Needful Things - Stephen King [274]
"That's what it says." Clut giggled nervously. "The word 'ever' and the word 'frog' have got lines drawn under them."
"And you say the car was vandalized?"
"That's right. Tires slashed, just like Hugh's. And a big long scratch down the passenger side. Ouch!"
"Okay," Alan said, "here's something else for you to do. Go to the barber shop, and then to the billiard parlor if you need to. Find out who it was Henry cut off this week or last."
"But the State Police-" "Fuck the State Police!" Alan said feelingly. "It's our town. We know who to ask and where to find them.
Do you want to tell me you can't lay hands on someone who'll know this story in just about five minutes?"
"Of course not," Clut said. "I saw Charlie Fortin when I came back from Castle Hill, noodling with a bunch of guys in front of the Western Auto. If Henry was bumping heads with somebody, Charlie will know who. Hell, the Tiger's Charlie's home away from home."
"Yes. But were the State Police questioning him?"
"Well no."
"No. So you question him. But I think we both already know the answer, don't we?"
"Hugh Priest," Clut said.
"it has the unmistakable clang of a ringer to me," Alan said. He thought, This is maybe not so different from Henry Payton's first guess after all.
"Okay, Alan. I'll get on it."
"And call me back the minute you know for sure. The second."
He gave Clut the number, then made him recite it back so he could be sure Clut had copied it down correctly.
"I will," Clut said, and then burst out furiously, "What's going on, Alan? Goddammit, what's going on around here?"
"I don't know." Alan felt very old, very tired and angry.
No longer angry at Payton for shunting him off the case, but angry at whoever was responsible for these gruesome fireworks. And he felt more and more sure that, when they got to the bottom of it, they would discover that a single agency had been at work all along.
Wilma and Nettle. Henry and Hugh. Lester and John. Someone had wired them together like packets of high explosive. "I don't know, Clut, but we're going to find out."
He hung up and dialled Polly's number again. His urge to make things right with her, to understand what had happened to make her so furious with him, was fading. The replacement feeling which had begun to creep over him was even less comforting: a deep, unfocused dread; a growing feeling that she was in danger.
Ring, ring, ring but no answer.
Polly, I love you and we need to talk. Please pick up the phone.
Polly, I love you and we need to talk. Please pick up the phone.
Polly, I love you the litany ran around in his head like a wind-up toy.
He wanted to call Clut back and ask him to check on her right away, before he did anything else, but couldn't. That would be very wrong when there might be other packets of explosive still waiting to explode in The Rock.
Yes, but Alan suppose Polly's one of them?
That thought poked some buried association loose, but he was unable to grasp it before it floated away.
Alan slowly hung up the telephone, cutting it off in mid-ring as he settled it into its cradle.
3
Polly could stand it no longer. She rolled on her side, reached for the telephone and it stilled in mid-ring.
Good, she thought. But was it?
She was lying on her bed, listening to the sound of approaching thunder. It was hot upstairs-as hot as the middle of July-but opening the windows was not an option, because she'd had Dave Phillips, one of the local handymen and caretakers, put on her storm windows and doors just the week before. So she had taken off the old jeans and shirt she had worn on her expedition to the country and folded them neatly over the chair by the door. Now she lay on the bed in her underwear, wanting a little nap before she got up and showered, but unable to go to sleep.
Some of it was the sirens, but more of it was Alan; what Alan had done. She could not comprehend this grotesque betrayal of all she had believed and all she had trusted,