Outsider

by Stephen King

  ‘Were those cans out there in that barn?’

  ‘Yuh,’ Dougie said. ‘I got two dozen, but they’ll have to be warshed out. Still smell like clabbered milk.’

  ‘What about the hoss-tack?’

  ‘All gone, Daddy.’

  ‘Well, that ain’t the best news of the week, but no more than what I expected. What you callin for, son? And where are you? Sound like you’re on the dark side of the moon.’

  ‘I’m out at 79. Listen, Daddy, somebody been stayin out there.’

  ‘What? You mean like hobos or hippies?’

  ‘It ain’t that. There’s no mess – beercans or wrappers or liquor bottles – and no sign anyone took a dump anywhere, unless they walked a quarter of a mile to the nearest bushes. No campfire sign, either.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Elfman said, ‘dry as it’s been. What did you find? Not that I guess it matters, nothing left to steal and them old buildings half fallen down and not worth pea-turkey.’

  Dougie kept looking back. The road looked empty, all right, but he wished the dust would settle faster.

  ‘I found a pair of bluejeans that look new, and Jockey underpants that look new, and some expensive sneakers, them with the gel insides, that also look new. Only they’re all stained with something, and so’s the hay they was lyin in.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘No, it ain’t blood. Turned the hay black, whatever it was.’

  ‘Oil? Motor oil? Somethin like ’at?’

  ‘No, the stuff wasn’t black, just the hay it got on. I don’t know what it was.’

  But he knew what those stiff patches on the jeans and underpants looked like; he had been masturbating three and sometimes four times a day since he turned fourteen, using an old piece of towel to shoot his spunk into, and then using the backyard tap to rinse it out when his parents were gone. Sometimes he forgot, though, and that piece of toweling got pretty crusty.

  Only there had been a lot of that stuff, a lot, and really, who would jizz off on a brand-new pair of Adipowers, high-class kicks that cost upward of a hundred and forty dollars, even at Wally World? Dougie might have thought about taking them for himself under other circumstances, but not with that crap on them, and not with the other thing he’d noticed.

  ‘Well, let it go and just come on home,’ Elfman said. ‘You got those cans, at least.’

  ‘No, Daddy, you need to get the police out. There was a belt in them jeans, and it’s got a shiny silver buckle in the shape of a horse’s head.’

  ‘That means nothing to me, son, but I guess it does to you.’

  ‘On the news, they said that Terry Maitland was wearing a buckle like that when he was seen at the train station in Dubrow. After he killed that little boy.’

  ‘They said that?’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  ‘Well, shit. You wait there at the crossing until I call you back, but I guess the cops will want to come. I’ll come, too.’

  ‘Tell them I’ll meet them at Biddle’s store.’

  ‘Biddle’s … Dougie, that’s five miles back toward Flint!’

  ‘I know. But I don’t want to stay here.’ The dust had settled now, and there was nothing to be seen, but Dougie still didn’t feel right. Not a single car had passed on the main road since he started talking to his father, and he wanted to be where there were people.

  ‘What’s wrong, son?’

  ‘When I was in that barn where I found the clothes – I’d already got the cans by then, and was lookin for that tack you said might be out there – I started to feel all wrong. Like someone was watchin me.’

  ‘You just got the creeps. The man who killed that boy is dead as dirt.’

  ‘I know, but tell the cops I’ll meet em at Biddle’s, and I’ll take em out there, but I’m not staying here by myself.’ He ended the call before his father could argue with him.

  15

  The meeting with Marcy was set for eight o’clock that night at the Maitland home. Ralph got the green-light call from Howie Gold, who told him Alec Pelley would also be there. Ralph asked if he could bring Yune Sablo, if Yune was available.

  ‘Under no circumstances,’ Howie replied. ‘Bring Lieutenant Sablo or anyone else, even your lovely wife, and the meeting’s off.’

  Ralph agreed. There was nothing else he could do. He puttered around in the cellar for awhile, mostly just shifting boxes from one side to the other and back again. Then he picked at his supper. With two hours still stretching before him, he pushed away from the table. ‘I’m going to the hospital to visit Fred Peterson.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just feel like I should.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, if you want.’

  Ralph shook his head. ‘I’ll go directly to Barnum Court from there.’

  ‘You’re wearing yourself out. Running your guts to water, my grandmother would have said.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  She gave him a smile that said she knew better, then stood on her toes to kiss him. ‘Call me. Whatever happens, call me.’

  He smiled. ‘Nuts to that. I’ll come back and tell you in person.’

  16

  As he was entering the hospital’s lobby, Ralph met the department’s missing detective on his way out. Jack Hoskins was a slight man, prematurely gray, with bags under his eyes and a red-veined nose. He was still wearing his fishing outfit – khaki shirt and khaki pants, both with many pockets – but his badge was clipped to his belt.

  ‘What are you doing here, Jack? I thought you were on vacation.’

  ‘Called back three days early,’ he said. ‘Drove into town not an hour ago. My net, gumrubbers, poles, and tackle box are still in my truck. Chief thought he might like to have at least one detective on active duty. Betsy Riggins is upstairs on five, having the baby. Her labor started late this afternoon. I talked to her husband, who says she’s got a long way to go. Like he’d have any idea. As for you …’ He paused for effect. ‘You’re in a hell of a mess, Ralph.’

  Jack Hoskins made no effort to hide his satisfaction. A year previous, Ralph and Betsy Riggins had been asked to fill out routine evaluation forms for Jack, when he became eligible for a pay bump. Betsy, the detective with the least seniority, had said all the right things. Ralph had turned his in to Chief Geller with only two words written in the space provided: No opinion. It hadn’t kept Hoskins from getting his bump, but it was an opinion, all the same. Hoskins wasn’t supposed to see the eval sheets, and maybe hadn’t, but word of what had been on Ralph’s had of course gotten back to him.

  ‘Did you look in on Fred Peterson?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did.’ Jack pursed his lower lip and blew scant hair off his forehead. ‘Lot of monitors in his room, and low lines on all of them. I don’t think he’s coming back.’

  ‘Well, welcome home.’

  ‘Fuck that, Ralph, I had three more days, the bass were running, and I’m not even going to get a chance to change my shirt, which stinks of fish guts. Got calls from both Geller and Sheriff Doolin. Have to go all the way out to that useless dustbowl known as Canning Township. I understand your buddy Sablo is already there. I probably won’t actually make it home until ten or eleven.’

  Ralph could have said, Don’t blame me, but who else was this mostly useless time-server going to blame? Betsy, for getting pregnant last November? ‘What’s in Canning?’

  ‘Jeans, underpants, and sneakers. Kid found them in a shed or a barn while he was hunting out milk cans for his father. Also a belt with a horse’s head buckle. Of course the Mobile Crime Lab will already be there, I’ll be about as useful as tits on a bull, but the chief—’

  ‘There’ll be fingerprints on the buckle,’ Ralph interrupted. ‘And there may be tire tracks from the van, or the Subaru, or both.’

  ‘Don’t try teaching your daddy how to suck eggs,’ Jack said. ‘I was carrying a detective’s shield while you were still in uniform.’ The subtext Ralph heard was And I’ll still be carrying it when you’re
working as a mall guard at Southgate.

  He left. Ralph was glad to see him go. He only wished he could go out there himself. Fresh evidence at this point could be precious. The silver lining was that Sablo had already gotten there, and would be supervising the Forensics Unit. They’d finish most of their work before Jack could arrive and maybe screw something up, as he had on at least two previous occasions that Ralph knew about.

  He went up to the maternity waiting room first, but all the seats were empty, so maybe the delivery was going faster than Billy Riggins, a nervous novice at this, had expected. Ralph buttonholed a nurse and asked her to tell Betsy that he wished her all the best.

  ‘I will when I get the chance,’ the nurse said, ‘but right now she’s very busy. That little man is in a hurry to get out.’

  Ralph had a brief image of Frank Peterson’s bloody, violated body and thought, If the little man knew what this world was like, he’d be fighting to stay in.

  He took the elevator down two floors to ICU. The remaining member of the Peterson family was in room 304. His neck was heavily bandaged and in a cervical collar. A respirator wheezed, the little accordion gadget inside flopping up and down. The lines on the monitors surrounding the man’s bed were, as Jack Hoskins had said, mighty low. There were no flowers (Ralph had an idea they weren’t allowed in ICU rooms), but a couple of Mylar balloons had been tethered to the foot of the bed and floated near the ceiling. They were imprinted with cheerful exhortations Ralph didn’t like to look at. He listened to the wheeze of the machine that was breathing for Fred. He stared at those low lines and thought of Jack saying I don’t think he’s coming back.

  As he sat down by the bed, a memory from his high school days came to him, back when what was now called environmental studies had been plain old Earth science. They had been studying pollution. Mr Greer had produced a bottle of Poland Spring water and poured it into a glass. He invited one of the kids – Misty Trenton, it had been, she of the deliciously short skirts – up to the front of the room and asked her to take a sip. She had done so. Mr Greer then produced an eyedropper and dipped it into a bottle of Carter’s Ink. He squeezed a drop into the glass. The students watched, fascinated, as that single drop sank, trailing an indigo tentacle behind it. Mr Greer rocked the glass gently from side to side, and soon all the water in the glass was tinted a weak blue. Would you drink it now? Mr Greer asked Misty. She shook her head so emphatically that one of her hair clips came loose, and everybody, Ralph included, had laughed. He wasn’t laughing now.

  Less than two weeks ago, the Peterson family had been perfectly fine. Then had come the drop of polluting ink. You could say it was the chain on Frankie Peterson’s bike, that he would have made it home unharmed if it hadn’t broken, but he also would have made it home unharmed – only pushing his bike instead of riding it – if Terry Maitland hadn’t been waiting in that grocery store parking lot. Terry was the drop of ink, not the bike chain. It was Terry who had first polluted and then destroyed the entire Peterson family. Terry, or whoever had been wearing Terry’s face.

  Strip away the metaphors, Jeannie had said, and you are left with the inexplicable. The supernatural.

  Only that’s not possible. The supernatural may exist in books and movies, but not in the real world.

  No, not in the real world, where drunk incompetents like Jack Hoskins got pay bumps. All Ralph had experienced in his nearly fifty years of life denied the idea. Denied there was even the possibility of such a thing. Yet as he sat here looking at Fred (or what remained of him), Ralph had to admit there was something devilish about the way the boy’s death had spread, taking not just one or two members of his nuclear family, but the whole shebang. Nor did the damage stop with the Petersons. No one could doubt that Marcy and her daughters would carry scars for the rest of their lives, perhaps even permanent disabilities.

  Ralph could tell himself that similar collateral damage followed every atrocity – hadn’t he seen it time and again? Yes. He had. Yet this one seemed so personal, somehow. Almost as if these people had been targeted. And what about Ralph himself? Was he not part of the collateral damage? And Jeannie? Even Derek, who was going to come home from camp to discover that a good many things he’d taken for granted – his father’s job, for instance – were now at risk.

  The respirator wheezed. Fred Peterson’s chest rose and fell. Every now and then he made a thick noise that sounded weirdly like a chuckle. As if it were all a cosmic joke, but you had to be in a coma to get it.

  Ralph couldn’t stand it anymore. He left the room, and by the time he got to the elevator, he was nearly running.

  17

  Once outside, he sat on a bench in the shade and called the station. Sandy McGill picked up, and when Ralph asked if she’d heard anything from Canning Township, there was a pause. When she finally spoke, she sounded embarrassed. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about that with you, Ralph. Chief Geller left specific instructions. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Ralph said, getting up. His shadow stretched long, the shadow of a hanged man, and of course that made him think of Fred Peterson again. ‘Orders is orders.’

  ‘Thanks for understanding. Jack Hoskins is back, and he’s going out there.’

  ‘No problem.’ He hung up and started for the short-term parking lot, telling himself it didn’t matter; Yune would keep him in the loop.

  Probably.

  He unlocked his car, got in, and cranked the air conditioning. Quarter past seven. Too late to go home, too early to go to the Maitlands’. Which left cruising aimlessly around town like a self-absorbed teenager. And thinking. About how Terry had called Willow Rainwater ma’am. About how Terry had asked directions to the nearest doc-in-the-box, even though he’d lived in FC all his life. About how Terry had shared a room with Billy Quade, and wasn’t that convenient. About how Terry had risen to his feet to ask Mr Coben his question, which was even more convenient. Thinking about that drop of ink in the glass of water, turning it pale blue, of footprints that just ended, of maggots squirming inside a cantaloupe that had looked fine on the outside. Thinking that if a person did begin considering supernatural possibilities, that person would no longer be able to think of himself as a completely sane person, and thinking about one’s sanity was maybe not a good thing. It was like thinking about your heartbeat: if you had to go there, you might already be in trouble.

  He turned on the car radio and hunted for loud music. Eventually he found the Animals belting out ‘Boom Boom.’ He cruised, waiting for it to be time to go to the Maitland house on Barnum Court. Finally it was.

  18

  It was Alec Pelley who answered his knock and led him across the living room and into the kitchen. From upstairs he could hear the Animals again. This time it was their biggest hit. It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy, Eric Burdon wailed, and God, I know I’m one.

  Confluence, he thought. Jeannie’s word.

  Marcy and Howie Gold were sitting at the kitchen table. They had coffee. There was also a cup where Alec had been sitting, but no one offered to pour Ralph a cup. I have come unto the camp of mine enemies, he thought, and sat down.

  ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

  Marcy made no reply, just picked up her cup with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

  ‘This is painful for my client,’ Howie said, ‘so let’s keep it brief. You told Marcy you wanted to talk to her—’

  ‘Needed,’ Marcy interrupted. ‘Needed to talk to me, is what he said.’

  ‘So noted. What is it you needed to talk to her about, Detective Anderson? If it’s an apology, feel free to make it, but understand that we reserve all our legal options.’

  In spite of everything, Ralph wasn’t quite ready to apologize. None of these three had seen a bloody branch jutting from Frank Peterson’s bottom, but Ralph had.

  ‘New information has come to light. It may not be substantive, but it’s suggestive of something, although I don’t know exactly what. My wife called it a confluence.’<
br />
  ‘Can you be a little more specific?’ Howie asked.

  ‘It turns out that the van used to abduct the Peterson boy was stolen by a kid only a little older than Frank Peterson himself. The kid’s name is Merlin Cassidy. He was running away from an abusive stepfather. In the course of his run between New York and south Texas, where he was finally arrested, he stole a number of vehicles. He dumped the van in Dayton, Ohio, in April. Marcy – Mrs Maitland – you and your family were in Dayton in April.’

  Marcy had been raising her cup for another sip, but now she set it down with a bang. ‘Oh, no. You’re not putting that on Terry. We flew both ways, and except for when Terry went to visit his dad, we were together the whole time. End of story, and I think it’s time for you to leave.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Ralph said. ‘We knew it was a family trip, and that you went by air, almost from the time Terry became a person of interest. It’s just that … can’t you see how weird it is? The van is there when your family is there, then it turns up here. Terry told me he never saw it, let alone stole it. I want to believe that. We have his fingerprints all over the damn thing, but I still want to. And almost can.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Howie said. ‘Stop trying to suck us in.’

  ‘Would it help you to believe me, maybe even trust me a little, if I told you we now have physical evidence that Terry was in Cap City? His fingerprints on a book from the hotel newsstand? Testimony that has him leaving those prints at approximately the same time the Peterson boy was abducted?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Alec Pelley asked. He sounded almost shocked.

  ‘No.’ Even with the case as effectively dead as Terry himself, Bill Samuels would be furious if he found out Ralph had told Marcy and Marcy’s lawyer about A Pictorial History of Flint County, Douree County, and Canning Township, but he was determined not to let this meeting end without getting some answers.