The Outsider-Stephen King

by Stephen King

  "Your idea to arrest him in public is now looking like a bad call," Samuels said.

  Ralph gave him a hard look. "It was one you went along with."

  "Not very enthusiastically," Samuels said. "Let's have the truth, since everyone else has gone home and it's just us girls. With you it was close to home."

  "Damn straight," Ralph said. "It still is. And since it's just us girls, let me remind you that you did a little more than just go along. You've got an election coming up in the fall, and a dramatic high-profile arrest wouldn't exactly hurt your chances."

  "That never entered my mind," Samuels said.

  "Fine. It never entered your mind, you just went with the flow, but if you think arresting him at the ballpark was just about my son, you need to take another look at those crime scene pictures, and think about Felicity Ackerman's autopsy addendum. Guys like this never stop at one."

  Color began to mount in Samuels's cheeks. "You think I haven't? Christ, Ralph, I was the one who called him a fucking cannibal, on the record."

  Ralph slid a palm up his cheek. It rasped. "Arguing over who said what and who did what is pointless. The thing to remember is it doesn't matter who gets to the security footage first. If it's Pelley, he can't just put it under his arm and carry it away, can he? Nor can he erase it."

  "That's true," Samuels said. "And it's not apt to be conclusive, in any case. We may see a man in some of the footage who looks like Maitland--"

  "Right. But proving it's him, based on a few glimpses, would be a different kettle of fish. Especially when stacked up against our eyewits and the fingerprints." Ralph stood and opened the door. "Maybe the footage isn't the most important thing. I need to make a phone call. Should have made it already."

  Samuels followed him into the reception area. Sandy McGill was on the telephone. Ralph approached her and made a throat-cutting gesture. She hung up and looked at him expectantly.

  "Everett Roundhill," he said. "Chairman of the high school English department. Track him down and get him on the phone."

  "Tracking him down won't be a problem, since I've already got his number," Sandy said. "He's called twice already, asking to speak to the lead investigator, and I basically told him to get in line." She picked up a sheaf of WHILE YOU WERE OUT notes and waved them at him. "I was going to put these on your desk for tomorrow. I know it's Sunday, but I've been telling people I'm pretty sure you'll be in."

  Speaking very slowly, and looking at the floor instead of at the man beside him, Bill Samuels said, "Roundhill called. Twice. I don't like that. I don't like it at all."

  3

  Ralph arrived home at quarter to eleven on that Saturday night. He hit the garage door opener, drove inside, then hit it again. The door rattled obediently back down on its tracks, at least one thing in the world that remained sane and normal. Push Button A and, assuming Battery Compartment B is loaded with relatively fresh Duracells, Garage Door C opens and closes.

  He turned off the engine and just sat there in the dark, tapping the steering wheel with his wedding ring, remembering a rhyme from his raucous teenage years: Shave and a haircut . . . you bet! Sung by the whorehouse . . . quartet!

  The door opened and Jeanette came out, wrapped in her housecoat. In the spill of light from the kitchen, he saw that she was wearing the bunny slippers he'd given her as a joke present on her last birthday. The real present had been a trip to Key West, just the two of them, and they'd had a great time, but now it was just a blurry remnant in his mind, the way all vacations were later on: things with no more substance than the aftertaste of candy floss. The joke slippers were the things that had lasted, pink slippers from the Dollar Store with their ridiculous little eyes and their comical floppy ears. Seeing her in them made his eyes sting. He felt as if he had aged twenty years since stepping into that clearing at Figgis Park and viewing the bloody ruin that had been a little boy who probably idolized Batman and Superman.

  He got out and hugged his wife hard, pressing his beard-stubbly cheek to her smooth one, saying nothing at first, concentrating on holding back the tears that wanted to come.

  "Honey," she said. "Honey, you got him. You got him, so what's wrong?"

  "Maybe nothing," he said. "Maybe everything. I should have brought him in for questioning. But Jesus Christ, I was so sure!"

  "Come in," she said. "I'll make tea, and you can tell me about it."

  "Tea will keep me awake."

  She drew back and looked at him with eyes as lovely and dark at fifty as they had been at twenty-five. "Are you going to sleep, anyway?" And when he didn't reply: "Case closed."

  Derek was away at camp in Michigan, so they had the house to themselves. She asked him if he wanted to watch the eleven o'clock news on the kitchen TV, and he shook his head. The last thing he wanted was ten minutes of coverage on how the Flint City Monster had been brought to bay. Jeannie made raisin toast to go with the tea. Ralph sat at the kitchen table, looking at his hands, and told her everything. He saved Everett Roundhill for last.

  "He was furious with all of us," Ralph said, "but since I was the one who finally called him back, I was the one who took the incoming fire."

  "Are you saying he confirmed Terry's story?"

  "Every word. Roundhill picked up Terry and the other two teachers--Quade and Grant--at the high school. Ten o'clock Tuesday morning, as arranged. They got to the Sheraton in Cap City around 11:45, just in time to pick up their conference IDs and be seated for the banquet lunch. Roundhill says he lost track of Terry for an hour or so after the lunch was over, but he thinks Quade was with him. In any case, they were all back together by three, which is when Mrs. Stanhope saw him putting Frank Peterson's bike--and Frank himself--into a dirty white van seventy miles south."

  "Have you talked to Quade?"

  "Yes. On the way home. He wasn't angry--Roundhill's so pissed he's threatening to call for a full-scale investigation by the AG--but he was disbelieving. Stunned. Said that he and Terry went to a used bookstore called Second Edition after the banquet lunch, browsed, then came back for Coben."

  "And Grant? What about him?"

  "He's a she--Debbie Grant. Haven't reached her yet, her husband said she went out with some other women, and when she does that she always turns off her phone. I'll get her tomorrow morning, and when I do, I have no doubt that she'll confirm what Roundhill and Quade told me." He took a small bite of his toast, then put it back on the plate. "This is my fault. If I'd pulled Terry in for questioning Thursday night, after Stanhope and the Morris girl ID'd him, I'd have known we had a problem and this wouldn't be all over TV and the Internet now."

  "But by then you'd matched the fingerprints to Terry Maitland's, isn't that right?"

  "Yes."

  "Fingerprints in the van, a fingerprint on the van's ignition key, fingerprints in the car he abandoned by the river, on the branch he used to . . ."

  "Yes."

  "And then more eyewitnesses. The man behind Shorty's Pub, and his friend. Plus the cab driver. And the bouncer at the strip club. They all knew him."

  "Uh-huh, and now that he's been arrested, I have no doubt we'll get a few more eyewits from Gentlemen, Please. Bachelors, mostly, who won't have to explain to their wives what they were doing there. I still should have waited. Maybe I should have called the high school to check on his movements on the day of the murder, except it made no sense, being summer vacation and all. What could they have told me except 'He's not here'?"

  "And you were afraid that if you started asking questions, it would get back to him."

  That had seemed obvious at the time, but now it only seemed stupid. Worse, careless. "I've made some mistakes in my career, but nothing like this. It's as if I went blind."

  She shook her head vehemently. "Do you remember what I said when you told me that was how you meant to do it?"

  "Yes."

  Go ahead. Get him away from those boys as fast as you can.

  That was what she'd said.

  They sat there, lookin
g at each other across the table.

  "This is impossible," Jeannie said at last.

  He pointed a finger at her. "I think you've reached the heart of the matter."

  She sipped her tea thoughtfully, then looked at him over the rim of her cup. "There's an old saying that everyone has a double. I think Edgar Allan Poe even wrote a story about it. 'William Wilson,' it was called."

  "Poe wrote his stories before fingerprints and DNA. We don't have the DNA yet--that's pending--but if it comes back as his, it's him and I'm probably okay. If it comes back as someone else's, they'll cart me off to the loonybin. After I lose my job and get sued for false arrest, that is."

  She lifted her own piece of toast, then lowered it again. "You have his fingerprints here. And you'll have his DNA here, I'm sure of it. But Ralph . . . you don't have any fingerprints or DNA from there. From whoever attended that conference in Cap City. What if Terry Maitland killed the boy and it was the double at that conference?"

  "If you're saying Terry Maitland has a lost identical twin with the same fingerprints and DNA, it's not possible."

  "I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you don't have any forensic proof that it was Terry in Cap City. If Terry was here, and the forensic evidence says he was, then the double must have been there. It's the only thing that makes sense."

  Ralph understood the logic, and in the detective novels Jeannie liked to read--the Agatha Christies, the Rex Stouts, the Harlan Cobens--it would have been the centerpiece of the final chapter, when Miss Marple, Nero Wolfe, or Myron Bolitar revealed all. There was one rock-hard fact, as unassailable as gravity: a man could not be in two places at the same time.

  But if Ralph had confidence in the eyewitnesses here, he had to have equal confidence in the eyewitnesses who said they had been in Cap City with Maitland. How could he doubt them? Roundhill, Quade, and Grant all taught in the same department. They saw Maitland every day. Was he, Ralph, supposed to believe those three teachers had colluded in the rape-murder of a child? Or that they had spent two days with a double so perfect they had never even suspected? And even if he could make himself believe it, could Bill Samuels ever convince a jury, especially when Terry had a seasoned and crafty defense lawyer like Howie Gold on his side?

  "Let's go up to bed," Jeanette said. "I'll give you one of my Ambiens and rub your back. This will look better in the morning."

  "You think so?" he asked.

  4

  As Jeanette Anderson was rubbing her husband's back, Fred Peterson and his older son (now, with Frankie gone, his only son) were picking up dishes and setting the living room and the den to rights. And although it had been a remembrance gathering, the remains were pretty much the same as after any large and long houseparty.

  Ollie had surprised Fred. The boy was your typical self-involved teenager who ordinarily wouldn't pick up his socks from under the coffee table unless told twice or three times, but tonight he'd been an efficient and uncomplaining helper since Arlene had at ten o'clock turned out the last of that day's unending stream of guests. The gathering of friends and neighbors had been winding down by seven, and Fred had hoped it would be over by eight--God, he was so tired of nodding when people told him Frankie was in heaven now--but then came the news that Terence Maitland had been arrested for Frankie's murder, and the damn thing had cranked up all over again. That second cycle almost had been a party, albeit a grim one. Again and again Fred had been told that a, it was unbelievable, that b, Coach T had always seemed so normal, and c, the needle at McAlester was too good for him.

  Ollie went back and forth from the living room to the kitchen, carrying glasses and piles of dishes, loading them into the dishwasher with an efficiency Fred never would have expected. When the dishwasher was full, Ollie set it going and rinsed more dishes, stacking them in the sink for the next load. Fred brought in the dishes that had been left in the den, and found yet more on the picnic table in the backyard, where some of their visitors had gone to smoke. Fifty or sixty people must have washed through the house before it was finally over, everyone in the neighborhood, plus well-wishers from other parts of town, not to mention Father Brixton and his various hangers-on (his groupies, Fred thought) from St. Anthony's. On and on they had come, a stream of mourners and gawkers.

  Fred and Ollie did their clean-up work silently, each wrapped up in his own thoughts and his own grief. After receiving condolences for hours--and to be fair, even those from total strangers had been heartfelt--they were unable to condole with each other. Maybe that was strange. Maybe it was sad. Maybe it was what literary types called irony. Fred was too tired and heartsick to think about it.

  During all of this, the dead boy's mother sat on the sofa in her best meet-the-public silk dress, her knees together, her hands cupping her fat upper arms as if she were cold. She'd said nothing since the last of the evening's guests--old Mrs. Gibson from next door, who had predictably held on until the bitter end--finally took her leave.

  She can go now, she's got it all stored up, Arlene Peterson had said to her husband as she locked the front door and then leaned her bulk against it.

  Arlene Kelly had been a slender vision in white lace when Father Brixton's predecessor married them. She had still been slender and beautiful after giving birth to Ollie, but that had been seventeen years ago. She had begun to put on weight after giving birth to Frank, and now she was on the verge of obesity . . . although she was still beautiful to Fred, who hadn't the heart to take Dr. Connolly's advice, at his last physical: You're good to go for another fifty years, Fred, as long as you don't fall off a building or step in front of a truck, but your wife has type two diabetes, and needs to lose fifty pounds if she's going to stay healthy. You need to help her. After all, you've both got a lot to live for.

  Only with Frankie not just dead but murdered, most of the things they had to live for seemed stupid and insignificant. Only Ollie retained his former precious importance in Fred's mind, and even in his grief, he knew that he and Arlene had to be careful about how they treated him in the weeks and months ahead. Ollie was also grieving. Ollie could shoulder his share (more than that, really) of clearing away the remains of this last act in the tribal death-rites of Franklin Victor Peterson, but tomorrow they would have to let him start going back to being a boy. It would take time, but he would get there eventually.

  The next time I see Ollie's socks under the coffee table, I will rejoice, Fred promised himself. And I will break this horrible, unnatural silence as soon as I can think of something to say.

  But he could think of nothing, and as Ollie sleepwalked past him into the den, pulling their vacuum cleaner by its hose, Fred thought--with no idea of how wrong he was--that at least things could not get worse.

  He went to the doorway of the den, and watched as Ollie began vacuuming the gray pile with that same eerie, unguessed-at efficiency, taking long, even strokes, first pushing the nap one way and then pulling it the other. The crumby remains of Nabs, Oreos, and Ritz crackers disappeared as if they had never been there, and Fred finally found something to say. "I'll do the living room."

  "I don't mind," Ollie said. His eyes were red and swollen. Given the age difference between the two brothers--seven years--they had been amazingly close. Or maybe it wasn't so amazing, maybe that was just enough space to keep sibling rivalry to a bare minimum. To make Ollie something like Frank's second father.

  "I know," Fred said, "but share and share alike."

  "Okay. Just don't say, 'It's what Frankie would have wanted.' I'd have to strangle you with the vacuum hose."

  Fred smiled at that. Probably not his first smile since the policeman had come to the door last Tuesday, but maybe the first real one. "It's a deal."

  Ollie finished the carpet and trundled the vacuum to his father. When Fred pulled it into the living room and started in on the carpet, Arlene got to her feet and trudged toward the kitchen without looking back. Fred and Ollie glanced at each other. Ollie shrugged. Fred shrugged back and began vacuuming again. Peop
le had reached out to them in their grief, and Fred supposed that was nice, but golly-willikers, what a mess they had left behind. He consoled himself with the thought that it would have been much worse if it had been an Irish wake, but Fred had quit the booze after Ollie was born, and the Petersons kept a dry house.

  From the kitchen came a most unexpected sound: laughter.

  Fred and Ollie stared at each other again. Ollie hurried for the kitchen, where his mother's laughter, which had seemed natural and easy to begin with, was now rising to a hysterical pitch. Fred stepped on the vacuum cleaner's power button, killing it, and followed.

  Arlene Peterson was standing with her back to the sink, holding her considerable belly and nearly screaming with laughter. Her face had gone bright red, as if she were running a high fever. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

  "Ma?" Ollie asked. "What the hell?"

  Although the dishes had been cleared from the living room and den, there was still a ton of work to be done here. There were two counters on either side of the sink, and a table in the kitchen nook, where the Peterson family had taken most of their evening meals. All these surfaces were loaded with partially eaten casseroles, Tupperware containers, and leftovers wrapped in aluminum foil. Resting on top of the stove was the carcass of a partially eaten chicken and a gravy boat full of congealed brown sludge.

  "We've got enough leftovers for a month!" Arlene managed. She doubled over, guffawing, then straightened up. Her cheeks had turned purple. Her red hair, which she had bequeathed to both the son standing before her and the one now underground, had come loose from the clips with which she had temporarily tamed it, and now stood out around her congested face in a frizzy corona. "Bad news, Frankie's dead! Good news, I won't have to go shopping for a long . . . long . . . time!"

  She began to howl. It was a sound that belonged in an insane asylum, not in their kitchen. Fred told his legs to move, to go to her and embrace her, but at first they wouldn't obey. It was Ollie who moved, but before he could get to her, Arlene picked up the chicken and threw it. Ollie ducked. The chicken flew end over end, shedding stuffing, and hit the wall with a horrible crunch-splat. It left a circle of grease on the wallpaper below the clock.