This stuff is deadly. Ten-four?"
"I acknowledge," Henry heard himself say. He found himself wishing he were anywhere but here-but since he was here, he wished that Alan Pangborn were here beside him. Since arriving in Castle Rock, he had come more and more to feel like Brer Rabbit stuck in the Tar Baby.
"What is it? K?"
"We don't know yet. Not curare, because there was no paralysis until the very end. Also, curare is relatively painless, and Mr.
Beaufort suffered a great deal. All we know right now is that it started slowly and then moved like a freight-train. Ten-four."
"That's all? Ten-four."
"Jesus Christ," Ray Van Allen ejaculated. "Isn't it enough?
Tenfour."
"Yes. I guess it is. K."
"Just be glad-" Crackle crackle brrack!
"Say again, Dr. Van Allen. Say again. Ten-four."
Through the swelling ocean of static he heard Dr. Van Allen say, "Just be glad you've got the gun in custody. That you don't have to worry about it doing any more damage. Ten-four."
"You got that right, buddy. Ten-forty, out."
5
Cora Rusk turned onto Main Street and walked slowly toward Needful Things. She passed a bright yellow Ford Econoline van with WPTD CHANNEL 5 ACTION NEWS emblazoned on the side, but did not see Danforth "Buster" Keeton looking out of the driver's window at her with unblinking eyes. She probably wouldn't have recognized him in any case; Buster had become, in a manner of speaking, a new man. And even if she had seen and recognized him, it would have meant nothing to Cora. She had her own problems and sorrows. Most of all, she had her own anger. And none of this concerned her dead son.
In one hand, Cora Rusk held a pair of broken sunglasses.
It had seemed to her that the police were going to question her forever... or at least until she went mad. Go away! she wanted to scream at them. Stop asking me all these stupid questions about Brian!
Arrest him if he's in trouble, his father willfix it, fixing things I. s all he's good for, but leave me alone! I've got a date with The King, and I can't keep him waiting!
At one point she had seen Sheriff Pangborn leaning in the doorway between the kitchen and the back stoop, his arms folded across his chest, and she had been on the very verge of blurting this out, thinking he would understand. He wasn't like these others-he was from town, he would know about Needful Things, he would have bought his own special item there, he would understand.
Except Mr. Gaunt had spoken up in her mind just then, as calm and as reasonable as ever. No, [email protected]'t talk to him. He wouldn't understand. He's not like you. He's not a smart shopper. Tell them you want to go to the hospital and see your other boy. That will get rid of them, at least for awhile. After that it won't matter.
So she had told them just that, and it worked like a charm. She had even managed to squeeze out a tear or two, thinking not about Brian but about how sad Elvis must feel, wandering around Graceland without her. Poor lost King!
They had left, all but the two or three who were out in the garage. Cora didn't know what they were doing or what they could possibly want out there, and she didn't care. She grabbed her magic sunglasses off the table and hurried upstairs. Once she was in her room she slipped out of her robe, lay down on her bed, and put them on.
At once she was in Graceland again. Relief, anticipation, and amazing horniness filled her.
She swept up the curving staircase, cool and nude, to the upstairs hall, hung with jungle tapestries and nearly as wide as a freeway.
She walked down to the closed double doors at the far end, her bare feet whispering in the deep nap of the carpet. She saw her fingers reach out and close around the handles. She pushed the doors open, revealing The King's bedroom, a room which was all black and white-black walls, white shag rug, black drapes over the windows, white trim on the black bedspread-except for the ceiling, which was painted midnight blue with a thousand twinkly electric stars.
Then she looked at the bed and that was when the horror struck.
The King was on the bed, but The King was not alone.
Sitting on top of him, riding him like a pony, was Myra Evans.
She had turned her head and stared at Cora when the doors opened.
The King only kept looking up at Myra, blinking those sleepy, beautiful blue eyes of his.
"Myra!" Cora had exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"Well," Myra said smugly, "I'm sure not vacuuming the floor."
Cora gasped for breath, utterly stunned. "Well... well... well I'll be butched! she cried, her voice rising as her wind returned.
"Then go be butched," Myra said, pumping her hips faster, "and take those silly sunglasses off while you're at it. They look stupid.
Get out of here. Go back to Castle Rock. We're busy... aren't we, E?"
"That's raht, sweet thang," The long said. "Just as busy as two twiddlybugs in a carpet."
Horror turned to fury, and Cora's paralysis broke with a snap.
She rushed at her so-called friend, meaning to rip her deceitful eyes from their sockets. But when she raised one clawed hand to do so, Myra reached out-never missing a stroke with her pumping hips as she did-and tore the sunglasses from Cora's face with her own hand.
Cora had squeezed her eyes shut in surprise... and when she opened them, she had been lying in her own bed again. The sunglasses were on the floor, both lenses shattered.
"No," Cora moaned, lurching out of bed. She wanted to shriek, but some inner voice-not her own-warned her that the police in the garage would hear if she did, and come running. "No, please no, please, pleeeease-" She tried to fit chunks of the broken lenses back into the streamlined gold frames, but it had been impossible. They were broken.
Broken by that evil whoring slut. Broken by herfriend, Myra Evans.
Her friend who had somehow found her own way to Graceland, her friend who was even now, as Cora tried to put together a priceless artifact that was irretrievably broken, making love to The King.
Cora looked up. Her eyes had become glittering black slits.
"I'll butch her," she had whispered hoarsely. "See if I don't."
6
She read the sign in the window of Needful Things, paused for a moment, thinking, and then walked around to the service alley. She brushed by Francine Pelletier, who was on her way out of the alley, putting something into her purse. Cora hardly even looked at her.
Halfway down the alley she saw Mr. Gaunt standing behind a wooden table which lay across the open back door of his shop like a barricade.
"Ah, Cora!" he exclaimed. "I was wondering when you'd drop by."
"That bitch!" Cora spat. "That double-crossing little slut-bitch!"
"Pardon me, Cora," Mr. Gaunt said with urbane politeness, "but you seem to have missed a button or two." He pointed one of his odd, long fingers at the front of her dress.
Cora had slipped the first thing she'd found in the closet on over her nakedness, and had managed to do only the top button.
Below that one, the dress gaped open to the curls of her pubic hair. Her belly, swelled by a great many Ring-Dings, Yodels, and chocolate-covered cherries during Santa Barbara (and all her other shows), curved smoothly out.
"Who gives a shit?" Cora snapped.
"Not I," Mr. Gaunt agreed serenely. "How may I help you?"
"That bitch is f**king The King. She broke my sunglasses. I want to kill her."
"Do you," Mr. Gaunt said, raising his eyebrows. "Well, I can't say that I don't sympathize, Cora, because I do. It may be that a woman who would steal another woman's man deserves to live. I wouldn't care to say on that subject one way or the other-I've been a businessman all my life, and know very little about matters of the heart. But a woman who deliberately breaks another woman's most treasured possession well, that is a much more serious thing. Do you agree?"
She began to smile. It was a hard smile. It was a merciless smile.
It was a smile utterly devoid of sanity. "Too f**king right," said Cora Rusk.
Mr. Gaunt turned around for a moment. When he faced Cora again, he was holding an automatic pistol in one hand.
"Might you be looking for something like this?" he asked.
CHAPTER TWENTY
1
After Buster finished with Myrtle, he fell into a deep fugue state.
All sense of purpose seemed to desert him. He thought of them-the whole town was crawling with Them-but instead of the clear, righteous anger the idea had brought only minutes before, he now felt only weariness and depression. He had a pounding headache.
His arm and back ached from wielding the hammer.
He looked down and saw that he was still holding it. He opened his hand and it fell to the kitchen linoleum, making a bloody splatter there. He stood looking at this splatter for almost a full minute with a kind of idiot attention. It looked to him like a sketch of his father's face drawn in blood.
He plodded through the living room and into his study, rubbing his shoulder and upper arm as he went. The handcuff chain jingled maddeningly. He opened the closet door, dropped to his knees, crawled beneath the clothes which hung at the front, and dug out the box with the pacers on the front. He backed clumsily out of the closet again (the handcuff caught in one of Myrtle's shoes and he threw it to the back of the closet with a sulky curse), took the box over to his desk, and sat down with it in front of him. Instead of excitement, he felt only sadness. Winning Ticket was wonderful, all right, but what good could it possibly do him now? It didn't matter if he put the money back or not. He had murdered his wife.