Rose Madder

by Stephen King

  He yanked Pam off the coathook. There was an unspeakable gristly sound as she came. Her one good eye--bluer than ever it seemed to Norman--stared at him in wordless horror.

  Then she opened her mouth and shrieked.

  Norman never thought about it; his hands acted on their own, grabbing her face by the cheeks, planting his big palms beneath the delicate angles of her jaw, and then twisting. There was a single sharp crack--the sound of someone stamping on a cedar shingle--and she went limp in his arms. She was gone, and whatever she had known about Rose was gone with her

  "Oh you dopey gal, " Norman breathed. "Put your eye out on the fucking coathook, how stupid is that?"

  He shook her in his arms. Her head flopped bonelessly from side to side. She now wore a wet red bib on the front of her white uniform. He carried Pam back over to the coverlets and dropped her there. She sprawled with her legs apart.

  "Brazen bitch, " Norman said. "You can't even quit when you're dead, can you?" He crossed her legs. One of her arms dropped off her lap and thumped onto the coverlets. He saw a kinky purple bracelet around her wrist--it looked almost like a short length of telephone cord. On it was a key.

  Norman looked at this, then toward the lockers at the far end of the room.

  You can't go there, Normie, his father said. I know what you're thinking, but you're nuts if you go anywhere near their place on Durham Avenue.

  Norman smiled. You're nuts if you go there. That was sort of funny, when you thought about it. Besides, where else was there to go? What else was there to try? He didn't have much time. His bridges were burning merrily behind him, all of them.

  "The time is out of joint," Norman Daniels murmured, and stripped the key-bracelet off Pam's wrist. He went down to the lockers, holding the bracelet between his teeth long enough to stick the bullmask back on his hand Then he held Ferd up and let him scan the Dymotapes on the lockers.

  "This one, " Ferd said, and tapped the locker marked PAM HAVERFORD with his rubber face.

  The key fit the lock. Inside was a pair ofjeans, a tee-shirt, a sports bra, a shower-bag, and Pam's purse. Norman took the purse over to one of the Dandux baskets and spilled out the contents on the towels. He cruised Ferdinand over the stuff like some bizarre spy satellite.

  "There you go, big boy, " Ferd murmured.

  Norman plucked a thin slice of gray plastic from the rubble of cosmetics, tissues, and papers. It would open the front door of their clubhouse, no doubt about that. He picked it up, started to turn away--

  "Wait, " ze bool said. It went to Norman's ear and whispered, flower-decked horns bobbing.

  Norman listened, then nodded. He stripped the mask off his sweaty hand again, stuffed it back into his pocket, and bent over Pam's purse-litter. He sifted carefully this time, much as he would have if he had been investigating what was called "an event scene" in the current jargon ... only then he would have used the tip of a pen or pencil instead of the tips of his fingers.

  Fingerprints certainly aren't a problem here, he thought, and laughed. Not anymore.

  He pushed her billfold aside and picked up a small red book with TELEPHONE ADDRESS on the front. He looked under D, found an entry for Daughters and Sisters, but it wasn't what he was looking for. He turned to the front page of the book, where a great many numbers had been written over and around Pam's doodles--eyes and cartoon bowties, mostly. The numbers all looked like phone numbers, though.

  He turned to the back page, the other likely spot. More phone numbers, more eyes, more bowties ... and in the middle, neatly boxed and marked with asterisks, this:

  "Oh boy, " he said. "Hold your cards, folks, but I think we have a Bingo. We do, don't we, Pammy?"

  Norman tore the back page out of Pam's book, stuffed it in his front pocket, and tiptoed back to the door. He listened. No one out there. He let out a breath and touched the corner of the paper he'd just stuck in his pocket. His mind lifted off in another one of those skips as he did so, and for a little while there was nothing at all.

  4

  Hale and Gustafson led Rosie and Gert to a corner of the squadroom that was almost like a conversation-pit; the furniture was old but fairly comfortable, and there were no desks for the detectives to sit behind. They dropped instead onto a faded green sofa parked between the soft-drink machine and the table with the Bunn-O-Matic on it. Instead of a grim picture of drug addicts or AIDS victims, there was a travel-agency poster of the Swiss Alps over the coffee-maker. The detectives were calm and sympathetic, the interview was low-key and respectful, but neither their attitude nor the informal surroundings helped Rosie much. She was still angry, more furious than she had ever been in her life, but she was also terrified. It was being in this place.

  Several times as the Q-and-A went on, she came close to losing control of her emotions, and each time this happened she would look across the room to where Bill was sitting patiently outside the waist-high railing with its sign reading POLICE BUSINESS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT, PLEASE.

  She knew she should get up, go over to him, and tell him not to wait any longer--to just take himself on home and call her tomorrow. She couldn't bring herself to do it. She needed him to be there the way she'd needed him to be behind her on the Harley when the detectives had been driving them here, needed him as an overimaginative child needs a nightlight when she wakes up in the middle of the night.

  The thing was, she kept having crazy ideas. She knew they were crazy, but knowing didn't help. For awhile they would go away, she would simply answer their questions and not have the crazy ideas, and then she would catch herself thinking that they had Norman down in the basement, that they were hiding him down there, sure they were, because law enforcement was a family, cops were brothers, and cops' wives weren't allowed to run away and have lives of their own no matter what. Norman was safely tucked away in some tiny sub-basement room where no one could hear you even if you screamed at the top of your lungs, a room with sweaty concrete walls and a single bare bulb hanging down from a cord, and when this meaningless charade was over, they would take her to him. They would take her to Norman.

  Crazy. But she only fully knew it was crazy when she looked up and saw Bill on the other side of the low railing, watching her and waiting for her to be done so he could take her home on the back of his iron pony.

  They went over it and over it, sometimes Gustafson asking the questions, sometimes Hale, and while Rosie had no sense that the two men were playing good-cop/bad-cop, she wished they would finish with their interminable questions and their interminable forms and let them go. Maybe when she got out of here, those paralyzing swoops between rage and terror would abate a little.

  "Tell me again how you happened to have Mr. Daniels's picture in your purse, Ms. Kinshaw," Gustafson said. He had a half-completed report in front of him and a Bic in one hand. He was frowning horribly; to Rosie he looked like a kid taking a final he hasn't studied for.

  "I've told you that twice already," Gert said.

  "This'll be the last time," Hale said quietly.

  Gert looked at him. "Scout's Honor?"

  Hale grinned--a very winning grin--and nodded. "Scout's Honor."

  So she told them again how she and Anna had tentatively connected Norman Daniels to the murder of Peter Slowik, and how they had gotten Norman's picture by fax. From there she went on to how she had noticed the man in the wheelchair when the ticket-agent shouted at him. Rosie was familiar with the story now, but Gert's bravery still amazed her. When Gert got to the confrontation with Norman behind the comfort station, relating it in the matter-of-fact tones of a woman reciting a shopping list, Rosie took her big hand and squeezed it hard.

  When she finished this time, Gert looked at Hale and raised her eyebrows. "Okay?"

  "Yes," Hale said. "Very okay. Cynthia Smith owes you her life. If you were a cop, I'd put you in for a citation."

  Gert snorted. "I'd never pass the physical. Too fat."

  "Just the same," Hale said, not smiling, meeting her eyes.
>
  "Well, I appreciate the compliment, but what I really want to hear from you is that you're going to catch the guy."

  "We'll catch him," Gustafson said. He sounded absolutely sure of himself and Rosie thought, You don't know my Norman, Officer.

  "Are you done with us?" Gert asked.

  "With you, yes," Hale said. "I have a few more questions for Ms. McClendon ... can you deal with that? If not, they could wait." He paused. "But they really shouldn't wait. I think we both know that, don't we?"

  Rosie closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. She looked toward Bill, who was still sitting outside the railing, and then back at Hale.

  "Ask what you have to," she said. "Just finish as soon as you can. I want to go home."

  5

  This time when he came back a into his own head he was getting out of the Tempo on a quiet street he recognized almost at once as Durham Avenue. He was parked a block and a half down from the Pussy Palace. It wasn't dark yet, but getting there; the shadows under the trees were thick and velvety, somehow luscious.

  He looked down at himself and saw that he must have gone to his room before leaving the hotel. His skin smelled of soap and he was wearing different clothes. They were good clothes for his errand, too: chinos, a white roundneck tee-shirt, and a blue work-shirt with the tails hanging out. He looked like the sort of guy who might turn out on a weekend to check a faulty gas connection or ...

  "Or to check the burglar alarm, " Norman said under his breath, and grinned. "Pretty brazen, Senor Daniels. Pretty goddam bra--"

  Panic struck like a thunderclap then, and he slapped at the lefthand rear pocket of the chinos he was now wearing. He felt nothing but the lump of his wallet. He slapped at the righthand rear and let out a harsh sigh of relief as the limp rubber of the mask flopped against his hand. He had forgotten his service revolver, apparently--left it back in the room safe--but he'd remembered the mask, and right now the mask seemed a lot more important than the gun. Probably crazy, but there it was.

  He started up the sidewalk toward 251. If there were only a few cunts there, he'd try to take them all hostage. If there were a lot, he'd hold onto as many as he could--maybe half a dozen--and send the rest scampering for the hills. Then he'd simply start shooting them, one by one, until somebody coughed up Rose's address. If none of them knew it, he'd shoot them all and start checking files ... but he didn't think it would come to that.

  What will you do if the cops are there, Normie? his father asked nervously. Cops out front, cops inside, cops protecting the place from you?

  He didn't know. And didn't much care.

  He passed 245, 247, 249. There was a hedge between that last one and the sidewalk, and as Norman reached the end of it he stopped suddenly, looking at 251 Durham Avenue with narrow, suspicious eyes. He had been prepared to see a lot of activity or a little activity, but he had not been prepared for what he was seeing, which was no activity at all.

  Daughters and Sisters stood at the end of its narrow, deep lawn with the second-and third-story shades pulled against the heat of the day. It was as silent as a relic. The windows to the left of the porch were unshaded but dark. There were no shapes moving in there. No one on the porch. No cars in the driveway.

  I can't just stand here, he thought, and got moving again. He walked past the place, looking into the vegetable garden where he'd seen the two whores before--one of them the whore he'd grabbed at the comfort station. The garden was also empty this evening. And from what he could see of the back yard, that was empty, too.

  It's a trap, Normie, his father said. You know that, don't you?

  Norman walked as far as a Cape Cod with 257 on the door, then turned and began to saunter casually back down the sidewalk. He knew it looked like a trap, the father-voice was right about that, but somehow it didn't feel like a trap.

  Ferdinand the Bull rose up before his eyes like a cheesy rubber ghost--Norman had pulled the mask out of his back pocket and put it on his hand without even realizing it. He knew this was a bad idea; anyone looking out a window would be sure to wonder why the big man with the swollen face was talking to the rubber mask ... and making the mask answer back by wiggling its lips. Yet none of that seemed to matter, either. Life had gotten very ... well, basic. Norman sort of liked that.

  "Nah, it's not a trap, " Ferdinand said. "Are you sure?" he asked. He was almost in front of 251 again.

  "Yeah," Ferdinand said, nodding his garlanded horns. "They just went on with their picnic, that's all. Right now they're probably all sitting around toasting marshmallows while some dyke in a granny dress sings 'Blowin' in the Wind.' You didn't amount to any more than a temporary wrinkle in their day. "

  He stopped in front of the walk leading up to Daughters and Sisters, looking down at the mask, thunderstruck.

  "Hey-sorry, guy, " ze bool said apologetically, "but I don't make the news, you know, I only report it. "

  Norman was stunned to discover there was something almost as bad as coming home to find out your wife had absconded for parts unknown with your bank card in her purse: there was being ignored.

  Being ignored by a bunch of women.

  "Well, then, teach them not to do that, " Ferd said. "Teach them a lesson. Go on, Norm. Teach them who you are. Teach them so they'll never forget it. "

  "So they'll never forget it, " Norman muttered, and the mask nodded enthusiastically on his hand.

  He stuffed it into his back pocket again and pinched Pam's keycard and the slip of paper he'd taken from her address book out of his left front one as he went up the walk. He climbed the porch steps, glancing up once--casually, he hoped--at the TV camera mounted over the door. He held the keycard against his leg. Eyes might be watching, after all. He would do well to remember that, lucky or not, Ferdinand was only a rubber mask with Norman Daniels's hand for a brain.

  The keycard slot was just where he had expected it would be. There was a talkbox beside it, complete with a little sign instructing visitors to press and speak.

  Norman pressed the button, leaned forward, and said: "Midland Gas, checking for a leak in the neighborhood, ten-four? "

  He let go of the button. Waited. Glanced up at the camera. Black-and-white, probably wouldn't show how swollen his face was ... he hoped. He smiled to show he was harmless as his heart pumped away in his chest like a small, vicious engine.

  No answer. Nothing.

  He pushed the button again. "Anybody home, gals?"

  He gave them time, counting slowly to twenty. His father whispered that it was a trap, exactly the sort of trap he himself would have set in this situation, lure the scumbucket in, make him believe the place was empty, then land on him like a load of bricks. And yes, it was the kind of trap he himself would have set ... but there was no one here. He was almost sure of it. The place felt as empty as a discarded beercan.

  Norman put the keycard into the slot. There was a single loud click. He pulled the card out, turned the doorknob, and stepped into the front hall of Daughters and Sisters. From

  his left came a low, steady sound: meep-meep-meep-meep. It was a keypad burglar alarm. The words FRONT DOOR were flashing on and off in its message window.

  Norman looked at the slip of paper he'd brought with him, took a second to pray the number on it was what he thought it was, and punched 0471. For one heartstopping moment ithe alarm continued to meep, and then it stopped. Norman let out his breath and closed the door. He reset the alarm without even thinking about it, just cop instinct at work.

  He looked around, noted the stairs going up to the second floor, then walked down the main hall. He poked his head into the first room on the right. It looked like a schoolroom, with chairs set up in a circle and a blackboard at one end.

  Written on the blackboard were the words DIGNITY, RESPONSIBILITY, and FAITH.

  "Words of wisdom, Norm, " Ferdinand said. He was back on Norman's hand again. He'd gotten there like magic. "Words of wisdom. "

  "If you say so; looks like the same old shit to me."
He looked around, then raised his voice. It seemed almost sacrilegious to shout into this somehow dusty silence, but a man had to do what a man had to do.

  "Hello? Anybody here? Midland Gas!"

  "Hello?" Ferd shouted from the end of his arm, looking brightly around with his empty eyes. He spoke in the comic-German voice Norman's father had sometimes used when he was drunk. "Hello, vas you dere, Cholly?"

  "Shut up, you idiot, " Norman muttered.

  "Yessir, Cap'n," ze bool replied, and fell silent at once.

  Norman turned slowly around and then went on down the hall. There were other rooms along the way--a parlor, a dining room, what looked like a little library--but they were all empty. The kitchen at the end of the hall was empty, too, and now he had a new problem: where did he go to find what he was looking for?

  He drew in a breath and closed his eyes, trying to think (and trying to stave off the headache, which was trying to come back). He wanted a cigarette but didn't dare light one; for all he knew, they might have the smoke detectors turned up enough to shriek at the first whiff of tobacco.

  He drew in another deep breath, drew it all the way down to the floor of his lungs, and now recognized the smell in here for what it was-not the smell of dust but the smell of women, women who had been long entrenched with their own kind, women who had knitted themselves into a communal shroud of self-righteousness in an effort to block out the real world. It was a smell of blood and douche and sachet and hair spray and roll-on deodorant and perfumes with fuck-me names like My Sin and White Shoulders and Obsession. It was the vegetable smell of what they liked to eat and the fruity smell of the teas they liked to drink; that smell was not dust but something like yeast, a fermentation, and it produced a smell cleaning could never remove: the smell of women without men. All at once that smell was filling his nose, filling his throat, filling his heart, gagging him, making him feel faint, almost suffocating him.

  "Get hold of yourself, Cholly, " Ferdinand said sharply. "All you smell is last night's spaghetti sauce! I mean, Cheezus-pleezus! "