Needful Things - Stephen King [203]
He's gonna be filing those all day, Alan thought resignedly.
Maybe all week.
Then he could hold on no longer. He threw back his head and bellowed laughter. Andy Clutterbuck, who had been in the dispatcher's office, came out to see what was going on.
"Sheriff?" he asked. "Everything okay?"
"Yeah," Alan said. Then he looked at the reports and forms, scattered hell to breakfast, and began to laugh again. "John's doing a little creative paperwork here, that's all."
John crawled out from under his desk and stood up. He looked like a man who wishes mightily that someone would ask him to stand at attention, or maybe hit the deck and do forty pushupsThe front of his previously immaculate uniform was covered with dust, and in spite of his amusement, Alan made a mental note it had been a long time since Eddie Warburton had taken care of the floor under these bullpen desks.
Then he began laughing again.
There was simply no help for it. Clut looked from John to Alan and then back to John again, puzzled.
"Okay," Alan said, getting himself under control at last. "What were you looking for, John? The Holy Grail? The Lost Chord?
What?"
"My wallet," John said, brushing ineffectually at the front of his uniform. "I can't find my goddam wallet."
"Did you check your car?"
"Both of them," John said. He passed a disgusted glance over the asteroid belt of junk around his desk. "The cruiser I was driving last night and my Pontiac. But sometimes when I'm here I stick it in a desk drawer because it makes a lump against my butt when I sit down. So I was checking-" "It wouldn't bust your ass like that if you didn't keep your whole goddam life in there, John," Andy Clutterbuck said reasonably.
"Clut," Alan said, "go play in the traffic, would you?"
"Huh?"
Alan rolled his eyes. "Go find something to do. I think John and I can handle this; we're trained investigators. If it turns out we can't, we'll let you know."
"Oh, sure. just trying to help, you know. I've seen his wallet.
It looks like he's got the whole Library of Congress in there. In fact-" "Thanks for your input, Clut. We'll see you."
"Okay," Clut said. "Always glad to help. Later, dudes."
Alan rolled his eyes. He felt like laughing again, but controlled himself. It was clear from John's unhappy expression that it was no joke to him. He was embarrassed, but that was only part of it. Alan had lost a wallet or two in his time, and he knew weat a shitty feeling it was. Losing the money in it and the hassle of reporting credit cards gone west was only part of it, and not necessarily the worst part, either. You kept remembering stuff you had tucked away in there, stuff that might seem like junk to someone else but was irreplaceable to you.
John was hunkered down on his hams, picking up papers, sorting them, stacking them, and looking disconsolate. Alan helped.
"Did you really hurt your toes, Alan?"
"Nah. You know these shoes-it's like wearing Brinks trucks on your feet. How much was in the wallet, John?"
"Aw, no more'n twenty bucks, I guess. But I got my hunting license last week, and that was in there. Also my MasterCard. I'll have to call the bank and tell them to cancel the number if I can't find the damned wallet. But what I really want are the pictures.
Mom and Dad, my sisters you know. Stuff like that."
But it wasn't the picture of his mother and father or the ones of his sisters that John really cared about; the really important one was the picture of him and Sally Ratcliffe. Clut had taken it at the Fryeburg State Fair about three months before Sally had broken up with John in favor of that stonebrain Lester Pratt.
"Well," Alan said, "it'll turn up. The money and the plastic may be gone, but the wallet and pictures will probably come home, John.
They usually do. You know that."
"Yeah," John said with a sigh. "It's just that damn, I keep trying to remember if I had it this morning when I came