The Outsider-Stephen King Read online

  ADA Gilstrap looked at Terry. "What do you say, chum? Want to risk getting shot? Okay by me if you do. Save the state the expense of a bunch of appeals before you take the needle."

  "That's uncalled-for," Howie said.

  Gilstrap, a long-timer who would almost certainly choose to retire (and with a fat pension) if Bill Samuels lost the upcoming election, only smirked.

  "Hey, Mitchell," Terry said. The guard who had monitored Terry's shave, making sure the prisoner did not try to cut his throat with a single-blade Bic, raised his eyebrows but didn't unfold his arms. "How hot is it outside?"

  "Eighty-four when I came in," Mitchell said. "Going up close on a hundred come noon, they said on the radio."

  "No vest," Terry said to the sheriff, and broke into a smile that made him look very young. "I don't want to stand in front of Judge Horton in a sweaty shirt. I coached his grandson in Little League."

  Gilstrap, looking alarmed at this, took a notebook from inside his plaid jacket and jotted something.

  "Let's get going," Howie said. He took Terry by the arm.

  Ralph's cell phone rang. He took it from the left side of his belt (his holstered service weapon was on the right) and looked at the screen. "Hold it, hold it, I have to take this."

  "Oh, come on," Howie said. "What is this, an arraignment or a dog-and-pony show?"

  Ralph ignored him and walked to the far side of the room, where there were coin-op snack and soda vending machines. He stood beneath a sign reading FOR VISITOR USE ONLY, spoke briefly, listened. He ended the call and returned to the others. "Okay. Let's do it."

  Officer Mitchell had stepped between Howie and Terry long enough to snap cuffs on Terry's wrists. "Too tight?" he asked.

  Terry shook his head.

  "Then let's walk."

  Howie took off his suit coat and draped it over the cuffs. The two officers led Terry out of the room with Gilstrap in the lead, strutting like a majorette.

  Howie fell in step next to Ralph. He spoke in a low voice. "This is a clusterfuck." And when Ralph made no reply: "Okay, fine, clam up all you want to, but between now and the grand jury, we have to sit down--you, me, and Samuels. Pelley too, if you want. The facts of the case aren't going to come out today, but they will come out, and then you won't have to worry about just state or regional news coverage. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, the Internet blogs--they'll all be here, savoring the weirdness. It'll be OJ meets The Exorcist."

  Yes, and Ralph had an idea Howie would do all he could to make that happen. If he could get reporters to focus on the question of a man who appeared to have been in two places at the same time, he wouldn't have to worry about them focusing on the boy who had been raped and murdered, perhaps partially eaten.

  "I know what you're thinking, but I'm not the enemy here, Ralph. Unless you don't give a shit about anything except seeing Terry convicted, that is, and I don't believe it. That's Samuels, not you. Don't you want to know what happened?"

  Ralph made no reply.

  Marcy Maitland was waiting in the lobby, looking very small between the hugely pregnant Betsy Riggins and Yune Sablo from the State Police. When she saw her husband and started forward, Riggins attempted to hold her back, but Marcy shook her off easily. Sablo only stood pat, watching. Marcy had just time enough to look into her husband's face and kiss his cheek before Officer Mitchell took her by the shoulders and pushed her gently but firmly back toward the sheriff, who was still holding the bulletproof vest, as if he didn't know what to do with it now that it had been refused.

  "Come on, now, Mrs. Maitland," Mitchell said. "That's not allowed."

  "I love you, Terry," Marcy called as the officers moved him toward the door. "And the girls send theirs."

  "Same goes back to all of you doubled," Terry said. "Tell them it's going to be all right."

  Then he was outside, into the hot morning sunshine and the incoming fire of two dozen questions, all hurled at once. To Ralph, still in the lobby, those mingled voices sounded more like invective than interrogation.

  Ralph had to give Howie points for persistence. He still hadn't given up.

  "You're one of the good ones. Never took a bribe, never pitted evidence, always walked a straight path."

  I think I came close to pitting some evidence last night, Ralph thought. I think it was close. If Sablo hadn't been there, if it had just been me and Samuels . . .

  Howie's expression was almost pleading. "You've never had a case like this. None of us have. And it's not just the little boy anymore. His mother is dead, too."

  Ralph, who hadn't turned on the television that morning, stopped and stared at Howie. "You say what?"

  Howie nodded. "Yesterday. Heart attack. That makes her victim number two. So come on--don't you want to know? Don't you want to get this right?"

  Ralph couldn't hold back any longer. "I do know. And because I do, I'm going to give you one for free, Howie. That call I just took was from Dr. Bogan, in the Pathology and Serology Department at General. He doesn't have all of the DNA back yet, and won't for at least another couple of weeks, but they crashed the semen sample they took from the backs of the boy's legs. It matches the cheek swabs we took Saturday night. Your client killed Frank Peterson, and buggered him, and tore away pieces of his flesh. And all that got him so excited that he spunked on the corpse."

  He strode away quickly, leaving Howie Gold temporarily unable to move or speak. Which was good, because the central paradox still remained. DNA didn't lie. But Terry's colleagues weren't lying, either, Ralph was sure of it. Add to that the fingerprints on the book from the newsstand, and the Channel 81 video.

  Ralph Anderson was a man of two minds, and the double vision was driving him crazy.

  2

  Until 2015, the Flint County courthouse had stood next to the Flint County jail, which was convenient. Prisoners up for arraignment were simply led from one gothic heap of stones to the other, like overgrown children going on a field trip (except, of course, kids going on field trips were rarely handcuffed). Now a half-constructed Civic Center stood next door, and prisoners had to be transported six blocks to the new courthouse, a nine-story glass box that wags had dubbed the Chicken Coop.

  At the curb in front of the jail, waiting to make the trip: two police cars with flashing lights, a short blue bus, and Howie's gleaming black SUV. Standing on the sidewalk next to the latter, and looking like a chauffeur in his dark suit and darker shades, was Alec Pelley. On the other side of the street, behind police department sawhorses, were the reporters, the camerapersons, and a small crowd of lookie-loos. Several of the latter were carrying signs. One read, EXECUTE THE CHILD KILLER. Another read, MAITLAND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL. Marcy stopped on the top step and stared at these signs with dismay.

  The county jail corrections officers halted at the foot of the steps, their job done. Sheriff Doolin and ADA Gilstrap, the men technically in charge of this morning's legal ritual, escorted Terry to the lead police car. Ralph and Yunel Sablo headed for the one behind. Howie took Marcy's hand and led her toward his Escalade. "Don't look up. Don't give the photographers anything but the top of your head."

  "Those signs . . . Howie, those signs . . ."

  "Never mind them, just keep moving."

  Because of the heat, the windows of the blue bus were open. The prisoners inside, most of them weekend warriors bound for their own arraignments on an array of lesser charges, caught sight of Terry. They pressed their faces against the wire mesh, catcalling.

  "Hey, faggot!"

  "Did you bend your dick getting it in?"

  "You're bound for the needle, Maitland!"

  "Did you suck his cock before you bit it off?"

  Alec started around the Escalade to open the passenger door, but Howie shook his head, motioned him back, and pointed to the rear door on the curb side instead. He wanted to keep Marcy as far as possible from the crowd across the street. Her head was lowered, and her hair obscured her face, but as Howie led her to the door Alec was holding open, he could
hear her sobbing even in the general tumult.

  "Mrs. Maitland!" That was a leather-lunged reporter, calling from beyond the sawhorse barricade. "Did he tell you he was going to do it? Did you try to stop him?"

  "Don't look up, don't respond," Howie said. He wished he could tell her not to listen. "This is all under control. Just get in, and off we go."

  As he handed her in, Alec murmured in his ear. "Beautiful, isn't it? Half the city police are on vacation, and FC's fearless sheriff can barely manage crowd control at the Elks Barbecue."

  "Just get us there," Howie said. "I'll ride in back with Marcy."

  Once Alec was behind the wheel and all the doors were closed, the yells from the crowd and the bus were muted. Ahead of the Escalade, the police cars and the blue bus were pulling out, moving as slowly as a funeral cortege. Alec fell into line. Howie could see the reporters sprinting up the sidewalk, oblivious of the heat, just wanting to be at the Chicken Coop when Terry arrived. The TV trucks would already be there, parked nose to tail like a herd of grazing mastodons.

  "They hate him," Marcy said. The little eye makeup she had put on--mostly to hide the bags beneath them--had run, giving her a raccoon-like aspect. "He never did anything but good for this town, and they all hate him."

  "That will change when the grand jury refuses to indict," Howie said. "And they will. I know it, and Samuels knows it, too."

  "Are you sure?"

  "I am. In some cases, Marcy, you have to struggle to find even one reasonable doubt. This case is made of them. No way can the grand jury indict."

  "That isn't what I meant. Are you sure that people will change their minds?"

  "Of course they will."

  In the rearview mirror he saw Alec grimace at that, but sometimes a lie was necessary, and this was one of those times. Until the real killer of Frank Peterson was found--if he ever was--the people of Flint City were going to believe that Terry Maitland had gamed the system and gotten away with murder. They would treat him accordingly. But for now all Howie could do was focus on the arraignment.

  3

  As long as Ralph was dealing with prosaic day-to-day affairs, things like what was for supper, a grocery run with Jeannie, an evening call from Derek at camp (these were less frequent now that the kiddo's homesickness was abating), he was more or less okay. But when his attention centered on Terry--as it had to now--a kind of uber consciousness set in, as if his mind was trying to reassure itself that everything was just as it always had been: up was up, down was down, and it was just the summer heat in this badly air-conditioned car that was producing fine droplets of sweat under his nose. Each day was to be relished because life was short, he understood that, but too much was just too much. When the mind's filter disappeared, the big picture disappeared with it. There was no forest, only trees. At its worst, there were no trees, either. Just bark.

  When the little procession reached the Flint County courthouse, Ralph snuggled in behind the sheriff, noting every hot point of sun on the rear bumper of Doolin's cruiser: four points in all. The reporters who had been at the county jail were already arriving, streaming into a crowd twice the size of the one that had been waiting at the county jail. They were crammed shoulder to shoulder on the lawn flanking the steps. He could see various station logos on the TV reporters' polo shirts, and the dark circles of sweat under their arms. The pretty blond anchor from Channel 7 out of Cap City arrived with her hair in a tangle and sweat cutting trenches in her showgirl makeup.

  Sawhorses had been set up here, too, but the ebb and flow of the jostling crowd had already knocked some of them askew. A dozen cops, half city police and half sheriff's department, tried their best to keep the steps and the sidewalk clear. Twelve weren't enough, in Ralph's estimation, not nearly, but summer always depleted the ranks.

  The reporters jostled for the prime spots on the lawn, unapologetically elbowing the spectators back. The blond anchor from Channel 7 tried to make a place for herself in front, flashing her locally famous smile, and was thwacked by a hastily made sign for her pains. The sign featured a crudely drawn hypodermic needle below the message MAITLAND TAKE YOUR MEDICINE. Her cameraman shoved the guy with the sign backward, shouldering an elderly woman off her feet in the process. Another woman caught her and fetched the cameraman a good one upside the head with her purse. The purse, Ralph noticed (he was currently helpless not to), was faux alligator, and red.

  "How did the vultures get here so quick?" Sablo marveled. "Man, they scurry faster than cockroaches when someone turns on the light."

  Ralph only shook his head, looking at the crowd with mounting dismay, trying to see it as a whole, and unable to in his current state of hyper-vigilance. As Sheriff Doolin exited his car (brown uniform shirt untucked on one side above his Sam Browne belt; roll of pink fat peeking through the gap) and opened the rear door so that Terry could get out, someone began shouting, "Needle, needle!"

  The crowd picked it up, chanting like fans at a football game.

  "NEEDLE! NEEDLE! NEEDLE!"

  Terry stared at them, one lock of his neatly combed hair coming loose and hanging down above his left eyebrow. (Ralph felt he could count every strand.) There was a look of pained bewilderment on his face. Seeing people he knows, Ralph thought. People whose kids he taught, people whose kids he coached, people he had to his house for end-of-season barbecues. All of them rooting for him to die.

  One of the sawhorse barricades clattered into the street, the crossbar sliding away. People surged onto the sidewalk, a few of them reporters with mics and notebooks, the rest local citizens who looked ready to string Terry Maitland up from the nearest lamppost. Two of the cops on crowd control rushed over and pushed them back, none too gently. Another replaced the barricade, which left the crowd free to break through at another location. Ralph saw what looked like two dozen cell phones taking photos and video.

  "Come on," he said to Sablo. "Let's get him the fuck inside before they clog the steps."

  They exited the car and hurried toward the courthouse steps, Sablo motioning Doolin and Gilstrap forward. Now Ralph could see Bill Samuels standing inside one of the courthouse doors, looking dumbfounded . . . but why? How could he have not expected this? How could Sheriff Doolin not have expected it? Nor was he himself blameless--why hadn't he insisted they bring Terry around to the rear doors, where most of the courthouse staff entered?

  "Get back, folks!" Ralph shouted. "This is the process, let the process work!"

  Gilstrap and the sheriff started Terry toward the steps, one holding each arm. Ralph had time to register (again) Gilstrap's horrible plaid coat, and to wonder if the man's wife had picked it out. If so, she must secretly hate him. Now the prisoners in the short bus--who would wait there in the day's strengthening heat, stewing in their own sweat until the star prisoner's arraignment was disposed of--added their voices to the auditory melee, some chanting Needle, Needle, others just yipping like dogs or howling like coyotes, pistoning their fists against the mesh covering the open windows.

  Ralph turned to the Escalade and raised his open palm to it in a Stop gesture, wanting Howie and Alec Pelley to keep Marcy where she was until Terry was inside and the crowd settled down. It did no good. The streetside back door opened and then she was out, dipping one shoulder and eluding Howie Gold's grasping hand as easily as she had slipped away from Betsy Riggins in the county jail's lobby. As she ran to catch up with her husband, Ralph noted her low heels and a shaving cut on one calf. Her hand must have trembled, he thought. When she called Terry's name, the cameras swung toward her. There were five in all, their lenses like glazed eyes. Someone threw a book at her. Ralph couldn't read the title, but he knew that green jacket. Go Set a Watchman, by Harper Lee. His wife had read it for her book club. The cover came loose and one of the flaps fluttered. The book hit her shoulder and bounced off. She didn't seem to notice.

  "Marcy!" Ralph shouted, leaving his place by the steps. "Marcy, over here!"

  She looked around, perhaps searching for him,
perhaps not. She looked like a woman in a dream. Terry stopped, turning at the sound of his wife's name, and resisted when Sheriff Doolin tried to continue pulling him toward the steps.

  Howie reached Marcy before Ralph could. As he took her arm, a burly man in mechanic's coveralls overturned one of the sawhorses and rushed her. "Did you cover up for him, you evil cunt? Did you?"

  Howie was sixty, but still in good shape. And he wasn't shy. As Ralph watched, he flexed his knees and drove a shoulder into the right side of the burly man's midsection, knocking him aside.

  "Let me help," Ralph said.

  "I can take care of her," Howie said. His face was flushed all the way to his thinning hair. He had an arm around Marcy's waist. "We don't want your help. Just get him inside. Now! Jesus, man, what were you thinking? This is a circus!"

  Ralph thought to say, It's the sheriff's circus, not mine, only it was at least partly his. And what about Samuels? Had he perhaps foreseen this? Even hoped for it, because of the wide news coverage it would surely garner?

  He turned in time to see a man in a cowboy shirt duck around one of the crowd control cops, sprint across the sidewalk, and hock a mouthful of spit in Terry's face. Before the guy could rush away, Ralph stuck out a foot and sent him sprawling in the street. Ralph could read the tag on his jeans: LEVI'S BOOT CUT. He could see the faded circle of a Skoal can on the right back pocket. He pointed at one of the crowd control cops. "Cuff that man and stick him in your cruiser."

  "Our c-cars are all around b-back," the cop said. He was a county guy, and looked not much older than Ralph's son.

  "Then stick him on the short bus!"

  "And leave these people to--"

  Ralph lost the rest, because he was seeing something amazing. While Doolin and Gilstrap stared at the spectators, Terry was helping the man in the cowboy shirt to his feet. He said something to Cowboy Shirt that Ralph missed, even with his ears seemingly attuned to the whole universe. Cowboy Shirt nodded and started away, hunching one shoulder to blot a scrape on his cheek. Later, Ralph would remember this little moment in the larger play. He would consider it deeply on long nights when sleep wouldn't come: Terry helping the guy get up with his cuffed hands even as the spit ran down his cheek. Like something out of the fucking Bible.