The Outsider-Stephen King

by Stephen King

  "Nope, and he was on the road for months. Made it all the way to El Paso before a cop bagged him in a Walmart parking lot, sleeping in a stolen Buick. He stole four vehicles in all, but the van was the first. He drove it as far as Ohio before he ditched it and switched to another one. Left the ignition key in it, just the way we thought." He said this with some pride, and Ralph supposed he had a right; it was nice that at least one of their theories going in had proved correct.

  "But we still don't know how it got down here, do we?" Ralph asked. Something was nagging him, though. Some small detail.

  "No," Samuels said. "It's just a loose thread that isn't loose anymore. I thought you'd like to know."

  "And now I do."

  Samuels drank a swallow of beer, then set the can on the picnic table. "I'm not running for re-election."

  "No?"

  "No. Let that lazy asshole Richmond have the job, and see how people like him when he refuses to prosecute eighty per cent of the cases that land on his desk. I told your wife, and she didn't exactly overwhelm me with sympathy."

  "If you think I've been telling her this is all your fault, Bill, you're wrong. I haven't said a word against you. Why would I? Arresting him at that fucking ballgame was my idea, and when I talk to the IA shooflies on Friday, I'll make that clear."

  "I'd expect nothing less."

  "But as I may have already mentioned, you didn't exactly try to talk me out of it."

  "We believed him guilty. I still believe him guilty, dying declaration or no dying declaration. We didn't check for an alibi because he knows everyone in the goddam town and we were afraid of spooking him--"

  "Also we didn't see the point, and boy, were we wrong about tha--"

  "Yes, okay, your fucking point is fucking taken. We also believed he was extremely dangerous, especially to young boys, and on last Saturday night he was surrounded by them."

  "When we got to the courthouse, we should have taken him around back," Ralph said. "I should have insisted on it."

  Samuels shook his head vehemently enough to cause the cowlick to come loose and spring to attention. "Don't take that on yourself. Transfer from county jail to the courthouse is the sheriff's purview. Not the city's."

  "Doolin would've listened to me." Ralph dropped his empty can back into the cooler and looked directly at Samuels. "And he would have listened to you. I think you know that."

  "Water over the dam. Or under the bridge. Or whatever the hell that saying is. We're done. I guess the case might technically stay in the open file, but--"

  "The technical term is OBI, open but inactive. It will stay that way even if Marcy Maitland brings a civil suit against the department, claiming her husband was killed as a result of negligence. And that's a suit she could win."

  "Is she talking about doing that?"

  "I don't know. I haven't scraped up enough nerve to speak to her yet. Howie might give you an idea of what she's thinking."

  "Maybe I'll talk to him. Try to pour a little oil on troubled waters."

  "You're a fountain of wise sayings this evening, counselor."

  Samuels picked up his can of beer, then put it back with a small grimace. He saw Jeannie Anderson at the kitchen window, looking out at them. Just standing there, her face unreadable. "My mother used to subscribe to Fate."

  "Me too," Ralph said moodily, "but after what happened to Terry, I'm not so sure. That Peterson kid came right out of nowhere. Nowhere."

  Samuels smiled a little. "I'm not talking about predestination, just a little digest-sized magazine full of stories about ghosts and crop circles and UFOs and God knows what else. Mom used to read me some of them when I was a kid. There was one in particular that fascinated me. 'Footsteps in the Sand,' it was called. It was about a newly married couple that went on their honeymoon in the Mojave Desert. Camping, you know. Well, one night they pitched their little tent in a grove of cottonwoods, and when the young bride woke up the next morning, her husband was gone. She walked out of the grove to where the sand started, and saw his tracks. She called to him, but there was no answer."

  Ralph made a horror-movie sound: Ooooo-oooo.

  "She followed the tracks over the first dune, then over the second. The tracks kept getting fresher. She followed them over the third . . ."

  "And the fourth, and the fifth!" Ralph said in an awed voice. "And she's still walking to this day! Bill, I hate to cut your campfire story short, but I think I'm going to eat a piece of pie, take a shower, and go to bed."

  "No, listen to me. The third dune was as far as she got. His tracks went halfway down the far side, then stopped. Just stopped, with nothing but acres of sand all around. She never saw him again."

  "And you believe that?"

  "No, I'm sure it's bullshit, but belief isn't the point. It's a metaphor." Samuels tried to soothe the cowlick down. The cowlick refused. "We followed Terry's tracks, because that's our job. Our duty, if you like that word better. We followed them until they stopped on Monday morning. Is there a mystery? Yes. Will there always be unanswered questions? Unless some new and amazing piece of information drops into our laps, there will be. Sometimes that happens. It's why people continue to wonder what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. It's why people keep trying to figure out what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste. It's why people argue about whether or not Oswald acted alone when he shot JFK. Sometimes the tracks just stop, and we have to live with that."

  "One big difference," Ralph said. "The woman in your story about the footsteps could believe her husband was still alive somewhere. She could go on believing that until she was an old woman instead of a young bride. But when Marcy got to the end of her husband's tracks, Terry was right there, dead on the sidewalk. She's burying him tomorrow, according to the obituary in today's paper. I imagine it'll just be her and her girls. Along with fifty news vultures outside the fence, that is, yelling questions and snapping pictures."

  Samuels sighed. "Enough. I'm going home. I told you about the kid--Merlin Cassidy's his name, by the way--and I can see you don't want to listen to anything else."

  "No, wait, sit back down a minute," Ralph said. "You told me one, now I'm going to tell you one. Not out of a psychic magazine, though. This is personal experience. Every word true."

  Samuels lowered himself back to the bench.

  "When I was a kid," Ralph said, "ten or eleven--around Frank Peterson's age--my mother sometimes used to bring home cantaloupes from the farmers' market, if they were in season. Back then I loved cantaloupe. They've got this sweet, dense flavor watermelon can't get close to. So one day she brought home three or four in a net bag, and I asked her if I could have a piece. 'Sure,' she said. 'Just remember to scrape the seeds into the sink.' She didn't really have to tell me that, because I'd opened up my share of cantaloupes by then. You with me so far?"

  "Uh-huh. I suppose you cut yourself, right?"

  "No, but my mother thought I did, because I let out a screech they probably heard next door. She came on the run, and I just pointed at the cantaloupe, laying there on the counter, split in two. It was full of maggots and flies. I mean those bugs were squirming all over each other. My mother got the Raid and sprayed the ones on the counter. Then she got a dish towel, wrapped the pieces in it, and threw them in the swill bucket out back. Since that day I can't bear to look at a slice of cantaloupe, let alone eat one. That's my Terry Maitland metaphor, Bill. The cantaloupe looked fine. It wasn't spongy. The skin was whole. There was no way those bugs could have gotten inside, but somehow they did."

  "Fuck your cantaloupe," Samuels said, "and fuck your metaphor. I'm going home. Think before you quit the job, Ralph, okay? Your wife said I was getting out before Johnny Q. Public fired me, and she's probably right, but you don't have to face the voters. Just three retired cops that are this city's excuse for Internal Affairs, and a shrink collecting some municipal shekels to supplement a private practice on life support. And there's something else. If you quit, people will be even more sure that we screwed this thing
up."

  Ralph stared at him, then began laughing. It was hearty, a series of guffaws that came all the way up from the belly. "But we did! Don't you know that yet, Bill? We did. Royally. We bought a cantaloupe because it looked like a good cantaloupe, but when we cut it open in front of the whole town, it was full of maggots. No way for them to get in, but there they were."

  Samuels trudged toward the kitchen door. He opened the screen, then whirled around, his cowlick springing jauntily back and forth. He pointed at the hackberry tree. "That was a sparrow, goddammit!"

  3

  Shortly after midnight (around the time the last remaining member of the Peterson family was learning how to make a hangman's noose, courtesy of Wikipedia), Marcy Maitland awoke to the sound of screams from her elder daughter's bedroom. It was Grace at first--a mother always knows--but then Sarah joined her, creating a terrible two-part harmony. It was the girls' first night out of the bedroom Marcy had shared with Terry, but of course the kids were still bunking together, and she thought they might do that for some time to come. Which was fine.

  What wasn't fine were those screams.

  Marcy didn't remember running down the hall to Sarah's bedroom. All she remembered was getting out of bed and then standing inside the open door of Sarah's room and beholding her daughters, sitting bolt upright in bed and clutching each other in the light of the full July moon that came flooding through the window.

  "What?" Marcy asked, looking around for an intruder. At first she thought he (surely it was a he) was crouched in the corner, but that was only a pile of cast-off jumpers, tee-shirts, and sneakers.

  "It was her!" Sarah cried. "It was G! She said there was a man! God, Mom, she scared me so bad!"

  Marcy sat on the bed and pried her younger daughter from Sarah's arms and took Grace in her own. She was still looking around. Was he in the closet? He might be, the accordion doors were closed. He could have done that when he heard her coming. Or under the bed? Every childhood fear flooded back while she waited for a hand to close around her ankle. In the other would be a knife.

  "Grace? Gracie? Who did you see? Where was he?"

  Grace was crying too hard to answer, but she pointed at the window.

  Marcy went there, her knees threatening to come unhinged at every step. Were the police still watching the house? Howie said they would be making regular passes for awhile, but that didn't mean they were there all the time, and besides, Sarah's bedroom window--all of their bedroom windows--looked out on either the backyard or the side yard, between their house and the Gundersons'. And the Gundersons were away on vacation.

  The window was locked. The yard--every single blade of grass seeming to cast a shadow in the moonlight--was empty.

  She came back to the bed, sat, and stroked Grace's hair, which was clumped and sweaty. "Sarah? Did you see anything?"

  "I . . ." Sarah considered. She was still holding Grace, who was sobbing against her big sister's shoulder. "No. I might have thought I did, just for a second, but that was because she was screaming, 'The man, the man.' There was no one there." And, to Gracie, "No one, G. Really."

  "You had a bad dream, honey," Marcy said. Thinking, Probably the first of many.

  "He was there," Gracie whispered.

  "He must have been floating, then," Sarah said, speaking with admirable reasonableness for someone who had been scared out of sleep only minutes before. "Because we're on the second floor, y'know."

  "I don't care. I saw him. His hair was short and black and standing up. His face was lumpy, like Play-Doh. He had straws for eyes."

  "Nightmare," Sarah said matter-of-factly, as if this closed the subject.

  "Come on, you two," Marcy said, striving for that same matter-of-fact tone. "You're with me for the rest of the night."

  They came without protest, and five minutes after she had them settled in, one on each side of her, ten-year-old Gracie had fallen asleep again.

  "Mom?" Sarah whispered.

  "What, honey?"

  "I'm scared of Daddy's funeral."

  "So am I."

  "I don't want to go, and neither does G."

  "That makes three of us, sweetheart. But we'll do it. We'll be brave. It's what your dad would have wanted."

  "I miss him so much I can't think of anything else."

  Marcy kissed the gently beating hollow of Sarah's temple. "Go to sleep, honey."

  Sarah eventually did. Marcy lay awake between her daughters, looking up at the ceiling and thinking of Grace turning to the window in a dream so real she thought she was awake.

  He had straws for eyes.

  4

  Shortly after three AM (around the time Fred Peterson was trudging out into his backyard with a footstool from the living room in his left hand and his hangrope over his right shoulder), Jeanette Anderson awoke, needing to pee. The other side of the bed was empty. After doing her little bit of business, she went downstairs and found Ralph sitting in his Papa Bear easy chair, staring at the blank screen of the TV set. She observed him with a wifely eye and noted that he had dropped weight since the discovery of Frank Peterson's body.

  She put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  He didn't look around. "Bill Samuels said something that's nagging at me."

  "What?"

  "That's just it, I don't know. It's like having a word on the tip of your tongue."

  "Was it about the boy who stole the van?"

  Ralph had told her about his conversation with Samuels while the two of them were lying in bed prior to turning out the light, passing it on not because any of it was substantive but because a twelve-year-old boy making it all the way from mid-state New York to El Paso in a series of stolen vehicles was sort of amazing. Maybe not Fate magazine amazing, but still pretty wild. He must really hate his stepdad, Jeannie had said before turning out the light.

  "I think it was something about the kid," Ralph said now. "And there was a scrap of paper in that van. I meant to check back on that, and it kind of got lost in the shuffle. I don't think I mentioned it to you."

  She smiled and ruffled his hair, which--like the body under the pajamas--seemed thinner than it had in the spring. "You did, actually. You said it might be part of a take-out menu."

  "I'm pretty sure it's in evidence."

  "You told me that, too, hon."

  "I might go down to the station tomorrow and take a peek. Maybe it will help me put a finger on whatever it was Bill said."

  "I think that's a good idea. Time to do something besides brood. You know, I went back and re-read that Poe story. The narrator says that when he was at school, he kind of ruled the roost. But then this other boy arrived who had the same name."

  Ralph took her hand and gave it an absent kiss. "Believable enough so far. William Wilson's not as common a name as Joe Smith, maybe, but it's not exactly Zbigniew Brzezinski, either."

  "Yes, but then the narrator discovers that they have the same birth date, and they're going around in similar clothes. Worst of all, they look something alike. People get them mixed up. Sound familiar?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, William Wilson Number One keeps meeting William Wilson Number Two later in life, and these meetings always end badly for Number One, who turns to a life of crime and blames Number Two. Are you following this?"

  "Considering it's quarter past three in the morning, I think I'm doing a fine job."

  "Well, in the end, William Wilson Number One stabs William Wilson Number Two with a sword, only when he looks into a mirror, he sees he's stabbed himself."

  "Because there never was any second William Wilson, I take it."

  "But there was. Lots of other people saw the second one. In the end, though, William Wilson Number One had a hallucination and committed suicide. Because he couldn't stand the doubleness, I guess."

  She expected him to scoff, but he nodded instead. "Okay, that actually makes sense. Pretty damn good psychology, in fact. Especially for . . . what? The middle of the nineteenth century?"

&
nbsp; "Something like that, yes. I took a class in college called American Gothic, and we read a lot of Poe's stories, including that one. The professor said people had the mistaken idea that Poe wrote fantastic stories about the supernatural, when in fact he wrote realistic stories about abnormal psychology."

  "But before fingerprints and DNA," Ralph said, smiling. "Let's go to bed. I think I can sleep now."

  But she held him back. "I'm going to ask you something now, husband of mine. Probably because it's late and it's just the two of us. There's no one to hear you if you laugh at me, but please don't, because that would make me sad."

  "I won't laugh."

  "You might."

  "I won't."

  "You told me Bill's story about the footprints that just stopped, and you told me your story about the maggots that somehow got into the cantaloupe, but both of you were speaking in metaphors. Just as the Poe story is a metaphor for the divided self . . . or so my college prof said. But if you strip the metaphors away, what do you have?"

  "I don't know."

  "The inexplicable," she said. "So my question to you is pretty simple. What if the only answer to the riddle of the two Terrys is supernatural?"

  He didn't laugh. He had no urge to laugh. It was too late at night for laughter. Or too early in the morning. Too something, anyway. "I don't believe in the supernatural. Not ghosts, not angels, not the divinity of Jesus Christ. I go to church, sure, but only because it's a peaceful place where I can sometimes listen to myself. Also because it's the expected thing. I had an idea that's why you went, too. Or because of Derek."

  "I would like to believe in God," she said, "because I don't want to believe we just end, even though it balances the equation--since we came from blackness, it seems logical to assume that it's to blackness we return. But I believe in the stars, and the infinity of the universe. That's the great Out There. Down here, I believe there are more universes in every fistful of sand, because infinity is a two-way street. I believe there's another dozen thoughts in my head lined up behind each one I'm aware of. I believe in my consciousness and my unconscious, even though I don't know what those things are. And I believe in A. Conan Doyle, who had Sherlock Holmes say, 'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.' "