The Dark Half - Stephen King [41]
'Your whereabouts, Mr Beaumont,' Pangborn said.
'Okay, my whereabouts. Five pretty difficult hours. Hours when most people are in bed. Thanks to nothing more than blind luck, we — I, if you prefer — can cover at least three of those five hours. Maybe Rawlie and his odious lady friend left at two, maybe they left at one-thirty or twofifteen. Whenever it was, it was late. They'll corroborate that, and the Burks woman wouldn't lie me an alibi even if Rawlie would. I think if Billie Burks saw me washed up drowning on the beach, she'd throw a bucket of water on me.'
Liz gave him an odd, grimacing little smile as she took William, who was beginning to squirm, from him. At first he didn't understand that smile, and then it came to him. It was that phrase, of course — lie me an alibi. It was a phrase which Alexis Machine, arch-villain of the George Stark novels, sometimes used. It was odd, in a way; he could not remember ever using a Stark-ism in conversation before. On the other hand, he had never been accused of murder before, either, and murder was a George Stark kind of situation.
'Even supposing we're off by an hour and the last guests left at one,' he continued, 'and further supposing I jumped into my car the minute — the second — they were gone over the hill, and then drove like a mad bastard for Castle Rock, it would be four-thirty or five o'clock in the morning before I could possibly get there. No turnpike going west, you know.'
One of the troopers began: 'And the Arsenault woman said it was about quarter of one when she saw — '
'We don't need to go into that right now,' Alan interrupted quickly.
Liz made a rude, exasperated sound, and Wendy goggled at her comically. In the crook of her other arm, William stopped squirming, suddenly engrossed in the wonderfulness of his own twiddling fingers. To Thad she said, 'There were still lots of people here at one, Thad. Lots of them.'
Then she rounded on Alan Pangborn — really rounded on him this time.
'What is wrong with you, Sheriff? Why are you so bullheadedly determined to lay this off on my husband? Are you a stupid man? A lazy man? A bad man? You don't look like any of those things, but your behavior makes me wonder. It makes me wonder very much. Perhaps it was a lottery. Was that it? Did you draw his name out of a fucking hat?'
Alan recoiled slightly, clearly surprised — and discomfited — by her ferocity. 'Mrs Beaumont — '
'I have the advantage, I'm afraid, Sheriff,' Thad said. 'You think I killed Homer Gamache —'
'Mr Beaumont, you have not been charged with — '
'No. But you think it, don't you?'
Color, solid and bricklike, not embarrassment, Thad thought, but frustration, had beef slowly climbing into Pangborn's cheeks like color in a thermometer. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'I do think it. In spite of the things you and your wife have said.'
This reply filled Thad with wonder. What, in God's name, could have happened to make this man (who, as Liz had said, did not look at all stupid) so sure? So goddamned sure?
Thad felt a shiver go up his spine . . . and then a peculiar thing happened. A phantom sound filled his mind — not his head but his mind — for a moment. It was a sound which imparted an aching sense of déjà vu for it had been almost thirty years since he had last heard it. It was the ghostly sound of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small birds.
He put a hand up to his head and touched the small scar there, and the shiver came again, stronger this time, twisting through his flesh like wire. Lie me an alibi, George, he thought. I'm in a bit of a tight here, so lie me an alibi.
'Thad?' Liz asked. 'Are you all right?'
'Hmmm?' He looked around at her.
'You're pale.'
'I'm fine,' he said, and he was. The sound was gone. If it had really been there at all.
He turned back to Pangborn.
'As I said, Sheriff, I have a certain advantage in this matter. You think I killed Homer. I, however, know I