The Dark Half Page 9

  "Stephanie, ma'am," the voice on the other side of the door replied patiently.

  "I can call your station-house and check that, you know!" she nearly shrieked.

  "I know you can, Mrs. Eberhart," the voice responded, "but you'd feel safer quicker if you just let us in, don't you think?"

  And because she still recognized the Voice of Cop as easily as she had recognized the Smell of Bad, she unlocked the door and let Toomey and his partner in. Once they were, Dodie did something else she had never done before: she went into hysterics.

  Seven

  POLICE BUSINESS

  1

  Thad was upstairs in his study, writing, when the police came.

  Liz was reading a book in the living room while William and Wendy goofed with each other in the oversized playpen they shared. She went to the door, looking out through one of the narrow ornamental windows which flanked it before opening it. This was a habit she had gotten into since what was jokingly called Thad's "debut" in People magazine. Visitors--vague acquaintances for the most part, with a generous mixture of curious town residents and even a few total strangers (these latter unanimously Stark fans) thrown in for good measure--had taken to dropping by. Thad called it the "see-the-living-crocodiles syndrome" and said it would peter out in another week or two. Liz hoped he was right. In the meantime, she worried that one of the new callers might be a mad crocodile-hunter of the sort who had killed John Lennon, and peeked through the side window first. She didn't know if she would recognize a bona fide madman if she saw one, but she could at least keep Thad's train of thought from derailing during the two hours each morning he spent writing. After that he went to the door himself, usually throwing her a guilty little-boy look to which she didn't know bow to respond.

  The three men on the front doorstep this Saturday morning were not fans of either Beaumont or Stark, she guessed, and not madmen either . . . unless some of the current crop had taken to driving State Police cruisers. She opened the door, feeling the uneasy twinge even the most blameless people must feel when the police show up without being called. She supposed if she'd had children old enough to be out whooping and hollering this rainy Saturday morning, she would already be wondering if they were okay.

  "Yes?"

  "Are you Mrs. Elizabeth Beaumont?" one of them asked.

  "Yes, I am. May I help you?"

  "Is your husband home, Mrs. Beaumont?" a second asked. These two were wearing identical gray rain-stickers and State Police hats.

  No, that's the ghost of Ernest Hemingway you hear clacking away upstairs, she thought of saying, and of course didn't. First came the has-anybody-had-an-accident fright, then the phantom guilt which made you want to come out with something harsh or sarcastic, something which said, no matter what the actual words: Go away. You are not wanted here. We have done nothing wrong. Go and find someone who has.

  "May I ask why you'd like to see him?"

  The third policeman was Alan Pangborn. "Police business, Mrs. Beaumont," he said. "May we speak with him, please?"

  2

  Thad Beaumont did not keep anything resembling an organized journal, but he did sometimes write about the events in his own life which interested, amused, or frightened him. He kept these accounts in a bound ledger, and his wife did not care much for them. They gave her the creeps, in fact, although she had never told Thad so. Most were strangely passionless, almost as if a part of him was standing aside and reporting on his life with its own divorced and almost disinterested eye. Following the visit of the police on the morning of June 4th, he wrote a long entry with a strong and unusual subcurrent of emotion running through it.

  "I understand Kafka's The Trial and Orwell's 1984 a little better now [Thad wrote]. To read them as political novels and no more is a serious mistake. I suppose the depression I went through after finishing Dancers and discovering there was nothing waiting behind it--except for Liz's miscarriage, that is--still counts as the most wrenching emotional experience of our married life, but what happened today seems worse. I tell myself it's because the experience is still fresh, but I suspect it's a lot more than that. I suppose if my time in the darkness and the loss of those first twins are wounds which have healed, leaving only scars to mark the places where they were, then this new wound will also heal . . . but I don't believe time will ever gloss it over completely. It will also leave its scar, one which is shorter but deeper--like the fading tattoo of a sudden knife-slash.

  "I'm sure the police behaved according to their oaths (if they still take them, and I guess they do). Yet there was then and still is now a feeling that I was in danger of being pulled into some faceless bureaucratic machine, not men but a machine which would go methodically on about its business until it had chewed me to rags . . . because chewing people to rags is the machine's business. The sound of my screams would neither hurry nor delay that machine's chewing action.

  "I could tell Liz was nervous when she came upstairs and told me the police wanted to see me about something but wouldn't tell her what it was. She said one of them was Alan Pangborn, the Castle County Sheriff. I may have met him once or twice before, but I only really recognized him because his picture is in the Castle Rock Call from time to time.

  "I was curious, and grateful for a break from the typewriter, where my people have been insisting on doing things I don't want them to do for the last week. If I thought anything, I suppose I thought it might have something to do with Frederick Clawson, or some bit of fallout from the People article.

  "I don't know if I can get the tone of the meeting which followed right or not. I don't know if it even matters, only that it seems important to try. They were standing in the hall near the foot of the stairs, three large men (it's no wonder people call them bulls) dripping a little water onto the carpet.

  " 'Are you Thaddeus Beaumont?' one of them--it was Sheriff Pangborn--asked, and that's when the emotional change I want to describe (or at least indicate) began to happen. Puzzlement joined the curiosity and pleasure at being released, however briefly, from the typewriter. And a little worry. My full name, but no 'Mister. ' Like a judge addressing a defendant upon whom he is about to pass sentence.

  " 'Yes, that's right, ' I said, 'and you're Sheriff Pangborn. I know, because we've got a place on Castle Lake. ' Then I put out my hand, that old automatic gesture of the well-trained American male.

  "He just looked at it, and an expression came over his face--it was as if he'd opened the door of his refrigerator and discovered the fish he'd bought for supper had spoiled. 'I have no intention of shaking your hand, ' he said, 'so you might as well put it back down again and save us both some embarrassment. ' It was a hell of a strange thing to say, a. downright rude thing to say, but that didn't bother me as much as the way he said it. It was as if he thought I was out of my mind.

  "And just like that, I was terrified. Even now I find it difficult to believe how rapidly, how goddam rapidly, my emotions lensed through the spectrum from ordinary curiosity and some pleasure at the break in an accustomed routine to naked fear. In that instant I knew they weren't here just to talk to me about something but because they believed I had done something, and in that first moment of horror--'I have no intention of shaking your hand'--I was sure that I had.

  "That's what I need to express. In the moment of dead silence that followed Pangborn's refusal to shake my hand, I thought, in fact, that I had done everything . . . and would be powerless not to confess my guilt. "

  3

  Thad lowered his hand slowly. From the corner of his eye he could see Liz with her hands clasped into a tight white ball between her breasts, and suddenly he wanted to be furious at this cop, who had been invited freely into his home and had then refused to shake his hand. This cop whose salary was paid, at least in some small part, by the taxes the Beaumonts paid on their house in Castle Rock. This cop who had frightened Liz. This cop who had frightened him.

  "Very well," Thad said evenly. "If you won't shake hands with me, then perhaps
you'll tell me why you're here. "

  Unlike the State cops, Alan Pangborn was wearing not a rainslicker but a waterproof jacket which came only to his waist. He reached into his back pocket, brought out a card, and began to read from it. It took Thad a moment to realize he was hearing a variation of the Miranda warning.

  "As you said, my name is Alan Pangborn, Mr. Beaumont. I am the Sheriff of Castle County, Maine. I'm here because I have to question you in connection with a capital crime. I will ask you these questions at the Orono State Police Barracks. You have the right to remain silent--"

  "Oh dear Jesus, please, what is this?" Liz asked, and layered on top of that Thad heard himself saying, "Wait a minute, wait just a damn minute." He intended to roar this, but even with his brain telling his lungs to turn the volume up to a full lecture-hall-quieting bellow, the best he could manage was a mild objection that Pangborn overrode easily.

  "--and you have the right to legal counsel. If you cannot afford legal counsel, such will be provided for you. "

  He replaced the card in his back pocket.

  "Thad?" Liz was crowding against him like a small child frightened by thunder. Her huge puzzled eyes stared at Pangborn. Every so often they flicked to the State Troopers, who looked big enough to play defense on a pro football team, but mostly they remained on Pangborn.

  "I'm not going anywhere with you," Thad said. His voice was shaking, jigging up and down, changing registers like the voice of a young adolescent. He was still trying to be furious. "I don't believe you can compel me to do that. "

  One of the Troopers cleared his throat. "The alternative," he said, "is for us to go back and get a warrant for your arrest, Mr. Beaumont. On the basis of information in our possession, that would be very easy. "

  The Trooper glanced at Pangborn.

  "It might be fair to add that Sheriff Pangborn wanted us to bring one with us. He argued very strongly for it, and I guess he would have gotten his way if you weren't . . . something of a public figure. "

  Pangborn looked disgusted, possibly by this fact, possibly because the Trooper was informing Thad of the fact, most likely both.

  The Trooper saw the look, shuffled his wet shoes as if a trifle embarrassed, but pushed on anyway. "With the situation being what it is, I have no problem with you knowing that." He looked questioningly at his partner, who nodded. Pangborn just went on looking disgusted. And angry. He looks, Thad thought, as if he'd like to rip me open with his fingernails and wrap my guts around my head.

  "That sounds very professional," Thad said. He was relieved to find he was getting at least some of his wind back and his voice was settling down. He wanted to be angry because anger would allay the fear, but he could still manage no more than bewilderment. He felt sucker-punched. "What it ignores is the fact that I don't have the slightest idea what this goddam situation is. "

  "If we believed that to be the case, we wouldn't be here, Mr. Beaumont," Pangborn said. The expression of loathing on his face finally turned the trick: Thad was suddenly infuriated.

  "I don't care what you think!" Thad said. "I told you that I know who you are, Sheriff Pangborn. My wife and I have owned a summer house in Castle Rock since 1973--long before you ever heard of the place. I don't know what you're doing here, a hundred and sixty-odd miles from your territory, or why you're looking at me like I was a splat of birdshit on a new car, but I can tell you I'm not going anywhere with you until I find out. If it's going to take an arrest warrant, you go on and get one. But I want you to know that if you do, you're going to be up to your neck in a kettle of boiling shit and I'll be the one underneath stoking the fire. Because I haven't done anything. This is fucking outrageous. Just . . . fucking . . . outrageous!"

  Now his voice had reached full volume, and both the Troopers looked a little abashed. Pangborn did not. He went on staring at Thad in that unsettling way.

  In the other room, one of the twins began to cry.

  "Oh Jesus," Liz moaned, "what is this? Tell us!"

  "Go take care of the kids, babe," Thad said, not unlocking his gaze from Pangborn's.

  "But--"

  "Please," he said, and then both babies were crying. "This will be all right. "

  She gave him a final trembling look, her eyes saying Do you promise? and then went into the living room.

  "We want to question you in connection with the murder of Homer Gamache." the second Trooper said.

  Thad broke his hard stare at Pangborn and turned to the Trooper. "Who?"

  "Homer Gamache," Pangborn repeated. "Are you going to tell us the name means nothing to you, Mr. Beaumont?"

  "Of course I'm not," Thad said, astonished. "Homer takes our trash to the dump when we're in town. Makes some small repairs around the house. He lost an arm in Korea. They gave him the Silver Star--"

  "Bronze," Pangborn said stonily.

  "Homer's dead? Who killed him?"

  The Troopers now looked at each other, surprised. After grief, astonishment may be the most difficult human emotion to fake effectively.

  The first Trooper replied in a curiously gentle voice:

  "We have every reason to believe you did, Mr. Beaumont. That's why we're here. "

  4

  Thad looked at him with utter blankness for a moment and then laughed. "Jesus. Jesus Christ. This is crazy. "

  "Do you want to get a coat, Mr. Beaumont?" the other Trooper asked. "Raining pretty hard out there. "

  "I'm not going anywhere with you," he repeated absently, entirely missing Pangborn's sudden expression of exasperation. Thad was thinking.

  "I'm afraid you are," Pangborn said, "one way or the other. "

  "It'll have to be the other, then," he said, and then came out of himself. "When did this happen?"

  "Mr. Beaumont," Pangborn said, speaking slowly and enunciating carefully--it was as if he were speaking to a four-year-old, and not a terribly bright one at that. "We're not here to give you information. "

  Liz came back into the doorway with the babies. All color had drained from her face; her forehead shone like a lamp. "This is crazy," she said, looking from Pangborn to the Troopers and then back to Pangborn again. "Crazy. Don't you know that?"

  "Listen," Thad said, walking over to Liz and putting an arm around her, "I didn't kill Homer, Sheriff Pangborn, but I understand now why you're so pissed. Come on upstairs to my office. Let's sit down and see if we can't figure this out--"

  "I want you to get your coat," Pangborn said. He glanced at Liz. "Forgive my French, but I've had about all the bullshit I can put up with for a rainy Saturday morning. We have you cold. "

  Thad looked at the older of the two State Troopers. "Can you talk some sense to this man? Tell him that he can avoid a whole lot of embarrassment and trouble just by telling me when Homer was killed?" And, as an afterthought: "And where. If it was in The Rock, and I can't imagine what Homer would be doing up here . . . well, I haven't been out of Ludlow, except to go to the University, in the last two and a half months." He looked at Liz, who nodded.

  The Trooper thought it over, and then said: "Excuse us a moment. "

  The three of them went back down the hallway, the Troopers almost appearing to lead Pangborn. They went out the front door. As soon as it was shut, Liz burst into a spate of confused questions. Thad knew her well enough to suspect her terror would have come out as anger--fury, even--at the cops, if not for the news of Homer Gamache's death. As things were, she was on edge of tears.

  "It's going to be all right," he said, and kissed her on the cheek. As an afterthought, he also bussed William and Wendy, who were beginning to look decidedly troubled. "I think the State Troopers already know I'm telling the truth. Pangborn . . . well, he knew Homer. You did, too. He's just pissed as hell." And from the look and sound of him, he must have what seems like unshakable evidence tying me to the murder, he thought but did not add.

  He walked down the hall and peered out the narrow side window as Liz had done. If not for the situation, what he saw would have been funn
y. The three of them were standing on the stoop, almost but not quite out of the rain, having a conference. Thad could get the sound of their voices, but not the sense. He thought they looked like ballplayers conferring on the mound during a lateinning rally by the other team. Both State cops were talking to Pangborn, who was shaking his head and replying heatedly.

  Thad went back down the hall.

  "What are they doing?" Liz asked.

  "I don't know," Thad said, "but I think the State cops are trying to talk Pangborn into telling me why he's so sure I killed Homer Gamache. Or at least some of the why. "

  "Poor Homer," she muttered. "This is like a bad dream. "

  He took William from her and told her again not to worry.

  5

  The policemen came in about two minutes later. Pangborn's face was a thundercloud. Thad surmised the two State cops had told him what Pangborn himself already knew but didn't want to admit: the writer was exhibiting none of the tics and twitches they associated with guilt.

  "All right," Pangborn said. He was trying to avoid surliness, Thad thought, and doing a pretty good job. Not quite succeeding, but doing a pretty good job all the same, considering he was in the presence of his number-one suspect in the murder of a one-armed old man. "These gentlemen would like me to ask you at least one question here, Mr. Beaumont, and so I will. Can you account for your whereabouts during the time-period from eleven p. m. on May thirty-first until four a. m. on June first.

  The Beaumonts exchanged a glance. Thad felt a great weight around his heart loosen. It did not quite fall off, not yet, but he felt as if all the catches holding that weight had been unbuckled. Now all it would take was one good push.

  "Was it?" he murmured to his wife. He thought it was, but it seemed just a little too good to be true.

  "I'm sure it was," Liz responded. "The thirty-first, did you say?" She was looking at Pangborn with radiant hope.

  Pangborn looked back suspiciously. "Yes, ma'am. But I'm afraid your unsubstantiated word won't be--"