Johnny set his mug down with a bang. Bannerman had taken off his spectacles and was polishing them savagely.
“Your daughter crossed this morning? Jesus!”
Bannerman put his glasses on again. His face was dark and dull with fury. And he's afraid, Johnny saw. Not afraid that the voters would turn him out, or that the Union-Leader would publish another editorial about nitwit cops in western Maine, but afraid because, if his daughter had happened to go to the library alone this morning
“My daughter,” Bannerman agreed softly. “I think she passed within forty feet of that… that animal. You know what that makes me feel like?”
“I can guess,” Johnny said.
“No, I don't think you can. It makes me feel like I almost stepped into an empty elevator shaft. Like I passed up the mushrooms at dinner and someone else died of toadstool poisoning. And it makes me feel dirty. It makes me feel filthy. I guess maybe it also explains why I finally called you. I'd do anything right now to nail this guy. Anything at all.”
Outside, a giant orange plow loomed out of the snow like something from a horror movie. It parked and two men got out. They crossed the street to Jon's and sat at the counter. Johnny finished his tea. He no longer wanted the chili.
“This guy goes back to his bench,” Bannerman resumed, “but not for long. Around 9:25 he hears the Harrington boy and the Loggins girl coming back from the library. So he goes back behind the bandstand again. It must have been around 9:25 because the librarian signed them out at 9:18. At 9:45 three boys from the fifth grade went past the bandstand on their way to the library. One of them thinks he might have seen “some guy” standing on the other side of the bandstand. That's our whole description. “Some guy.” We ought to put it out on the wire, what do you think? Be on the lookout for some guy.
Bannerman uttered a short laugh like a bark.
“At 9:55 my daughter and her friend Susan go by on their way back to school. Then, about 10:05, Mary Kate Hendrasen came along… by herself. Katrina and Sue met her going down the school steps as they were going up. They all said hi.”
“Dear God,” Johnny muttered. He ran his hands through his hair.
“Last of all, 10:20 A. M. The three fifth-grade boys are coming back. One of them sees something on the bandstand. It's Mary Kate, with her leotard and her underpants yanked down, blood all over her legs, her face-” her face-”
“Take it easy,” Johnny said, and put a hand on Banner-man's arm.
“No, I can't take it easy,” Bannerman said. He spoke almost apologetically. “I've never seen anything like that, not in eighteen years of police work. He raped that little girl and that would have been enough-enough to, you know, kill her-the medical examiner said the way he did it-he ruptured something and it-yeah, it probably would have, well-killed her-but then he had to go on and choke her. Nine years old and choked and left-left on the bandstand with her underpants pulled down.”
Suddenly Bannerman began to cry. The tears filled his eyes behind his glasses and then rolled down his face in two streams. At the counter the two guys from the Bridgton road crew were talking about the Superbowl. Bannerman took his glasses off again and mopped his face with his handkerchief. His shoulders shook and heaved. Johnny waited, stirring his chili aimlessly.
After a little while, Bannerman put his handkerchief away. His eyes were red, and Johnny thought how oddly naked his face looked without his glasses.
“I'm sorry, man,” he said. “It's been a very long day.”
“It's all right,” Johnny said.
“I knew I was going to do that, but I thought I could hold on until I got home to my wife.”
“Well, I guess that was just too long to wait.”
“You're a sympathetic ear. “Bannerman slipped his glasses back on. “No, you're more than that. You've got something. I'll be damned if I know just what it is, but it's something.”
“What else have you got to go on?”
“Nothing. I'm taking most of the heat, but the state police haven't exactly distinguished themselves. Neither has the attorney general's special investigator, or our pet FBI man. The county M. E. has been able to type the sperm, but that's no good to us at this stage of the game. The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of hair or skin under the victim's fingernails. They all must have struggled, but we don't have as much as a centimeter of skin. The devil must be on this guy's side. He hasn't dropped a button or a shopping list or left a single damn track. We got a shrink from Augusta, also courtesy of the state A. G., and he tells us all these guys give themselves away sooner or later. Some comfort. What if it's later -say about twelve bodies from now?”
“The cigarette pack is in Castle Rock?”
“Yes.”
Johnny stood up. “Well, let's take a ride.”
“My car?”
Johnny smiled a little as the wind rose, shrieking, outside. “On a night like this, it pays to be with a policeman, he said.
The snowstorm was at its height and it took them an hour and a half to get over to Castle Rock in Bannerman's cruiser. It was twenty past ten when they came in through the foyer of the Town Office Building and stamped the snow off their boots.
There were half a dozen reporters in the lobby, most of them sitting on a bench under a gruesome oil portrait of some town founding father, telling each other about previous night watches. They were up and surrounding Bannerman and Johnny in no time.
“Sheriff Bannerman, is it true there has been a break in the case?”
“I have nothing for you at this time,” Bannerman said stolidly.
“There's been a rumor that you've taken a man from Oxford into custody, Sheriff, is that true?”
“No. If you folks will pardon us…
But their attention had turned to Johnny, and he felt a sinking sensation in his belly as he recognized at least two faces from the press conference at the hospital.
“Holy God!” one of them exclaimed. “You're John Smith, aren't you?”
Johnny felt a crazy urge to take the fifth like a gangster at a Senate committee hearing.
“Yes,” he said. “That's me.”
“The psychic guy?” another asked.
“Look, let us pass!” Bannerman said, raising his voice. “Haven't you guys got anything better to do than-”
“According to Inside View, you're a fake,” a young man in a heavy topcoat said. “Is that true?”
“All I can say about that is Inside View prints what they want,” Johnny said. “Look, really-”
“You're denying the Inside View story?”
“Look, I really can't say anything more.”
As they went through the frosted glass door and into the sheriff's office, the reporters were racing toward the two pay phones on the wall by the dog warden's office.
“Now the shit has truly hit the fan,” Bannerman said unhappily. “I swear before God I never thought they'd still be here on a night like this. I should have brought you in the back.”
“Oh, didn't you know?” Johnny asked bitterly. “We love the publicity. All of us psychics are in it for the publicity.”
“No, I don't believe that,” Bannerman said. “At least not of you. Well, it's happened. Can't be helped now.”
But in his mind, Johnny could visualize the headlines:
a little extra seasoning in a pot of stew that was already bubbling briskly. CASTLE ROCK SHERIFF DEPUTIZES LOCAL PSYCHIC IN STRANGLER CASE. “NOVEMBER KILLER” TO BE INVESTIGATED BY SEER. HOAX ADMISSION STORY A FABRICATION, SMITH PROTESTS.
There were two deputies in the outer office, one of them snoozing, the other drinking coffee and looking glumly through a pile of reports.
“His wife kick him out or something?” Bannerman asked sourly, nodding toward the sleeper.
“He just got back from Augusta,” the deputy said. He was little more than a kid himself, and there were dark circles of weariness under his eyes. He glanced over at Johnny curiously.
“Johnny Smith, Frank Dodd. Sleeping beauty over there is Roscoe Fisher.”
Johnny nodded hello.
“Roscoe says the A. G. wants the whole case,” Dodd told Bannerman. His look was angry and defiant and somehow pathetic. “Some Christmas present, huh?”
Bannerman put a hand on the back of Dodd's neck and shook him gently. “You worry too much, Frank. Also, you're spending too much time on the case.”
“I just keep thinking there must be something in these reports… “He shrugged and then flicked them with one finger. “Something.”
“Go home and get some rest, Frank. And take sleeping beauty with you. All we need is for one of those photographers to get a picture of him. They'd run it in the papers with a caption like “In Castle Rock the Intensive Investigation Goes On,” and we'd all be out sweeping streets.”
Bannerman led Johnny into his private office. The desk was awash in paperwork. On the windowsill was a triptych showing Bannerman, his wife, and his daughter Katrina. His degree hung neatly framed on the wall, and beside it, in another frame, the front page of the Castle Rock Call which had announced his election.
“Coffee?” Bannerman asked him, unlocking a file cabinet.
“No thanks. I'll stick to tea.”
“Mrs. Sugarman guards her tea jealously,” Bannerman said. “Takes it home with her every day, sorry. I'd offer you a tonic, but we'd have to run the gauntlet out there again to get to the machine. Jesus Christ, I wish they'd go home.”
“That's okay.”
Bannerman came back with a small clasp envelope. “This is it,” he said. He hesitated for a moment, then handed the envelope over.
Johnny held it but did not immediately open it. “As long as you understand that nothing comes guaranteed. I can't promise. Sometimes I can and sometimes I can't.”
Bannerman shrugged tiredly and repeated: “No venture, no gain.”
Johnny undid the clasp and shook an empty Marlboro cigarette box out into his hand. Red and white box. He held it in his left hand and looked at the far wall. Gray wall. Industrial gray wall. Red and white box. Industrial gray box. He put the cigarette package in his other hand, then cupped it in both. He waited for something, anything to come. Nothing did. He held it longer, hoping against hope, ignoring the knowledge that when things come, they came at once.
At last he handed the cigarette box back. “I'm sorry,” he said.
“No soap, huh?”
“No.”
There was a perfunctory tap at the door and Roscoe Fisher stuck his head in. He looked a bit shamefaced. “Frank and I are going home, George. I guess you caught me coopin.”
“As long as I don't catch you doing it in your cruiser,” Bannerman said. “Say hi to Deenie for me.”
“You bet. “Fisher glanced at Johnny for a moment and then closed the door.
