If Nettle had gone into Needful Things, if Nettle had spent some time there-browsing, talking to the new shopkeeper that everyone in town thought was so fascinating and whom Alan kept not meeting-that might have bitched up her window of opportunity and re-opened the possibility of a mystery rock-thrower. But she hadn't. The shop had been closed. Gaunt had told both Polly, who had indeed dropped by later on, and the CID boys that he had seen neither hide nor hair of Nettle since the day she came in and bought her carnival glass lampshade. In any case, he had spent the morning in the back room, listening to classical music and cataloguing items. If someone had knocked, he probably wouldn't have heard anyway. So Nettle must have gone directly home, and that left her the time to do all those things which Alan found so unlikely.
Wilma Jersyck's window of opportunity was even narrower. Her husband had some woodworking equipment in the basement; he had been down there Sunday morning from eight until just past ten. He saw it was getting late, he said, so he'd shut down the machinery and gone upstairs to dress for eleven o'clock Mass.
Wilma, he told the officers, had been in the shower when he entered the bedroom, and Alan had no reason to doubt the new widower's testimony.
It must have gone like this: Wilma leaves her house on a driveby mission at nine-thirty-five or nine-forty. Pete's in the basement, making birdhouses or whatever, and doesn't even know she's gone.
Wilma gets to Nettle's at about quarter to ten-just minutes after Nettle must have left for Polly's-and sees the door standing open.
To Wilma, this is as good as a gilt-edged invitation. She parks, goes inside, kills the dog and writes the note on impulse, and leaves again. None of the neighbors remembered seeing Wilma's bright yellow Yugo-inconvenient, but hardly proof it hadn't been there.
Most of the neighbors had been gone, anyway, either to church or visiting out of town.
Wilma drives back to her house, goes upstairs while Pete is shutting down his planer or jigsaw or whatever, and gets undressed.
When Pete enters the master bathroom to wash the sawdust off his hands before putting on a coat and tie, Wilma has just stepped into the shower; in fact, she's probably still dry on one side.
Pete jerzyck's finding his wife in the shower was the only thing in the whole mess that made perfect sense to Alan. The corkscrew which had been used on the dog was a lethal enough weapon, but a short one.
She'd have wanted to wash off any bloodstains on her hands and arms.
Wilma just misses Nettle on one end and just misses her husband on the other. Was it possible? Yes. Only by a squeak and a gasp, but it was possible.
So let it go, Alan. Let it go and go to sleep.
But he still couldn't, because it still sucked. It sucked hard.
Alan rolled onto his back once more. Downstairs he heard the clock in the living room softly chiming four. This was getting him nowhere at all, but he couldn't seem to turn his mind off.
He tried to imagine Nettle sitting patiently at her kitchen table, writing THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING overand overagain while, less than twenty feet away, her beloved little dog lay dead. He couldn't do it no matter how he tried. What had seemed like a gate into this particular garden now seemed more and more like a clever painting of a gate on the high, unbroken wall. A trompe Poeil.
Had Nettle walked over to Wilma's house on Willow Street and broken the windows? He didn't know, but he did know that Nettle Cobb was still a figure of interest in Castle Rock... the crazy lady who had killed her husband and then spent all those years in juniper Hill.
On the rare occasions when she deviated from the path of her usual routine, she was noticed. If she had gone stalking over to Willow Street on Sunday morning-perhaps muttering to herself as she went and almost certainly crying-she would have been noticed. Tomorrow Alan would start knocking on the doors between the two houses and asking questions.
He began to slip off to sleep at last. The image that followed him down was a pile of rocks with a sheet of note-paper banded around each one. And he thought again: If Nettle didn't throw them, then who did?
9
As the small hours of Monday morning crept toward dawn and the beginning of a new and interesting week, a young man named Ricky Bissonette emerged from the hedge surrounding the Baptist parsonage.
Inside this neat-as-a-pin building, the Reverend William Rose slept the sleep of the just and the righteous.
Ricky, nineteen and not overburdened with brains, worked down at Sonny's Sunoco. He had closed up hours ago but had hung around in the office, waiting until it was late enough (or early enough) to play a little prank on Rev. Rose. On Friday afternoon, Ricky had stopped by the new shop, and had fallen into conversation with the proprietor, who was one interesting old fellow. One thing led to another, and at some point Ricky had realized he was telling Mr. Gaunt his deepest, most secret wish. He mentioned the name of a young actress-model-a very young actress-model-and told Mr. Gaunt he would give just about anything for some pictures of this young woman with her clothes off.
"You know, I have something that might interest you," Mr.
Gaunt had said. He glanced around the store as if to verify that it was empty except for the two of them, then went to the door and turned the OPEN sign over to CLOSED. He returned to his spot by the cash register, rummaged under the counter, and came up with an unmarked manila envelope. "Have a look at these, Mr.
Bissonette," Mr. Gaunt said, and then dropped a rather lecherous man-of-the-world wink. "I think you'll be startled. Perhaps even amazed."
Stunned was more like it. It was the actress-model for whom Ricky lusted-it had to be!-and she was a lot more than just nude.
In some of the pictures she was with a well-known actor. In others, she was with two well-known actors, one of whom was old enough to be her grand father. And in still othersBut before he could see any of the others (and it appeared there were fifty or more, all brilliant eight-by-ten glossy color shots), Mr.
Gaunt had snatched them away.
"That's -!" Ricky gulped, mentioning a name which was well known to readers of the glossy tabloids and watchers of the glossy talk-shows.
"Oh, no," Mr. Gaunt said, while his jade-colored eyes said Oh, yes. "I'm sure it can't be... but the resemblance is remarkable, isn't it? The sale of pictures such as these is illegal, of course-sexual content aside, the girl can't be a minute over seventeen, whoever she is-but I might be persuaded to deal for these just the same, Mr. Bissonette. The fever in my blood is not malaria but commerce. So! Shall we dicker?"
They dickered. Ricky Bissonette ended up purchasing seventytwo p**n ographic photographs for thirty-six dollars... and this little prank.
He ran across the parsonage lawn bent over at the waist, settled into the shadow of the porch for a moment to make sure he was unwatched, then climbed the steps. He produced a plain white card from his back pocket, opened the mail-slot, and dropped the card through.
He eased the brass slot closed with the tips of his fingers, not wanting it to clack shut. Then he vaulted the porch railing and ran fleetly back across the lawn. He had big plans for the two or three hours of darkness which still remained to this Monday morning; they involved seventy-two photographs and a large bottle of jergens hand lotion.
The card looked like a white moth as it fluttered from the mailslot to the faded rug-runner in the front hall of the parsonage.
It landed message-side up: How you doing you Stupid Babtist Rat-Fuck.
We are writting you to say you better Quit talking out aginst our Casino Nite. We are just going to have a little fun we are not hurting You. Anyway a bunch of us Loyal Catholics are tired of your Babtist Bullshit. We know all You Babtists are a bunch of Cunt Lickers anyway.
Now to THIS You better Pay Atention, Reverund Steam-Boat Willy. If you dont keept your Dick-Face out of Our business, we are going to stink You and your Ass-Face Buddies up so bad you will Stink Forever!
Leave us alone you Stupid Babtist Rat-Fuck or You WILL BE A SORRY SON OF A BITCH. "Just a Warning" from THE CONCERNED CATHOLIC MEN OF CASTLE ROCK Rev. Rose discovered the note when he came downstairs in his bathrobe to collect the morning paper. His reaction is perhaps better imagined than described.
Leland Gaunt stood at the window of the front room above Needful Things with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out across the town of Castle Rock.
The four-room apartment behind him would have raised eyebrows in town, for there was nothing in it-nothing at all. Not a bed, not an appliance, not a single chair. The closets stood open and empty. A few dust-bunnies tumbled lazily across floors innocent of rugs in a slight draft that blew through the place at ankle level.
The only furnishings were, quite literally, window-dressing: homey checked curtains. They were the only furnishings which mattered, because they were the only ones which could be seen from the street.
The town was sleeping now. The shops were dark, the houses were dark, and the only movement on Main Street was the blinker at the intersection of Main and Watermill, flashing on and off in sleepy yellow beats. He looked over the town with a tender loving eye. It wasn't his town just yet, but it soon would be. He had a lien on it already. They didn't know that... but they would. They would.
The grand opening had gone very, very well.
Mr. Gaunt thought of himself as an electrician of the human soul.
In a small town like Castle Rock, all the fuse-boxes were lined up neatly side by side. What you had to do was open the boxes... and then start cross-wiring. You hot-wired a Wilma jerzyck to a Nettle Cobb by using wires from two other fuse-boxes-those of a young fellow like Brian Rusk and a drunk fellow like Hugh Priest, let us say.