Needful Things - Stephen King [202]
He felt restless, oddly uneasy. It wouldn't hurt to cruise around the block where the murders had taken place. He might remember a few more families with kids in the right age-brackets if he actually looked at the houses and who knew? Maybe what Henry had said about kids also held true for middle-aged Polish ladies who bought their clothes at Lane Bryant. Jill Mislaburski's memory might improve if the questions were coming from someone with a familiar face.
He started to grab his uniform hat off the top of the coat tree by the door and then left it where it was. It might be better today, he decided, if I only look semi-official. As far as that goes, it wouldn't kill me to take the station wagon.
He left the office and stood in the bullpen for a moment, bemused.
John LaPointe had turned his desk and the space around it into something that looked in need of Red Cross flood-relief. Papers were stacked up everywhere. The drawers were nested inside each other, making a Tower of Babel on John's desk-blotter. it looked ready to fall over at any second. And John, ordinarily the most cheerful of police officers, was red-faced and cursing.
"I'm going to wash your mouth out with soap, Johnny," Alan said, grinning.
John jumped, then turned around. He answered Alan with a grin of his own, one which was both shamefaced and distracted.
"Sorry, Alan. I-" Then Alan was moving. He crossed the room with the same liquid, silent speed that had so struck Polly Chalmers on Friday evening. John LaPointe's mouth fell open. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw what Alan was up to-the two drawers on top of the stack he had made were starting to tumble.
Alan was fast enough to avert an utter disaster, but not fast enough to catch the first drawer. It landed on his feet, scattering papers, paper-clips, and loose bunches of staples everywhere. He pinned the other two against the side of John's desk with his palms.
"Holy Jesus! That was lickety-split, Alan!" John exclaimed.
"Thank you, John," Alan said with a pained smile. The drawers were starting to slip. Pushing harder did no good; it only made the desk start to move. Also, his toes hurt. "Toss all the compliments you want, by all means. But in between, maybe you could take the goddam drawer off my feet."
"Oh! Shit! Right! Right!" John hurried to do it. In his eagerness to remove the drawer, he bumped Alan. Alan lost his tenuous pressure-hold on the rwo drawers he had caught in time. They also landed on his feet.
"Ouch!" Alan yelled. He started to grab his right foot and then decided the left one hurt worse. "Bastard!"
"Holy Jesus, Alan, I'm sorry!"
"What have you got in there?" Alan asked, hopping away with his left foot in his hand. "Half of Castle Land Quarry?"
"I guess it has been awhile since I cleaned em out." John smiled guiltily and began stuffing papers and office supplies helter-skelter back into the drawers. His conventionally handsome face was flaming scarlet. He was on his knees, and when he pivoted to get the paper-clips and staples which had gone under Clut's desk, he kicked over a tall stack of forms and reports that he had stacked on the floor. Now the bullpen area of the Sheriff's Office was beginning to resemble a tornado zone.
"Whoops!" John said.
"Whoops," Alan said, sitting on Norris Ridgewick's desk and trying to massage his toes through his heavy black police-issue shoes.
"Whoops is good, John. A very accurate description of the situation.
This is a whoops if I ever saw one."
"Sorry," John said again, and actually wormed under his desk on his stomach, sweeping errant clips and staples toward him with the sides of his hands. Alan was not sure if he should laugh or cry.
John's feet were wagging back and forth as he moved his hands, spreading the papers on the floor widely and evenly.
"John, get out of there!" Alan yelled. He was trying hard not to laugh, but he could tell already it was going to be a lost cause.
LaPointe jerked. His head honked briskly against the underside of his desk. And another stack of papers, one which had been deposited on the