1.
The snow came early that year. There were six inches on the ground by November 7, and Johnny had taken to lacing on a pair of old green gumrubber boots and wearing his old parka for the trek up to the mailbox. Two weeks before, Dave Pelsen had mailed down a package containing the texts he would be using in January, and Johnny had already begun making tentative lesson plans. He was looking forward to getting back. Dave had also found him an apartment on Howland Street in Cleaves. 24 Howland Street. Johnny kept that on a scrap of paper in his wallet, because the name and number had an irritating way of slipping his mind.
On this day the skies were slatey and lowering, the temperature hovering just below the twenty degree mark. As Johnny tramped up the driveway, the first spats of snow began to drift down. Because he was alone, he didn't feel too self conscious about running his tongue out and trying to catch a flake on it. He was hardly limping at all, and he felt good. There hadn't been a headache in two weeks or more.
The mail consisted of an advertising circular, a Newsweek, and a small manila envelope addressed to John Smith, no return address. Johnny opened it on the way back, the rest of the mail stuffed into his hip pocket. He pulled out a single page of newsprint, saw the words Inside View at the top, and came to a halt halfway back to the house.
It was page three of the previous week's issue. The headline story dealt with a reporter's 'expose' on the handsome second banana of a TV crime show; the second banana had been suspended from high school twice (twelve years ago) and busted for possession of cocaine (six years ago). Hot news for the hausfraus of America. There was also an all-grain diet, a cute baby photo, and a story of a nine-year-old girl who had been miraculously cured of cerebral palsy at Lourdes (DOCTORS MYSTIFIED, the headline trumpeted gleefully). A story near the bottom of the page had been circled. MAINE 'PSYCHIC' ADMITS HOAX, the headline read. The story was not by-lined.
IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE POLICY of Inside View not only to bring you the fullest coverage of the psychics which the so-called 'National Press' ignores, but to expose the tricksters and charlatans who have held back true acceptance of legitimate psychic phenomena for so long.
One of these tricksters admitted his own hoax to an Inside View source recently. This so called 'psychic', John Smith of Pownal, Maine, admitted to our source that 'it was all a gimmick to pay back my hospital bills. If there's a book in it, I might come out with enough to pay off what I owe and retire for a couple of years in the bargain,' Smith grinned. 'These days, people will believe anything - why shouldn't I get on the gravy train?'
Thanks to Inside View, which has always cautioned readers that there are two phony psychics for each real one, John Smith's gravy train has just been derailed. And we reiterate our standing offer of $1000 to anyone who can prove that any nationally known psychic is a fraud.
Hoaxers and charlatans be warned!
Johnny read the article twice as the snow began to come down more heavily. A reluctant grin broke over his features. The ever-vigilant press apparently didn't enjoy being thrown off some bumpkin's front porch, he thought. He tucked the tear sheet back into its envelope and stuffed it into his back pocket with the rest of the mail.
'Dees,' he said aloud, 'I hope you're still black and blue.
2.
His father was not so amused. Herb read the clipping and then slammed it down on the kitchen table in disgust. 'You ought to sue that son of a whore. That's nothing but slander, Johnny. A deliberate hatchet job.'
'Agreed and agreed,' Johnny said. It was dark outside. This afternoon's silently falling snow had developed into tonight's early winter blizzard. The wind shrieked and howled around the eaves. The driveway had disappeared under a dunelike progression of drifts. 'But there was no third party when we talked, and Dees damn well knows it. It's his word against mine.'
'He didn't even have the guts to put his own name to this lie,' Herb said. 'Look at this "an Inside View source". What's this source? Get him to name it, that's what I say.
'Oh, you can't do that,' Johnny said, grinning. 'That's like walking up to the meanest street-fighter on the block with a KICK ME HARD sign taped to your crotch. Then they turn it into a holy war, page one and all. No thanks. As far as I'm concerned, they did me a favor. I don't want to make a career out of telling people where gramps hid his stock certificates or who's going to win the fourth at Scarborough Downs. Or take this lottery.' One of the things that had most surprised Johnny on coming out of his coma was to discover that Maine and about a dozen other states had instituted a legal numbers game. 'In the last month I've gotten sixteen letters from people who want me to tell them what the number's going to be. It's insane. Even if I could tell them, which I couldn't, what good would it do them? You can't pick your own number in the Maine lottery, you get what they give you. But still I get the letters.'
'I don't see what that has to do with this crappy article.
'If people think I'm a phony, maybe they'll leave me alone.'
'Oh,' Herb said. 'Yeah, I see what you mean.' He lit his pipe. 'You've never really been comfortable with it, have you?'
'No,' Johnny said. 'We never talk much about it, either, which is something of a relief. It seems like the only thing other people do want to talk about.' And it wasn't just that they wanted to talk; that wouldn't have bothered him so much. But when he was in Slocum's Store for a sixpack or a loaf of bread, the girl would try to take his money without touching his hand, and the frightened, skittish look in her eyes was unmistakable. His father's friends would give him a little wave instead of a handshake. In October Herb had hired a local high school girl to come in once a week to do some dusting and vacuum the floors. After three weeks she had quit for no stated reason at all probably someone at her high school had told her who she was cleaning for. It seemed that for everyone who was anxious to be touched, to be informed, to be in contact with Johnny's peculiar talent, there was another who regarded him as a kind of leper. At times like these, Johnny would think of the nurses staring at him the day he had told Eileen Magown that her house was on fire, staring at him like magpies on a telephone wire. He would think of the way the TV reporter had drawn back from him after the press conference's unexpected conclusion, agreeing with everything he said but not wanting to be touched. Unhealthy either way.
'No, we don't talk about it,' Herb agreed. 'It makes me think of your mother, I suppose. She was so sure you'd been given the ... the whatever-it-is for some reason. Sometimes I wonder if she wasn't right.'
Johnny shrugged. 'All I want is a normal life. I want to bury the whole damn thing. And if this little squib helps me do it, so much the better.'
'But you still can do it, can't you?' Herb asked. He was looking closely at his son.
Johnny thought about a night not quite a week ago. They had gone out to dinner, a rare happening on their strapped budget. They had gone to Cole's Farm in Gray, probably the best restaurant in the area, a place that was always packed. The night had been cold, the dining room cheery and warm. Johnny had taken his father's coat and his own into the cloakroom, and as he thumbed through the racked coats, looking for empty hangers, a whole series of clear impressions had cascaded through his mind. It was like that sometimes, and on another occasion he could have handled every coat for twenty minutes and gotten nothing at all. Here was a lady's coat with a fur collar. She was having an affair with one of her husband's poker buddies, was scared sick about it, but didn't know how to close it off. A man's denim jacket, sheepskin-lined. This guy was also worried - about his brother, who had been badly hurt on a construction project the week before. A small boy's parka - his grandmother in Durham had given him a Snoopy transistor radio just today and he was mad because his father hadn't let him bring it into the dining room with him. And another one, a plain, black topcoat, that had turned him cold with terror and robbed him of his appetite. The man who owned this coat was going mad. So far he had kept up appearances - not even his wife suspected - but his vision of the world was being slowly darkened by a series of increasingly paranoid fantasies. Touching that
Coat had been like touching a writhing coil of snakes.
'Yes, I can still do it,' Johnny said briefly. 'I wish to hell I couldn't.'
'You really mean that?'
Johnny thought of the plain, black topcoat. He had only picked at his meal, looking this way and that, trying to single the man out of the crowd, unable to do so.
'Yes,' he said. 'I mean it.'
'Best forgotten then,' Herb said, and clapped his son on the shoulder.
3.
And for the next month or so it seemed that it would be forgotten. Johnny drove north to attend a meeting at the high school for midyear teachers and to take a load of his personal things up to his new apartment, which he found small but liveable.
He went in his father's car, and as he was getting ready to leave Herb asked him, 'You're not nervous? About driving?'
Johnny shook his head. Thoughts of the accident itself troubled him very little now. If something was going to happen to him, it would. And deep down he felt confident that lightning would not strike in the same place again - when he died, he didn't believe it would be in a car accident.
In fact, the long trip was quiet and soothing, the meeting a little bit like Old Home Week. All of his old colleagues who were still teaching at CMHS dropped by to wish him the best. But he couldn't help noticing how few of them actually shook hands with him, and he seemed to sense a certain reserve, a wariness in their eyes. Drivmg home, he convinced himself it was probably imagination. And if not, well - even that had its amusing side. If they had read their Inside View, they would know he was a hoax and nothing to worry about.
The meeting over, there was nothing to do but go back to Pownal and wait for the Christmas holidays to come and go. The packages containing personal objects stopped coming, almost as if a switch had been thrown - the power of the press, Johnny told his father. They were replaced by a brief spate of angry - and mostly anonymous - letters and cards from people who seemed to feel personally cheated.
'You ort to burn in H! E! L! L! for your slimey skeems to bilk this American Republic,' a typical one read. It had been written on a crumpled sheet of Ramada Inn stationery and was postmarked York, Pennsylvania. 'You are nothing but a Con Artist and a dirty rotten cheet. I bless God for that paper that saw thru you. You Ort to be ashamed of yourself Sir. The Bible says an ordinery sinner will be cast into the Lake of F!I!R!E! and be consomed but a F!A!L!S!E P!R!O!F!I!T! shall burn forever and EVER! That's you a False Profit who sold your Immortal Soul for a few cheep bucks. So thats the end of my letter and I hope for your sake I never catch you ut on the Streets of your Home Town. Signed, A FRIEND (of God not you Sir)!'
Over two dozen letters in this approximate vein came in during the course of about twenty days following the appearance of the inside View story. Several enterprising souls expressed an interest in joining in with Johnny as partners. 'I used to be a magician's assistant,' one of these latter missives bragged, 'and I could trick an old whore out of her g-string. If you're planning a mentalist gig, you need me in!'
Then the letters dried up, as had the earlier influx of boxes and packages. On a day in late November when he had checked the mailbox and found it empty for the third afternoon in a row, Johnny walked back to the house remembering that Andy Warhol had predicted that a day would come when everyone in America would be famous for fifteen minutes. Apparently his fifteen minutes had come and gone, and no one was any more pleased about it than he was.
But as things turned out, it wasn't over yet.
4.
'Smith?' The telephone voice asked. 'John Smith?'
'Yes.' It wasn't a voice he knew, or a wrong number. That made it something of a puzzle since his father had had the phone unlisted about three months ago. This was December 17, and their tree stood in the corner of the living room, its base firmly wedged into the old tree stand Herb had made when Johnny was just a kid. Outside it was snowing.
'My name is Bannerman. Sheriff George Bannerman, from Castle Rock.' He cleared his throat. 'I've got a well, I suppose you'd say I've got a proposal for you.
'How did you get this number?'
Bannerman cleared his throat again. 'Well, I could have gotten it from the phone company, I suppose, it being police business. But actually I got it from a friend of yours. Doctor by the name of Weizak.'
'Sam Weizak gave you my number?'
'That's right.'
Johnny sat down in the phone nook, utterly perplexed. Now the name Bannerman meant something to him. He had come across the name in a Sunday supplement article only recently. He was the sheriff of Castle County, which was considerably west of Pownal, in the Lakes region. Castle Rock was the county seat, about thirty miles from Norway and twenty from Bridgton.
'Police business?' he repeated.
'Well, I guess you'd say so, ayuh. I was wondering if maybe the two of us could get together for a cup of coffee
'It involves Sam?'
'No. Dr. Weizak has nothing to do with it,' Banner-man said. 'He gave me a call and mentioned your name. That was,.. oh, a month ago, at least. To be frank, I thought he was nuts. But now we're just about at our wits' end.'
'About what? Mr. - Sheriff - Bannerman, I don't understand what you're talking about.'
'It'd really be a lot better if we could get together for coffee,' Bannerman said. 'Maybe this evening? There's a place called Jon's on the main drag in Bridgton. Sort of halfway between your town and mine.'
'No, I'm sorry,' Johnny said. 'I'd have to know what it was about. And how come Sam never called me?'
Bannerman sighed. I guess you're a man who doesn't read the papers,' he said.
But that wasn't true. He had read the papers compulsively since he had regained consciousness, trying to pick up on the things he had missed. And he had seen Bannerman's name just recently. Sure. Because Bannerman was on a pretty hot seat. He was the man in charge of-Johnny held the phone away from his ear and looked at it with sudden understanding. He looked at it the way a man might look at a snake he has just realized is poisonous.
'Mr. Smith?' It squawked tinnily. 'Hello, Mr. Smith?'
'I'm here,' Johnny said putting the phone back to his ear. He was conscious of a dull anger at Sam Weizak, Sam who had told him to keep his head down only this summer, and then had turned around and given this local-yokel sheriff an earful - behind Johnny's back.
'It's that strangling business, isn't it?'
Bannerman hesitated a long time. Then he said, 'Could we talk, Mr. Smith?'
'No. Absolutely not.' The dull anger had ignited into sudden fury. Fury and something else. He was scared.
'Mr. Smith, it's important. Today...'
'No. I want to be left alone. Besides, don't you read the goddam inside View? I'm a fake anyway.'
'Dr. Weizak said...'
'He had no business saying anything! 'Johnny shouted. He was shaking all over. 'Good-bye!' He slammed the phone into its cradle and got out of the phone nook quickly, as if that would prevent it from ringing again. He could feel a headache beginning in his temples. Dull drill-bits. Maybe I should call his mother out there in California, he thought. Tell her where her little sonny-buns is. Tell her to get in touch. Tit for tat.
Instead he hunted in the address book in the phone-table drawer, found Sam's office number in Bangor, and called it. As soon as it rang once on the other end he hung up, scared again. Why had Sam done that to him? Goddammit, why?
He found himself looking at the Christmas tree.
Same old decorations. They had dragged them down from the attic again and taken them out of their tissue-paper cradles again and hung them up again, just two evenings ago. It was a funny thing about Christmas decorations. There weren't many things that remained intact year after year as a person grew up. Not many lines of continuity, not many physical objects that could easily serve both the states of childhood and adulthood. Your kid clothes were handed down or packed off to the Salvation Army; your Donald Duck watch sprung its mainspring; your Red Ryder cowboy boots wore out. The wallet you made in your first camp handicrafts class got replaced by a Lord Buxton, and you traded your red wagon and your bike for more adult toys - a car, a tennis racket, maybe one of those new TV hockey games. There were only a few things you could hang onto. A few books, maybe, or a lucky coin, or a stamp collection that had been preserved and improved upon.
Add to that the Christmas tree ornaments in your parents' house.
The same chipped angels year after year, and the same tinsel star on top; the tough surviving platoon of what had once been an entire battalion of glass balls (and we never forget the honored dead, he thought - this one died as a result of a baby's clutching hand, this one slipped as dad was putting it on and crashed to the floor, the red one with the Star of Bethlehem painted on it was simply and mysteriously broken one year when we took them down from the attic, and I cried); the tree stand itself. But sometimes, Johnny thought, absently massaging his temples, it seemed it would be better, more merciful, if you lost touch with even these last vestiges of childhood. You could never discover the books that had first turned you on in quite the same way. The lucky coin had not protected you from any of the ordinary whips and scorns and scrapes of an ordinary life. And when you looked at the ornaments you remembered that there had once been a mother in the place to direct the tree-trimming operation, always ready and willing to piss you off by saying 'a little higher' or 'a little lower' or 'I think you've got too much tinsel on that left side, dear.' You looked at the ornaments and remembered that just the two of you had been around to put them up this year, just the two of you because your mother went crazy and then she died, but the fragile Christmas tree ornaments were still here, still hanging around to decorate another tree taken from the small back woodlot and didn't they say more people committed suicide around Christmas than at any other time of the year? By God, it was no wonder.
What a power God has given you, Johnny.
Sure, that's right, God's a real prince. He knocked me through the windshield of a cab and I broke my legs and spent five years or so in a coma and three people died. The girl I loved got married. She had the son who should have been mine by a lawyer who's breaking his ass to get to Washington so he can help run the big electric train set. If I'm on my feet for more than a couple of hours at a time it feels like somebody took a long splinter and rammed it straight up my leg to my balls. God's a real sport. He's such a sport that he fixed up a funny comic-opera world where a bunch of glass Christmas tree globes could outlive you. Neat world, and a really first-class God in charge of it. He must have been on our side during Vietnam, because that's the way he's been running things ever since time began.
He has a job for you, Johnny.
Bailing some half-assed country cop out of a jam so he can get re-elected next year.
Don't run from him, Johnny. Don't hide away in a cave.
He rubbed his temples. Outside, the wind was rising. He hoped dad would be careful coming home from work.
Johnny got up and pulled on a heavy sweatshirt. He went out into the shed, watching his breath frost the air ahead of him. To the left was a large pile of wood he had split in the autumn just past, all of it cut into neat Stove lengths. Next to it was a box of kindling, and be-side that was a stack of old newspapers. He squatted down and began to thumb through them. His hands went numb quickly but he kept going, and eventually he came to the one he was looking for. The Sunday paper from three weeks ago.
He took it into the house, slapped it down on the kitchen table, and began to root through it. He found the article he was looking for in the features section and sat down to reread it.
The article was accompanied by several photos, one of them showing an old woman locking a door, another showing a police car cruising a nearly deserted street, two others showing a couple of businesses that were nearly deserted. The headline read: THE HUNT FOR THE CASTLE ROCK STRANGLER GOES ON ... AND
ON.
Five years ago, according to the story, a young woman named Alma Frechette who worked at a local restaurant had been raped and strangled on her way home from work. A joint investigation of the crime had been conducted by the state attorney general's office and the Castle County sheriff's department. The result had been a total zero. A year later an elderly woman, also raped and strangled, had been discovered in her tiny third-floor apartment on Carbine Street in Castle Rock. A month later the killer had struck again; this time the victim had been a bright young junior high school girl.
There had been a more intensive investigation. The investigative facilities of the FBI had been utilized, all to no result. The following November Sheriff Carl M. Kelso, who had been the county's chief law officer since approximately the days of the Civil War, had been voted out and George Bannerman had been voted in, largely on an aggressive campaign to catch the 'Castle Rock Strangler'.
Two years passed. The strangler had not been apprehended, but no further murders occurred, either. Then, last January, the body of seventeen-year-old Carol Dunbarger had been found by two small boys. The Dunbarger girl had been reported as a missing person by her parents. She had been in and out of trouble at Castle Rock High School where she had a record of chronic tardiness and truancy, she had been busted twice for shop-lifting, and had run away once before, getting as far as Boston. Both Bannerman and the state police assumed she had been thumbing a ride - and the killer had picked her up. A midwinter thaw had uncovered her body near Strimmer's Brook, where two small boys had found it. The state medical examiner said she had been dead about two months.
Then, this November 2, there had been yet another murder. The victim was a well-liked Castle Rock grammar school teacher named Etta Ringgold. She was a lifetime member of the local Methodist church, holder of an M.B.S. in elementary education, and prominent in local charities. She had been fond of the works of Robert Browning, and her body had been found stuffed into a culvert that ran beneath an unpaved secondary road. The uproar over the murder of Miss Ringgold had rumbled over all of northern New England. Comparisons to Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, were made -comparisons that did nothing to pour oil on the troubled waters. William Loeb's Union-Leader in not-so distant Manchester, New Hampshire, had published a helpful editorial titled THE DO-NOTHING COPS IN OUR SISTER STATE.
This Sunday supplement article, now nearly six weeks old and smelling pungently of shed and woodbox, quoted two local psychiatrists who had been perfectly happy to blue-sky the situation as long as their names weren't printed. One of them mentioned a particular sexual aberration - the urge to commit some violent act at the moment of orgasm. Nice, Johnny thought, grimacing. He strangled them to death as he came. His headache was getting worse all the time.
The other shrink pointed out the fact that all five murders had been committed in late fall or early winter. And while the manic-depressive personality didn't con-form to any one set pattern, it was fairly common for such a person to have mood-swings closely paralleling the change of the seasons. He might have a 'low' lasting from mid-April until about the end of August and then begin to climb, 'peaking' at around the time of the murders.
During the manic or 'up' state, the person in question was apt to be highly sexed, active, daring, and optimistic. 'He would be likely to believe the police unable to catch him,' the unnamed psychiatrist had finished. The article concluded by saying that, so far, the person in question had been right.
Johnny put the paper down, glanced at the clock, and saw his father should be home almost anytime, unless the snow was holding him up. He took the old newspaper over to the wood stove and poked it into the firebox.
Not my business. Goddam Sam Weizak anyway.
Don't hide away in a cave, Johnny.
He wasn't hiding away in a cave, that wasn't it at all. It just so happened that he'd had a fairly tough break. Losing a big chunk of your life, that qualified you for tough-break status, didn't it?
And all the self-pity you can guzzle?
'Fuck you,' he muttered to himself. He went to the window and looked out. Nothing to see but snow falling in heavy, wind-driven lines. He hoped dad was being careful, but he also hoped his father would show up soon and put an end to this useless rat-run of introspection. He went over to the telephone again and stood there, undecided.
Self-pity or not, he had lost a goodish chunk of his life. His prime, if you wanted to put it that way. He had worked hard to get back. Didn't he deserve some ordinary privacy? Didn't he have a right to what he had just been thinking of a few minutes ago - an ordinary life?
There is no such thing, my man.
Maybe not, but there was such a thing as an abnormal life. That thing at Cole's Farm. Feeling people's clothes and suddenly knowing their little dreads, small secrets, petty triumphs - that was abnormal. It wasn't a talent, it was a curse.
Suppose he did meet this sheriff? There was no guarantee he could tell him a thing. And suppose he could? Just suppose he could hand him his killer on a silver platter? It would be the hospital press conference all over again, a three-ring circus raised to the grisly nth power.
A little song began to run maddeningly through his aching head, little more than a jingle, really. A Sunday. school song from his early childhood: This little light of mine ...I'm gonna let it shine ... this little light of mine ... I'm gonna let it shine ... let it shine, shine, shine, let it shine...
He picked up the phone and dialed Weizak's office number. Safe enough now, after five. Weizak would have gone home, and big-deal neurologists don't list their home phones. The phone rang six or seven times and Johnny was going to put it down when it was answered and Sam himself said, 'Hi? Hello?'
'Sam?'
'John Smith?' The pleasure in Sam's voice was Unmistakable - but was there also an undercurrent of unease in it.
'Yeah, it's me.'
'How do you like this snow?' Weizak said, maybe a little heartily. 'Is it snowing where you are?'
'It's snowing.'
'Just started here about an hour ago. They say John? Is it the sheriff? Is that why you sound so cold?'
'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, nub, 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 teenage 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 manicdepressive 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 u~ set 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 l 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.
5.
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 report 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.'
6.
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 3O2 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 a 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 plain 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.'
'Go to it,' Bannerman said. 'Man, I love good chili. My ulcer hollers bloody hell about it. Fuck you, ulcer, I say. Down the hatch.'
They were quiet for a moment. Johnny worked on his chili and Bannerman watched him curiously. He sup-posed Smith could have found out he had a dog named Rusty. He even could have found out that Rusty was old and nearly blind. Take it a step farther: if he knew Katrina's name, he might have done that 'something like Cathy but that's not quite it' routine just to add the right touch of hesitant realism. But why? And none of that explained that queer, zapped feeling he'd gotten in his head when Smith touched his hand. If it was a con, it was a damned good one.
Outside, the wind gusted to a low shriek that seemed to rock the small building on its foundations. A flying veil of snow lashed the Pondicherry Bowling Lanes across the street.
'Listen to that,' Bannerman said. 'Supposed to keep up all night. Don't tell me the winters're getting milder.'
'Have you got something?' Johnny asked. 'Something that belonged to the guy you're looking for?'
'We think we might,' Bannerman said, and then shook his head. 'But it's pretty thin,'
'Tell me.'
Bannerman laid it out for him. The grammar school and the library sat facing each other across the town common. It was standard operating procedure to send students across when they needed a book for a project or a report. The teacher gave them a pass and the librarian initialed it before sending them back. Near the center of the common, the land dipped slightly. On the west side of the dip was the town bandstand. In the dip itself were two dozen benches where people sat during band concerts and football rallies in the fall.
'We think he just sat himself down and waited for a kid to come along. He would have been out of sight from both sides of the common. But the footpath runs along the north side of the dip, close to those benches.'
Bannerman shook his head slowly.
'What makes it worse is that the Frechette woman was killed right on the bandstand. I am going to face a shit-storm about that at town meeting in March - that is, if I'm still around in March. Well, I can show them a memo I wrote to the town manager, requesting adult crossing guards on the common during school hours. Not that it was this killer that I was worried about, Christ, no. Never in my wildest dreams did I think he'd go back to the same spot a second time.'
'The town manager turned down the crossing guards?'
'Not enough money,' Bannerman said. 'Of course, he can spread the blame around to the town selectmen, and they'll try to spread it back on me, and the grass will grow on Mary Kate Hendrasen's grave and ...' He paused for a moment, or perhaps choked on what he was saying. Johnny gazed at his lowered head sympathetically.
'It might not have made any difference anyhow,' Bannerman went on in a dryer voice. 'Most of the crossing guards we use are women, and this fuck we're after doesn't seem to care how old or young they are.'
'But you think he waited on one of those benches?'
Bannerman did. They had found an even dozen fresh cigarette butts near the end of one of the benches, and four more behind the bandstand itself, along with an empty box. Marlboros, unfortunately - the second or third most popular brand in the country. The cellophane on the box had been dusted for prints and had yielded none at all.
'None at all?' Johnny said. 'That's a little funny, isn't it?'
'Why do you say so?'
'Well, you'd guess the killer was wearing gloves even if he wasn't thinking about prints - it was cold out -, but you'd think the guy that sold him the cigarettes ...
Bannerman grinned. 'You've got a head for this work,' he said, 'but you're not a smoker.'
'No,' Johnny said. 'I used to smoke a few cigarettes when I was in college, but I lost the habit after my accident.
'A man keeps his cigarettes in his breast pocket. Take them out, get a cigarette, put the pack back. If you're wearing gloves and not leaving fresh prints every time you get a butt, what you're doing is polishing that cellophane wrapper? Get it? And you missed one other thing, Johnny. Need me to tell you?'
Johnny thought it over and then said, 'Maybe the pack of cigarettes came out of a carton. And those cartons are packed by machine.'
'That's it,' Bannerman said. 'You are good at this.'
'What about the tax stamp on the package?'
'Maine,' Bannerman said.
'So if the killer and the smoker were the same man... Johnny said thoughtfully.
Bannerman shrugged. 'Sure, there's the technical possibility that they weren't. But I've tried to imagine who else would want to sit on a bench in the town common on a cold, cloudy winter morning long enough to smoke twelve or sixteen cigarettes, and I come up a blank.'
Johnny sipped his tea. 'None of the other kids that crossed saw anything?'
'Nothing,' Bannerman said. 'I've talked to every kid that had a library pass this morning.'
'That's a lot weirder than the fingerprint business. Doesn't it strike you that way?'
'It strikes me as goddam scary. Look, the guy is sitting there, and what he's waiting for is one kid one girl - by herself. He can hear the kids as they come along. And each time he fades back behind the bandstand...'
'Tracks,' Johnny said.
'Not this morning. There was no snow-cover this morning. Just frozen ground. So here's this crazy shitbag that ought to have his own testicles carved off and served to him for dinner, here he is, skulking behind the bandstand. At about 8: 50 A.M., Peter Harrington and Melissa Loggins come along. School has been in session about twenty minutes at that time. When they're gone, he goes back to his bench. At 9: i5 he fades back behind the bandstand again. This time it's two little girls, Susan Flarhaty and Katrina Bannerman.'
Johnny set his mug down with a bang. Bannerman had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them savagely.
'Your daughter crossed this morning? Jesus!'
Bannerman put his glasses on again. His face was dark and dull with fury. And he's afraid, Johnny saw. Not afraid that the voters would turn him out, or that the Union-Leader would publish another editorial about nitwit cops in western Maine, but afraid because, if his daughter had happened to go to the library alone this morning
'My daughter,' Bannerman agreed softly. 'I think she passed within forty feet of that ... that animal. You know what that makes me feel like?'
'I can guess,' Johnny said.
'No, I don't think you can. It makes me feel like I almost stepped into an empty elevator shaft. Like I passed up the mushrooms at dinner and someone else died of toadstool poisoning. And it makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel filthy. I guess maybe it also explains why I finally called you. I'd do anything right now to nail this guy. Anything at all.'
Outside, a giant orange plow loomed out of the snow like something from a horror movie. It parked and two men got out. They crossed the street to Jon's and sat at the counter. Johnny finished his tea. He no longer wanted the chili.
'This guy goes back to his bench,' Bannerman resumed, 'but not for long. Around 9:25 he hears the Harrington boy and the Loggins girl coming back from the library. So he goes back behind the bandstand again. It must have been around 9:25 because the librarian signed them out at 9:18. At 9:45 three boys from the fifth grade went past the bandstand on their way to the library. One of them thinks he might have seen "some guy" standing on the other side of the bandstand. That's our whole description. "Some guy." We ought to put it out on the wire, what do you think? Be on the lookout for some guy.
Bannerman uttered a short laugh like a bark.
'At 9:55 my daughter and her friend Susan go by on their way back to school. Then, about 10:05, Mary Kate Hendrasen came along ... by herself. Katrina and Sue met her going down the school steps as they were going up. They all said hi.'
'Dear God,' Johnny muttered. He ran his hands through his hair.
'Last of all, 10:20 A.M. The three fifth-grade boys are coming back. One of them sees something on the bandstand. It's Mary Kate, with her leotard and her underpants yanked down, blood all over her legs, her face - -' her face -- -'
'Take it easy,' Johnny said, and put a hand on Banner-man's arm.
'No, I can't take it easy,' Bannerman said. He spoke almost apologetically. 'I've never seen anything like that, not in eighteen years of police work. He raped that little girl and that would have been enough - enough to, you know, kill her - the medical examiner said the way he did it - he ruptured something and it - yeah, it probably would have, well - killed her - but then he had to go on and choke her. Nine years old and choked and left - left on the bandstand with her underpants pulled down.'
Suddenly Bannerman began to cry. The tears filled his eyes behind his glasses and then rolled down his face in two streams. At the counter the two guys from the Bridgton road crew were talking about the Superbowl. Bannerman took his glasses off again and mopped his face with his handkerchief. His shoulders shook and heaved. Johnny waited, stirring his chili aimlessly.
After a little while, Bannerman put his handkerchief away. His eyes were red, and Johnny thought how oddly naked his face looked without his glasses.
'I'm sorry, man,' he said. 'It's been a very long day.'
'It's all right,' Johnny said.
'I knew I was going to do that, but I thought I could hold on until I got home to my wife.'
'Well, I guess that was just too long to wait.'
'You're a sympathetic ear.' Bannerman slipped his glasses back on. 'No, you're more than that. You've got something. I'll be damned if I know just what it is, but it's something.'
'What else have you got to go on?'
'Nothing. I'm taking most of the heat, but the state police haven't exactly distinguished themselves. Neither has the attorney general's special investigator, or our pet FBI man. The county M.E. has been able to type the sperm, but that's no good to us at this stage of the game. The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of hair or skin under the victim's fingernails. They all must have struggled, but we don't have as much as a centimeter of skin. The devil must be on this guy's side. He hasn't dropped a button or a shopping list or left a single damn track. We got a shrink from Augusta, also courtesy of the state A.G., and he tells us all these guys give themselves away sooner or later. Some comfort. What if it's later -say about twelve bodies from now?'
'The cigarette pack is in Castle Rock?'
'Yes.'
Johnny stood up. 'Well, let's take a ride.'
'My car?'
Johnny smiled a little as the wind rose, shrieking, outside. 'On a night like this, it pays to be with a policeman, he said.
7.
The snowstorm was at its height and it took them an hour and a half to get over to Castle Rock in Bannerman's cruiser. It was twenty past ten when they came in through the foyer of the Town Office Building and stamped the snow off their boots.
There were half a dozen reporters in the lobby, most of them sitting on a bench under a gruesome oil portrait of some town founding father, telling each other about previous night watches. They were up and surrounding Bannerman and Johnny in no time.
'Sheriff Bannerman, is it true there has been a break in the case?'
'I have nothing for you at this time,' Bannerman said stolidly.
'There's been a rumor that you've taken a man from Oxford into custody, Sheriff, is that true?'
'No. If you folks will pardon us ...
But their attention had turned to Johnny, and he felt a sinking sensation in his belly as he recognized at least two faces from the press conference at the hospital.
'Holy God!' one of them exclaimed. 'You're John Smith, aren't you?'
Johnny felt a crazy urge to take the fifth like a gangster at a Senate committee hearing.
'Yes,' he said. 'That's me.'
'The psychic guy?' another asked.
'Look, let us pass!' Bannerman said, raising his voice. 'Haven't you guys got anything better to do than -'
'According to Inside View, you're a fake,' a young man in a heavy topcoat said. 'Is that true?'
'All I can say about that is Inside View prints what they want,' Johnny said. 'Look, really -'
'You're denying the Inside View story?'
'Look, I really can't say anything more.'
As they went through the frosted glass door and into the sheriff's office, the reporters were racing toward the two pay phones on the wall by the dog warden's office.
'Now the shit has truly hit the fan,' Bannerman said unhappily. 'I swear before God I never thought they'd still be here on a night like this. I should have brought you in the back.'
'Oh, didn't you know?' Johnny asked bitterly. 'We love the publicity. All of us psychics are in it for the publicity.'
'No, I don't believe that,' Bannerman said. 'At least not of you. Well, it's happened. Can't be helped now.'
But in his mind, Johnny could visualize the headlines:
a little extra seasoning in a pot of stew that was already bubbling briskly. CASTLE ROCK SHERIFF DEPUTIZES LOCAL PSYCHIC IN STRANGLER CASE. 'NOVEMBER KILLER' TO BE INVESTIGATED BY SEER. HOAX ADMISSION STORY A FABRICATION, SMITH PROTESTS.
There were two deputies in the outer office, one of them snoozing, the other drinking coffee and looking glumly through a pile of reports.
'His wife kick him out or something?' Bannerman asked sourly, nodding toward the sleeper.
'He just got back from Augusta,' the deputy said. He was little more than a kid himself, and there were dark circles of weariness under his eyes. He glanced over at Johnny curiously.
'Johnny Smith, Frank Dodd. Sleeping beauty over there is Roscoe Fisher.'
Johnny nodded hello.
'Roscoe says the A.G. wants the whole case,' Dodd told Bannerman. His look was angry and defiant and somehow pathetic. 'Some Christmas present, huh?'
Bannerman put a hand on the back of Dodd's neck and shook him gently. 'You worry too much, Frank. Also, you're spending too much time on the case.'
'I just keep thinking there must be something in these reports...' He shrugged and then flicked them with one finger. 'Something.'
'Go home and get some rest, Frank. And take sleeping beauty with you. All we need is for one of those photographers to get a picture of him. They'd run it in the papers with a caption like "In Castle Rock the Intensive Investigation Goes On," and we'd all be out sweeping streets.'
Bannerman led Johnny into his private office. The desk was awash in paperwork. On the windowsill was a triptych showing Bannerman, his wife, and his daughter Katrina. His degree hung neatly framed on the wall, and beside it, in another frame, the front page of the Castle Rock Call which had announced his election.
'Coffee?' Bannerman asked him, unlocking a file cabinet.
'No thanks. I'll stick to tea.'
'Mrs. Sugarman guards her tea jealously,' Bannerman said. 'Takes it home with her every day, sorry. I'd offer you a tonic, but we'd have to run the gauntlet out there again to get to the machine. Jesus Christ, I wish they'd go home.'
'That's okay.'
Bannerman came back with a small clasp envelope. 'This is it,' he said. He hesitated for a moment, then handed the envelope over.
Johnny held it but did not immediately open it. 'As long as you understand that nothing comes guaranteed. I can't promise. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't.'
Bannerman shrugged tiredly and repeated: 'No venture, no gain.'
Johnny undid the clasp and shook an empty Marlboro cigarette box out into his hand. Red and white box. He held it in his left hand and looked at the far wall. Gray wall. Industrial gray wall. Red and white box. Industrial gray box. He put the cigarette package in his other hand, then cupped it in both. He waited for something, anything to come. Nothing did. He held it longer, hoping against hope, ignoring the knowledge that when things come, they came at once.
At last he handed the cigarette box back. 'I'm sorry,' he said.
'No soap, huh?'
'No.'
There was a perfunctory tap at the door and Roscoe Fisher stuck his head in. He looked a bit shamefaced. 'Frank and I are going home, George. I guess you caught me coopin.'
'As long as I don't catch you doing it in your cruiser,' Bannerman said. 'Say hi to Deenie for me.'
'You bet.' Fisher glanced at Johnny for a moment and then closed the door.
'Well,' Bannerman said. 'It was worth the try, I guess. I'll run you back...'
'I want to go over to the common,' Johnny said abruptly.
'No, that's no good. It's under a foot of snow.'
'You can find the place, can't you?'
'Of course I can. But what'll it gain?'
'I don't know. But let's go across.'
'Those reporters are going to follow us, Johnny. Just as sure as God made little fishes.'
'You said something about a back door.'
'Yeah, but it's a fire door. Getting in that way is okay, but if we use it to go out, the alarm goes off.'
Johnny whistled through his teeth. 'Let them follow along, then.'
Bannerman looked at him thoughtfully, for several moments and then nodded. 'Okay.'
8.
When they came out of the office, the reporters were up and surrounding them immediately. Johnny was reminded of a rundown kennel over in Durham where a strange old woman kept collies. The dogs would all runout at you when you went past with your fishing pole, yapping and snarling and generally scaring the hell out of you. They would nip but not actually bite.
'Do you know who did it, Johnny?' 'Have any ideas at all?'
'Got any brainwaves, Mr. Smith?'
'Sheriff, was calling in a psychic your idea?'
'Do the state police and the A.G.'s office know about this development, Sheriff Bannerman?'
'Do you think you can break the case, Johnny?'
'Sheriff, have you deputized this guy?'
Bannerman pushed his way slowly and solidly through them, zipping his coat. 'No comment, no comment.' Johnny said nothing at all.
The reporters clustered in the foyer as Johnny and Bannerman went down the snowy steps. It wasn't until they bypassed the cruiser and began wading across the street that one of them realized they were going to the common. Several of them ran back for their topcoats. Those who had been dressed for outside when Banner-man and Johnny emerged from the office now floundered down the Town Office steps after them, calling like children.
9.
Flashlights bobbing in the snowy dark. The wind howled, blowing snow past them this way and that in errant sheets.
'You're not gonna be able to see a damn thing,' Bannerman said. 'You w ... holy shit!' He was almost knocked off his feet as a reporter in a bulky overcoat and a bizarre tam o'shanter sprawled into him.
'Sorry, Sheriff,' he said sheepishly. 'Slippery. Forgot my galoshes.'
Up ahead a yellow length of nylon rope appeared out of the gloom. Attached to it was a wildly swinging sign reading POLICE INVESTIGATION.
'You forgot your brains, too,' Bannerman said. 'No- you keep back, all of you! Keep right back!'
'Town common's public property, Sheriff!' one of the reporters cried.
'That's right, and this is police business. You stay be-hind this rope here or you'll spend the night in my holding cell.'
With the beam of his flashlight he traced the course of the rope for them and then held it up so Johnny could pass beneath. They walked down the slope toward the snow-mounded shapes of the benches. Behind them the reporters gathered at the rope, pooling their few lights so that Johnny and George Bannerman walked in a dull sort of spotlight,
'Flying blind,' Bannerman said.
'Well, there's nothing to see, anyway,' Johnny said. 'Is there?'
'No, not now. I told Frank he could take that rope down anytime. Now I'm glad he didn't get arou
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