The Dead Zone (56 page)

There were several political cartoons in Johnny's notebooks. All of them showed Stillson's infectious slantwise grin, and in all of them he was wearing his construction helmet. One by Oliphant showed Greg rolling a barrel of oil marked PRICE CEILINGS straight down the middle aisle of the House, the helmet cocked back on his head. Up front was Jimmy Carter, scratching his head and looking puzzled; he was not looking Greg's way at all and the implication seemed to be that he was going to get run down. The caption read: OUTTA MY WAY, JIMMY!

The helmet. The helmet somehow bothered Johnny more than anything else. The Republicans had their elephant, the Democrats their donkey, and Greg Stillson had his construction helmet. In Johnny's dreams it sometimes seemed that Stillson was wearing a motorcycle helmet. And sometimes it was a coal-scuttle helmet.

In a separate notebook he kept the clippings his father had sent him concerning the fire at Cathy's. He had gone over them again and again, although for reasons that Sam, Roger, or even his father could not have suspected. PSYCHIC PREDICTS FIRE. “MY DAUGHTER WOULD HAVE DIED TOO,” TEARFUL, THANKFUL MOM PROCLAIMS (the tearful, thankful mom in question had been Patty Strachan's).
Psychic Who Cracked Castle Rock Murders Predicts Flash Fire.
ROADHOUSE DEATH-TOLL REACHES 90. FATHER SAYS JOHN SMITH HAS LEFT NEW ENGLAND, REFUSES TO SAY WHY. Pictures of him. Pictures of his father. Pictures of that long-ago wreck on Route 6 in Cleaves Mills, back in the days when Sarah Bracknell had been his girl. Now Sarah was a woman, the mother of two, and in his last letter Herb had said Sarah was showing a few gray hairs. It seemed impossible to believe that he himself was thirty-one. Impossible, but true.

Around all these clippings were his own jottings, his painful efforts to get it straight in his mind once and for all. None of them understood the true importance of the fire, its implication on the much larger matter of what to do about Greg Stillson.

He had written: “I have to do something about Stillson. I
have
to. I was right about Cathy's, and I'm going to be right about this. There is absolutely no question in my mind. He is going to become president and he is going to start a war—or cause one through simple mismanagement of the office, which amounts to the same thing.

“The question is:
How drastic are the measures that need to be taken?

“Take Cathy's as a test-tube case. It almost could have been sent to me as a sign, God I'm starting to sound like my mother, but there it is. Okay, I
knew
there was going to be a fire and that people were going to die. Was that sufficient to save them? Answer: it was not sufficient to save
all
of them, because
people only truly believe after the fact.
The ones who came to the Chatsworth house instead of going to Cathy's were saved, but it's important to remember that R.C. didn't have the party because he believed my prediction. He was very upfront about that. He had the party because he thought it would help me have peace of mind. He was . . . humoring me. He believed
after.
Patty Strachan's mother believed
after.
After-after-after. By then it was too late for the dead and the burned.

“So, Question 2: Could I have changed the outcome?

“Yes. I could have driven a car right through the front of the place. Or, I could have burned it down myself that afternoon.

“Question 3: What would the results of either action have been to me?

“Imprisonment, probably. If I took the car option and then lightning struck it later that night. I suppose I could have argued . . . no, it doesn't wash. Common experience may recognize some sort of psychic ability in the human mind, but the law sure as hell doesn't. I think now, if I had it to do over again, I would do one of those things and never mind the consequences to me. Is it possible that I didn't completely believe my own prediction?

“The matter of Stillson is horribly similar in all respects, except, thank God, that I have a lot more lead time.

“So, back to square one. I don't want Greg Stillson to become President. How can I change that outcome?

“1. Go back to New Hampshire and ‘jine up,' as he puts it. Try to throw a few monkey wrenches into the America Now party. Try to sabotage
him.
There's dirt enough under the rug. Maybe I could sweep some of it out.

“2. Hire someone else to get the dirt on him. There's enough of Roger's money left over to hire someone good. On the other hand, I got the feeling that Lancte was pretty good. And Lancte's dead.

“3. Wound or cripple him. The way Arthur Bremmer crippled Wallace, the way whoever-it-was crippled Larry Flynt.

“4. Kill him. Assassinate him.

“Now, some of the drawbacks. The first option isn't sure enough. I could end up doing nothing more constructive than getting myself trounced, the way Hunter Thompson did when he was researching his first book, that one on the Hell's Angels. Even worse, this fellow Elliman may be familiar with what I look like, as a result of what happened at the Trimbull rally. Isn't it more or less S.O.P. to keep a file on people who may be dangerous to your guys? I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Stillson had one guy on his payroll whose only job was to keep updated files on weird people and kooks. Which definitely includes me.

“Then there's the second option. Suppose all the dirt has already come out? If Stillson has already formed his higher political aspirations—and all his actions seem to point that way—he may already have cleaned up his act. And another thing: dirt under the rug is only as dirty as the press wants to make it, and the press likes Stillson. He cultivates them. In a novel I suppose I would turn private detective myself and ‘get the goods on him,' but the sad fact is that I wouldn't know where to begin. You could argue that my ability to ‘read' people, to find things that have been lost (to quote Sam) would give me a boost. If I could find out something about Lancte, that would turn the trick. But isn't it likely that Stillson delegates all that to Sonny Elliman? And I cannot even be sure, despite my suspicions, that Edgar Lancte was still on Stillson's trail when he was murdered. It is possible that I might hang Sonny Elliman and still not finish Stillson.

“Overall, the second alternative
is just not sure enough.
The stakes are
enormous,
so much so that I don't even dare let
myself think about ‘the big picture' very often. It brings on a very bitch-kitty of a headache every time.

“I have even considered, in my wilder moments, trying to hook him on drugs the way the character Gene Hackman played in
The French Connection II
was, or driving him batty with LSD slipped into his Dr Pepper or whatever it is he drinks. But all of that is cop-show make-believe. Gordon Liddy shit. The problems are so great that this ‘option' doesn't even bear much talking about. Maybe I could kidnap him. After all, the guy is only a U.S. representative. I wouldn't know where to get heroin or morphine, but I could get plenty of LSD from Larry McNaughton right here in the good old Phoenix Public Works Department. He has pills for every purpose. But suppose (if we're willing to suppose the foregoing) that he just enjoyed his trip(s)?

“Shooting and crippling him? Maybe I could and maybe I couldn't. I guess under the right circumstances, I could—like the rally in Trimbull. Suppose I did. After what happened in Laurel, George Wallace was never really a potent political force again. On the other hand, FDR campaigned from his wheelchair and even turned it into an asset.

“That leaves assassination, the Big Casino. This is the one unarguable alternative. You can't run for president if you're a corpse.

“If I could pull the trigger.

“And if I could, what would the results be to me?

“As Bob Dylan says ‘Honey do you have to ask me that?' ”

There were a great many other notes and jottings, but the only other really important one was written out and neatly boxed: “Suppose outright murder does turn out to be the only alternative? And suppose it turned out that I could pull the trigger? Murder is still wrong. Murder is wrong. Murder is wrong. There may yet be an answer. Thank God there's years of time.”

But for Johnny, there wasn't.

In early December of 1978, shortly after another congressman, Leo Ryan of California, had been shot to death on a jungle airstrip in the South American country of Guayana, Johnny Smith discovered he had almost run out of time.

At 2:30
P.M
. on December 26, 1978, Bud Prescott waited on a tall and rather haggard-looking young man with graying hair and badly bloodshot eyes. Bud was one of three clerks working in the 4th Street Phoenix Sporting Goods Store on the day after Christmas, and most of the business was exchanges—but this fellow was a paying customer.

He said he wanted to buy a good rifle, light-weight, bolt-action. Bud showed him several. The day after Christmas was a slow one on the gun-counter; when men got guns for Christmas, very few of them wanted to exchange them for something else.

This fellow looked them all over carefully and finally settled on a Remington 700, .243 caliber, a very nice gun with a light kick and a flat trajectory. He signed the gunbook John Smith and Bud thought,
If I never saw me an alias before in my life, there's one there.
“John Smith” paid cash—took the twenties right out of a wallet that was bulging with them. Took the riffle right over the counter. Bud, thinking to poke him a little, told him he could have his initials burned into the stock, no extra charge. “John Smith” merely shook his head.

When “Smith” left the store, Bud noticed that he was limping noticeably. Would never be any problem identifying that guy again, he thought, not with that limp and those scars running up and down his neck.

At 10:30
A.M
. on December 27, a thin man who walked with a limp came into Phoenix Office Supply, Inc., and approached Dean Clay, a salesman there. Clay said later that he noticed what his mother had always called a “fire-spot” in one of the man's eyes. The customer said he wanted to buy a large
attaché case, and eventually picked out a handsome cowhide item, top of the line, priced at $149.95. And the man with the limp qualified for the cash discount by paying with new twenties. The whole transaction, from looking to paying, took no more than ten minutes. The fellow walked out of the store, and turned right toward the downtown area, and Dean Clay never saw him again until he saw his picture in the Phoenix
Sun.

Late that same afternoon a tall man with graying hair approached Bonita Alvarez's window in the Phoenix Amtrak terminal and inquired about traveling from Phoenix to New York by train. Bonita showed him the connections. He followed them with his finger and then carefully jotted them all down. He asked Bonnie Alvarez if she could ticket him to depart on January 3. Bonnie danced her fingers over her computer console and said that she could.

“Then why don't you . . .” the tall man began, and then faltered. He put one hand up to his head.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“Fireworks,” the tall man said. She told the police later on that she was quite sure that was what he said.
Fireworks.

“Sir? Are you all right?”

“Headache,” he said. “Excuse me.” He tried to smile, but the effort did not improve his drawn, young-old face much.

“Would you like some aspirin? I have some.”

“No, thanks. It'll pass.”

She wrote the tickets and told him he would arrive at New York's Grand Central Station on January 6, at midafternoon.

“How much is that?”

She told him and added: “Will that be cash or charge, Mr. Smith?”

“Cash,” he said, and pulled it right out of his wallet—a whole handful of twenties and tens.

She counted it, gave him his change, his receipt, his tickets. “Your train leaves at 10:30
A.M
., Mr. Smith,” she said. “Please be here and ready to entrain at 10:10.”

“All right,” he said. “Thank you.”

Bonnie gave him the big professional smile, but Mr. Smith was already turning away. His face was very pale, and to Bonnie he looked like a man who was in a great deal of pain.

She was very sure that he had said
fireworks.

Elton Curry was a conductor on Amtrak's Phoenix-Salt Lake run. The tall man appeared promptly at 10:00
A.M
. on January 3, and Elton helped him up the steps and into the car because he was limping quite badly. He was carrying a rather old tartan traveling bag with scuffmarks and fraying edges in one hand. In the other hand he carried a brand-new cowhide attaché case. He carried the attaché case as if it were quite heavy.

“Can I help you with that, sir?” Elton asked, meaning the attaché case but it was the traveling bag that the passenger handed him, along with his ticket.

“No, I'll take that when we're underway, sir.”

“All right. Thank you.”

A very polite sort of fellow, Elton Curry told the FBI agents who questioned him later. And he tipped well.

January 6,1979, was a gray, overcast day in New York—snow threatened but did not fall. George Clements' taxi was parked in front of the Biltmore Hotel, across from Grand Central.

The door opened and a fellow with graying hair got in, moving carefully and a little painfully. He placed a traveling bag and an attaché case beside him on the seat, closed the door, then put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes for a moment, as if he was very, very tired.