down on Huffington Post, there and gone. And it wasn’t as if Marcy Maitland would have been in touch with her father-in-law to tell him the sad news – why would she, considering the man’s condition?