The Dark Half - Stephen King [35]
Little by little her strength came back and she was able to get to her feet. She slipped around the corner at the end of the hall and then into the kitchen, where the phone was. She kept her eyes averted from what remained of Mr Bigshot, although it was an empty exercise; she would see that mind-photograph in all its hideous clarity for a long time to come.
She called the police and when they came she wouldn't let them in until one of them slid his ID under the door.
'What's your wife's name?' she asked the cop whose laminated badge identified him as Charles F. Toomey, Jr. Her voice was high and quivery, utterly unlike her usual one. Close friends (had she had any) would not have recognized it.
'Stephanie, ma'am,' the voice on the other side of the door replied patiently.
'I can call your station-house and check that, you know!' she nearly shrieked.
'I know you can, Mrs Eberhart,' the voice responded, 'but you'd feel safer quicker if you just let us in, don't you think?'
And because she still recognized the Voice of Cop as easily as she had recognized the Smell of Bad, she unlocked the door and let Toomey and his partner in. Once they were, Dodie did something else she had never done before: she went into hysterics.
Seven
Police Business
1
Thad was upstairs in his study, writing, when the police came.
Liz was reading a book in the living room while William and Wendy goofed with each other in the oversized playpen they shared. She went to the door, looking out through one of the narrow ornamental windows which flanked it before opening it. This was a habit she had gotten into since what was jokingly called Thad's 'debut' in People magazine. Visitors — vague acquaintances for the most part, with a generous mixture of curious town residents and even a few total strangers (these latter unanimously Stark fans) thrown in for good measure — had taken to dropping by. Thad called it the 'see the living-crocodiles syndrome' and said it would peter out in another week or two. Liz hoped he was right. In the meantime, she worried that one of the new callers might be a mad crocodile-hunter of the sort who had killed John Lennon, and peeked through the side window first. She didn't know if she would recognize a bona fide madman if she saw one, but she could at least keep Thad's train of thought from derailing during the two hours each morning he spent writing. After that he went to the door himself, usually throwing her a guilty little-boy look to which she didn't know how to respond.
The three men on the front doorstep this Saturday morning were not fans of either Beaumont or Stark, she guessed, and not madmen either . . . unless some of the current crop had taken to driving state police cruisers. She opened the door, feeling the uneasy twinge even the most blameless people must feel when the police show up without being called. She supposed if she'd had children old enough to be out whooping and hollering this rainy Saturday morning, she would already be wondering if they were okay.
'Yes?'
'Are you Mrs Elizabeth Beaumont?' one of them asked.
'Yes, I am. May I help you?'
'Is your husband home, Mrs Beaumont?' a second asked. These two were wearing identical gray rain-slickers and state police hats.
No, that's the ghost of Ernest Hemingway you hear clacking away upstairs, she thought of saying, and of course didn't. First came the has-anybody-had-an-accident fright, then the phantom guilt which made you want to come out with something harsh or sarcastic, something which said, no matter what the actual words: Go away. You are not wanted here. We have done nothing wrong. Go and find someone who has.
'May I ask why you'd like to see him?'
The third policeman was Alan Pangborn. 'Police