Finders Keepers

by Stephen King

  "But if he's in some kind of jam he doesn't want them to know about, and he still wanted to talk to someone . . . you know, an adult . . ." Jerome is four years older than he was when he helped Hodges with the Brady Hartsfield mess, old enough to vote and buy legal liquor, but still young enough to remember how it is to be seventeen and suddenly realize you've gotten in over your head with something. When that happens, you want to talk to somebody who's been around the block a few times.

  "Jerome's right," Holly says. She turns back to Hodges. "Let's talk to the teacher and find out if Pete asked for advice about anything. If he asks why we want to know--"

  "Of course he'll want to know why," Hodges says, "and I can't exactly claim confidentiality. I'm not a lawyer."

  "Or a priest," Jerome adds, not helpfully.

  "You can tell him we're friends of the family," Holly says firmly. "And that's true." She opens her door.

  "You have a hunch about this," Hodges says. "Am I right?"

  "Yes," she says. "It's a Holly-hunch. Now come on."

  25

  As they are walking up the wide front steps and beneath the motto EDUCATION IS THE LAMP OF LIFE, the door of Andrew Halliday Rare Editions opens again and Pete Saubers steps inside. He starts down the main aisle, then stops, frowning. The man behind the desk isn't Mr. Halliday. He is in most ways the exact opposite of Mr. Halliday, pale instead of florid (except for his lips, which are weirdly red), white-haired instead of bald, and thin instead of fat. Almost gaunt. Jesus. Pete expected his script to go out the window, but not this fast.

  "Where's Mr. Halliday? I had an appointment to see him."

  The stranger smiles. "Yes, of course, although he didn't give me your name. He just said a young man. He's waiting for you in his office at the back of the shop." This is actually true. In a way. "Just knock and go in."

  Pete relaxes a little. It makes sense that Halliday wouldn't want to have such a crucial meeting out here, where anybody looking for a secondhand copy of To Kill a Mockingbird could walk in and interrupt them. He's being careful, thinking ahead. If Pete doesn't do the same, his slim chance of coming out of this okay will go out the window.

  "Thanks," he says, and walks between tall bookcases toward the back of the shop.

  As soon as he goes by the desk, Morris rises and goes quickly and quietly to the front of the shop. He flips the sign in the door from OPEN to CLOSED.

  Then he turns the bolt.

  26

  The secretary in the main office of Northfield High looks curiously at the trio of after-school visitors, but asks no questions. Perhaps she assumes they are family members come to plead the case of some failing student. Whatever they are, it's Howie Ricker's problem, not hers.

  She checks a magnetic board covered with multicolored tags and says, "He should still be in his homeroom. That's three-oh-nine, on the third floor, but please peek through the window and make sure he's not with a student. He has conferences today until four, and with school ending in a couple of weeks, plenty of kids stop by to ask for help on their final papers. Or plead for extra time."

  Hodges thanks her and they go up the stairs, their heels echoing. From somewhere below, a quartet of musicians is playing "Greensleeves." From somewhere above, a hearty male voice cries jovially, "You suck, Malone!"

  Room 309 is halfway down the third-floor corridor, and Mr. Ricker, dressed in an eye-burning paisley shirt with the collar unbuttoned and the tie pulled down, is talking to a girl who is gesturing dramatically with her hands. Ricker glances up, sees he has visitors, then returns his attention to the girl.

  The visitors stand against the wall, where posters advertise summer classes, summer workshops, summer holiday destinations, an end-of-year dance. A couple of girls come bopping down the hall, both wearing softball jerseys and caps. One is tossing a catcher's mitt from hand to hand, playing hot potato with it.

  Holly's phone goes off, playing an ominous handful of notes from the "Jaws" theme. Without slowing, one of the girls says, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," and they both laugh.

  Holly looks at her phone, then puts it away. "A text from Tina," she says.

  Hodges raises his eyebrows.

  "Her mother knows about the money. Her father will too, as soon as he gets home from work." She nods toward the closed door of Mr. Ricker's room. "No reason to hold back now."

  27

  The first thing Pete becomes aware of when he opens the door to the darkened inner office is the billowing stench. It's both metallic and organic, like steel shavings mixed with spoiled cabbage. The next thing is the sound, a low buzzing. Flies, he thinks, and although he can't see what's in there, the smell and the sound come together in his mind with a thud like a heavy piece of furniture falling over. He turns to flee.

  The clerk with the red lips is standing there beneath one of the hanging globes that light the back of the store, and in his hand is a strangely jolly gun, red and black with inlaid gold curlicues. Pete's first thought is Looks fake. They never look fake in the movies.

  "Keep your head, Peter," the clerk says. "Don't do anything foolish and you won't get hurt. This is just a discussion."

  Pete's second thought is You're lying. I can see it in your eyes.

  "Turn around, take a step forward, and turn on the light. The switch is to the left of the door. Then go in, but don't try to slam the door, unless you want a bullet in the back."

  Pete steps forward. Everything inside him from the chest on down feels loose and in motion. He hopes he won't piss his pants like a baby. Probably that wouldn't be such a big deal--surely he wouldn't be the first person to spray his Jockeys when a gun is pointed at him--but it seems like a big deal. He fumbles with his left hand, finds the switch, and flips it. When he sees the thing lying on the sodden carpet, he tries to scream, but the muscles in his diaphragm aren't working and all that comes out is a watery moan. Flies are buzzing and lighting on what remains of Mr. Halliday's face. Which is not much.

  "I know," the clerk says sympathetically. "Not very pretty, is he? Object lessons rarely are. He pissed me off, Pete. Do you want to piss me off?"

  "No," Pete says in a high, wavering voice. It sounds more like Tina's than his own. "I don't."

  "Then you have learned your lesson. Go on in. Move very slowly, but feel free to avoid the mess."

  Pete steps in on legs he can barely feel, edging to his left along one of the bookcases, trying to keep his loafers on the part of the rug that hasn't been soaked. There isn't much. His initial panic has been replaced by a glassy sheet of terror. He keeps thinking of those red lips. Keeps imagining the big bad wolf telling Red Riding Hood, The better to kiss you with, my dear.

  I have to think, he tells himself. I have to, or I'm going to die in this room. Probably I will anyway, but if I can't think, it's for sure.

  He keeps skirting the blotch of blackish-purple until a cherrywood sideboard blocks his path, and there he stops. To go farther would mean stepping onto the bloody part of the rug, and it might still be wet enough to squelch. On the sideboard are crystal decanters of booze and a number of squat glasses. On the desk he sees a hatchet, its blade throwing back a reflection of the overhead light. That is surely the weapon the man with the red lips used to kill Mr. Halliday, and Pete supposes it should scare him even more, but instead the sight of it clears his mind like a hard slap.

  The door clicks shut behind him. The clerk who probably isn't a clerk leans against it, pointing the jolly little gun at Pete. "All right," he says, and smiles. "Now we can talk."

  "Wh-Wh--" He clears his throat, tries again, this time sounds a little more like himself. "What? Talk about what?"

  "Don't be disingenuous. The notebooks. The ones you stole."

  It all comes together in Pete's mind. His mouth falls open.

  The clerk who isn't a clerk smiles. "Ah. The penny drops, I see. Tell me where they are, and you might get out of this alive."

  Pete doesn't think so.

  He thinks he already knows to
o much for that.

  28

  When the girl emerges from Mr. Ricker's homeroom, she's smiling, so her conference must have gone all right. She even twiddles her fingers in a little wave--perhaps to all three of them, more likely just to Jerome--as she hurries off down the hall.

  Mr. Ricker, who has accompanied her to the door, looks at Hodges and his associates. "Can I help you, lady and gentlemen?"

  "Not likely," Hodges says, "but worth a try. May we come in?"

  "Of course."

  They sit at desks in the first row like attentive students. Ricker plants himself on the edge of his desk, an informality he eschewed when talking to his young conferee. "I'm pretty sure you're not parents, so what's up?"

  "It's about one of your students," Hodges says. "A boy named Peter Saubers. We think he may be in trouble."

  Ricker frowns. "Pete? That doesn't seem likely. He's one of the best students I've ever had. Demonstrates a genuine love of literature, especially American literature. Honor Roll every quarter. What kind of trouble do you think he's in?"

  "That's the thing--we don't know. I asked, but he stonewalled me."

  Ricker's frown deepens. "That doesn't sound like the Pete Saubers I know."

  "It has to do with some money he seems to have come into a few years back. I'd like to fill you in on what we know. It won't take long."

  "Please say it has nothing to do with drugs."

  "It doesn't."

  Ricker looks relieved. "Good. Seen too much of that, and the smart kids are just as much at risk as the dumb ones. More, in some cases. Tell me. I'll help if I can."

  Hodges starts with the money that began arriving at the Saubers house in what was, almost literally, the family's darkest hour. He tells Ricker about how, seven months after the monthly deliveries of mystery cash ceased, Pete began to seem stressed and unhappy. He finishes with Tina's conviction that her brother tried to get some more money, maybe from the same source the mystery cash came from, and is in his current jam as a result.

  "He grew a moustache," Ricker muses when Hodges has finished. "He's in Mrs. Davis's Creative Writing course now, but I saw him in the hall one day and joshed him about it."

  "How did he take the joshing?" Jerome asks.

  "Not sure he even heard me. He seemed to be on another planet. But that's not uncommon with teenagers, as I'm sure you know. Especially when summer vacation's right around the corner."

  Holly asks, "Did he ever mention a notebook to you? A Moleskine?"

  Ricker considers it while Holly looks at him hopefully.

  "No," he says at last. "I don't think so."

  She deflates.

  "Did he come to you about anything?" Hodges asks. "Anything at all that was troubling him, no matter how minor? I raised a daughter, and I know they sometimes talk about their problems in code. Probably you know that, too."

  Ricker smiles. "The famous friend-who."

  "Beg pardon?"

  "As in 'I have a friend who might have gotten his girlfriend pregnant.' Or 'I have a friend who knows who spray-painted anti-gay slogans on the wall in the boys' locker room.' After a couple of years on the job, every teacher knows about the famous friend-who."

  Jerome asks, "Did Pete Saubers have a friend-who?"

  "Not that I can recall. I'm very sorry. I'd help you if I could."

  Holly asks, in a small and not very hopeful voice, "Never a friend who kept a secret diary or maybe found some valuable information in a notebook?"

  Ricker shakes his head. "No. I'm really sorry. Jesus, I hate to think of Pete in trouble. He wrote one of the finest term papers I've ever gotten from a student. It was about the Jimmy Gold trilogy."

  "John Rothstein," Jerome says, smiling. "I used to have a tee-shirt that said--"

  "Don't tell me," Ricker says. "Shit don't mean shit."

  "Actually, no. It was the one about not being anyone's birthday . . . uh, present."

  "Ah," Ricker says, smiling. "That one."

  Hodges gets up. "I'm more of a Michael Connelly man. Thanks for your time." He holds out his hand. Ricker shakes it. Jerome is also getting up, but Holly remains seated.

  "John Rothstein," she says. "He wrote that book about the kid who got fed up with his parents and ran away to New York City, right?"

  "That was the first novel in the Gold trilogy, yes. Pete was crazy about Rothstein. Probably still is. He may discover new heroes in college, but when he was in my class, he thought Rothstein walked on water. Have you read him?"

  "I never have," Holly says, also getting up. "But I'm a big movie fan, so I always go to a website called Deadline. To read the latest Hollywood news? They had an article about how all these producers wanted to make a movie out of The Runner. Only no matter how much money they offered, he told them to go to hell."

  "That sounds like Rothstein, all right," Ricker says. "A famous curmudgeon. Hated the movies. Claimed they were art for idiots. Sneered at the word cinema. Wrote an essay about it, I think."

  Holly has brightened. "Then he got murdered and there was no will and they still can't make a movie because of all the legal problems."

  "Holly, we ought to go," Hodges says. He wants to get over to the Saubers home. Wherever Pete is now, he'll turn up there eventually.

  "Okay . . . I guess . . ." She sighs. Although in her late forties, and even with the mood-levelers she takes, Holly still spends too much time on an emotional rollercoaster. Now the light in her eyes is going out and she looks terribly downcast. Hodges feels bad for her, wants to tell her that, even though not many hunches pan out, you shouldn't stop playing them. Because the few that do pan out are pure gold. Not exactly a pearl of wisdom, but later, when he has a private moment with her, he'll pass it on. Try to ease the sting a little.

  "Thank you for your time, Mr. Ricker." Hodges opens the door. Faintly, like music heard in a dream, comes the sound of "Greensleeves."

  "Oh my gosh," Ricker says. "Hold the phone."

  They turn back to him.

  "Pete did come to me about something, and not so long ago. But I see so many students . . ."

  Hodges nods understandingly.

  "And it wasn't a big deal, no adolescent Sturm und Drang, it was actually a very pleasant conversation. It only came to mind now because it was about that book you mentioned, Ms. Gibney. The Runner." He smiles a little. "Pete didn't have a friend-who, though. He had an uncle-who."

  Hodges feels a spark of something bright and hot, like a lit fuse. "What was it about Pete's uncle that made him worth discussing?"

  "Pete said the uncle had a signed first edition of The Runner. He offered it to Pete because Pete was a Rothstein fan--that was the story, anyway. Pete told me he was interested in selling it. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to part with a book signed by his literary idol, and he said he was considering it very seriously. He was hoping to help send his sister to one of the private schools, I can't remember which one--"

  "Chapel Ridge," Holly says. The light in her eyes has returned.

  "I think that's right."

  Hodges walks slowly back to the desk. "Tell me . . . us . . . everything you remember about that conversation."

  "That's really all, except for one thing that kind of nudged my bullshit meter. He said his uncle won the book in a poker game. I remember thinking that's the kind of thing that happens in novels or movies, but rarely in real life. But of course, sometimes life does imitate art."

  Hodges frames the obvious question, but Jerome gets there first. "Did he ask you about booksellers?"

  "Yes, that's really why he came to me. He had a short list of local dealers, probably gleaned from the Internet. I steered him away from one of them. Bit of a shady reputation there."

  Jerome looks at Holly. Holly looks at Hodges. Hodges looks at Howard Ricker and asks the obvious follow-up question. He's locked in now, the fuse in his head burning brightly.

  "What's this shady book dealer's name?"

  29

  Pete sees only one chance to g
o on living. As long as the man with the red lips and pasty complexion doesn't know where the Rothstein notebooks are, he won't pull the trigger of the gun, which is looking less jolly all the time.

  "You're Mr. Halliday's partner, aren't you?" he says, not exactly looking at the corpse--it's too awful--but lifting his chin in that direction. "In cahoots with him."

  Red Lips utters a brief chuckle, then does something that shocks Peter, who believed until that moment he was beyond shock. He spits on the body.

  "He was never my partner. Although he had his chance, once upon a time. Long before you were even a twinkle in your father's eye, Peter. And while I find your attempt at a diversion admirable, I must insist that we keep to the subject at hand. Where are the notebooks? In your house? Which used to be my house, by the way. Isn't that an interesting co-inky-dink?"

  Here is another shock. "Your--"

  "More ancient history. Never mind. Is that where they are?"

  "No. They were for awhile, but I moved them."

  "And should I believe that? I think not."

  "Because of him." Pete again lifts his chin toward the body. "I tried to sell him some of the notebooks, and he threatened to tell the police. I had to move them."

  Red Lips considers this, then gives a nod. "All right, I can see that. It fits with what he told me. So where did you put them? Out with it, Peter. Fess up. We'll both feel better, especially you. If 'twere to be done, 'twere well it were done quickly. Macbeth, act one."

  Pete does not fess up. To fess up is to die. This is the man who stole the notebooks in the first place, he knows that now. Stole the notebooks and murdered John Rothstein over thirty years ago. And now he's murdered Mr. Halliday. Will he scruple at adding Pete Saubers to his list?

  Red Lips has no trouble reading his mind. "I don't have to kill you, you know. Not right away, at least. I can put a bullet in your leg. If that doesn't loosen your lips, I'll put one in your balls. With those gone, a young fellow like you wouldn't have much to live for, anyway. Would he?"

  Pushed into a final corner, Pete has nothing left but the burning, helpless outrage only adolescents can feel. "You killed him! You killed John Rothstein!" Tears are welling in his eyes; they run down his cheeks in warm trickles. "The best writer of the twentieth century and you broke into his house and killed him! For money! Just for money!"