Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [246]
There was a gasp on the other end of the line.
'Naomi? Can we -'
There was a click as she hung up the telephone.
Connection broken.
4
Sam sat in his study until almost nine-thirty, eating Tums and writing one name after another on the same legal pad he had used when composing the first draft of his speech, He would look at each name for a little while, then cross it off. Six years had seemed like a long time to spend in one place ... at least until tonight. Tonight it seemed like a much shorter period of time - a weekend, say.
Craig Jones, he wrote.
He stared at the name and thought, Craig might know about Ardelia ... but he'd want to know why I was interested.
Did he know Craig well enough to answer that question truthfully? The answer to that question was a firm no. Craig was one of Junction City's younger lawyers, a real wannabe. They'd had a few business lunches ... and there was Rotary Club, of course ... and Craig had invited him to his house for dinner once. When they happened to meet on the street they spoke cordially, sometimes about business, more often about the weather. None of that added up to friendship, though, and if Sam meant to spill this nutty business to someone, he wanted it to be to a friend, not an associate that called him ole buddy after the second sloe-gin fizz.
He scratched Craig's name off the list.
He'd made two fairly close friends since coming to Junction City, one a physician's assistant with Dr Melden's practice, the other a city cop. Russ Frame, his PA friend, had jumped to a better-paying family practice in Grand Rapids early in 1989. And since the first of January, Tom Wycliffe had been overseeing the Iowa State Patrol's new Traffic Control Board. He had fallen out of touch with both men since - he was slow making friends, and not good at keeping them, either.
Which left him just where?
Sam didn't know. He did know that Ardelia Lortz's name affected some people in Junction City like a satchel charge. He knew - or believed he knew - that he had met her even though she was dead. He couldn't even tell himself that he had met a relative, or some nutty woman calling herself Ardelia Lortz. Because
I think I met a ghost. In fact, I think I met a ghost inside of a ghost. I think that the library I entered was the Junction City Library as it was when Ardelia Lortz was alive and in charge of the place. I think that's why it felt so weird and off-kilter. It wasn't like time-travel, or the way I imagine time-travel would be. It was more like stepping into limbo for a little while. And it was real. I'm sure it was real.
He paused, drumming his fingers on the desk.
Where did she call me from? Do they have telephones in limbo?
He stared at the list of crossed-off names for a long moment, then tore the yellow sheet slowly off the pad. He crumpled it up and tossed it in the wastebasket.
You should have left it alone, part of him continued to mourn.
But he hadn't. So now what?
Call one of the guys you trust. Call Russ Frame or Tom Wycliffe. Just pick up the phone and make a call.
But he didn't want to do that. Not tonight, at least. He recognized this as an irrational, half-superstitious feeling - he had given and gotten a lot of unpleasant information over the phone just lately, or so it seemed - but he was too tired to grapple with it tonight. If he could get a good night's sleep (and he thought he could, if he left the bedside lamp on again), maybe something better, something more concrete, would occur to him tomorrow morning, when he was fresh. Further along, he supposed he would have to try and mend his fences with Naomi Higgins and Dave Duncan ... but first he wanted to find out just what kind of fences they were.
If he could.
CHAPTER 9
The Library Policeman (I)
He did sleep well. There were no dreams, and an idea came to him naturally and easily in the shower the next morning, the way ideas