Gerald's Game - Stephen King [156]
This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert, she had written, but was it? Could she? She was so tired. Of course she was; she had been pushing that goddamned cursor across the VDT screen almost all day. Pushing the envelope, they called it, and if you pushed the envelope long enough and hard enough, you tore it wide open. Maybe it would be best to just go upstairs and take a nap. Better late than never, and all that shit. She could file this to memory, retrieve it tomorrow morning, go back to work on it then —
Punkin's voice stopped her. This voice came only infrequently now, and Jessie listened very carefully to it when it did.
If you decide to stop now, Jessie, don't bother to file the document. Just delete it. We both know you'll never have the guts to face Joubert again — not the way a person has to face a — thing she's writing about. Sometimes it takes heart to write about a thing, doesn't it? To let that thing out of the room way in the back of your mind and put it up there on the screen.
'Yes,' she murmured. 'A yard of heart. Maybe more.'
She dragged at her cigarette, then snuffed it out half-smoked. She riffled through the clippings a final time and looked out the window at the slope of Eastern Prom. The snow had long since stopped and the sun was shining brightly, although it wouldn't be for much longer; February days in Maine are thankless, miserly things.
'What do you say, Punkin?' Jessie asked the empty room. She spoke in the haughty Elizabeth Taylor voice she had favored as a child, the one that had driven her mother completely bonkers. 'Shall we carry on, my deah?'
There was no answer, but Jessie didn't need one. She leaned forward in her chair and set the cursor in motion once more. She didn't stop again for a long time, not even to light a cigarette.
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y - S E V E N
This is the time to talk about Raymond Andrew Joubert. It won't be easy, but I'm going to do my best. So pour yourself another cup of coffee, dear, and if you've got a bottle of brandy handy, you may want to doctor it up a bit. Here comes Part Three.
I have all the newspaper clippings beside me on the desk, but the articles and news items don't tell all I know, let alone all there is to know — I doubt if anyone has the slightest idea of all the things Joubert did (including Joubert himself, I imagine), and that's probably a blessing. The stuff the papers could only hint at and the stuff that didn't make them at all is real nightmare-fodder, and I wouldn't want to know all of it. Most of the stuff that isn't in the papers came to me during the last week courtesy of a strangely quiet, strangely chastened Brandon Milheron. I'd asked him to come over as soon as the connections between Joubert's story and my own had become too obvious to ignore.
'You think this was the guy, don't you?' he asked. 'The one who was in the house with you?'
'Brandon,' I said, 'Iknow it's the guy.'
He sighed, looked down at his hands for a minute, then looked up at me again — we were in this very room, it was nine o'clock in the morning, and there were no shadows to hide his face that time. 'I owe you an apology,' he said. 'I didn't believe you then — '
'I know,' I said, as kindly as I could.
' — but I do now. Dear God. How much do you want to know, Jess?'
I took a deep breath and said, 'Everything you can find out.'
He wanted to know why. 'I mean, if you say it's your business and I should butt out, I guess I'll have to accept that, but you're asking me to re-open a matter the firm considers closed. If someone who knows I was watching out for you last fall notices me sniffing around Joubert this winter, it's not impossible that — '
'That you could get in trouble,' I said. It was something I hadn't considered.
'Yes,' he said, 'but I'm not terribly concerned about that — I'm a big boy, and I can take care of myself . . . at least I think I can. I'm a lot more concerned about you, Jess. You could wind up on the front page again, after