The Dark Half - Stephen King [33]
It was, she thought, as if Beaumont had stepped out to get a cup of coffee when he got to that part . . . and George Stark had stepped in and written the scene, like a literary Rumpelstiltskin. Certainly it was the only gold in that particular pile of hay.
Well, none of it mattered now. All it proved was that no one was immune to bullshit forever. The bigshot had taken her for a ride, but at least it had been a short ride. And it was now over.
Dodie Eberhart reached the third-floor landing, her hand already curling into the sort of tight fist she made when the time had come not for polite knocking but hammering, and then she saw hammering would not be necessary. The bigshot's door was standing ajar.
'Jesus wept!' Dodie muttered, her lip curling. This wasn't a junkie neighborhood, but when it came to ripping off some idiot's apartment, the junkies were more than willing to cross boundary lines. The guy was even stupider than she had thought.
She rapped on the door with her knuckles and it swung open. 'Clawson!' she called in a voice which promised doom and damnation.
There was no answer. Looking up the short corridor, she could see the shades in the living room were drawn and the overhead light was burning. A radio was playing softly.
'Clawson, I want to talk to you!'
She started up the short corridor . . . and stopped.
One of the sofa cushions was on the floor.
That was all. No sign that the place had been trashed by a hungry junkie, but her instincts were still sharp, and her wind was up 'm a moment. She smelled something. It was very faint, but it was there. A little like food which had spoiled but not yet rotted. That wasn't it, but it was as close as she could come. Had she smelled it before? She thought she had.
And there was another smell, although she didn't think it was her nose which was making her aware of it. She knew that one right away. She and Trooper Hamilton from Connecticut would have agreed at once on what it was: the smell of bad.
She stood just outside the living room, looking at the tumbled cushion, listening to the radio. What the climb up three flights of stairs hadn't been able to do that one innocent cushion had — her heart was beating rapidly under her massive left breast, and her breath was coming shallowly through her mouth. Something was not right here. Very much not right. The question was whether or not she would become a part of it if she hung around.
Common sense told her to go, go while she still had a chance, and common sense was very strong. Curiosity told her to stay and peck . . . and it was stronger.
She edged her head around the entrance to the living room and looked first to her right, where there was a fake fireplace, two windows giving a view on L Street, and not much else. She looked to the left and her head suddenly stopped moving. It actually seemed to lock in position. Her eyes widened.
That locked stare lasted no more than three seconds, but it seemed much longer to her. And she saw everything, down to the smallest detail; her mind made its own photograph of what it was seeing, as clear and sharp as those the crime photographer would soon take.
She saw the two bottles of Amstel beer on the coffee table, one empty and the other half-full, with a collar of foam still inside the bottle-neck. She saw the ashtray with CHICAGOLAND! written on its curving surface. She saw two cigarette butts, unfiltered, squashed into the center of the tray's pristine whiteness although the bigshot didn't smoke — not cigarettes, at least. She saw the small plastic box which had once been full of pushpins lying on its side between the bottles and the ashtray. Most of the pushpins, which the bigshot used to tack things to his kitchen bulletin board, were scattered across the glass surface of the coffee table. She saw a few had come to rest on an open copy of People magazine, the one featuring the Thad Beaumont/George Stark story. She could see Mr and Mrs Beaumont shaking hands across Stark's gravestone,