Needful Things (83 page)

“Thank you, Miss Milliken!” He took ten and gave back eight.

He charged them what they could afford—not a penny more or a penny less. Each according to his means was Mr. Gaunt's motto, and never mind each according to his needs, because they were
all
needful things, and he had come here to fill their emptiness and end their aches.

“Good to see you, Mr. Emerson!”

Oh, it was always good, so very good, to be doing business in the old way again. And business had never been better.

Alan Pangborn wasn't in Castle Rock. While the reporters and the State Police gathered at one end of Main Street and Leland Gaunt conducted his going-out-of-business sale halfway up the hill, Alan was sitting at the nurses' station of the Blumer Wing in Northern Cumberland Hospital in Bridgton.

The Blumer Wing was small—only fourteen patient rooms—but what it tacked in size it made up for in color. The walls of the inpatient rooms were painted in bright primary shades. A mobile hung from the ceiling in the nurses' station, the birds depending from it swinging and dipping gracefully around a central spindle.

Alan was sitting in front of a huge mural which depicted a medley of Mother Goose rhymes. One section of the mural showed a man leaning across a table, holding something out to a small boy, obviously a hick, who looked both frightened and fascinated. Something about this particular image had struck Alan, and a snatch of childhood rhyme rose like a whisper in his mind:

Simple Simon met a pie-man

going to the fair.

“Simple Simon,” said the pie-man,

“come and taste my wares!”

A ripple of gooseflesh had broken out on Alan's arms—tiny bumps like beads of cold sweat. He couldn't say why, and that seemed perfectly normal. Never in his entire life had he felt as shaken, as scared, as deeply confused as he did right now. Something totally beyond his ability to understand was happening in Castle Rock. It had become clearly apparent only late this afternoon, when everything had seemed to blow sky-high at once, but it had begun days, maybe even a week, ago. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck had been only the first outward signs.

And he was terribly afraid that things were still progressing while he sat here with Simple Simon and the pie man.

A nurse, Miss Hendrie according to the small nameplate on her breast, walked up the corridor on faintly squeaking crepe soles weaving her way gracefully among the toys which littered the hall. When Alan came in, half a dozen kids, some with limbs in casts or slings, some with the partial baldness he associated with chemotherapy treatments, had been playing in the hall, trading blocks and trucks, shouting amiably to each other. Now it was the supper hour, and they had gone either down to the cafeteria or back to their rooms.

“How is he?” Alan asked Miss Hendrie.

“No change.” She looked at Alan with a calm expression which contained an element of hostility. “Sleeping. He
should
be sleeping. He has had a great shock.”

“What do you hear from his parents?”

“We called the father's place of employment in South Paris. He had an installation job over in New Hampshire this afternoon. He's left for home, I understand, and will be informed when he arrives. He should get here around nine, I would think, but of course it's impossible to tell.”

“What about the mother?”

“I don't know,” Miss Hendrie said. The hostility was more apparent now, but it was no longer aimed at Alan. “I didn't make that call. All I know is what I see—she's not here. This little boy saw his brother commit suicide with a rifle, and although it happened at home, the mother is not here yet. You'll have to excuse me now—I have to fill the med-cart.”

“Of course,” Alan muttered. He watched her as she started away, then rose from his chair. “Miss Hendrie?”

She turned to him. Her eyes were still calm, but her raised brows expressed annoyance.

“Miss Hendrie, I really do need to talk with Sean Rusk. I think I need to talk to him very badly.”

“Oh?” Her voice was cool.

“Something—” Alan suddenly thought of Polly and his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and pushed on. “Something is going on in my town. The suicide of Brian Rusk is only part of it, I believe. And I also believe that Sean Rusk may have the key to the rest of it.”

“Sheriff Pangborn, Sean Rusk is only seven years old.
And if he
does
know something, why aren't there other policemen here?”

Other policemen, he thought, What she means are
qualified
policemen. Policemen who don't interview eleven-year-old boys on the street and then send them home to commit suicide in the garage.

“Because they've got their hands full,” Alan said, “and because they don't know the town the way I do.”

“I see.” She turned to go again.

“Miss Hendrie.”

“Sheriff I'm short-handed this evening and very b—”

“Brian Rusk wasn't the only Castle Rock fatality today. There were at least three others. Another man, the owner of the local tavern, has been taken to the hospital in Norway with gunshot trauma. He may live, but it's going to be touch and go with him for the next thirty-six hours or so. And I have a hunch the killing isn't done.”

He had finally succeeded in capturing all of her attention.

“You believe Sean Rusk knows something about this?”

“He may know why his brother killed himself. If he does, that may open up the rest of it. So if he wakes up, will you tell me?”

She hesitated, then said, “That depends on his mental state when he does, Sheriff. I'm not going to allow you to make a hysterical little boy's condition worse, no matter what is going on in your town.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Good.” She gave him a look which said,
Just sit there and don't make trouble for me, then,
and went back behind the high desk. She sat down, and he could hear her putting bottles and boxes on the med-cart.

Alan got up, went to the pay phone in the hall, and dialled Polly's number again. And once again it simply rang on and on. He dialled You Sew and Sew, got the answering machine and racked the phone. He went back to his chair, sat in it, and stared at the Mother Goose mural some more.

You forgot to ask me one question, Miss Hendrie, Alan thought. You forgot to ask me why I'm here if there's so much going on in the seat of the county I was elected
to preserve and protect. You forgot to ask me why I'm not leading the investigation while some less essential officer—old Seat Thomas, for instance—sits here, waiting for Sean Rusk to wake up. You forgot to ask those things, Miss Hendrie, and I know a secret. I'm
glad
you forgot. That's the secret.

The reason was as simple as it was humiliating. Except in Portland and Bangor, murder belonged not to the Sheriff's Office but to the State Police. Henry Payton had winked at that in the wake of Nettie and Wilma's duel, but he was not winking anymore. He couldn't afford to. Representatives of every southern Maine newspaper and TV station were either in Castle Rock right now or on their way. They would be joined by their colleagues from all over the state before very much longer . . . and if this really was not over, as Alan suspected, they would shortly be joined by more media people from points south.

That was the simple reality of the situation, but it didn't change the way Alan felt. He felt like a pitcher who can't get the job done and is sent to the showers by the coach. It was an indescribably shitty way to feel. He sat in front of Simple Simon and once again began to add up the score.

Lester Pratt, dead. He had come to the Sheriff's Office in a jealous frenzy and had attacked John LaPointe. It was over his girl, apparently, although John had told Alan before the ambulance came that he had not dated Sally Ratcliffe in over a year. “I only thaw her to thpeek to wunth in awhile on the thtreet, and even then thee cut me dead motht of the time. Thee dethided I'm one of the hellbound.” He had touched his broken nose and winced. “Right now I
feel
hellhound.”

John was now hospitalized in Norway with a broken nose, a fractured jaw, and possible internal injuries.

Sheila Brigham was also in the hospital. Shock.

Hugh Priest and Billy Tupper were both dead. That news had come in just as Sheila was beginning to fall apart. The call came from a beer deliveryman, who'd had the sense to call Medical Assistance before calling the Sheriff. The man had been almost as hysterical as Sheila Brigham, and Alan hadn't blamed him. By then he had been feeling pretty hysterical himself.

Henry Beaufort, in critical condition as a result of multiple gunshot wounds.

Norris Ridgewick, missing . . . and that somehow hurt the most.

Alan had looked around for him after receiving the deliveryman's call, but Norris was just gone. Alan had assumed at the time that he must have gone outside to formally arrest Danforth and would return with the Head Selectman in tow, but events shortly proved that no one had arrested Keeton. Alan supposed the Staties would arrest him if they ran across him while they pursued other lines of investigation, but otherwise, no. They had more important things to do. In the meantime, Norris was just gone. Wherever he was, he'd gotten there on foot; when Alan left town, Norris's VW had still been lying on its side in the middle of Lower Main Street.

The witnesses said Buster had crawled into his Cadillac through the window and simply driven away. The only person who had tried to stop him had paid a steep price. Scott Garson was hospitalized here at Northern Cumberland with a broken jaw, broken cheekbone, broken wrist, and three broken fingers. It could have been worse; the bystanders claimed Buster had actively tried to run the man down as he lay in the street.

Lenny Partridge, broken collarbone and God knew how many broken ribs, was also here someplace. Andy Clutterbuck had weighed in with news of this fresh disaster while Alan was still trying to comprehend the fact that the town's Head Selectman was now a fugitive from justice handcuffed to a big red Cadillac. Hugh Priest had apparently stopped Lenny, tossed him across the road, and driven away in the old man's car. Alan supposed they would find Lenny's car in the parking lot of The Mellow Tiger, since Hugh had bitten the dust there.

And, of course, there was Brian Rusk, who had eaten a bullet at the ripe old age of eleven. Clut had barely begun to tell his tale when the phone rang again. Sheila was gone by then, and Alan had picked up on the voice of a screaming, hysterical little boy—Sean Rusk, who had dialled the number on the bright orange sticker beside the kitchen telephone.

All in all, Medical Assistance ambulances and Rescue
Services units from four different towns had made afternoon stops in Castle Rock.

Now, sitting with his back to Simple Simon and the pie-man, watching the plastic birds as they swung and dipped around their spindle, Alan turned once more to Hugh and Lenny Partridge. Their confrontation was hardly the biggest to take place in Castle Rock today, but it was one of the oddest . . . and Alan sensed that a key to this business might be hidden in its very oddity.

“Why in God's name didn't Hugh take his own car, if he had a hard-on for Henry Beaufort?” Alan had asked Clut, running his hands through hair which was already wildly disarranged. “Why bother with Lenny's old piece of shit?”

“Because Hugh's Buick was standing on four flats. Looked like somebody ripped the shit out of them with a knife.” Clut had shrugged, looking uneasily at the shambles the Sheriff's Office had become. “Maybe he thought Henry Beaufort did it.”

Yes, Alan thought now. Maybe so. It was crazy, but was it any crazier than Wilma Jerzyck thinking Nettie Cobb had first splattered mud on her sheets and then thrown rocks through the windows of her house? Any crazier than Nettie thinking Wilma had killed her dog?

Before he had a chance to question Clut any further, Henry Payton had come in and told Alan, as kindly as he could, that he was taking the case. Alan nodded. “There's one thing you need to find out, Henry, as soon as you can.”

“What's that, Alan?” Henry had asked, but Alan saw with a sinking feeling that Henry was listening to him with only half an ear. His old friend—the first real friend Alan had made in the wider law-enforcement community after winning the job as Sheriff, and a very valuable friend he had turned out to be—was already concentrating on other things. How he would deploy his forces, given the wide spread of the incidents, was probably chief among them.

“You need to find out if Henry Beaufort was as angry at Hugh Priest as Hugh apparently was at him. You can't ask him now, I understand he's unconscious, but when he wakes up—”

“Will do,” Henry said, and clapped Alan on the
shoulder. “Will do.” Then, raising his voice: “Brooks! Morrison! Over here!”

Alan watched him move off and thought of going after him. Of grabbing him and
making
him listen. He didn't do it, because Henry and Hugh and Lester and John—even Wilma and Nettie—were beginning to lose any feeling of real importance to him. The dead were dead; the wounded were being looked after; the crimes had been committed.

Except Alan had a terrible, sneaking suspicion that the real crime was still going on.

When Henry had walked away to brief his men, Alan had called Clut over once again. The Deputy came with his hands stuffed into his pockets and a morose look on his face. “We been replaced, Alan,” he said. “Taken right out of the picture. God
damn!”

“Not entirely,” Alan said, hoping he sounded as if he really believed this. “You're going to be my liaison here, Clut.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the Rusk house.”

But when he got there, both Brian and Sean Rusk were gone. The ambulance which was taking care of the unfortunate Scott Garson had swung by to pick up Sean; they were on their way to Northern Cumberland Hospital. Harry Samuels's second hearse, an old converted Lincoln, had gotten Brian Rusk and would take him to Oxford, pending autopsy. Harry's better hearse—the one he referred to as “the company car”—had already left for the same place with Hugh and Billy Tupper.