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  Finally he said, 'No. I guess not.'

  'Me either. You got wounded in a war that's already been decided, Ralph, and you won't be the last. But if you went to the Whale People - or to Susan Day - and opened your shirt and pointed at the bandage and said "This is partly your fault, so own the part that's yours," they'd raise their hands and say, "Oh no, goodness no, we're sorry you got hurt, Ralph, we whale watchers abhor violence, but it wasn't our fault, we have to keep WomanCare open, we have to man and woman the barricades, and if a little spilled blood is what it takes to do that, then so be it." But it's not about WomanCare, and that's what drives me absolutely bugfuck. It's about--'

  '- abortion.'

  'Shit, no! Abortion rights are safe in Maine and in Derry, no matter what Susan Day says at the Civic Center Friday night. This is about whose team is the best team. About whose side God's on. It's about who's right. I wish they'd all just sing "We Are the Champions" and go get drunk.'

  Ralph threw back his head and laughed. Leydecker laughed with him.

  'So they're assholes,' he finished with a shrug. 'But they're our assholes. Does that sounds like I'm joking? I'm not. WomanCare, Friends of Life, Body Watch, Daily Bread . . . they're our assholes, Derry assholes, and I really don't mind watching out for our own. That's why I took this job, and why I stay with it. But you'll have to forgive me if I'm less than crazy about being tapped to watch out for some long-stemmed American Beauty from New York who's going to fly in here and give an incendiary speech and then fly out with a few more press-clippings and enough material for chapter five of her new book.

  'To our faces she'll talk about what a wonderful little grassroots community we are, and when she gets back to her duplex on Park Avenue, she'll tell her friends about how she hasn't managed to shampoo the stink of our paper mills out of her hair yet. She is woman; hear her roar . . . and if we're lucky, the whole thing will quiet down with no one dead or disabled.'

  Ralph had become sure of what those greenish flickers meant. 'But you're scared, aren't you?' he asked.

  Leydecker looked at him, surprised. 'Shows, does it?'

  'Only a little,' Ralph said, and thought: Just in your aura, John, that's all. Just in your aura.

  'Yeah, I'm scared. On a personal level I'm scared of fucking up the assignment, which has absolutely no upside to compensate for all the things that can go wrong. On a professional level I'm scared of something happening to her on my watch. On a community level I'm fucking terrified of what happens if there's some sort of confrontation and the genie comes out of the bottle . . . more coffee, Ralph?'

  'I'll pass. I ought to be going soon, anyway. What's going to happen to Pickering?'

  He didn't actually care much about Charlie Pickering's fate, but the big cop would probably think it strange if he asked about May Locher before he asked about Pickering. Suspicious, maybe.

  'Steve Anderson - the ADA who questioned you - and Pickering's court-appointed attorney are probably horse-trading even as we speak. Pickering's guy will be saying he might be able to get his client - the thought of Charlie Pickering being anyone's client - for anything, sort of blows my mind, by the way - to plead out to second-degree assault. Anderson will say the time has come to put Pickering away for good and he's going for attempted murder. Pickering's lawyer will pretend to be shocked, and tomorrow your buddy is going to be charged with first-degree assault with a deadly weapon and bound over for trial. Then, possibly in December but more likely early next year, you'll be called as the star witness.'

  'Bail?'

  'It'll probably be set in the forty-thousand-dollar range. You can get out on ten per cent if the rest can be secured in event of flight, but Charlie Pickering doesn't have a house, a car, or even a Timex watch. In the end, he's liable to go back to Juniper Hill, but that's really not the object of the game. We're going to be able to keep him off the street for quite a while this time, and with people like Charlie, that's the object of the game.'

  'Any chance The Friends of Life might go his bail?'

  'Nah. Ed Deepneau spent a lot of last week with him, the two of them drinking coffee in the Bagel Shop. I imagine Ed was giving Charlie the lowdown on the Centurions and the King of Diamonds--'

  'Crimson King is what Ed--'

  'Whatever,' Leydecker agreed, waving a hand. 'But most of all I imagine he spent the time explaining how you were the devil's righthand man and how only a smart, brave, and dedicated fellow like Charlie Pickering could take you out of the picture.'

  'You make him sound like such a calculating shit,' Ralph said. He was remembering the Ed Deepneau he'd played chess with before Carolyn had fallen ill. That Ed had been an intelligent, well-spoken, civilized man with a deep capacity for kindness. Ralph still found it all but impossible to reconcile that Ed with the one he'd first glimpsed in July of 1992. He had come to think of the more recent arrival as 'rooster Ed'.

  'Not just a calculating shit, a dangerous calculating shit,' Leydecker said. 'For him Charlie was just a tool, like a paring knife you'd use to peel an apple with. If the blade snaps off a paring knife, you don't run to the knife-grinder's to get a new one put on; that's too much trouble. You toss it in the wastebasket and get a new paring knife instead. That's the way guys like Ed treat guys like Charlie, and since Ed is The Friends of Life - for the time being, at least - I don't think you have to worry about Charlie making bail. In the next few days, he's going to be lonelier than a Maytag repairman. Okay?'

  'Okay,' Ralph said. He was a little appalled to realize he felt sorry for Pickering. 'I want to thank you for keeping my name out of the paper, too . . . if you were the one who did it, that is.'

  There had been a brief mention of the incident in the Derry News's Police Beat column, but it said only that Charles H. Pickering had been arrested on 'a weapons charge' at the Derry Public Library.

  'Sometimes we ask them for a favor, sometimes they ask us for one,' Leydecker said, standing up. 'It's how things work in the real world. If the nuts in The Friends of Life and the prigs in The Friends of WomanCare ever discover that, my job is going to get a lot easier.'

  Ralph plucked the rolled-up Dumbo poster from the wastebasket, then stood up on his side of Leydecker's desk. 'Could I have this? I know a little girl who might really like it, in a year or so.'

  Leydecker held out his hands expansively. 'Be my guest - think of it as a little premium for being a good citizen. Just don't ask for my crotchless panties.'

  Ralph laughed. 'Wouldn't think of it.'

  'Seriously, I appreciate you coming in. Thanks, Ralph.'

  'No problem.' He reached across the desk, shook Leydecker's hand, then headed for the door. He felt absurdly like Lieutenant Columbo on TV - all he needed was the cigar and the ratty trenchcoat. He put his hand on the knob, then paused and turned back. 'Can I ask you about something totally unrelated to Charlie Pickering?'

  'Fire away.'

  'This morning in the Red Apple Store I heard that Mrs Locher, my neighbor up the street, died in the night. Nothing so surprising about that; she had emphysema. But there are police-line tapes up between the sidewalk and her front yard, plus a sign on the door saying the site has been sealed by the Derry PD. Do you know what it's about?'

  Leydecker looked at him so long and hard that Ralph would have felt acutely uncomfortable . . . if not for the man's aura. There was nothing in it which communicated suspicion.

  God, Ralph, you're taking these things a little too seriously, aren't you?

  Well, maybe yes and maybe no. Either way he was glad that the green flickers at the edges of Leydecker's aura had not reappeared.

  'Why are you looking at me that way?' Ralph asked. 'If I presumed or spoke out of turn, I'm sorry.'

  'Not at all,' Leydecker said. 'It's a little weird, that's all. If I tell you about it, can you keep it quiet?'

  'Yes.'

  'It's your downstairs tenant I'm chiefly worried about. When the word discretion is mentioned, it's not the Prof I think of.'

 
Ralph laughed heartily. 'I won't say a word to him - Scout's Honor - but it's interesting you'd mention him; Bill went to school with Mrs Locher, way back when. Grammar school.'

  'Man, I can't imagine the Prof in grammar school,' Leydecker said. 'Can you?'

  'Sort of,' Ralph said, but the picture which rose in his mind was an exceedingly peculiar one: Bill McGovern looking like a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and Tom Sawyer in a pair of knickers, long white socks . . . and a Panama hat.

  'We're not sure what happened to Mrs Locher,' Leydecker said. 'What we do know is that shortly after three a.m., 911 logged an anonymous call from someone - a male - who claimed to have just seen two men, one carrying a pair of scissors, come out of Mrs Locher's house.'

  'She was killed?' Ralph exclaimed, realizing two things simultaneously: that he sounded more believable than he ever would have expected, and that he had just crossed a bridge. He hadn't burned it behind him - not yet, anyway - but he would not be able to go back to the other side without a lot of explanations.

  Leydecker turned his hands palms up and shrugged. 'If she was, it wasn't with a pair of scissors or any other sharp object. There wasn't a mark on her.'

  That, at least, was something of a relief.

  'On the other hand, it's possible to scare someone to death - especially someone who's old and sick - during the commission of a crime,' Leydecker said. 'Anyway, this'll be easier to explain if you let me just tell you what I know. It won't take long, believe me.'

  'Of course. Sorry.'

  'Want to hear something funny? The first person I thought of when I looked over the 911 call-sheet was you.'

  'Because of the insomnia, right?' Ralph asked. His voice was steady.

  'That and the fact that the caller claimed to have seen these men from his living room. Your living room looks out on the Avenue, doesn't it?'

  'Yes.'

  'Uh-huh. I even thought of listening to the tape, then I remembered that you were coming in today . . . and that you're sleeping through again. That's right, isn't it?'

  Without an instant of pause or consideration, Ralph set fire to the bridge he had just crossed. 'Well, I'm not sleeping like I did when I was sixteen and working two after-school jobs, I won't kid you about that, but if I was the guy who called 911 last night, I did it in my sleep.'

  'Exactly what I figured. Besides, if you saw something a little off-kilter on the street, why would you make the call anonymously?'

  'I don't know,' Ralph said, and thought, But suppose it was a little more than off-kilter, John? Suppose it was completely unbelievable?

  'Me, neither,' Leydecker said. 'Your place has a view of Harris Avenue, yes, but so do about three dozen others . . . and just because the guy who made the call said he was inside, that doesn't mean he really was, does it?'

  'I guess not. There's a pay-phone outside the Red Apple he could have called from, plus one outside the liquor store. A couple in Strawford Park, too, if they work.'

  'Actually there are four in the park, and they all work. We checked.'

  'Why would he lie about where he was calling from?'

  'The most likely reason is because he was lying about the rest of what he had to say, too. Anyway, Donna Hagen said the guy sounded very young and sure of himself.' The words were barely out of his mouth before Leydecker winced and put a hand on top of his head. 'That didn't come out just the way I meant it, Ralph. Sorry.'

  'It's okay - the idea that I sound like an old fart on a pension is not exactly a new concept to me. I am an old fart on a pension. Go on.'

  'Chris Nell was the responding officer - first on the scene. Do you remember him from the day we arrested Ed?'

  'I remember the name.'

  'Uh-huh. Steve Utterback was the responding detective and the OIC - officer in charge. He's a good man.'

  The guy in the watchcap, Ralph thought.

  'The lady was dead in bed, but there was no sign of violence. Nothing obvious taken, either, although old ladies like May Locher aren't usually into a lot of real hockable stuff - no VCR, no big fancy stereo, nothing like that. She did have one of those Bose Waves, though, and two or three pretty nice pieces of jewelry. This is not to say that there wasn't other jewelry as nice or nicer, but--'

  'But why would a burglar take some and not all?'

  'Exactly. What's more interesting in this case is that the front door - the one the 911 caller said he saw the two men coming out of - was locked from the inside. Not just a spring-lock, either; there was a thumb-bolt and a chain. Same with the back door, by the way. So if the 911 caller was on the up and up, and if May Locher was dead when the two guys left, who locked the doors?'

  Maybe it was the Crimson King, Ralph thought . . . and to his horror, almost said aloud.

  'I don't know. What about the windows?'

  'Locked. Thumb-latches turned. And, just in case that's not Agatha Christie enough for you, Steve says the storms were on. One of the neighbors told him Mrs Locher hired a kid to put them on just last week.'

  'Sure she did,' Ralph said. 'Pete Sullivan, the same kid who delivers the newspaper. Now that I think of it, I saw him doing it.'

  'Mystery-novel bullshit,' Leydecker said, but Ralph thought Leydecker would have swapped Susan Day for May Locher in about three seconds. 'The prelim medical came in just before I left for the courthouse to meet you. I had a glance at it. Myocardial this, thrombosis that . . . heart-failure's what it comes down to. Right now we're treating the 911 call as a crank - we get em all the time, all cities do - and the lady's death as a heart-attack brought on by her emphysema.'

  'Just a coincidence, in other words.' That conclusion might save him a lot of trouble - if it flew, that was - but Ralph could hear the disbelief in his own voice.

  'Yeah, I don't like it, either. Neither does Steve, which is why the house has been sealed. State Forensics will give it a complete top-to-bottom, probably starting tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, Mrs Locher has taken a little ride down to Augusta for a more comprehensive postmortem. Who knows what it'll show? Sometimes they do show things. You'd be surprised.'

  'I suppose I would,' Ralph said.

  Leydecker tossed his toothpick into the trash, appeared to brood for a moment, then brightened up. 'Hey, here's an idea - maybe I'll get someone in clerical to make a dupe of that 911 call. I could bring it over and play it for you. Maybe you'll recognize the voice. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.'

  'I suppose they have,' Ralph said, smiling uneasily.

  'Anyway, it's Utterback's case. Come on, I'll see you out.'

  In the hall, Leydecker gave Ralph another searching look. This one made Ralph feel a good deal more uncomfortable, because he had no idea what it meant. The auras had disappeared again.

  He tried on a smile that felt lame. 'Something hanging out of my nose that shouldn't be?'

  'Nope. I'm just amazed at how good you look for someone who went through what you did yesterday. And compared to how you looked last summer . . . if that's what honeycomb can do, I'm going to buy myself a beehive.'

  Ralph laughed as though this were the funniest thing he had ever heard.

  2

  1:42 a.m., Tuesday morning.

  Ralph sat in the wing-chair, watching wheels of fine mist revolve around the streetlights. Up the street, the police-line tapes hung dispiritedly in front of May Locher's house.

  Barely two hours' sleep tonight, and he found himself again thinking that dead might be better. No more insomnia then. No more long waits for dawn in this hateful chair. No more days when he seemed to be looking at the world through the Gardol Invisible Shield they used to prattle about on the toothpaste commercials. Back when TV had been almost brand-new, that had been, in the days when he had yet to find the first strands of gray in his hair and he was always asleep five minutes after he and Carol had finished making love.

  And people keep talking about how good I look. That's the weirdest part of it.

  Except it wasn't. Considering some of the thi
ngs he'd seen just lately, a few people saying he looked like a new man was far, far down on his list of oddities.

  Ralph's eyes returned to May Locher's house. The place had been locked up, according to Leydecker, but Ralph had seen the two little bald doctors come out the front door, he had seen them, goddammit--

  But had he?

  Had he really?

  Ralph cast his mind back to the previous morning. Sitting down in this same chair with a cup of tea and thinking Let the play begin. And then he had seen those two little bald bastards come out, damn it, he had seen them come out of May Locher's house!

  Except maybe that was wrong, because he hadn't really been looking at Mrs Locher's house; he had been pointed more in the direction of the Red Apple. He'd thought the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye was probably Rosalie, and had turned his head to check. That was when he'd seen the little bald doctors on the stoop of May Locher's house. He was no longer entirely sure he had seen the front door open; maybe he had just assumed that part, and why not? They sure as hell hadn't come up Mrs Locher's walk.

  You can't be sure of that, Ralph.

  Except he could. At three in the morning, Harris Avenue was as still as the mountains of the moon - the slightest movement anywhere within the range of his vision registered.

  Had Doc #1 and Doc #2 come out the front door? The longer Ralph thought about it, the more he doubted it.

  Then what happened, Ralph? Did they maybe step out from behind the Gardol Invisible Shield? Or - how's this? - maybe they walked through the door, like those ghosts that used to haunt Cosmo Topper in that old TV show!

  And the craziest thing of all was that felt just about right.

  What? That they walked through the fucking DOOR? Oh, Ralph, you need help. You need to talk to someone about what's happening to you.

  Yes. That was the one thing of which he was sure: he needed to spill all this to someone before it drove him crazy. But who? Carolyn would have been best, but she was dead. Leydecker? The problem there was that Ralph had already lied to him about the 911 call. Why? Because the truth would have sounded insane. It would have sounded, in fact, as if he had caught Ed Deepneau's paranoia like a cold. And wasn't that really the most likely explanation, when you looked at the situation dead on?