27
The Budwelser truck Hugh had almost sideswiped in town stopped at a couple of the little mom-n-pops on the other side of the bridge and finally pulled into the parking lot of The Mellow Tiger at 4:01 p.m.
The driver got out, grabbed his clipboard, hitched up his green khaki pants, and marched toward the building. He stopped five feet away from the door, eyes widening. He could see a pair of feet in the bar's doorway.
"Holy Joe!" the driver exclaimed. "You okay, buddy?"
A faint wheezing cry drifted to his ears:... help...
The driver ran inside and discovered Henry Beaufort, barely alive, crumpled behind the bar.
28
"Ith Lethter Pratt," John LaPointe croaked. Supported by Norris on one side and Sheila on the other, he had hobbled over to where Alan knelt by the body.
"Who?" Alan asked. He felt as if he had accidentally stumbled into some mad comedy. Ricky and Lucy Go to Hell. Hey Lester, you got some 'splainin to do.
"Lethter Pratt," John said again with painful patience. "He'th the Phidthical Educaythun teather at the high thcool."
"What's he doing here?" Alan asked.
John LaPointe shook his head wearily. "Dunno, Alan. He jutht came in and went cray the."
"Somebody give me a break," Alan said. "Where's Hugh Priest?
Where's Clut? What in God's name is going on here?"
29
George T. Nelson stood in the doorway of his bedroom, looking around unbelievingly. The place looked as if some punk band-the Sex Pistols, maybe the Cramps-had had a party in it, along with all their fans.
"What-" he began, and could say no more. Nor did he need to. He knew what. It was the coke. Had to be. He'd been dealing among the faculty at Castle Rock High for the last six years (not all the teachers were appreciators of what Ace Merrill sometimes called Bolivian Bingo Dust, but the ones who were qualified as big appreciators), and he'd left half an ounce of almost pure coke under the mattress. It was the blow, sure it was. Someone had talked and someone else had gotten greedy. George supposed he'd known that as soon as he'd pulled into the driveway and saw the broken kitchen window.
He crossed the room and yanked up the mattress with hands that felt dead and numb. Nothing underneath. The coke was gone.
Nearly two thousand dollars' worth of almost pure coke, gone. He sleepwalked toward the bathroom to see if his own small stash was still in the Anacin bottle on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet.
He'd never needed a hit as badly as he did just now.
He reached the doorway and stopped, eyes wide. It wasn't the mess that riveted his attention, although this room had also been turned upside down with great zeal; it was the toilet. The ring was down, and it was thinly dusted with white stuff.
George had an idea that white stuff was not Johnson's Baby Powder.
He walked across to the toilet, wetted his finger, and touched it to the dust. He put his finger in his mouth. The tip of his tongue went numb almost at once. Lying on the floor between the john and the tub was an empty plastic Baggie. The picture was clear.
Crazy, but clear. Someone had come in, found the coke... and then flushed it down the crapper. Why? Why? He didn't know, but he decided when he found the person who had done this, he would ask. just before he tore his head right off his shoulders. it couldn't hurt.
His own three-gram stash was intact. He carried it out of the bathroom and then stopped again as a fresh shock struck his eyes.
He hadn't seen this particular abomination as he crossed the bedroom from the hall, but from this angle it was impossible to miss.
He stood where he was for a long moment, eyes wide with amazed horror, his throat working convulsively. The nests of veins at his temples beat rapidly, like the wings of small birds. He finally managed to produce one small, strangled word:... mom...!"
Downstairs, behind George T. Nelson's oatmeal-colored sofa, Frank jewett slept on.
30
The bystanders on Lower Main, who had been called out to the sidewalk by the yelling and the gunshot, were now being entertained by a new novelty: the slow-motion escape of their Head Selectman.
Buster leaned as far into his Cadillac as he could and turned the ignition switch to the oN position. He then pushed the button that lowered the power window on the driver's side. He closed the door again and carefully began to wriggle in through the window.
He was still sticking out from the knees down, his left arm pulled back behind him at a severe angle by the handcuff around the doorhandle, the chain lying across his large left thigh, when Scott Garson came up.
"Uh, Danforth," the banker said hesitantly, "I don't think you're supposed to do that. I believe you're arrested."
Buster looked under his right armpit, smelling his own aromaquite spicy by now, quite spicy indeed-and saw Garson upside down. He was standing directly behind Buster. He looked as if he might be planning to try to haul Buster back out of his own car.
Buster pulled his legs up as much as he could and then shot them out, hard, like a pony kicking up dickens in the @asture. The heels of his shoes struck Garson's face with a smack which Buster found entirely satisfying. Garson's gold-rimmed spectacles shattered. He howled, reeled backward with his bleeding face in his hands, and fell on his back in Main Street.
"Hah!" Buster grunted. "Didn't expect that, did you? Didn't expect that at all, you persecuting son of a bitch, did you?"
He wriggled the rest of the way into his car. There was just enough chain. His shoulder-joint creaked alarmingly and then rotated enough in its socket to allow him to wriggle under his own arm and scoot his ass back along the seat. Now he was sitting behind the wheel with his cuffed arm out the window. He started the car.
Scott Garson sat up in time to see the Cadillac bearing down on him. Its grille seemed to leer at him, a vast chrome mountain which was going to crush him.
He rolled frantically to the left, avoiding death by less than a second. One of the Cadillac's large front tires rolled over his right hand, squashing it pretty efficiently. Then the rear tire rolled over it, finishing the job. Garson lay on his back, looking at his grotesquely mashed fingers, which were now roughly the size of puttyknives, and began to scream up into the hot blue sky.
31
"TAMMMEEEEE FAYYYYE!"
This shriek hauled Frank jewett out of his deepening doze. He had absolutely no idea where he was in those first confused seconds-only that it was some tight, close place. An unpleasant place.
There was something in his hand, too... what was it?
He raised his right hand and almost poked out his own eye with the steak-knife. itoooooohhhh, noooooooh! TAMMEEEEEEE FAYYYYE!"
It came back to him all at once. He was behind the couch of his good old "friend," George T. Nelson, and that was George T.
Nelson himself, in the flesh, noisily mourning his dead parakeet.
Along with this realization, everything else returned to Frank: the magazines scattered all over the office, the blackmail note, the possible (no, probable-the more he thought about it, the more probable it seemed) ruin of his career and his life.
Now, incredibly, he could hear George T. Nelson sobbing. Sobbing over a goddam flying shithouse. Well, Frank thought, I'm going to put you out of your misery, George. Who knows-maybe you'll even wind up in bird heaven.
The sobs were approaching the sofa. Better and better. He would jump up-surprise, George!-and the bastard would be dead before he had any idea of what was up. Frank was on the verge of making his spring when George T. Nelson, still sobbing as if his heart would break, seat-dropped onto his sofa. He was a heavy man, and his weight drove the sofa back smartly toward the wall. He did not hear the surprised, breathless "Oooof."' from behind him; his own sobs covered it. He fumbled for the telephone, dialed through a shimmer of tears and got (almost miraculously) Fred Rubin on the first ring.
"Fred!" he cried. "Fred, something terrible has happened!
Maybe it's still happening! Oh Jesus, Fred! Oh Jesus!"
Below and behind him, Frank jewett was struggling for breath.
Edgar Allan Poe stories he'd read as a kid, stories about being buried alive, raced through his head. His face was slowly turning the color of old brick. The heavy wooden leg which had been forced against his chest when George T. Nelson collapsed onto the sofa felt like a bar of lead. The back of the sofa lay against his shoulder and the side of his face.
Above him, George T. Nelson was spilling a garbled description of what he'd found when he finally got home into Fred Rubin's ear.
At last he paused for a moment and then cried out, "I don't care if I shouldn't be calking about it on the phone-HOW CAN I CARE
WHEN HE KILLED TAMMY Faye? THE BASTARD KILLED
TAMMY Faye! Who could have done it, Fred? Who? You have to help me!"
Another pause as George T. Nelson listened, and Frank realized with growing panic that he was soon going to pass out. He suddenly understood what he had to do-use the Llama automatic to shoot up through the sofa. He might not kill George T. Nelson, he might not even hit George T. Nelson, but he could sure as hell get George T.
Nelson's attention, and once he did that he thought the odds were good that George T. Nelson would get his fat ass off this sofa before Frank died down here with his nose squashed against the baseboard heating unit.
Frank opened the hand holding the steak-knife and tried to reach for the pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants. Dreamlike horror washed through him as he realized he couldn't get ithis fingers were opening and closing two full inches above the gun's ivory-inlaid handle. He tried with all his remaining strength to get the hand down lower, but his pinned shoulder would not move at all; the big sofa-and George T. Nelson's considerable weightheld it firmly against the wall.