Needful Things Read online

  "Yeah."

  "So maybe it started out to be just another drive-by to keep Nettie's water hot. Then Wilma saw the door standing open and the drive-by turned into something else. Maybe it wasn't quite that way, but it feels right to me."

  The words weren't even out of his mouth before he recognized them as a lie. It didn't feel right, that was the trouble. It should have felt right, he wanted it to feel right, and it didn't. What was driving him crazy was that there was no reason for that sense of wrongness, at least none he could put his finger on. The closest he could come was to wonder if Nettie would have been careless not only about locking her door but about shutting it tightly if she was as paranoid about Wilma Jerzyck as she had seemed ... and that wasn't enough to hang a suspicion on. It wasn't enough because not all of Nettie's gear was stowed tightly, and you couldn't make any assumptions about what such a person would and wouldn't do. Still ...

  "What did Wilma do?" Norris asked. "Trash the place?"

  "Killed Nettie's dog."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "Jesus! What a bitch!"

  "Well, but we knew that about her, didn't we?"

  "Yeah, but still..."

  There it was again. Even from Norris Ridgewick, who could be depended on, even after all these years, to fill out at least twenty per cent of his paperwork bassackwards : Yeah, but still.

  "She did it with a Swiss Army knife. Used the corkscrew attachment and stuck a note on it, saying it was payback for Nettie slinging mud at her sheets. So Nettie went over to Wilma's with a bunch of rocks. She wrapped notes of her own around them with rubber bands. The notes said the rocks were Wilma's last warning. She threw them through all of the Jerzycks' downstairs windows."

  "Mother-a-God," Norris said, not without some admiration.

  "The Jerzycks left for eleven o'clock Mass at ten-thirty or so. After Mass they had lunch with the Pulaskis. Pete Jerzyck stayed to watch the Patriots with Jake Pulaski, so there was no way he could even try to cool Wilma out this time."

  "Did they meet on that corner by accident?" Norris asked.

  "I doubt it. I think Wilma got home, saw the damage, and called Nettie out."

  "You mean like in a duel?"

  "That's what I mean."

  Norris whistled, then stood quietly for a few moments, hands clasped behind his back, looking out into the darkness. "Alan, why are we supposed to attend these goddam autopsies, anyway?" he asked at last.

  "Protocol, I guess," Alan said, but it was more than that ... at least for him. If you were troubled about the look of a case, or the feel of it (as he was troubled by the look and feel of this one), you might see something that would knock your brain out of neutral and into one of the forward gears. You might see a hook to hang your hat on.

  "Well, then, I think it's time the county hired a protocol officer," Norris grumbled, and Alan laughed.

  He wasn't laughing inside, though, and not just because this was going to hit Polly so hard over the next few days. Something about the case wasn't right. Everything looked all right on top, but down in the place where instinct lived (and sometimes hid), the Martian warlords still seemed to make more sense. At least to Alan.

  Hey, come on! Didn't you just lay it out for Norris, A to Z, in the length of time it takes to smoke a cigarette?

  Yes, he had. That was part of the trouble. Did two women, even when one was half-nuts and the other was poison-mean, meet on a street-corner and cut each other to ribbons like a couple of hopped-up crack addicts for such simple reasons?

  Alan didn't know. And because he didn't know, he flipped the cigarette away and began to go over the whole thing again.

  2

  For Alan, it began with a call from Andy Clutterbuck. Alan had just turned off the Patriots-Jets game (the Patriots were already down by a touchdown and a field goal, and the second quarter was less than three minutes old) and was putting on his coat when the phone rang. Alan had been intending to go down to Needful Things and see if Mr. Gaunt was there. It was even possible, Alan supposed, that he might meet Polly there, after all. The call from Clut had changed all that.

  Eddie Warburton, Clut said, had been hanging up the phone just as he, Clut, came back from lunch. There was some sort of ruckus going on over in the "tree-street" section of town. Women fighting or something. It might be a good idea, Eddie said, if Clut were to call the Sheriff and tell him about the trouble.

  "What in the blue hell is Eddie Warburton doing answering the Sheriff's Office telephone?" Alan asked irritably.

  "Well, I guess with the dispatch office empty, he thought--"

  "He knows the procedure as well as anyone--when dispatch is empty, let The Bastard route the incoming calls."

  "I don't know why he answered the phone," Clut said with barely concealed impatience, "but I don't think that's the important thing. Second call on the incident came in four minutes ago, while I was talking with Eddie. An old lady. I didn't get a name--either she was too upset to give me one or she just didn't want to. Anyhow, she says there's been some sort of serious fight on the comer of Ford and Willow: Two women involved. Caller says they were using knives. She says they're still there."

  "Still fighting?"

  "No--down, both of them. The fight's over."

  "Right." Alan's mind began clicking along faster, like an express train picking up speed. "You logged the call, Clut?"

  "You bet I did."

  "Good. Seaton's on this afternoon, isn't he? Get him out there right away."

  "Already sent him."

  "God bless you. Now call the State Police."

  "Do you want CIU?"

  "Not yet. For the time being, just alert them to the situation. I'll meet you there, Clut."

  When he got to the crime scene and saw the extent of the damage, Alan radioed the Oxford Barracks of the State Police and told them to send a Crime Investigation Unit right away ... two, if they could spare them. By then Clut and Seaton Thomas were standing in front of the downed women with their arms spread, telling people to go back into their homes. Norris arrived, took a look, then got a roll of yellow tape marked CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS out of the trunk of his cruiser. There was a thick coating of dust on the tape, and Norris told Alan later that he hadn't been sure it would stick, it was so old.

  It had, though. Norris strung it around the trunks of oak trees, forming a large triangle around the two women who appeared to be embracing at the foot of the stop-sign. The spectators had not returned to their houses, but did retreat to their own lawns. There were about fifty of them, and the number was growing as calls were made and neighbors hurried over to view the wreckage. Andy Clutterbuck and Seaton Thomas looked almost jumpy enough to pull their pieces and start firing warning shots. Alan sympathized with the way they felt.

  In Maine, the Criminal Investigation Department of the State Police handles murder investigations, and for small-fry fuzz (which is almost all of them), the scariest time comes between the discovery of the crime and the arrival of CID. Local cops and county mounties both know perfectly well that it is the time when the so-called chain of evidence is most often broken. Most also know that what they do during that time will be closely scrutinized by Monday-morning quarterbacks--most of them from the judiciary and the Attorney General's Office--who believe that small-fry fuzz, even the County boys, are a bunch of Deputy Dawgs with ham hands and fumble fingers.

  Also, those silent bunches of people standing on the lawns across the street were goddam spooky. They reminded Alan of the mall-zombies in Dawn of the Dead.

  He got the battery-powered bullhorn out of the back seat of his cruiser and told them he wanted them to go inside, right away. They began to do it. He then reviewed the protocol in his head one more time, and radioed dispatch. Sandra McMillan had come in to handle the chores there. She wasn't as steady as Sheila Brigham, but beggars could not be choosers ... and Alan guessed Sheila would hear what had happened and come in before much longer. If her sense of duty didn't b
ring her, curiosity would.

  Alan told Sandy to track down Ray Van Allen. Ray was Castle County's On-Call Medical Examiner--also the county coroner--and Alan wanted him here when CID arrived, if that was possible.

  "Roger, Sheriff," Sandy said self-importantly. "Base is clear."

  Alan went back to his officers on the scene. "Which one of you verified that the women are dead?"

  Clut and Seat Thomas looked at each other in uneasy surprise, and Alan felt his heart sink. One point for the Monday-morning quarterbacks--or maybe not. The first Crime Investigation Unit wasn't here yet, although he could hear more sirens approaching. Alan ducked under the tape and approached the stop-sign, walking on tiptoe like a kid trying to sneak out of the house after curfew.

  The spilled blood was mostly pooled between the victims and in the leaf-choked gutter beside them, but a fine spray of droplets--what the forensics boys called back-splatter--dotted the area around them in a rough circle. Alan dropped on one knee just outside this circle, stretched out a hand, and found he could reach the corpses--he had no doubt that was what they were--by leaning forward to the very edge of balance with one arm stretched out.

  He looked back at Seat, Norris, and Clut. They were clustered together in a knot, staring at him with big eyes.

  "Photograph me," he said.

  Clut and Seaton only looked at him as if he had given an order in Tagalog, but Norris ran to Alan's cruiser and rooted around in back until he found the old Polaroid there, one of two they used for taking crime-scene photographs. When the appropriations committee met, Alan was planning to ask for at least one new camera, but this afternoon the appropriations committee meeting seemed very unimportant.

  Norris hurried back with the camera, aimed, and triggered it. The drive whined.

  "Better take another one just to be safe," Alan said. "Get the bodies, too. I'm not going to have those guys saying we broke the chain of evidence. Be damned if I will." He was aware that his voice sounded a shade querulous, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Norris took another Polaroid, documenting Alan's position outside the circle of evidence and the way the bodies were lying at the foot of the stop-sign. Then Alan leaned cautiously forward again and placed his fingers against the bloodstained neck of the woman lying on top. There was no pulse, of course, but after a second the pressure of his fingers caused her head to fall away from the sign-post and turn sideways. Alan recognized Nettie at once, and it was Polly he thought of.

  Oh Jesus, he thought dolefully. Then he went through the motions of feeling for Wilma's pulse, even though there was a meat-cleaver buried in her skull. Her cheeks and forehead were printed with small dots of blood. They looked like heathen tattoos.

  Alan got up and returned to where his men were standing on the other side of the tapes. He couldn't seem to stop thinking of Polly, and he knew that was wrong. He had to get her off his mind or he was going to bitch this up for sure. He wondered if any of the gawkers had ID'd Nettie already. If so, Polly would surely hear before he could call her. He hoped desperately that she wouldn't come down to see for herself.

  You can't worry about that now, he admonished himself. You've got a double murder on your hands, from the look.

  "Get out your book," he told Norris. "You're club secretary."

  "Jesus, Alan, you know how lousy my spelling is."

  "Just write."

  Norris gave the Polaroid to Clut and got his notebook out of his back pocket. A pad of Traffic Warnings with his name rubber-stamped at the bottom of each sheet fell out with it. Norris bent, picked the pad up off the sidewalk, and stuffed it absently into his pocket again.

  "I want you to note that the head of the woman on top, designated Victim 1, was resting against the post of the stop-sign. I inadvertently pushed it off, checking for pulse."

  How easy it is to slip into Police Speak, Alan thought, where cars become "vehicles" and crooks become "perpetrators" and dead townspeople become "designated victims." Police Speak, the wonderful sliding glass barrier.

  He turned to Clut and told him to photograph this second configuration of the bodies, feeling extremely grateful that he'd had Norris document the original position before he touched the women.

  Clut took the picture.

  Alan turned back to Norris. "I want you to further note that when the head of Victim 1 moved, I was able to identify her as Netitia Cobb."

  Seaton whistled. "You mean it's Nettie?"

  "Yes. That's what I mean."

  Norris wrote the information down on his pad. Then he asked, "What do we do now. Alan?"

  "Wait for CID's Investigation Unit and try to look alive when they get here," Alan said.

  The CIU arrived less than three minutes later in two cars, followed by Ray Van Allen in his cranky old Subaru Brat. Five minutes later a State Police ID team arrived in a blue station wagon. All the members of the State Police team then lit cigars. Alan had known they would do this. The bodies were fresh and they were outdoors, but the ritual of the cigars was immutable.

  The unpleasant work known in Police Speak as "securing the scene" began. It went on until after dark. Alan had worked with Henry Payton, head of the Oxford Barracks (and thus in nominal charge of this case and the CIU guys working it), on several other occasions. He had never seen the slightest hint of imagination in Henry. The man was a plodder, but a thorough, conscientious plodder. It was because Henry had been assigned that Alan had felt safe to creep off for a bit and call Polly.

  When he returned, the hands of the victims were being secured in gallon-sized Ziploc Baggies. Wilma Jerzyck had lost one of her shoes, and her stockinged foot was accorded the same treatment. The ID team moved in and took close to three hundred photos. More State Police had arrived by then. Some held back the crowd, which was trying to draw closer again, and others shunted the arriving TV people down to the Municipal Building. A police artist did a quick sketch on a Crime-Scene Grid.

  At last the bodies themselves were taken care of--except, that was, for one final matter. Payton gave Alan a pair of disposable surgical gloves and a Ziploc Baggie. "The cleaver or the knife?"

  "I'll take the cleaver," Alan said. It would be the messier of the two implements, still clotted with Wilma Jerzyck's brains, but he didn't want to touch Nettie. He had liked her.

  With the murder weapons removed, tagged, bagged, and on their way to Augusta, the two CIU teams moved in and began to search the area around the bodies, which still lay in their terminal embrace with the blood pooled between them now hardening to a substance like enamel. When Ray Van Allen was finally allowed to load them into the Medical Assistance van, the scene was lit with police cruiser high beams and the orderlies first had to peel Wilma and Nettie apart.

  During most of this, Castle Rock's Finest stood around feeling like bumps on a log.

  Henry Payton joined Alan on the sidelines during the conclusion of the oddly delicate ballet known as On-Scene Investigation. "Lousy damned way to spend a Sunday afternoon," he said.

  Alan nodded.

  "I'm sorry the head moved on you. That was bad luck."

  Alan nodded again.

  "I don't think anyone's going to bother you about it, though. You've got at least one good pic of the original position." He looked toward Norris, who was talking with Clut and the newly arrived John LaPointe. "You're just lucky that old boy there didn't put his finger over the lens."

  "Aw, Norris is all right."

  "So's K-Y Jelly ... in its place. Anyway, the whole thing looks pretty simple."

  Alan agreed. That was the trouble; he had known that long before he and Norris finished their Sunday tour of duty in an alley behind Kennebec Valley Hospital. The whole thing was too pretty simple, maybe.

  "You planning to attend the cutting party?" Henry asked.

  "Yes. Is Ryan going to do it?"

  "That's what I understand."

  "I thought I might take Norris with me. The bodies will go to Oxford first, won't they?"

 
; "Uh-huh. That's where we log them in."

  "If Norris and I left now, we could be in Augusta before they get there."

  Henry Payton nodded. "Why not? I think it's buttoned up here."

  "I'd like to send one of my men with each of your CIU teams. As observers. Do you have a problem with that?"

  Payton thought it over. "Nope--but who's going to keep the peace? Ole Seat Thomas?"

  Alan felt a sudden flash of something which was a little too hot to be dismissed as mere annoyance. It had been a long day, he'd listened to Henry rag on his deputies about as much as he wanted to ... yet he needed to stay on Henry's good side in order to hitch a ride on what was technically a State Police case, and so he held his tongue.

  "Come on, Henry. It's Sunday night. Even The Mellow Tiger's closed."

  "Why are you so hot to stick with this, Alan? Is there something hinky about it? I understand there was bad feeling between the two women, and that the one on top already offed someone. Her husband, no less."

  Alan thought about it. "No--nothing hinky. Nothing that I know about, anyway. It's just that ..."

  "It doesn't quite jell in your head yet?"

  "Something like that."

  "Okay. Just as long as your men understand they're there to listen and no more."

  Alan smiled a little. He thought of telling Payton that if he instructed Clut and John LaPointe to ask questions, they would probably run the other way, and decided not to. "They'll keep their lips zipped," he said. "You can count on it."

  3

  And so here they were, he and Norris Ridgewick, after the longest Sunday in living memory. But the day had one thing in common with the lives of Nettie and Wilma: it was over.

  "Were you thinking about checking into a motel room for the night?" Norris asked hesitantly. Alan didn't have to be a mindreader to know what he was thinking about: the fishing he would miss tomorrow.

  "Hell, no." Alan bent and picked up the gown he had used to prop the door open. "Let's beat feet."

  "Great idea," Norris said, sounding happy for the first time since Alan had met him at the crime scene. Five minutes later they were headed toward Castle Rock along Route 43, the headlights of the County cruiser boring holes in the windy darkness. By the time they arrived, it had been Monday morning for almost three hours.