The Dark Half - Stephen King [175]
Then he thought of the voice-prints and the fingerprints, he thought of hundreds of sparrows crashing into the windows of Bergenfield County Hospital, and he was overcome with a fit of violent shivering that lasted almost a full minute.
3
Alan Pangborn was neither a coward nor a superstitious countryman who forked the sign of the evil eye at crows and kept his pregnant womenfolk away from the fresh milk because he was afraid they would clabber it. He was not a rube; he was not susceptible to the blandishments of city stickers who wanted to sell famous bridges cheap; he had not been born yesterday. He believed in logic and reasonable explanations. So he waited out his flock of shivers and then he pulled his Rolodex over in front of him and found Thad's telephone number. He observed with wry amusement that the number on the card and the one in his head matched. Apparently Castle Rock's distinguished 'writer fella' had remained even more firmly fixed in his mind — some part of it, anyway — than he had thought.
It has to have been Thad in that car. If you eliminate the nutty stuff, what other alternative is there? He described it. What was the old radio quiz show? Name It and Claim It.
Bergenfield County Hospital was, in fact, attacked by sparrows.
And there were other questions — far too many.
Thad and his family were under protection from the Maine State Police. If they had decided to pack up and come down here for the weekend, the State boys should have given him a call — partially to alert him, partially as a gesture of courtesy. But the state police would have tried to dissuade Thad from making such a trip, now that they had their protective surveillance down to routine up there in Ludlow. And if the trip had been of the spur-of-the-moment kind, their efforts to change his mind would have been even more strenuous.
Then there was what Fuzzy had not seen — namely, the back-up car or cars that would have been assigned the Beaumonts if they decided to put on their travelling shoes anyway . . . as they could have done; they weren't, after all, prisoners.
People with brain tumors often do very peculiar things.
If it was Thad's Toronado, and if he had been out at Fuzzy's to get it, and if he had been alone, that led to a conclusion Alan found very unpalatable, because he had taken a qualified liking to Thad. That conclusion was that he had deliberately ditched both his family and his protectors.
The state police still should have called me, if that was the case. They'd put out an APB, and they'd know damned well this is one of the places he'd be likely to come.
He dialed the Beaumont number. It was picked up on the first ring. A voice he didn't know answered. Which was only to say he could not put a name to the voice. That he was speaking to an officer of the law was something he knew from the first syllable.
'Hello, Beaumont residence.'
Guarded. Ready to drive a wedge of questions into the next gap if the voice happened to be the right one . . . or the wrong one.
What's happened? Pangborn wondered, and on the heels of that: They're dead. Whoever's out there has killed the whole family, as quickly, effortlessly, and with as little mercy as he showed the others. The protection, the interrogations, the traceback equipment . . . it was all for nothing.
Not even a hint of these thoughts showed in his voice as he answered.
'This is Alan Pangborn,' he said crisply. 'Sheriff, Castle County. I was calling for Thad Beaumont. To whom am I speaking?'
There was a pause. Then the voice replied, 'This is Steve Harrison, Sheriff. Maine State Police. I was going to call you. Should have done it at least an hour ago. But things here . . . things here are fucked all the way to the ionosphere. Can I ask why you called?'
Without a pause for thought — that would certainly have changed his response — Alan lied. He did it without asking