was terrified nevertheless, almost to the point of screaming helplessly. Instead of doing that she closed her eyes, visualized her living room, and suddenly she could hear the 'guests' on the Springer Show yelling at each other and feel the oblong of the remote control in her left hand. A second later she was starting up from the couch, eyes wide and skin all a-prickle. She could almost believe she had dreamed the whole deal (it certainly made sense, given her current level of anxiety on the subject), but the vividness of what she had seen in those few seconds argued against that idea, comforting as it was. So did the smear of purple on the back of the hand holding the TV controller.
6
The next day she called the Fogler Library and spoke to Mr. Bertram Partridge, the head of Special Collections. That gentleman grew steadily more excited as Lisey described the books still remaining in Scott's study. He called them 'associational volumes' and said Fogler Special Collections would be very happy to have them, 'and to work with her on the tax-credit question.' Lisey said that would be very nice, just as though she had been asking herself the tax-credit question for years. Mr. Partridge said he would send 'a team of removers' out the very next day to box the volumes up and bring them the hundred and twenty miles to the University of Maine's Orono campus. Lisey reminded him that the weather was supposed to be very hot, and that Scott's study, which was no longer air- conditioned, had reverted to its former loftish nature. Perhaps, she said, Mr. Partridge would like to hold his removers in abeyance until cooler weather.
'Not at all, Mrs. Landon,' Partridge said, chuckling expansively, and Lisey knew he was afraid she might change her mind if given too long to think the matter over. 'I've got a couple of young folks in mind who'll be perfect for the job. You wait and see.'
7
Less than an hour after her conversation with Bertram Partridge, Lisey's phone rang while she was making herself a tuna on rye for her supper: thin commons, but all she wanted. Outside, the heat lay on the land like a blanket. All color had been bleached from the sky; it was a perfect simmering white from horizon to horizon. As she mixed the tuna and mayonnaise with a little chopped onion, she had been thinking of how she'd found Amanda on one of those benches, looking out at the Hollyhocks, and this was strange, because she hardly ever thought of that anymore; it was like a dream to her. She remembered Amanda's asking if she'd have to drink any of that
(bug-juuuuice)
shitty punch if she came back—her way of trying to find out, Lisey supposed, if she'd have to remain incarcerated at Greenlawn—and Lisey had promised her no more punch, no more bug-juice. Amanda had agreed to return, although it had been clear she didn't really want to, that she would have been happy to continue sitting on the bench and looking out at the Hollyhocks until, in Good Ma's words, 'eternity was halfway over.' Just sitting there among the scary shrouded things and silent gazers, a bench or two above the woman in the caftan. The one who had murdered her child.
Lisey put her sandwich down on the counter, suddenly cold all over. She couldn't know that. There was no way she could know that.
But she did.
Be quiet, the woman had said. Be quiet while I think of why I did it.
And then Amanda had said something totally unexpected, hadn't she? Something about Scott. Although nothing Amanda said then could be important now, not with Scott dead and Jim Dooley also dead (or wishing he were), but still Lisey wished she could remember exactly what it might have been.
'Said she'd come back,' Lisey murmured. 'Said she'd come back if it would keep Dooley from hurting me.'
Yes, and Amanda had kept her word, God bless her, but Lisey wanted to remember something she'd said after that. I don't see what it can have to do with Scott, Amanda had said in that faintly distracted voice of hers. He's been dead such a long time…although…I think he told me something about—
That was when the phone rang, shattering the fragile glass of Lisey's recollection. And as she picked it up, a crazy certainty came to her: it would be Dooley. Hello, Missus, the Black Prince of the Incunks would say. I'm callin from inside the belly of the beast. How y'all doin today?
'Hello?' she said. She knew she was gripping the phone too tightly, but was helpless to do anything about it.
'Danny Boeckman here, Mrs. Landon,' the voice at the other end said, and the Mrs. was too close for comfort, but here came out heah, a comfortable Yankee pronunciation, and Deputy Boeckman sounded uncharacteristically excited, almost bubbly, and therefore boyish. 'Guess what?'
'Can't guess,' Lisey said, but another crazy idea came to her: he was going to say they drew straws down at the Sheriff's Office to see who was going to call up and ask her out on a date and he drew the short one. Except why would he sound excited about that?
'We found the dome-light cover!'
Lisey had no idea what he was talking about. 'I beg pardon?'
'Doolin—the guy you knew as Zack McCool and then as Jim Dooley—stole that PT Cruiser and used it while he was stalking you, Mrs. Landon. We were positive of that. And he was keeping it stashed out in that old gravel pit between runs, we were positive of that, too. We just couldn't prove it, because—'
'He wiped off all his fingerprints.'
'Ayuh, and got em all. But every now n then me n Plug went out there—'
'Plug?'
'I'm sorry, Joe. Deputy Alston?'
Plug, she thought. Aware for the first time, in a clear-seeing way, that these were real men with real lives. With nicknames. Plug, she thought. Deputy Joe Alston, also known as Plug.
'Mrs. Landon? Are you there?'
'Yes, Dan. May I call you Dan?'
'Sure, you bet. Anyway, every now n then we went sniffin round out there to see if we couldn't find some prizes, because there was plenty of sign that he'd spent time in that pit— candy-wrappers, a couple of RC bottles, things like that.'
'RC,' she said softly, and thought: Bool, Dan. Bool, Plug. Bool, The End.
'Right, that was the brand he seemed to favor, but not a single print on a single cast-off bottle matched up to one of his. The only match we got was to a fella who stole a car back in the late seventies and now clerks at the Quick-E-Mart over in Oxford. The other prints we got off the bottles, we surmise those were clerk-prints, too. But yest'y noon, Mrs. Landon—'
'Lisey.'
There was a pause while he considered this. Then he went on. 'Yest'y noon, Lisey, on a little track leadin out of that pit, I found the grand prize—the cover to that dome-light. He'd pulled it off and threw it into the puckies.' Boeckman's voice rose, became triumphant—became not the voice of a Deputy Sheriff but perfectly human. 'And that was the one thing he forgot to handle with gloves on or wipe off later! A big thumbprint on one side, a big fat old index-finger on the other! Where he gripped it. We got the results back by fax this morning.'
'John Doolin?'
'Ayuh. Nine points of comparison. Nine!' There was a pause, and when he spoke again, some of the triumph had gone out of his voice. 'Now if we could only find the son-of-a-buck.'
'I'm sure he'll turn up in time,' she said, and cast a longing glance at her tuna sandwich. She'd lost her train of thought about Amanda, but had regained her appetite. To Lisey that seemed like a fair swap, especially on such a boogery-hot day. 'Even if he doesn't, he's stopped harassing me.'
'He's left Castle County, I'd stake my reputation on that.' A note of unmistakable pride crept into Deputy Sheriff Dan Boeckman's voice. 'Got a little too hot for him here, I guess, so he ditched his ride and left. Plug feels the
