the azka, and couldn’t do it. If he had done such a thing, it had no doubt been by accident, and with her help. More likely she had just entered the dazed state which too many Percodans sometimes induced. It was the thing she disliked most about the pills.
No, she guessed that was the thing she disliked second to the most.
What she really hated about them was that they didn’t always work the way they were supposed to anymore.
“I’d drive you home, if I drove,” Mr. Gaunt said, “but I’m afraid I never learned.”
“Perfectly all right,” Polly said. “I appreciate your kindness a great deal.”
“Thank me if it works,” he replied. “Have a lovely afternoon, Polly.”
More sirens rose in the air. They were on the east side of town, over toward Elm, Willow, Pond, and Ford streets. Polly turned in that direction. There was something about the sound of sirens, especially on such a quiet afternoon, which conjured up vaguely threatening thoughts-not quite images-of impending doom. The sound began to die out, unwinding like an invisible clockspring in the bright autumn air.
She turned back to say something about this to Mr. Gaunt, but the door was shut. The sign reading
hung between the drawn shade and the glass, swinging gently back and forth on its string. He had gone back inside while her back was turned, so quietly she hadn’t even heard him.
Polly began to walk slowly home. Before she got to the end of Main Street another police car, this one a State Police cruiser, blasted past her.
19
“Danforth?”
Myrtle Keeton stepped through the front door and into the living room. She balanced the fondue pot under her left arm as she struggled to remove the key Danforth had left in the lock.
“Danforth, I’m home!”
There was no answer, and the TV wasn’t on. That was strange; he had been so determined to get home in time for the kick-off.
She wondered briefly if he might have gone somewhere else, up to the Garsons’, perhaps, to watch it, but the garage door was down, which meant he had put the car away. And Danforth didn’t walk anywhere if he could possibly avoid it. Especially not up the View, which was steep.
“Danforth? Are you here?”
Still no answer. There was an overturned chair in the dining room. Frowning, she set the fondue pot on the table and righted the chair. The first threads of worry, fine as cobweb, drifted through her mind. She walked toward the study door, which was closed.
When she reached it, she tipped her head against the wood and listened. She was quite sure she could hear the soft squeak of his desk chair.
“Danforth? Are you in there?”
No answer… but she thought she heard a low cough. Worry became alarm. Danforth had been under a great deal of strain lately-he was the only one of the town’s selectmen who worked really hard-and he weighed more than was good for him. What if he’d had a heart attack?
What if he was in there lying on the floor?
What if the sound she had heard was not a cough but the sound of Danforth trying to breathe?
The lovely morning and early afternoon they had spent together made such a thought seem horridly plausible: first the sweet buildup, then the crashing let-down. She reached for the knob of the study door… then drew her hand back and used it to pluck nervously at the loose skin under her throat instead. It had taken only a few blistering occasions to teach her that one did not disturb Danforth in his study without knocking… and that one never, never, never entered his sanctum sanctorum uninvited.
Yes, but if he’s had a heart attack… or… or…
She thought of the overturned chair and fresh alarm coursed through her.
Suppose he came home and surprised a burglar? What if the burglar conked Danforth over the head, knocked him out, and dragged him into his study?
She rapped a flurry of knuckles on the door. “Danforth? Are you all right?”
No answer. No sound in the house but the solemn tick-tock of the grand father clock in the living room, and… yes, she was quite sure of it: the creak of the chair in Danforth’s study.
Her hand began to creep toward the knob again.
“Danforth, are you…”
The tips of her fingers were actually touching the knob when his voice roared out at her, making her leap back from the door with a thin scream.
“Leave me alone! Can’t you leave me alone, you stupid bitch?”
She moaned. Her heart was jackhammering wildly in her throat.
It was not just surprise; it was the rage and unbridled hate in his voice. After the calm and pleasant morning they had spent, he could not have hurt her more if he had caressed her cheek with a handful of razor-blades.
“Danforth… I thought you were hurt. Her voice was a tiny gasp she could hardly hear herself.
“Leave me alone!” Now he was right on the other side of the door, by the sound.
Oh my God, he sounds as if he’s gone crazy. Can that be? How can that be? What’s happened since he dropped me off at Amanda’s?
But there were no answers to these questions. There was only ache. And so she crept away upstairs, got her beautiful new doll from the closet in the sewing room, then went into the bedroom.
She eased off her shoes and then lay down on her side of their bed with the doll in her arms.
Somewhere, far off, she heard conflicting sirens. She paid them no attention.
Their bedroom was lovely at this time of day, full of bright October sunshine. Myrtle did not see it. She saw only darkness.
She felt only misery, a deep, sick misery that not even the gorgeous doll could alleviate. The misery seemed to fill her throat and block her breathing.
Oh she had been so happy today-so very happy. He had been happy, too. She was sure of it. And now things were worse than they had been before. Much worse.
What had happened?
Oh God, what had happened and who was responsible?
Myrtle hugged the doll and looked up at the ceiling and after awhile she began to weep in large, flat sobs that made her whole body quake.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
At fifteen minutes to midnight on that long, long Sunday in October, a door in the basement of Kennebec Valley Hospital’s State Wing opened and Sheriff Alan Pangborn stepped through. He walked slowly, with his head down. His feet, clad in elasticized hospital slippers, shuffled on the linoleum. The sign on the door behind him could be read as it swung shut:
At the far end of the corridor, a janitor in gray fatigues was using a buffer to polish the floor in slow, lazy sweeps. Alan walked toward him, stripping the hospital cap off his head as he went. He lifted the green-gown he was wearing and stuffed the cap in a back pocket of the blue-jeans he wore beneath.
The soft drone of the buffer made him feel sleepy. A hospital in Augusta was the last place on earth he wanted to be tonight.
The janitor looked up as he approached, and switched off his machine.
“You don’t look so well, my friend,” he greeted Alan.
“I’m not surprised. Do you have a cigarette?”
The janitor took a pack of Luckies from his breast pocket and shook one out for Alan. “You can’t smoke it in here, though,” he said.
He nodded his head toward the morgue door. “Doc Ryan throws a fit.”
Alan nodded. “Where?”
The janitor took him to an intersecting corridor and pointed to a door about halfway down. “That goes to the alley beside the building.
Prop it open with something, though, or you’ll have to go all the way around to the front to get back in. You got matches?”
Alan started down the corridor. “I carry a lighter. Thanks for the smoke.”
