The Dark Half (43 page)

Alan sighed resignedly. “You can use my personal credit card number,” he said, “and you can tell the Head Ranger to have Pritchard call collect. I'll red-line the call and pay for it out of my own pocket. ”

There was a pause on the other end, and when Henry spoke again, he was more serious. “This really means something to you, doesn't it, Alan?”

“Yes. I don't know why, but it does. ”

There was a second pause. Alan could feel Henry Payton struggling not to ask questions. At last, Henry's better nature won. Or perhaps, Alan thought, it was only his more practical nature. “Okay,” he said. “I'll make the call, and tell the Head Ranger that you want to talk to this Hugh Pritchard about an ongoing murder investigation in Castle County, Maine. What's his wife's name?”

“Helga. ”

“Where they from?”

“Fort Laramie, Wyoming. ”

“Okay, Sheriff; here comes the hard part. What's your telephone credit card number?”

Sighing, Alan gave it to him.

A minute later he had the shadow-parade marching across the patch of sunlight on the wall again.

Still, Henry had been right about one thing: he had a hunch. About
something.
And it wasn't going away.

While Alan Pangborn was speaking to Henry Payton, Thad Beaumont was parking in one of the faculty slots behind the English-Math Building. He got out, being careful not to bang his left hand. For a moment he just stood there, digging the day and the unaccustomed dozy peace of the campus.

The brown Plymouth pulled in next to his Suburban, and the two big men who got out dispelled any dream of peace he might have been on the verge of building.

“I'm just going up to my office for a few minutes,” Thad said. “You could stay down here, if you wanted.” He eyed two girls strolling by, probably on their way to East Annex to sign up for summer courses. One was wearing a halter top and blue shorts, the other an almost non-existent mini with no back and a hem that was a strong man's heartbeat away from the swell of her buttocks. “Enjoy the scenery. ”

The two State cops had turned to follow the girls' progress as if their heads were mounted on invisible swivels. Now the one in charge-Ray Garrison or Roy Harriman, Thad wasn't sure which—turned back and said regretfully, “Sure would like to, sir, but we better come up with you. ”

“Really, it's just the second floor—”

“We'll wait out in the hall. ”

“You guys don't know how much all of this is starting to depress me,” Thad said.

“Orders,” Garrison-or-Harriman said. It was dear that Thad's depression—or happiness, for that matter-meant less than zero to him.

“Yeah,” Thad said, giving it up. “Orders. ”

He headed for the side door. The two cops followed him at a distance of a dozen paces, looking more like cops in their streetclothes than they ever had in their uniforms, Thad suspected.

After the still, humid heat, the air conditioning struck Thad with a wallop. All at once his shirt felt as if it were freezing to his skin. The building, so full of life and racket during the September-to-May academic year, felt a little creepy on this weekend afternoon at the end of spring. It would fill up to maybe a third of its usual hustle and bustle on Monday, when the first three-week summer session started, but for today, Thad found himself feeling a trifle relieved to have his police guard with him. He thought the second floor, where his office was, might be entirely deserted, which would at least allow him to avoid the necessity of explaining his large, watchful friends.

It turned out not to be entirely deserted, but he got off easily just the same. Rawlie DeLesseps was wandering down the hallway from the Department common room toward his own office, drifting in his usual Rawlie DeLesseps way . . . which meant he looked as if he might have recently sustained a hard blow to the head which had disrupted both his memory and his motor control. He moved dreamily from one side of the corridor to the other in mild loops, peering at the cartoons, poems, and announcements tacked to the bulletin boards on the locked doors of his colleagues. He
might
have been on his way to his office—it
looked
that way—but even someone who knew him well would probably have declined to make book on it. The stem of an enormous yellow pipe was damped between his dentures. The dentures were not quite as yellow as the pipe, but they were dose. The pipe was dead, had been since late 1985, when his doctor had forbidden him to smoke it following a mild heart attack.
I never liked to smoke that much anyway,
Rawlie would explain in his gentle, distracted voice when someone asked him about the pipe.
But without the bit in my teeth
. . .
gentlemen, I would not know where to go or what to do if I were lucky enough to arrive there.
Most times he gave the impression of not knowing where to go or what to do anyway . . . as he did now. Some people knew Rawlie for years before discovering he was not at all the absent-minded educated fool he seemed to be. Some never discovered it at all.

“Hello, Rawlie,” Thad said, picking through his keys.

Rawlie blinked at him, shifted his gaze to scan the two men behind Thad, dismissed them, and returned his gaze to Thad once more.

“Hello, Thaddeus,” he said. “I didn't think you were teaching any summer courses this year. ”

“I'm not. ”

“Then what can have possessed you to come here, of all places, on the tint
bona
fide
dog day of summer?”

“Just picking up some Honors files,” Thad said. “I'm not going to be here any longer than I have to, believe me. ”

“What did you do to your hand? It's black and blue all the way to the wrist. ”

“Well,” Thad said, looking embarrassed. The story made him sound like a drunk or an idiot, or both . . . but it still went down a lot easier than the truth would have done. Thad had been dourly amused to find that the police accepted it as easily as Rawlie did now—there had not been a single question about how or why he had managed to slam his own hand in the door of his bedroom closet.

He had instinctively known exactly the right story to tell—even in his agony he had known that. He was
expected
to do clumsy things—it was part of his character. In a way, it was like telling the interviewer from
People
(God rest his soul) that George Stark had been created in Ludlow instead of Castle Rock, and that the reason Stark wrote in longhand was because he had never learned to type.

He hadn't even tried to lie to Liz . . . but he had insisted she keep quiet about what had really happened, and she had agreed to do so. Her only concern had been extracting a promise from him that he would not try to contact Stark again. He had given the promise willingly enough, although he knew it was one he might not be able to keep. He suspected that, on some deep level of her mind, Liz knew that, too.

Rawlie was now looking at him with real interest. “In a closet door,” he said. “Marvelous. Were you perhaps playing hide and seek? Or was it some strange sexual rite?”

Thad grinned. “I gave up strange sexual rites around 1981,” he said. “Doctor's advice. Actually, I just wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. The whole thing is sort of embarrassing. ”

“I imagine so,” Rawlie said . . . and then winked. It was a very subtle wink, a bate flutter of one puffed and wrinkled old eyelid . . . but it was very definitely there. Had he thought he had fooled Rawlie? Pigs might fly.

Suddenly a new thought occurred to Thad. “Rawlie, do you still teach that Folk Myth seminar?”

“Every fall,” Rawlie agreed. “Don't you read your own Department's catalogue
,
Thaddeus? Dowsing, Witches, holistic remedies, Hex Signs of the Rich and Famous. It's as popular now as ever. Why do you ask?”

There was an all-purpose answer to that question, Thad had discovered; one of the best things about being a writer was that you always had an answer to
Why do you ask?
“Well, I have a story idea,” he said. “It's still in the exploration stage, but it's got possibilities, I think. ”

“What did you want to know?”

“Do sparrows have any significance in American superstition or folk myth that you know of?”

Rawlie's furrowing brow began to resemble the topography of some alien planet which was clearly inimical to human life. He gnawed on the stem of his pipe. “Nothing occurs right off the top of my head, Thaddeus, although

. . . I wonder if that's really why you're interested. ”

Pigs might fly,
Thad thought again: “Well . . . maybe not, Rawlie. Maybe not. Maybe I just said that because my interest is nothing I could explain in a hurry.” His eyes flicked briefly to his watchdogs, then returned to Rawlie's face. “I'm a bit pressed for time right now. ”

Rawlie's tips quivered in the faintest ghost of a smile. “I understand, I think. Sparrows . . . such common birds. Too common to have any deep superstitious connotations, I'd think. Yet . . . now that I think about it . . . there
is
something. Except I associate it with whippoorwills. Let me check. Will you be here awhile?”

“Not more than half an hour, I'm afraid. ”

“Well, I might find something right away in Barringer's book.
Folklore of America.
It's really not much more than a cookbook of superstitions, but it comes in handy. And I could always call you. ”

“Yes. You could always do that. ”

“Lovely party you and Liz threw for Tom Carroll,” Rawlie said. “Of course, you and Liz
always
throw the best parties. Your wife is much too charming to be a wife, Thaddeus. She should be your mistress. ”

“Thanks. I guess. ”

“Gonzo Tom,” Rawlie continued fondly. “It's hard to believe Gonzo Tom Carroll has sailed into the Gray Havens of retirement. I've been listening to him cut those trumpet-blast farts of his in the next office for better than twenty years. I suppose the next fellow will be quieter. Or at least more discreet. ”

Thad laughed.

“Wilhelmina also enjoyed herself,” Rawlie said. His eyelids drooped roguishly. He knew perfectly well how Thad and Liz felt about Billie.

“That's fine,” Thad said. He found Billie Burks and the concept of enjoyment mutually exclusive . . . but since she and Rawlie had formed part of a badly needed alibi, he supposed he should be glad she had come. “And if anything occurs to you about that other thing . . . ”

“Sparrows and their place in the Invisible World. Yes indeed.” Rawlie nodded to the two policemen behind Thad. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” He skirted them and continued on down to his office with a little more purpose. Not much, but a little.

Thad looked after him, bemused.

“What was
that?
” Garrison-or-Harriman asked.

“DeLesseps,” Thad murmured. “Chief grammarian and amateur folklorist. ”

“Looks like the kind of guy who might need a map to find his way home,” the other cop said.

Thad moved to the door of his office and unlocked it. “He's more alert than he looks,” he said, and opened the door.

He wasn't aware that Garrison-or-Harriman was beside him, one hand inside his specially tailored Tall Fella sport-coat, until he had flicked on the overhead lights. Thad felt a moment of belated fear, but the office was empty, of course—empty and so neat, after the soft and steady fallout of an entire year's clutter, that it looked dead.

For no reason that he could place, he felt a sudden and nearly sickening wave of homesickness and emptiness and loss—a mix of feelings like a deep, unexpected grief. It was like the dream. It was as if he had come here to say goodbye.

Stop being so goddam foolish,
he told himself, and another part of his mind replied quietly:
Over the deadline, Thad. You're over the deadline
,
and I think you might have made a very bad mistake in not at least trying to do what the man wants you to do. Short-term relief is better than no relief at all.

“If you want coffee, you can get a cup in the common room,” he said. “The pot will be full, if I know Rawlie. ”

“Where's that?” Garrison-or-Harriman's partner asked.

“Other side of the hall, two doors up,” Thad said, unlocking the files. He turned and gave them a grin that felt crooked on his face. “I think you'll hear me if I scream. ”

“Just make sure you
do
yell, if something happens,” Garrison-or-Harriman said.

“I will. ”

“I could send Manchester here for the coffee,” Garrison-or-Harriman said, “but I get the feeling that you're asking for a little privacy. ”

“Well, yeah. Now that you mention it. ”

“That's fine, Mr. Beaumont,” he said. He looked at Thad seriously, and Thad suddenly remembered that his name was Harrison. Just like the ex-Beatle. Stupid to have forgotten it. “You just want to remember those people in New York died from an overdose of privacy. ”

Oh? I thought Phyllis Myers and Rick Cowley died in the company of the police.
He thought of saying this out loud and then didn't. These men were, after all, only trying to do their duty.

“Lighten up, Trooper Harrison,” he said. “The building's so quiet today a barefoot man would make echoes. ”

“Okay. We'll be across the hall in the what-do-you-call-it. ”

“Common room. ”

“Right. ”