The Dark Half (34 page)

Halfway up the stairs he paused . . . and went back down again. He had a small den off the living room, not much more than a broom-closet furnished with a desk and some bookshelves, but adequate for his needs. He tried not to bring his work home with him. He did not always succeed in this, but he tried very hard.

He closed the door, turned on the light, and looked at the telephone.

Then Alan thought of Liz Beaumont's eyes—her dark, frightened eyes—and decided he was going to do it. Perhaps it would even do some good; a call in the dead of night would establish the fact that this was serious business, and get Dr. Pritchard thinking. Then Alan could call him back at a more reasonable hour.

Who knows,
he thought without much hope (but with a trace of humor),
maybe he MISSES getting calls in the middle of the night.

Alan took the scrap of paper from the pocket of his uniform blouse and dialed Hugh Pritchard's number in Fort Laramie. He did it standing up, setting himself for a blast of anger from that gravelly voice.

He need not have worried; the answering machine cut in after the same fraction of a ring, and delivered the same message.

He hung up thoughtfully and sat down behind his desk. The gooseneck lamp cast a round circle of light on the desk's surface, and Alan began to make a series of shadow animals in its glow—a rabbit, a dog, a hawk, even a passable kangaroo. His hands possessed that same deep grace which owned the rest of his body when he was alone and at rest; beneath those eerily flexible fingers, the animals seemed to march in a parade through the tiny spotlight cast by the hooded lamp, one flowing into the next. This little diversion had never failed to fascinate and amuse his children, and it often set his own mind at rest when it was troubled.

It didn't work now.

That was impossible, of course; he supposed he could swallow a ghost if someone put a gun to his head, but not some malignant Superman of a ghost who crossed whole continents in a single bound. He could think of several good reasons why someone might turn on his answering machine at night. Not the least of them was to keep from being disturbed by late-calling strangers such as Sheriff Alan J. Pangborn, of Castle Rock, Maine.

Alan Pangborn shuddered. It was crazy, but he shuddered anyway. It twisted through him like a wire.

He dialed Wyoming Directory Assistance, got the number for the Fort Laramie Sheriff's Office, and made another call. He was answered by a dispatcher who sounded half-asleep. Alan identified himself, told the dispatcher whom he had been trying to contact and where he lived, and then asked if they had Dr. Pritchard and his wife in their vacation file. If the doctor and his wife
had
gone off on holiday—and it was getting to be that season—they would probably have informed the local law and asked them to keep an eye on the house while it was empty.

“Well,” Dispatch said, “why don't you give me your number? I'll call you back with the information. ”

Alan sighed. This was just more standard operating procedure. More bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it. The guy didn't want to give out the information until he was sure Alan was what he said he was.

“No,” he said. “I'm calling from home, and it's the middle of the night—”

“It's not exactly high noon here, Sheriff Pangborn,” Dispatch answered laconically.

Alan sighed. “I'm sure that's true,” he said, “and I'm also sure that your wife and kids aren't asleep upstairs. Do this, my friend: call the Maine State Police Barracks in Oxford, Maine—I'll give you the number—and verify my name. They can give you my LAWS ID number. I'll call back in ten minutes or so, and we can exchange passwords. ”

“Shoot it to me,” Dispatch said, but he didn't sound happy about it. Alan guessed he might have taken the man away from the late show or maybe this month's
Penthouse.

“What's this about?” Dispatch asked after he had read back the Oxford State Police Barracks phone number.

“Murder investigation,” Alan said, “and it's hot. I'm not calling you for my health, pal.” He hung up.

He sat behind his desk and made shadow animals and waited for the minute hand to circle the face of the dock ten times. It seemed very slow. It had only gone around five times when the study door opened and Annie came in. She was wearing her pink robe and looked somehow ghostly to him; he felt that shudder wanting to work through him again, as if he had looked into the future and seen something there which was unpleasant. Nasty, even.

“Alan? What are you doing, sitting down here so late?”

He smiled, got up, kissed her easily. “Just waiting for the drugs to wear off,” he said.

“No, really—is it this Beaumont business?”

“Yeah. I've been trying to chase down a doctor who may know something about it. I keep getting his answering machine, so I called the Sheriff's Office to see if he's in their vacation file. The man on the other end is supposedly checking my
bona fides. ”
He looked at Annie with careful concern. “How are you, honey? Headache tonight?”

“No,” she said, “but I heard you come in.” She smiled. “You're the world's quietest man when you want to be, Alan, but you can't do a thing about your car. ”

He hugged her.

“Do you want a cup of tea?” she asked.

“God, no. A glass of milk, if you want to get one. ”

She left him alone and came back a minute later with the milk. “What's Mr. Beaumont like?” she asked. “I've seen him around town, and his wife comes into the shop once in awhile, but I've never spoken to him.” The shop was You Sew and Sew, owned and operated by a woman named Polly Chalmers. Annie Pangborn had worked there part-time for four years.

Alan thought about it. “I like him,” he said at last. “At first I didn't—I thought he was a cold fish. But I was seeing him under difficult circumstances. He's just . . . distant. Maybe it's because of what he does for a living. ”

“I liked both of his books very much,” Annie said.

He raised his eyebrows. “I didn't know you'd read him. ”

“You never asked, Alan. Then, when the story broke about the pen name, I tried one of the
other
ones.” Her nose wrinkled in displeasure.

“No good?”

“Terrible.
Scary. I didn't finish it. I never would have believed the same man wrote both books. ”

“You ought to get back to bed,” he said, “or you'll wake up with another pounder. ”

She shook her head. “I think the Headache Monster's gone again, at least for awhile.” She gave him a look from beneath lowered lashes. “I'll still be awake when you come up . . . if you're not too long, that is. ”

He cupped one breast through the pink robe and kissed her parted lips. “I'll be up just as fast as I can. ”

She left, and Alan saw that more than ten minutes had passed. He called Wyoming again and got the same sleepy dispatcher.

“Thought you'd forgot me, my friend. ”

“Not at all,” Alan said.

“Mind giving me your LAWS number, Sheriff?”

“109-44-205-ME. ”

“I guess you're the genuine article, all right. Sorry to put you through this rigamarole so late, Sheriff Pangborn, but I guess you understand. ”

“I do. What can you tell me about Dr. Pritchard?”

“Oh, he and his wife are in the vacation file, all right,” Dispatch said. “They're in Yellowstone Park, camping, until the end of the month. ”

But he was not much relieved, he found. Dr. Pritchard was going to be a hard man to get hold of, at least for the next couple of weeks.

“If I needed to get a message to the guy, do you think I could do it?” Alan asked.

“I'd think so,” Dispatch said. “You could call Park Services at Yellowstone. They'll know where he is, or they should. It might take awhile, but they'd probably get him for you. I've met him a time or two. He seems like a nice enough old fella. ”

“Well, that's good to know,” Alan said. “Thanks for your time. ”

“Don't mention it—it's what we're here for.” Alan heard the faint rattle of pages, and could imagine this faceless man picking up his
Penthouse
again, half a continent away.

“Goodnight,” he said.

“Goodnight, Sheriff. ”

Alan hung up and sat where he was for a moment, looking out the small den window into the darkness.

Alan wondered again how he would feel if it were his own life—and the lives of Annie and his children—at stake. He wondered how he would feel if he knew that, and no one would believe what he knew.

You're taking
it
home with
you
again, dear, he heard
Annie say in his mind.

And it was true. Fifteen minutes ago he had been convinced—in his nerve-endings, if not in his head—that Hugh and Helga Pritchard were lying dead in a pool of blood. It wasn't true; they were sleeping peacefully under the stars in Yellowstone National Park tonight. So much for intuition; it had a way of just fading out on you.

Did he really believe that?

Yes, he decided—he really did. In his head, at least. His nerve-endings were not so sure.

Alan finished his milk, turned off the desk-lamp, and went upstairs. Annie was still awake, and she was gloriously naked. She folded him into her arms, and Alan gladly allowed himself to forget everything else.

Stark called again two days later. Thad Beaumont was in Dave's Market at the time.

Dave's was a mom-and-pop store a mile and a half down the road from the Beaumont house. It was a place to go when running to the supermarket in Brewer was just too much of a pain in the ass.

Thad went down that Friday evening to get a six-pack of Pepsi, some chips, and some dip. One of the Troopers watching over the family rode with him. It was June 10th, six-thirty in the evening, plenty of light left in the sky. Summer, that beautiful green bitch, had ridden into Maine again.

The cop sat in the car while Thad went in. He got his soda and was inspecting the wild array of dips (you had your basic dam, and if you didn't like that, you had your basic onion) when the telephone rang.

He looked up at once, thinking:
Oh. Okay.

Rosalie behind the counter picked it up, said hello, listened, then held the phone out to him, as he had known she would. He was again swallowed by that dreamy feeling of
presque vu.

“Telephone, Mr. Beaumont. ”

He felt quite calm. His heart had stumbled over a beat, but only one; now it was jogging along at its usual rate. He was not sweating.

And there were no birds.

He felt none of the fear and fury he'd felt three days earlier. He didn't bother asking Rosalie if it was his wife, wanting him to pick up a dozen eggs or maybe a carton of o. j. while he was here. He knew who it was.

He stood by the Megabucks computer with its bright green screen announcing there had been no winner last week and this week's lottery jackpot was four million dollars. He took the phone from Rosalie and said, “Hello, George. ”

“Hello, Thad.” The soft brush-stroke of Southern accent was still there, but the overlay of country bumpkin was entirely gone—Thad only realized bow strongly yet subtly Stark had managed to convey that feeling of “Hail
fahr
, boys, I ain't too bright but I shore did get away with it, didn't I, hyuck, hyuck, hyuck?” when he heard its complete absence here.

“What do you want?”

“You know the answer to that. There's no need for us to play games, is there? It's a little bit late for that. ”

“Maybe I just want to hear you say it out loud.” That feeling was back, that weird feeling of being sucked out of his body and pulled down the telephone line to someplace precisely between the two of them.

Rosalie had taken herself down to the far end of the counter, where she was removing packs of cigarettes from a pile of cartons and re-stocking the long cigarette dispenser. She was ostentatiously not listening to Thad's end of the conversation in a way that was almost funny. There was no one in Ludlow—this end of town, anyway—who wasn't aware that Thad was under police guard or police protection or police some-damn-thing, and he didn't have to hear the rumors to know they had already begun to fly. Those who didn't think he was about to be arrested for drug-trafficking no doubt believed it was child abuse or wife-beating. Poor old Rosalie was down there trying to be good, and Thad felt absurdly grateful. He also felt as if he were looking at her through the wrong end of a powerful telescope. He was down the telephone line, down the rabbit hole, where there was no white rabbit but only foxy old George Stark, the man who could not be there but somehow was, all the same.