The Outsider_A Novel

by Stephen King

  Stop her, Ralph wanted to say to Howie. It’s painful and pointless. It doesn’t matter where he’s buried, except to Marcy and her daughters.

  But once more he kept silent and took it, because it was another kind of scolding, wasn’t it? Even if Marcy Maitland might not mean it that way. He told himself this would be over eventually, leaving him free to discover a life beyond Terry fucking Maitland. He had to believe there would be one.

  “I knew about the other place,” Marcy went on, “of course I did, but I never thought of mentioning it to Mr. Donelli. Terry took me there once, but it’s so far out of town . . . and so lonely . . .”

  “What other place would that have been?” Holly asked.

  A picture rose unbidden in Ralph’s mind—six cowboy pallbearers carrying a plank coffin. He sensed the arrival of another confluence.

  “The old graveyard in Canning Township,” Marcy said. “Terry took me out once, and it looked like nobody had been buried there for a long time, or even visited. There were no flowers or memorial flags. Just some crumbling grave markers. You couldn’t read the names on most of them.”

  Startled, Ralph glanced at Yune, who nodded slightly.

  “That’s why he was interested in that book in the newsstand,” Bill Samuels said in a low voice. “A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township.”

  Marcy continued to wipe her eyes with Jeannie’s handkerchief. “Of course he would have been interested in a book like that. There have been Maitlands in this part of the state ever since the Land Rush of 1889. Terry’s great-great-grandparents—or maybe even a generation greater than that, I don’t know for sure—settled in Canning.”

  “Not in Flint City?” Alec asked.

  “There was no Flint City back then. Just a little village called Flint, a wide spot in the road. Until statehood, in the early twentieth century, Canning was the biggest town in the area. Named after the biggest landowner, of course. When it came to acreage, the Maitlands were second or third. Canning was an important town until the big dust storms came in the twenties and thirties, when most of the good topsoil blew away. These days there’s nothing out there but a store and a church hardly anyone goes to.”

  “And the graveyard,” Alec said. “Where people did their burying until the town dried up. Including a bunch of Terry’s ancestors.”

  Marcy smiled wanly. “That graveyard . . . I thought it was awful. Like an empty house nobody cares about.”

  Yune said, “If this outsider was absorbing Terry’s thoughts and memories as the transformation progressed, then he would have known about the graveyard.” He was looking at one of the pictures on the wall now, but Ralph had a good idea what was going through his mind. It was going through his, as well. The barn. The discarded clothes.

  “According to the legends—there are dozens about El Cuco online—these creatures like places of death,” Holly said. “It’s where they feel most at home.”

  “If there are creatures who eat sadness,” Jeannie mused, “a graveyard would make a nice cafeteria, wouldn’t it?”

  Ralph wished mightily that his wife hadn’t come. If not for her, he would have been out the door ten minutes ago. Yes, the barn where the clothes had been found was near that dusty old boneyard. Yes, the goo that had turned the hay black was puzzling, and yes, perhaps there had been an outsider. That was a theory he was willing to accept, at least for the time being. It explained a lot. An outsider who was consciously re-creating a Mexican legend would explain even more . . . but it didn’t explain the disappearing man at the courthouse, or how Terry Maitland could have been in two places at the same time. He kept coming up against those things; they were like pebbles lodged in his throat.

  Holly said, “Let me show you some pictures I took at another graveyard. They may open a line of more normal investigation. If either Detective Anderson or Lieutenant Sablo is willing to talk to the police in Montgomery County, Ohio, that is.”

  Yune said, “At this point I’d talk to the pope, if it would help to clear this up.”

  One by one, Holly projected the photos on the screen: the train station, the factory with the swastika spray-painted on the side, the deserted car wash.

  “I took these from the parking lot of the Peaceful Rest Cemetery in Regis. It’s where Heath Holmes is buried with his parents.”

  She cycled through the pictures again: train station, factory, car wash.

  “I think the outsider took the van he stole from the lot in Dayton to one of these places, and I think if you could persuade the Montgomery County police to search them, some trace of it might still be there. The police might even find some trace of him. There, or maybe here.”

  This time she projected the photograph of the boxcars, sitting lonely and deserted on their siding. “He couldn’t have hidden the van in either of those, but he might have stayed in one of them. They’re even closer to the cemetery.”

  Here at last was something Ralph could take hold of. Something real. “Sheltered places. There could be traces. Even after three months.”

  “Tire tracks,” Yune said. “Maybe more discarded clothes.”

  “Or other stuff,” Holly said. “Will you check? And they should be prepared to do an acid phosphate test.”

  Semen stains, Ralph thought, and remembered the goo in the barn. What had Yune said about those? A nocturnal emission worthy of The Guinness Book of Records, wasn’t that it?

  Yune sounded admiring. “You know your stuff, ma’am.”

  Color rose in her cheeks, and she looked down. “Bill Hodges was very good at his job. He taught me a lot.”

  “I can call the Montgomery County prosecutor, if you want,” Samuels said. “Get somebody from whatever police department has jurisdiction in that town—Regis?—to coordinate with the Staties. Given what that Elfman kid found in that barn in Canning Township, it’s worth looking into.”

  “What?” Holly asked, immediately alight. “What did he find, beside the belt buckle with the prints on it?”

  “A pile of clothes,” Samuels said, “Pants, underwear shorts, sneakers. There was some kind of goo on them, also on the hay. It turned the hay black.” He paused. “No shirt, though. The shirt was missing.”

  Yune said, “That shirt might have been what the burned man was wearing on his head like a do-rag when we saw him at the courthouse.”

  “How far is this barn from the graveyard?” Holly asked.

  “Less than half a mile,” Yune said. “The residue on the clothes looked like semen. Is that what you’re thinking, Ms. Gibney? Is that why you want the Ohio cops to do an acid phosphate test?”

  “Can’t have been semen,” Ralph said. “There was too much of it.”

  Yune ignored this. He was staring at Holly, as if fascinated with her. “Are you thinking the stuff in the barn is a kind of residue from the change? We’re having samples checked, but the results haven’t come back yet.”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Holly said. “My research about El Cuco so far amounts to a few legends I read while I was flying down here, and they’re not reliable. They were passed down orally, generation to generation, long before forensic science existed. I’m just saying that the police in Ohio should check the places in my photographs. They might not find anything . . . but I think they will. I hope they will. Traces, as Detective Anderson said.”

  “Are you done, Ms. Gibney?” Howie asked.

  “Yes, I think so.” She sat down. Ralph thought she looked exhausted, and why not? She’d had a busy few days. In addition to that, being crazy had to wear a person out.

  Howie said, “Ladies and gentlemen, are there ideas on how we proceed from here? The floor is open for suggestions.”

  “The next step seems obvious,” Ralph said. “This outsider might be here in FC—the testimony from my wife and Grace Maitland seems to suggest that—but somebody needs to go down to Texas and interview Claude Bolton, see what he knows. If anything. I nominate me.”

 
Alec said, “I want to go with you.”

  “I think that’s a trip I’d also like to make,” Howie said. “Lieutenant Sablo?”

  “I’d like to, but I have two cases in court. If I don’t testify, a couple of very bad boys could walk. I’ll call the ADA in Cap City, see if there’s any chance of a postponement, but I’m not hopeful. It’s not like I can tell him I’m on the trail of a shape-shifting Mexican monster.”

  Howie smiled. “I should think not. What about you, Ms. Gibney? Want to go a little further south? You’d continue to be compensated, of course.”

  “Yes, I’ll go. Mr. Bolton may know things we need to find out. If, that is, we can ask the right questions.”

  Howie said, “What about you, Bill? Want to see this thing through?”

  Samuels smiled thinly, shook his head, then stood up. “All this has been interesting, in a mad sort of way, but as far as I’m concerned, the case is closed. I’ll make some calls to the police in Ohio, but that’s where my participation ends. Mrs. Maitland, I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “You ought to be,” Marcy said.

  He winced at that, but pressed on. “Ms. Gibney, it’s been fascinating. I appreciate your hard work and due diligence. You also make a surprisingly persuasive case for the fantastic, I say that without a trace of irony, but I’m going to go home, grab a beer out of the fridge, and start forgetting this whole thing.”

  They watched him gather up his briefcase and leave, the cowlick wagging at them like an admonitory finger as he went out the door.

  When he was gone, Howie said he would make their travel arrangements. “I’ll charter the King Air I sometimes use. The pilots will know the closest landing strip. I’ll also arrange for a car. If it’s just the four of us, a sedan or a small SUV should do.”

  “Leave a seat for me,” Yune said. “Just in case I can wiggle out of court.”

  “Happy to.”

  Alec Pelley said, “Someone needs to reach out to Mr. Bolton tonight, and tell him to expect visitors.”

  Yune lifted a hand. “That much I can do.”

  “Make him understand no one is after him for doing something illegal,” Howie said. “The last thing we want is for him to jackrabbit somewhere.”

  “Call me after you talk to him,” Ralph said to Yune. “Even if it’s late. I want to know how he reacts.”

  “So do I,” Jeannie said.

  “You should tell him something else,” Holly said. “You should tell him to be careful. Because if I’m right about this, he’s the next in line.”

  12

  Full dark had come when Ralph and the others stepped out of Howie Gold’s building. Howie himself was still upstairs, making arrangements, and his investigator was with him. Ralph wondered what they would talk about with everyone else gone.

  “Ms. Gibney, where are you staying?” Jeannie asked.

  “The Flint Luxury Motel. I reserved a room.”

  “Oh no, you can’t,” Jeannie said. “The only luxury there is on the sign out front. The place is a pit.”

  Holly looked disconcerted. “Well, there must be a Holiday Inn—”

  “Stay with us,” Ralph said, beating Jeannie to it and hoping it would earn him some points later on. God knew he could use them.

  Holly hesitated. She didn’t do well in the houses of other people. She didn’t do well even in the one where she had grown up, when on her quarterly duty visits to her mother. She knew that in the home of these strangers she would lie awake long and wake early, hearing every unfamiliar creak of the walls and the floors, listening to the murmured voices of the Andersons and wondering if they were talking about her . . . which they almost certainly would be. Hoping that if she had to get up in the night to spend a penny, they wouldn’t hear her. She needed her sleep. The meeting had been stressful enough, and the steady pushback of Detective Anderson’s disbelief had been understandable but exhausting.

  But, as Bill Hodges would have said. But.

  Anderson’s disbelief was the but. It was the reason she had to accept the invitation, and she did.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind, but I have to run an errand first. It won’t take long. Give me your address, and my iPad will take me right to you.”

  “Is it anything I can help you with?” Ralph asked. “I’d be happy to—”

  “No. Really. I’ll be fine.” She shook hands with Yune. “Come with us if you can, Lieutenant Sablo. I’m sure you want to.”

  He smiled. “I do, believe me, but it’s like that poem says—I have promises to keep.”

  Marcy Maitland was standing by herself, holding her purse against her stomach and looking shell-shocked. Jeannie went to her without hesitation. Ralph watched with interest as Marcy initially drew back, as if in alarm, then allowed herself to be hugged. After a moment she even put her head on Jeannie Anderson’s shoulder and hugged back. She looked like a tired child. When the two women drew apart, both of them were crying.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Jeannie said.

  “Thank you.”

  “If there’s anything I can do for you or your girls, anything at all—”

  “You can’t, but he can.” She turned her attention to Ralph, and although her eyes were still wet with tears, they were cold. Assessing. “This outsider, I want you to find him. Don’t let him get away just because you don’t believe in him. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ralph said, “but I’ll try.”

  Marcy said no more, only took Yune Sablo’s offered arm and let him lead her to her car.

  13

  Half a block down, parked in front of the long-abandoned Woolworth’s, Jack sat in his truck, sipping from a flask and watching the group on the sidewalk. The only one he couldn’t identify was a slender woman in the kind of suit a businesswoman might wear on a trip. Her hair was short, the graying bangs a little ragged, as if she had cut them herself. The case slung over her shoulder looked big enough to hold a shortwave radio. This woman watched as Sablo, the taco-bender state cop, squired Mrs. Maitland away. The stranger then walked to her car, which was too nondescript to be anything but an airport rental. Hoskins thought briefly of following her, but decided to stick with the Andersons. It had been Ralph who brought him here, after all, and wasn’t there some saying about going home with the girl you took to the dance?

  Besides, Anderson bore watching. Hoskins had never liked him, and since that snotty two-word evaluation a year ago (No opinion, he’d written . . . as if his shit didn’t stink), Jack had detested him. He had been delighted when Anderson tripped over his dick with the Maitland arrest, and it didn’t surprise him to discover the self-righteous sonofabitch was now meddling in things better left alone. A closed case, for instance.

  Jack touched the back of his neck, winced, then started his truck. He supposed he could go home after he saw the Andersons inside, but he thought maybe he’d just park up the street and keep an eye on their house. See what happened. He had a Gatorade bottle he could piss in, and he might even be able to sleep a little, if the steady hot throb from the back of his neck would allow that. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d slept in this truck; he’d done it on several occasions since the day the old ball and chain had walked out.

  Jack wasn’t sure what came next, but he had a clear fix on the basic task: to stop the meddling. The meddling in exactly what he didn’t know, only that it had something to do with the Peterson boy. And the barn in Canning Township. That was enough for now, and—sunburn aside, possible skin cancer aside—he was getting interested.

  He felt that when the time came for the next step, he would be told.

  14

  With the help of her navigation app, Holly made a quick and easy drive to the Flint City Walmart. She loved Walmarts, the size of them, the anonymity of them. Shoppers didn’t seem to look at other shoppers as they did in other stores; it was as if they were all in their own private capsules, buying clothes or video games or toilet paper in bulk. It wasn’t even necessary to
speak to a cashier, if you used the self-checkout. Which Holly always did. Her shopping was quick, because she knew exactly what she wanted. She went first to OFFICE SUPPLIES, then to MENS AND BOYS WEAR, finally to AUTOMOTIVE. She took her basket to the self-checkout and tucked the receipt into her wallet. These were business expenses, for which she expected to be reimbursed. If she lived, that was. She had an idea (one of Holly’s famous intuitions, she heard Bill Hodges saying) that was more likely to happen if Ralph Anderson—so like Bill in some ways, so very different from him in others—could get past the divide in his mind.

  She returned to her car and drove to the Anderson house. But before leaving the parking lot, she said a brief prayer. For all of them.

  15

  Ralph’s cell phone rang just as he and Jeannie were entering the kitchen. It was Yune. He had gotten the Marysville number of Lovie Bolton from John Zellman, the owner of Gentlemen, Please, and had reached Claude with no trouble.

  “What did you tell him?” Ralph asked.

  “Pretty much what we decided on in Howie’s office. That we wanted to interview him, because we’re having doubts about Terry Maitland’s guilt. Emphasized that we didn’t think Bolton himself was guilty of anything, and that the people who’d be coming to see him were acting strictly as private citizens. He asked if you’d be one of them. I said you would. Hope that’s okay with you. It seemed to be with him.”

  “That’s fine.” Jeannie had gone directly upstairs, and now he heard the start-up chime of the desktop computer they shared. “What else?”

  “I said that if Maitland was framed, then Bolton might be at risk for the same treatment, especially since he was a man with a record.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “Okay. He didn’t get defensive or anything. But then he said something interesting. Asked me if I was sure it really had been Terry Maitland he saw in the club the night the Peterson boy was murdered.”