Cujo (44 page)

Townsend smiled back. “Oh, I think we can manage.”

Masen nodded. “This thing is starting to look bad, Mr. Townsend. Very bad.”

“It's not good.”

“I'm beginning to wonder if this Kemp didn't bury them in the ditch beside some farm road between Castle Rock and Twickenbam.” Masen smiled again. “But we'll crack him, Mr. Townsend. I've cracked tough nuts before this.”

“Yessir,” Townsend said respectfully. He believed Masen had.

“We'll crack him if we have to sit him in this office and sweat him for two days.”

Townsend slipped out every fifteen minutes or so, trying to make contact with George Bannerman. He knew Bannerman only slightly, but he held a higher opinion of him than Masen did, and he thought Bannerman deserved to be warned that Andy Masen was on the prod for him. When he still hadn't reached Bannerman by ten o'clock, he began to feel worried. He also began to wonder if he should mention Bannerman's continued silence to Masen, or if he should hold his peace.

•  •  •

Roger Breakstone arrived in New York at 8:49
A.M.
on the Eastern shuttle, cabbed into the city, and checked into the Biltmore a little before 9:30.

“The reservation was for two?” the desk clerk asked.

“My partner has been called home on an emergency.”

“What a pity,” the desk clerk said indifferently, and gave Roger a card to fill out. While he did so, the desk clerk talked to the cashier about the Yankee tickets he had gotten for the following weekend.

Roger lay down in his room, trying to nap, but in spite of his poor rest the night before, no sleep would come. Donna screwing some other man, Vic holding on to all of that—trying to, anyway—in addition to this stinking mess over a red, sugary kiddies' cereal. Now Donna and Tad had disappeared. Vic had disappeared. Everything had somehow gone up in smoke this last week. Neatest trick you ever saw, presto cbango, everything's a big pile of shit. His head ached. The ache came in big, greasy, thumping waves.

At last he got up, not wanting to be alone with his bad head and his bad thoughts any longer. He thought he might as well go on over to Summers Marketing & Research at 47th and Park and spread some gloom around there—after all, what else did Ad Worx pay them for?

He stopped in the lobby for aspirin and walked over. The walk did nothing for his head, but it did give him a chance to renew his hate/hate relationship with New York.

Not back here,
he thought.
I'll go to work throwing cartons of Pespi on a truck before I bring Althea and the girls back here.

Summers was on the fourteenth floor of a big, stupid-looking, energy-efficient skyscraper. The receptionist smiled and nodded when Roger identified himself. “Mr. Hewitt has just stepped out for a few minutes. Is Mr. Trenton with you?”

“No, he was called home.”

“Well, I have something for you. It just came in this morning.”

She handed Roger a telegram in a yellow envelope. It was addressed to
V. TRENTON/ R. BREAKSTONE/ AD WORX/ CARE OF IMAGE-EYE STUDIOS
. Rob had forwarded it to Summers Marketing late yesterday.

Roger tore it open and saw at once that it was from old man Sharp, and that it was fairly long.

Walking papers, here we come,
he thought, and read the telegram.

•  •  •

The telephone woke Vic up at a few minutes before twelve; otherwise he might have slept most of the afternoon away as well. His sleep had been heavy and soggy, and he woke with a terrible feeling of disorientation. The dream had come again. Donna and Tad in a rocky niche, barely beyond the reach of some terrible, mythical beast. The room actually seemed to whirl around him as he reached for the telephone.

Donna and Tad,
he thought.
They're safe.

“Hello?”

“Vic, it's Roger.”

“Roger?” He sat up. His shirt was plastered to his body. Half his mind was still asleep and grappling with that dream. The light was too strong. The heat . . . it had been relatively cool when he went to sleep. Now the bedroom was an oven. How late was it? How late had they let him sleep? The house was so
silent.

“Roger, what time is it?”

“Time?” Roger paused. “Why, just twelve o'clock. What—”

“Twelve? Oh, Christ. . . . Roger, I've been asleep.”

“What's happened, Vic? Are they back?”

“They weren't when I went to sleep. That bastard Masen promised—”

“Who's Masen?”

“He's in charge of the investigation. Roger, I have to go. I have to find out—”

“Hold on, man. I'm calling from Summers. I've got to tell you. There was a telegram from Sharp in Cleveland. We're keeping the account.”

“What? What?” It was all going too fast for him. Donna . . . the account . . . Roger, sounding almost absurdly cheerful.

“There was a telegram here when I came in. The old man and his kid sent it to Image-Eye and Rob forwarded it here. You want me to read it?”

“Give me the gist.”

“Old man Sharp and the kid apparently came to the same conclusion using different chains of logic. The old man sees the Zingers thing as a replay of the Alamo—we're the good guys standing on the battlements, standing by to repel the boarders. All got to stick together, all for one and one for all.”

“Yeah, I knew he had that in him,” Vic said, rubbing the
back of his neck. “He's a loyal old bastard. That's why he came with us when we left New York.”

“The kid would still like to get rid of us, but he doesn't think this is the right time. He thinks it would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and even possible culpability. Can you
believe
it?”

“I could believe anything coming from that paranoid little twerp.”

“They want us to fly to Cleveland and sign a new two-year contract. It's not a five-year deal, and when it's up the kid's almost sure to be in charge and we'll undoubtedly be invited to take a long walk off a short dock, but two years . . . it's enough time, Vic! In two years we'll be on top of it! We can tell them—”

“Roger, I've got to—”

“—to take their lousy pound cake and pound it up their asses! They also want to discuss the new campaign, and I think they'll go for the Cereal Professor's swan song, too.”

“That's great, Roger, but I've got to find out what the Christ has been happening with Donna and Tad.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was a lousy time to call, but I couldn't keep it to myself, man. I would have busted like a balloon.”

“There's no bad time for good news,” Vic said. All the same, he felt a stab of jealousy, as painful as a sliver of sharpened bone, at the happy relief in Roger's voice, and a bitter disappointment that he couldn't share in Roger's feelings. But maybe it was a good omen.

“Vic, call me when you hear, okay?”

“I will, Rog. Thanks for the call.”

He hung up, slipped into his loafers, and went downstairs. The kitchen was still a mess—it made his stomach do a slow and giddy rollover just to look at it. But there was a note from Masen on the table, pegged down with a salt shaker.

Mr. Trenton,

Steve Kemp has been picked up in a western Massachusetts town, Twickenham. Your wife and son are not, repeat, are not, with him. I did not wake you with this news because Kemp is standing on his right to remain silent. Barring any complication, he will be brought directly to the Scarborough S.P. barracks for charging
on vandalism and possession of illegal drugs. We estimate him here by 11:30
A.M.
. If anything breaks, I'll call you soonest.

Andy Masen

“
Fuck
his right to remain silent,” Vic growled. He went into the living room, got the number of the Scarborough State Police barracks, and made the call.

“Mr. Kemp is here,” the duty officer told him. “He got here about fifteen minutes ago. Mr. Masen is with him now. Kemp's called a lawyer. I don't think Mr. Masen can come to the—”

“You never mind what he can or can't do,” Vic said. “You tell him it's Donna Trenton's husband and I want him to shag his ass over to the phone and talk to me.”

A few moments later, Masen came on the line.

“Mr. Trenton, I appreciate your concern, but this brief time before Kemp's lawyer gets here can be very valuable.”

“What's he told you?”

Masen hesitated and then said, “He's admitted to the vandalism. I think he finally realized this thing was a lot heavier than a little nose candy stashed in the wheel well of his van. He admitted the vandalism to the Massachusetts officers who brought him over here. But he claims that nobody was home when he did it, and that he left undisturbed.”

“You don't believe that shit, do you?”

Masen said carefully, “He's quite convincing. I couldn't say that I believe anything right now. If I could just ask him a few more questions—”

“Nothing came of Camber's Garage?”

“No. I sent Sheriff Bannerman up there with instructions to call in immediately if Mrs. Trenton had been there or if her car was there. And since he didn't call back in—”

“That's hardly definitive, is it?” Vic asked sharply.

“Mr. Trenton, I really must go. If we hear any—”

Vic slammed the telephone down and stood breathing rapidly in the hot silence of the living room. Then he went slowly to the stairs and mounted them. He stood in the upstairs hall for a moment and then went into his son's room. Tad's trucks were lined up neatly against the wall, slant-parking style. Looking at them hurt his heart. Tad's yellow slicker was hung on the brass hook by his bed, and his coloring
books were piled neatly on his desk. His closet door was open. Vic shut it absently and, barely thinking about what he was doing, put Tad's chair in front of it.

He sat on Tad's bed, hands dangling between his legs, and looked out into the hot, bright day.

Dead ends. Nothing but dead ends, and where
were
they?

(dead ends)

Now there was an ominous phrase if ever one had been coined.
Dead ends.
As a boy Tad's age he had been fascinated with dead-end roads, his mother had told him once. He wondered if that sort of thing was inherited, if Tad was interested in dead-end roads. He wondered if Tad was still alive.

And it suddenly occurred to him that Town Road No. 3, where Joe Camber's Garage stood, was a dead-end road.

He suddenly looked around and saw that the wall over the head of Tad's bed was bare. The Monster Words were gone. Now why had he taken those? Or had Kemp taken them for some weird reason of his own? But if Kemp had been in here, why hadn't he trashed Tad's room as he had those downstairs?

(dead ends and Monster Words)

Had she taken the Pinto up to Camber's? He remembered the conversation they'd had about the balky needle valve only vaguely. She was a little scared of Joe Camber, hadn't she said that?

No. Not Camber. Camber only wanted to mentally undress her. No, it was the
dog
she was a little scared of. What was his name?

They had joked about it. Tad. Tad calling the dog.

And again he heard Tad's phantom, ghostly voice, so hopeless and lost in this too-empty, suddenly creepy room:
Cujo . . . heere, Cujo . . . Cooojo . . .

And then something happened which Vic never spoke of to anyone in the rest of his life. Instead of hearing Tad's voice in his mind he was
actually
hearing it, high and lonely and terrified, a going-away voice
that was coming from inside the closet.

A cry escaped Vic's throat and he pushed himself up on Tad's bed, his eyes widening. The closet door was swinging open, pushing the chair in front of it, and his son was crying
“Coooooooo—”

And then he realized it wasn't Tad's voice; it was his own
tired, overwrought mind making Tad's voice from the thin scraping sound of the chair legs on the painted plank floor. That was all it was and—

—and there were eyes in the closet, he saw eyes, red and sunken and terrible—

A little scream escaped his throat. The chair tipped over for no earthly reason. And he saw Tad's teddybear inside the closet, perched on a stack of sheets and blankets. It was the bear's glass eyes he had seen. No more.

Heart thumping heavily in his throat, Vic got up and went to the closet. He could smell something in there, something heavy and unpleasant. Perhaps it was only mothballs—that smell was certainly part of it—but it smelled . . . savage.

Don't be ridiculous. It's just a closet. Not a cave. Not a monster lair.

He looked at Tad's bear. Tad's bear looked back at him, unblinking. Behind the bear, behind the hanging clothes, all was darkness. Anything could be back in there.
Anything.
But, of course, nothing was.

You gave me a scare, bear,
he said.

Monsters, stay out of this room,
the bear said. Its eyes sparkled. They were dead glass, but they sparkled.

The door's out of true, that's all,
Vic said. He was sweating; huge salty drops ran slowly down his face like tears.

You have no business here,
the bear replied.

What's the matter with me?
Vic asked the bear.
Am I going crazy? Is this what going crazy is like?

To which Tad's bear replied:
Monsters, leave Tad alone.

He closed the closet door and watched, as wide-eyed as a child, as the latch lifted and popped free of its notch. The door began to swing open again.

I didn't see that. I won't believe I saw that.

He slammed the door and put the chair against it again. Then he took a large stack of Tad's picturebooks and put them on the chair's seat to weight it down. This time the door stayed closed. Vic stood there looking at the closed door, thinking about dead-end roads. Not much traffic on dead-end roads. All monsters should live under bridges or in closets or at the ends of dead-end roads. It should be like a national law.