Needful Things - Stephen King [143]
Alan thought about it, then shook his head. It hadn't really been the warlords of Mars; this business actually looked quite simple. In a way, that was what made it so horrible. He saw no reason to cancel Norris's off-days.
"That's great," Norris said, and then added, "But I'll come in if you want, Alan. No problem."
"Shouldn't need you to, Norris," he said. "John and Clut have both been in touch with me-Clut went with the CID guys to talk with Pete jerzyck, and John went with the team investigating Nettle's end.
They've both been in touch. It's pretty clear. Nasty, but clear."
And it was yet he was troubled about it, just the same. On some deep level, he was very troubled indeed.
"Well, what happened? I mean, the Jerzyck bitch has been asking for it for years, but when somebody finally called her bluff, I thought she'd end up with a black eye or a broken arm nothing like this.
Was it just a case of picking on the wrong person?"
"I think that pretty well covers it," Alan said. "Wilma couldn't have picked a worse person in Castle Rock to start a feud with." :,Feud?" 'Polly gave Nettle a puppy last spring. It barked a little at first.
Wilma did a lot of bitching about it."
"Really? I don't remember a complaint sheet."
"She only made one official complaint. I caught it. Polly asked me if I would. She felt partly responsible, since she gave Nettle the dog in the first place. Nettle said she'd keep him inside as much as she could, and that finished it for me.
"The dog stopped the barking, but Wilma apparently went on bitching to Nettle. Polly says that Nettle'd cross the street when she saw Wilma coming, even if Wilma was two blocks away. Nettle did everything but fork the sign of the evil eye at her. Then, last week, she crossed the line. She went over to the jerzycks' while Pete and Wilma were at work, saw the sheets hanging on the line, and covered them with mud from the garden."
Norris whistled. "Did we catch that complaint, Alan?"
Alan shook his head. "From then until this afternoon, it was all between the ladies." :'What about Pete jerzyck?" ,:Do you know Pete?"
Well " Norris stopped. Thought about Pete. Thought about Wilma. Thought about the two of them together. Slowly nodded his head. "He was afraid Wilma would chew him up one side and down the other if he tried playing referee so he stood aside.
Is that it?"
"Sort of. He actually may have headed things off, at least for awhile. Clut says Pete told the CID guys that Wilma wanted to go over to Nettle's as soon as she got a look at her sheets. She was ready to rock and roll. She apparently called Nettle on the phone and told her she was going to rip off her head and shit down her neck."
Norris nodded. Between the autopsy on Wilma and the autopsy on Nettle, he had called dispatch in Castle Rock and asked for a list of complaints involving each of the two women. Nettle's list was short-one item. She had snapped and killed her husband. End of story.
No flare-ups before and none since, including the last few years she'd spent back in town. Wilma was a different kettle of tripe entirely.
She had never killed anyone, but the list of complaintsthose made by her and those made about her-was a long one, and went back to what had then been Castle Rock junior High, where she had punched a substitute teacher in the eye for giving her detention. On two occasions, worried women who'd had the ill luck or judgment to get into Wilma's bad books had requested police protection. Wilma had also been the subject of three assault complaints over the years. Ultimately all charges had been dropped, but it didn't take much study to figure out that no one in his or her right mind would have chosen Wilma jerzyck to fuck with.
"They were bad medicine for each other," Norris murmured.
"The worst."
"Her husband talked Wilma out of going over there the first time she wanted to go?"
"He knew better than to even try. He told Clut he dropped two Xanax into a cup of tea and that lowered her thermostat. In fact, jerzyck says he thought it was all over."
"Do you believe him, Alan?"