Needful Things

by Stephen King

  The witnesses said Buster had crawled into his Cadillac through the window and simply driven away. The only person who had tried to stop him had paid a steep price. Scott Garson was hospitalized here at Northern Cumberland with a broken jaw, broken cheekbone, broken wrist, and three broken fingers. It could have been worse; the bystanders claimed Buster had actively tried to run the man down as he lay in the street.

  Lenny Partridge, broken collarbone and God knew how many broken ribs, was also here someplace. Andy Clutterbuck had weighed in with news of this fresh disaster while Alan was still trying to comprehend the fact that the town's Head Selectman was now a fugitive from justice handcuffed to a big red Cadillac. Hugh Priest had apparently stopped Lenny, tossed him across the road, and driven away in the old man's car. Alan supposed they would find Lenny's car in the parking lot of The Mellow Tiger, since Hugh had bitten the dust there.

  And, of course, there was Brian Rusk, who had eaten a bullet at the ripe old age of eleven. Clut had barely begun to tell his tale when the phone rang again. Sheila was gone by then, and Alan had picked up on the voice of a screaming, hysterical little boy--Sean Rusk, who had dialled the number on the bright orange sticker beside the kitchen telephone.

  All in all, Medical Assistance ambulances and Rescue Services units from four different towns had made afternoon stops in Castle Rock.

  Now, sitting with his back to Simple Simon and the pie-man, watching the plastic birds as they swung and dipped around their spindle, Alan turned once more to Hugh and Lenny Partridge. Their confrontation was hardly the biggest to take place in Castle Rock today, but it was one of the oddest ... and Alan sensed that a key to this business might be hidden in its very oddity.

  "Why in God's name didn't Hugh take his own car, if he had a hard-on for Henry Beaufort?" Alan had asked Clut, running his hands through hair which was already wildly disarranged. "Why bother with Lenny's old piece of shit?"

  "Because Hugh's Buick was standing on four flats. Looked like somebody ripped the shit out of them with a knife." Clut had shrugged, looking uneasily at the shambles the Sheriff's Office had become. "Maybe he thought Henry Beaufort did it."

  Yes, Alan thought now. Maybe so. It was crazy, but was it any crazier than Wilma Jerzyck thinking Nettie Cobb had first splattered mud on her sheets and then thrown rocks through the windows of her house? Any crazier than Nettie thinking Wilma had killed her dog?

  Before he had a chance to question Clut any further, Henry Payton had come in and told Alan, as kindly as he could, that he was taking the case. Alan nodded. "There's one thing you need to find out, Henry, as soon as you can."

  "What's that, Alan?" Henry had asked, but Alan saw with a sinking feeling that Henry was listening to him with only half an ear. His old friend--the first real friend Alan had made in the wider law-enforcement community after winning the job as Sheriff, and a very valuable friend he had turned out to be--was already concentrating on other things. How he would deploy his forces, given the wide spread of the incidents, was probably chief among them.

  "You need to find out if Henry Beaufort was as angry at Hugh Priest as Hugh apparently was at him. You can't ask him now, I understand he's unconscious, but when he wakes up--"

  "Will do," Henry said, and clapped Alan on the shoulder. "Will do." Then, raising his voice: "Brooks! Morrison! Over here!"

  Alan watched him move off and thought of going after him. Of grabbing him and making him listen. He didn't do it, because Henry and Hugh and Lester and John--even Wilma and Nettie--were beginning to lose any feeling of real importance to him. The dead were dead; the wounded were being looked after; the crimes had been committed.

  Except Alan had a terrible, sneaking suspicion that the real crime was still going on.

  When Henry had walked away to brief his men, Alan had called Clut over once again. The Deputy came with his hands stuffed into his pockets and a morose look on his face. "We been replaced, Alan," he said. "Taken right out of the picture. God damn!"

  "Not entirely," Alan said, hoping he sounded as if he really believed this. "You're going to be my liaison here, Clut. "

  "Where are you going?"

  "To the Rusk house."

  But when he got there, both Brian and Sean Rusk were gone. The ambulance which was taking care of the unfortunate Scott Garson had swung by to pick up Sean; they were on their way to Northern Cumberland Hospital. Harry Samuels's second hearse, an old converted Lincoln, had gotten Brian Rusk and would take him to Oxford, pending autopsy. Harry's better hearse--the one he referred to as "the company car"--had already left for the same place with Hugh and Billy Tupper.

  Alan thought, The bodies will be stacked in that tiny morgue over there like cordwood.

  It was when he got to the Rusk home that Alan realized--in his gut as well as in his head--how completely he had been taken out of the play. Two of Henry's C.I.D. men were there ahead of him, and they made it clear that Alan could hang around only as long as he didn't try to stick in an oar and help them row. He had stood in the kitchen doorway for a moment, watching them, feeling about as useful as a third wheel on a motor-scooter. Cora Rusk's responses were slow, almost doped. Alan thought it might be shock, or perhaps the ambulance attendants who were transporting her remaining son to the hospital had given her some prescription mercy before they left. She reminded him eerily of the way Norris had looked as he had crawled from the window of his overturned VW. Whether it was because of a tranquilizer or just shock, the detectives weren't getting much of value from her. She wasn't quite weeping, but she was clearly unable to concentrate on their questions enough to make helpful responses. She didn't know anything, she told them; she had been upstairs, taking a nap. Poor Brian, she kept saying. Poor, poor Brian. But she expressed this sentiment in a drone which Alan found creepy, and she kept toying with a pair of old sunglasses which lay beside her on the kitchen table. One of the bows had been mended with adhesive tape, and one of the lenses was cracked.

  Alan had left in disgust and come here, to the hospital.

  Now he got up and went to the pay telephone down the hall in the main lobby. He tried Polly again, got no answer, and then dialled the Sheriff's Office. The voice which answered growled, "State Police," and Alan felt a childish surge of jealousy. He identified himself and asked for Clut. After a wait of almost five minutes, Clut came on the line.

  "Sorry, Alan. They just let the phone lay there on the desk. Lucky I came over to check, or you'd still be waiting. Darned old Staties don't care one bit about us."

  "Don't worry about it, Clut. Has anyone collared Keeton yet?"

  "Well ... I don't know how to tell you this, Alan, but ..."

  Alan felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach and closed his eyes. He had been right; it wasn't over.

  "Just tell me," he said. "Never mind the protocol."

  "Buster--Danforth, I mean--drove home and used a screwdriver to knock the doorhandle off his Cadillac. You know, where he was cuffed."

  "I know," Alan agreed. His eyes were still shut.

  "Well ... he killed his wife, Alan. With a hammer. It wasn't a State cop that found her, because the Staties weren't much interested in Buster up to twenty minutes ago. It was Seat Thomas. He drove by Buster's house to double check. He reported in what he found, and got back here not five minutes ago. He's having chest pains, he says, and I'm not surprised. He told me that Buster took her face 'bout right off. Said there's guts and hair everyplace. There's a platoon or so of Payton's bluejackets up there on the View now. I put Seat in your office. Figured he better sit down before he fell down."

  "Jesus Christ, Clut--take him over to Ray Van Allen, fast. He's sixty-two and been smoking Camels all his damn life."

  "Ray went to Oxford, Alan. He's trying td help the doctors patch up Henry Beaufort."

  "His P.A. then--what's his name? Frankel. Everett Frankel."

  "Not around. I tried both the office and his house."

  "Well, what does his wife say?"

  "Ev's a bach
elor, Alan."

  "Oh. Christ." Someone had scrawled a bit of graffiti over the telephone. Don't worry, be happy, it said. Alan considered this sourly.

  "I can take him to the hospital myself," Clut offered.

  "I need you right where you are," Alan said. "Have the reporters and TV people shown up?"

  "Yeah. The place is crawling with them."

  " Well, check on Seat as soon as we're done here. If he doesn't feel any better, here's what you do: go out front, grab a reporter who looks halfway bright to you, deputize him, and have him drive Seat over here to Northern Cumberland."

  "Okay." Clut hesitated, then burst out: "I wanted to go over to the Keeton place, but the State Police ... they won't let me onto the crime-scene! How do you like that, Alan? Those bastards won't let a County Deputy Sheriff onto the crime-scene!"

  "I know how you feel. I don't like it much myself. But they're doing their job. Can you see Seat from where you are, Clut?"

  "Yuh."

  "Well? Is he alive?"

  "He's sitting behind your desk, smoking a cigarette and looking at this month's Rural Law Enforcement."

  "Right," Alan said. He felt like laughing or crying or doing both at the same time. "That figures. Has Polly Chalmers called, Clut?"

  "N ... wait a minute, here's the log. I thought it was gone. She did call, Alan. Just before three-thirty."

  Alan grimaced. "I know about that one. Anything later?"

  "Not that I see here, but that doesn't mean much. With Sheila gone and these darned old State Bears clumping around, who can tell for sure?"

  "Thanks, Clut. Is there anything else I should know?"

  "Yeah, a couple of things."

  "Shoot."

  "They've got the gun Hugh used to shoot Henry, but David Friedman from State Police Ballistics says he doesn't know what it is. An automatic pistol of some kind, but the guy said he's never seen one quite like it."

  "Are you sure it was David Friedman?" Alan asked.

  "Friedman, yeah--that was the guy's name."

  "He must know. Dave Friedman's a walking Shooter's Bible."

  "He doesn't, though. I stood right there while he was talking to your pal Payton. He said it's a little like a German Mauser, but it lacked the normal markings and the slide was different. I think they sent it to Augusta with about a ton of other evidence."

  "What else?"

  "They found an anonymous note in Henry Beaufort's yard," Clut said. "It was crumpled into a ball beside his car--you know that classic T-Bird of his? It was vandalized, too. Just like Hugh's."

  Alan felt as if a large soft hand had just whacked him across the face. "What did the note say, Clut?"

  "Just a minute." He heard a faint whick-whick sound as Clut paged through his notebook. "Here it is. 'Don't you ever cut me off and then keep my car-keys you damn frog.' "

  "Frog?"

  "That's what it says." Clut giggled nervously. "The word 'ever' and the word 'frog' have got lines drawn under them."

  "And you say the car was vandalized?"

  "That's right. Tires slashed, just like Hugh's. And a big long scratch down the passenger side. Ouch!"

  "Okay," Alan said, "here's something else for you to do. Go to the barber shop, and then to the billiard parlor if you need to. Find out who it was Henry cut off this week or last."

  "But the State Police--"

  "Fuck the State Police!" Alan said feelingly. "It's our town. We know who to ask and where to find them. Do you want to tell me you can't lay hands on someone who'll know this story in just about five minutes?"

  "Of course not," Clut said. "I saw Charlie Fortin when I came back from Castle Hill, noodling with a bunch of guys in front of the Western Auto. If Henry was bumping heads with somebody, Charlie will know who. Hell, the Tiger's Charlie's home away from home."

  "Yes. But were the State Police questioning him?"

  "Well ... no."

  "No. So you question him. But I think we both already know the answer, don't we?"

  "Hugh Priest," Clut said.

  "It has the unmistakable clang of a ringer to me," Alan said. He thought, This is maybe not so different from Henry Payton's first guess after all.

  "Okay, Alan. I'll get on it."

  "And call me back the minute you know for sure. The second." He gave Clut the number, then made him recite it back so he could be sure Clut had copied it down correctly.

  "I will," Clut said, and then burst out furiously, "What's going on, Alan? Goddammit, what's going on around here?"

  "I don't know." Alan felt very old, very tired ... and angry. No longer angry at Payton for shunting him off the case, but angry at whoever was responsible for these gruesome fireworks. And he felt more and more sure that, when they got to the bottom of it, they would discover that a single agency had been at work all along. Wilma and Nettie. Henry and Hugh. Lester and John. Someone had wired them together like packets of high explosive. "I don't know, Clut, but we're going to find out."

  He hung up and dialled Polly's number again. His urge to make things right with her, to understand what had happened to make her so furious with him, was fading. The replacement feeling which had begun to creep over him was even less comforting: a deep, unfocused dread; a growing feeling that she was in danger.

  Ring, ring, ring ... but no answer.

  Polly, I love you and we need to talk. Please pick up the phone. Polly, I love you and we need to talk. Please pick up the phone. Polly, I love you--

  The litany ran around in his head like a wind-up toy. He wanted to call Clut back and ask him to check on her right away, before he did anything else, but couldn't. That would be very wrong when there might be other packets of explosive still waiting to explode in The Rock.

  Yes, but Alan ... suppose Polly's one of them? That thought poked some buried association loose, but he was unable to grasp it before it floated away.

  Alan slowly hung up the telephone, cutting it off in mid-ring as he settled it into its cradle.

  3

  Polly could stand it no longer. She rolled on her side, reached for the telephone ... and it stilled in mid-ring.

  Good, she thought. But was it?

  She was lying on her bed, listening to the sound of approaching thunder. It was hot upstairs--as hot as the middle of July--but opening the windows was not an option, because she'd had Dave Phillips, one of the local handymen and caretakers, put on her storm windows and doors just the week before. So she had taken off the old jeans and shirt she had worn on her expedition to the country and folded them neatly over the chair by the door. Now she lay on the bed in her underwear, wanting a little nap before she got up and showered, but unable to go to sleep.

  Some of it was the sirens, but more of it was Alan; what Alan had done. She could not comprehend this grotesque betrayal of all she had believed and all she had trusted, but neither could she escape it. Her mind would turn to something else (those sirens, for instance, and how they sounded like the end of the world) and then suddenly it would be there again, how he had gone behind her back, how he had sneaked. It was like being poked by the splintery end of a board in some tender, secret place.

  Oh Alan, how could you? she asked him--and herself--again.

  The voice which replied surprised her. It was Aunt Evvie's voice, and beneath the dry lack of sentiment that had always been her way, Polly felt a disquieting, powerful anger.

  If you had told him the truth in the first place, girl, he never would have had to.

  Polly sat up quickly. That was a disturbing voice, all right, and the most disturbing thing about it was the fact that it was her own voice. Aunt Evvie was many years dead. This was her own subconscious, using Aunt Ewie to express its anger the way a shy ventriloquist might use his dummy to ask a pretty girl for a date, and--

  Stop it, girl--didn't I once tell you this town is full of ghosts? Maybe it is me. Maybe it is.

  Polly uttered a whimpering, frightened cry and then pressed her hand against her mouth.

&nbs
p; Or maybe it isn't. In the end, who it is don't matter much, does it? The question is this, Trisha: Who sinned first? Who lied first? Who covered up first? Who cast the first stone?

  "That's not fair!" Polly shouted into the hot room, and then looked at her own frightened, wide-eyed reflection in the bedroom mirror. She waited for the voice of Aunt Ewie to come back, and when it didn't, she slowly lay back down again.

  Perhaps she had sinned first, if omitting part of the truth and telling a few white lies was sinning. Perhaps she had covered up first. But did that give Alan the right to open an investigation on her, the way a law officer might open an investigation on a known felon? Did it give him the right to put her name on some interstate law-enforcement wire ... or send out a tracer on her, if that was what they called it ... or ... or ...

  Never mind, Polly, a voice--one she knew--whispered. Stop tearing yourself apart over what was very proper behavior on your part. I mean, after all! You heard the guilt in his voice, didn't you?

  "Yes!" she muttered fiercely into the pillow. "That's right, I did! What about that, Aunt Ewie?" There was no answer ... only a queer, light tugging

  (the question is this Trisha)

  at her subconscious mind. As if she had forgotten something, left something out (would you like a sweet Trisha)

  of the equation.

  Polly rolled restlessly onto her side, and the azka tumbled across the fullness of one breast. She heard something inside scratch delicately at the silver wall of its prison.

  No, Polly thought, it's just something shifting. Something inert. This idea that there really is something alive in there ... it's just your imagination.

  Scratch-scritch-scratch.

  The silver ball jiggled minutely between the white cotton cup of her bra and the coverlet of the bed.

  Scratchy-scritch-scratch.

  That thing is alive, Trisha, Aunt Evvie said. That thing is alive, and you know it.

  Don't be silly, Polly told her, tossing over to the other side. How could there possibly be some creature in there? I suppose it might be able to breathe through all those tiny holes, but what in God's name would it eat?

  Maybe, Aunt Ewie replied with soft implacability, it's eating YOU, Trisha.