The Dead Zone (36 page)

“Well, he called me,” Johnny said, “and I've been sort of wondering what happened. Why you gave him my name. Why you didn't call me and say you had . . . and why you didn't call me first and ask if you could.”

Weizak sighed. “Johnny, I could maybe give you a lie, but that would be no good. I didn't ask you first because I was afraid you would say no. And I didn't tell you I'd done it afterward because the sheriff laughed at me. When someone laughs at one of my suggestions, I assume, nuh, that the suggestion is not going to be taken.”

Johnny rubbed at one aching temple with his free hand and closed his eyes. “But why, Sam? You know how I feel about that. You were the one who told me to keep my head down and let it blow over. You told me that yourself.”

“It was the piece in the paper,” Sam said. “I said to myself, Johnny lives down that way. And I said to myself, five dead women. Five.” His voice was slow, halting, and embarrassed. It made Johnny feel much worse to hear Sam sounding like this. He wished he hadn't called.

“Two of them teen-age girls. A young mother. A teacher of young children who loved Browning. All of it so corny, nuh? So corny I suppose they would never make a movie or a TV show out of it. But nonetheless true. It was the teacher I thought about most. Stuffed into a culvert like a bag of garbage . . .”

“You had no damn right to bring me into your guilt fantasies,” Johnny said thickly.

“No, perhaps not.”

“No perhaps about it!”

“Johnny, are you all right? You sound . . .”

“I'm fine!” Johnny shouted.

“You don't sound fine.”

“I've got a shitter of a headache, is that so surprising? I wish to
Christ
you'd left this alone. When I told you about your mother you didn't call her. Because you said . . .”

“I said some things are better lost than found. But that is not always true, Johnny. This man, whoever he is, has a terribly disturbed personality. He may kill himself. I am sure that
when he stopped for two years the police thought he had. But a manic-depressive sometimes has long level periods—it is called a ‘plateau of normality'—and then goes back to the same mood-swings. He may have killed himself after murdering that teacher last month. But if he hasn't, what then? He may kill another one. Or two. Or four. Or . . .”

“Stop it.”

Sam said, “Why did Sheriff Bannerman call you? What made him change his mind?”

“I don't know. I suppose the voters are after him.”

“I'm sorry I called him, Johnny, and that this has upset you so. But even more I am sorry that I did not call you and tell you what I had done. I was wrong. God knows you have a right to live your life quietly.”

Hearing his own thoughts echoed did not make him feel better. Instead he felt more miserable and guilty than ever.

“All right,” he said. “That's okay, Sam.”

“I'll not say anything to anyone again. I suppose that is like putting a new lock on the barn door after a horse theft, but it's all I can say. I was indiscreet. In a doctor, that's bad.”

“All right,” Johnny said again. He felt helpless, and the slow embarrassment with which Sam spoke made it worse.

“I'll see you soon?”

“I'll be up in Cleaves next month to start teaching. I'll drop by.”

“Good. Again, my sincere apologies, John.”

Stop saying that!

They said their good-byes and Johnny hung up, wishing he hadn't called at all. Maybe he hadn't wanted Sam to agree so readily that what he had done was wrong. Maybe what he had really wanted Sam to say was,
Sure I called him. I wanted you to get off your ass and do something.

He wandered across to the window and looked out into the blowing darkness.
Stuffed into a culvert like a bag of garbage.

God, how his head ached.

Herb got home half an hour later, took one look at Johnny's white face and said, “Headache?”

“Yeah.”

“Bad?”

“Not too bad.”

“We want to watch the national news,” Herb said. “Glad I got home in time. Bunch of people from NBC were over in Castle Rock this afternoon, filming. That lady reporter you think is so pretty was there. Cassie Mackin.”

He blinked at the way Johnny turned on him. For a moment it seemed that Johnny's face was all eyes, staring out at him and full of a nearly inhuman pain.

“Castle Rock? Another murder?”

“Yeah. They found a little girl on the town common this morning. Saddest damn thing you ever heard of. I guess she had a pass to go across the common to the library for some project she was working on. She got to the library but she never got back . . . Johnny, you look terrible, boy.”

“How old was she?”

“Just nine,” Herb said. “A man who'd do a thing like that should be strung up by the balls. That's my view on it.”

“Nine,” Johnny said, and sat down heavily. “Stone the crows.”

“Johnny, you sure you feel okay? You're white as paper.”

“Fine. Turn on the news.”

Shortly, John Chancellor was in front of them, bearing his nightly satchel of political aspirations (Fred Harris's campaign was not catching much fire), government edicts (the cities of America would just have to learn common budgetary sense, according to President Ford), international incidents. (a nationwide strike in France), the Dow Jones (up), and a “heartwarming” piece about a boy with cerebral palsy who was raising a 4-H cow.

“Maybe they cut it,” Herb said.

But after a commercial, Chancellor said: “In western Maine, there's a townful of frightened, angry people tonight. The town is Castle Rock, and over the last five years there have been five nasty murders—five women ranging in age from seventy-one to fourteen have been raped and strangled. Today there was a sixth murder in Castle Rock, and the victim was a nine-year-old girl. Catherine Mackin is in Castle Rock with the story.”

And there she was, looking like a figment of make-believe carefully superimposed on a real setting. She was standing across from the Town Office Building. The first of that afternoon's snow which had developed into tonight's blizzard was powdering the shoulders of her coat and her blonde hair.

“A sense of quietly mounting hysteria lies over this small New England mill town this afternoon,” she began. “The townspeople of Castle Rock have been nervous for a long time over the unknown person the local press calls ‘the Castle Rock Strangler' or sometimes ‘the November Killer.' That nervousness has changed to terror—no one here thinks that word is too strong—following the discovery of Mary Kate Hendrasen's body on the town common, not far from the bandstand where the body of the November Killer's first victim, a waitress named Alma Frechette, was discovered.”

A long panning shot of the town common, looking bleak and dead in the falling snow. This was replaced with a school photograph of Mary Kate Hendrasen, grinning brashly through a heavy set of braces. Her hair was a fine white-blonde. Her dress was an electric blue. Most likely her best dress, Johnny thought sickly. Her mother put her into her best dress for her school photo.

The reporter went on—now they were recapitulating the past murders—but Johnny was on the phone, first to directory assistance and then to the Castle Rock town offices. He dialed slowly, his head thudding.

Herb came out of the living room and looked at him curiously. “Who are you calling, son?”

Johnny shook his head and listened to the phone ring on the other end. It was picked up. “Castle County sheriff's office.”

“I'd like to talk to Sheriff Bannerman, please.”

“Could I have your name?”

“John Smith, from Pownal.”

“Hold on, please.”

Johnny turned to look at the TV and saw Bannerman as he had been that afternoon, bundled up in a heavy parka with county sheriff patches on the shoulders. He looked uncomfortable and dogged as he fielded the reporters' questions. He was a broad-shouldered man with a big, sloping head capped with curly dark hair. The rimless glasses he wore looked strangely out of place, as spectacles always seem to look out of place on very big men.

“We're following up a number of leads,” Bannerman said.

“Hello? Mr. Smith?” Bannerman said.

Again that queer sense of doubling. Bannerman was in two places at one time. Two
times
at one time, if you wanted to look at it that way. Johnny felt an instant of helpless vertigo.
He felt the way, God help him, you felt on one of those cheap carnival rides, the Tilt-A-Whirl or the Crack-The-Whip.

“Mr. Smith? Are you there, man?”

“Yes, I'm here.” He swallowed. “I've changed my mind.”

“Good boy! I'm damned glad to hear it.”

“I still may not be able to help you, you know.”

“I know that. But . . . no venture, no gain.” Bannerman cleared his throat. “They'd run me out of this town on a rail if they knew I was down to consulting a psychic.”

Johnny's face was touched with a ghost of a grin. “And a
discredited
psychic, at that.”

“Do you know where Jon's in Bridgton is?”

“I can find it.”

“Can you meet me there at eight o'clock?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Thank you, Mr. Smith.”

“All right.”

He hung up. Herb was watching him closely. Behind him, the “Nightly News” credits were rolling.

“He called you earlier, huh?”

“Yeah, he did. Sam Weizak told him I might be able to help.”

“Do you think you can?”

“I don't know,” Johnny said, “but my headache feels a little better.”

He was fifteen minutes late getting to Jon's Restaurant in Bridgton; it seemed to be the only business establishment on Bridgton's main drag that was still open. The plows were falling behind the snow, and there were drifts across the road in several places. At the junction of Routes 302 and 117, the blinker light swayed back and forth in the screaming wind. A police cruiser with CASTLE COUNTY SHERIFF in gold leaf on the door was parked in front of Jon's. He parked behind it and went inside.

Bannerman was sitting at a table in front of a cup of coffee and a bowl of chili. The TV had misled. He wasn't a big man; he was a huge man. Johnny walked over and introduced himself.

Bannerman stood up and shook the offered hand. Looking
at Johnny's white, strained face and the way his thin body seemed to float inside his Navy pea jacket, Bannerman's first thought was:
This guy is sick—he's maybe not going to live too long.
Only Johnny's eyes seemed to have any real life—they were a direct, piercing blue, and they fixed firmly on Bannerman's own with sharp, honest curiosity. And when their hands clasped, Bannerman felt a peculiar kind of surprise, a sensation he would later describe as a
draining.
It was a little like getting a shock from a bare electrical wire. Then it was gone.

“Glad you could come,” Bannerman said. “Coffee?”

“Yes.”

“How about a bowl of chili? They make great damn chili here. I'm not supposed to eat it because of my ulcer, but I do anyway.” He saw the look of surprise on Johnny's face and smiled. “I know, it doesn't seem right, a great big guy like me having an ulcer, does it?”

“I guess anyone can get one.”

“You're damn tooting,” Bannerman said. “What changed your mind?”

“It was the news. The little girl. Are you sure it was the same guy?”

“It was the same guy. Same M.O. And the same sperm type.”

He watched Johnny's face as the waitress came over. “Coffee?” she asked.

“Tea,” Johnny said.

“And bring him a bowl of chili, Miss,” Bannerman said. When the waitress had gone he said, “This doctor, he says that if you touch something, sometimes you get ideas about where it came from, who might have owned it, that sort of thing.”

Johnny smiled. “Well,” he said, “I just shook your hand and I know you've got an Irish setter named Rusty. And I know he's old and going blind and you think it's time he was put to sleep, but you don't know how you'd explain it to your girl.”

Bannerman dropped his spoon back into his chili—
plop.
He stared at Johnny with his mouth open. “By God,” he said. “You got that from me? Just now?”

Johnny nodded.

Bannerman shook his head and muttered, “It's one thing
to hear something like that and another to . . . doesn't it tire you out?”

Johnny looked at Bannerman, surprised. It was a question he had never been asked before. “Yes. Yes, it does.”

“But you knew. I'll be
damned.”

“But look, Sheriff.”

“George. Just plain George.”

“Okay, I'm Johnny, just Johnny. George, what I don't know about you would fill about five books. I don't know where you grew up or where you went to police school or who your friends are or where you live. I know you've got a little girl, and her name's something like Cathy, but that's not quite it. I don't know what you did last week or what beer you favor or what your favorite TV program is.”

“My daughter's name is Katrina,” Bannerman said softly. “She's nine, too. She was in Mary Kate's class.”

“What I'm trying to say is that the . . . the knowing is sometimes a pretty limited thing. Because of the dead zone.”

“Dead zone?”

“It's like some of the signals don't conduct,” Johnny said. “I can never get streets or addresses. Numbers are hard but they sometimes come.” The waitress returned with Johnny's tea and chili. He tasted the chili and nodded at Bannerman. “You're right. It's good. Especially on a night like this.”