The Dark Half - Stephen King [99]
There was a click. Stark was gone. Thad almost felt himself being yanked back along the telephone line from that mythical meeting-place in western Massachusetts, yanked along not at the speed of sound or light but at that of thought, and thumped rudely back into his own body, Stark naked again.
Jesus.
He dropped the phone and it hit the cradle askew. He turned around on legs which felt like stilts, not bothering to replace it properly.
Dave rushed into the room from one direction, Wes from another.
'It worked perfect!' Wes screamed. The FBI agents jumped once more. Malone made an 'Eeek!' noise very much like the one attributed to women in comic strips who have just spotted mice. Thad tried to imagine what these two would be like in a confrontation with a gang of terrorists or shotgun-toting bank-robbers and couldn't do it. Maybe I'm just too tired, he thought.
The two wiremen did a clumsy little dance, slapping each other on the back, and then raced out to the equipment van together.
'It was him,' Thad said to Liz. 'He said he wasn't, but it was him. Him.'
She came to him then and hugged him tightly and he needed that — he hadn't known how badly until she did it.
'I know,' she whispered in his ear, and he put his face into her hair and closed his eyes.
2
The shouting had wakened the twins; they were both crying lustily upstairs. Liz went to get them. Thad started to follow her, then returned to set the telephone properly into its cradle. It rang at once. Alan Pangborn was on the other end. He had stopped in at the Orono State Police Barracks to have a cup of coffee before his appointment with Dr Hume, and had been there when Dave the wireman radioed in with news of the call and the preliminary trace results. Alan sounded very excited.
'We don't have a complete trace yet, but we know it was New York City, area code 212,' he said. 'Five minutes and we'll have the location nailed down.'
'It was him,' Thad repeated. 'It was Stark. He said he wasn't, but that's who it was. Someone has to check on the girl he mentioned. The name is probably Darla Gates.' 'The slut from Vassar with the bad nasal habits?'
'Right,' Thad said. Although he doubted if Darla Gates would be worrying about her nose much anymore, one way or the other. He felt intensely weary.
'I'll pass the name on to the N.Y.P.D. How you doing, Thad?'
'I'm all right.'
'Liz?'
'Never mind the bedside manner just now, okay? Did you hear what I said? It was him. No matter what he said, it was him.'
'Well . . . why don't we just wait and see what comes of the trace?'
There was something in his voice Thad hadn't heard there before. Not the sort of cautious incredulity he'd evinced when he first realized the Beaumonts were talking about George Stark as a real guy, but actual embarrassment. It was a realization Thad would happily have spared himself, but it was simply too clear in the sheriff 's voice. Embarrassment, and of a very special sort — the kind you felt for someone too distraught or stupid or maybe just too self-insensitive to feel it for himself. Thad felt a twinkle of sour amusement at the idea.
'Okay, we'll wait and see,' Thad agreed. 'And while we're waiting and seeing, I hope you'll go ahead and keep your appointment with my doctor.'
Pangborn was replying, but all of a sudden Thad didn't much care. The acid was percolating up from his stomach again, and this time it was a volcano. Foxy George, he thought. They think they see through him. He wants them to think that. He is watching them see through him, and when they go away, far enough away, foxy old George will arrive in his black Toronado. And what am I going to do to stop him?
He didn't know.
He hung up the telephone, cutting off Alan Pangborn's voice, and went upstairs to help Liz change the twins and dress them for the afternoon.
And he kept thinking about how it had felt, how it had felt to be somehow trapped in a telephone line running