Four Past Midnight - Stephen King [61]
Then he thought of Craig Toomy, and alarm replaced relief.
'Say, I didn't kill that guy, did I? I hit him pretty hard.' He looked towards Craig, who was lying near the restaurant door with Don Gaffney kneeling beside him. Albert suddenly felt like passing out again. There was a great deal of blood on Craig's face and forehead.
'He's alive,' Don said, 'but he's out like a light.'
Albert, who had blown away more hardcases than The Man with No Name in his dreams, felt his gorge rise. 'Jesus, there's so much blood!'
'Doesn't mean a thing,' Nick said. 'Scalp wounds tend to bleed a lot.' He joined Don, picked up Craig's wrist, and felt for a pulse. 'You want to remember he had a gun to that girl's head, matey. If he'd pulled the trigger at point-blank range, he might well have done for her. Remember the actor who killed himself with a blank round a few years ago? Mr Toomy brought this on himself; he owns it completely. Don't take on.'
Nick dropped Craig's wrist and stood up.
'Besides,' he said, pulling a large swatch of paper napkins from the dispenser on one of the tables, 'his pulse is strong and regular. I think he'll wake up in a few minutes with nothing but a bad headache. I also think it might be prudent to take a few precautions against that happy event. Mr Gaffney, the tables in yonder watering hole actually appear to be equipped with tablecloths - strange but true. I wonder if you'd get a couple? We might be wise to bind old Mr I've-Got-to-Get-to-Boston's hands behind him.'
'Do you really have to do that?' Laurel asked quietly. 'The man is unconscious, after all, and bleeding.'
Nick pressed his makeshift napkin compress against Craig Toomy's headwound and looked up at her. 'You're Laurel, right?'
'Right.'
'Well, Laurel, let's not paint it fine. This man is a lunatic. I don't know if our current adventure did that to him or if he just growed that way, like Topsy, but I do know he's dangerous. He would have grabbed Dinah instead of Bethany if she had been closer. If we leave him untied, he might do just that next time.'
Craig groaned and waved his hands feebly. Bob Jenkins stepped away from him the moment he began to move, even though the revolver was now safely tucked into the waistband of Brian Engle's pants, and Laurel did the same, pulling Dinah with her.
'Is anybody dead?' Dinah asked nervously. 'No one is, are they?'
'No, honey.'
'I should have heard him sooner, but I was listening to the man who sounds like a teacher.'
'It's okay,' Laurel said. 'It turned out all right, Dinah.' Then she looked out at the empty terminal and her own words mocked her. Nothing was all right here. Nothing at all.
Don returned with a red-and-white-checked tablecloth in each fist.
'Marvellous,' Nick said. He took one of them and spun it quickly and expertly into a rope. He put the center of it in his mouth, clamping his teeth on it to keep it from unwinding, and used his hands to flip Craig over like a human omelette.
Craig cried out and his eyelids fluttered.
'Do you have to be so rough?' Laurel asked sharply.
Nick gazed at her for a moment, and she dropped her eyes at once. She could not help comparing Nick Hopewell's eyes with the eyes in the pictures which Darren Crosby had sent her. Widely spaced, clear eyes in a goodlooking - if unremarkable - face. But the eyes had also been rather unremarkable, hadn't they? And didn't Darren's eyes have something, perhaps even a great deal, to do with why she had made this trip in the first place? Hadn't she decided, after a great deal of close study, that they were the eyes of a man who would behave himself? A man who would back off if you told him to back off?
She had boarded Flight 29 telling herself that this was her great adventure, her one extravagant