Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [382]
Across the town square he could see the urine-yellow front of the Emporium Galorium, standing slightly apart from its nearest neighbors: the vacant building which had housed The Village Washtub until earlier that year, Nan's Luncheonette, and You Sew and Sew, the dress-and-notions shop run by Evvie Chalmers's great-granddaughter, Polly - a woman of whom we must speak at another time.
There were slant-parking spaces in front of all the shops on Lower Main Street, and all of them were empty ... except for one, which was just now being filled with a Ford station-wagon Pop recognized. The light throb of its engine was clearly audible in the morning-still air. Then it cut off, the brakelights went out, and Pop pulled back the foot which had been in the gutter and prudently withdrew himself to the corner of LaVerdiere's. Here he stood as still as that dog who has been alerted in the henhouse by some small sound, the sort of sound which might be disregarded in the killing frenzy of dogs neither so old nor so wise as this one.
John Delevan got out from behind the wheel of the station-wagon. The boy got out on the passenger side. They went to the door of the Emporium Galorium. The man began to knock impatiently, loud enough so the sound of it came as clearly to Pop as the sound of the engine had done. Delevan paused, they both listened, and then Delevan started in again, not knocking now but hammering at the door, and you didn't have to be a goddam mind-reader to know the man was steamed up.
They know, Pop thought. Somehow they know. Damned good thing I smashed the fucking camera.
He stood a moment longer, nothing moving except his hooded eyes, and then he slipped around the corner of the drugstore and into the alley between it and the neighboring bank. He did it so smoothly that a man fifty years younger might have envied the almost effortless agility of the movement.
This morning, Pop figured, it might be a little wiser to go back home by backyard express.
CHAPTER 16
When there was still no answer, John Delevan went at the door a third time, hammering so hard he made the glass rattle loosely in its rotting putty gums and hurting his hand. It was hurting his hand that made him realize how angry he was. Not that he felt the anger was in any way unjustified if Merrill had done what Kevin thought he had done - and yes, the more he thought about it, the more John Delevan was sure that Kevin was right. But he was surprised that he hadn't recognized the anger for what it was until just now.
This seems to be a morning for learning about myself, he thought, and there was something schoolmarmish in that. It allowed him to smile and relax a little.
Kevin was not smiling, nor did he look relaxed.
'It seems like one of three things has happened,' Mr Delevan said to his son. 'Merrill's either not up, not answering the door, or he figured we were getting warm and he's absconded with your camera.' He paused, then actually laughed. 'I guess there's a fourth, too. Maybe he died in his sleep.'
'He didn't die.' Kevin now stood with his head against the dirty glass of the door he mightily wished he had never gone through in the first place. He had his hands cupped around his eyes to make blinders, because the sun rising over the east side of the town square ran a harsh glare across the glass. 'Look.'
Mr Delevan cupped his own hands to the sides of his face and pressed his nose to the glass. They stood there side by side, backs to the square, looking into the dimness of the Emporium Galorium like the world's most dedicated window-shoppers. 'Well,' he said after a few seconds, 'it looks like if he absconded he left his shit behind.'
'Yeah - but that's not what I mean. Do you see it?'
'See what?'
'Hanging on that post. The one by the bureau with all the clocks on it.'
And after a moment, Mr Delevan did see it: a Polaroid camera, hanging by its strap from a hook on the post. He thought he could even see the chipped place, although that might have been his imagination.
It's not your imagination.
The smile