The Dark Half

   'I suppose — until you look at the rest of it. What Liz told you is perfectly true. Stark was just about ready for the scrap—heap, anyway. There might have been one more book, but only one. And one of the reasons Rick Cowley was such a honey, as Liz put it, was because he knew it, And he was right about the publicity. The People article, silly as it was, has done wonders for sales. Rick tells me Riding to Babylon has a shot at going back on the best-seller list, and sales are up on all Stark novels. Dutton's even planning to bring The Sudden Dancers and Purple Maze back into print. You look at it that way, Clawson did me a favor.'

  'So where does that leave us?' Alan asked.

  'I'll be damned if I know,' Thad replied.

  Into the silence that followed, Liz said in a soft voice: 'It's a crocodile-hunter. I was thinking about them just this morning. It's a crocodile-hunter, and he's just as crazy as a loon.'

  'Crocodile-hunter?' Alan turned to her.

   Liz explained about Thad's see-the- living-crocodiles syndrome. 'It could have been a crazy fan,' she said. 'It's not that lame, not when you think about the fellow who shot John Lennon and the one who tried to kill Ronald Reagan to impress Jody Foster. They are out there. And if Clawson could find out about Thad, someone else could have found out about Clawson.'

  'But why would a guy like that try to implicate me, if he loves my stuff so much?' Thad asked.

  'Because he doesn't!' Liz said vehemently. 'Stark's the man the crocodile-hunter loves. He probably hates you almost as much as he hates — hated — Clawson. You said you weren't sorry Stark was dead. That could be reason enough right there.'

  'I still don't buy it,' Alan said. 'The fingerprints — '

  'You say prints have never been copied or planted, Alan, but since they were in both places, there must be a way. It's the only thing that fits.'

  Thad heard himself say, 'No, you're wrong, Liz. If there is such a guy, he doesn't just love Stark.' He looked down at his arms and saw they were covered with goosebumps.

  'No?' Alan asked.

  Thad looked up at them both.

   'Have you thought that the man who killed Homer Gamache and Frederick Clawson might think he is George Stark?'

4

On the steps, Alan said: 'I'll keep you in touch, Thad.' In one hand he held photocopies — made on the machine in Thad's office — of Frederick Clawson's two letters. Thad thought privately that Alan's willingness to accept photocopies — at least for the present rather than insisting on taking the originals into evidence was the clearest sign of all that he had given over most of his suspicions.

'And be back to arrest me if you find the loophole in my alibi?' Thad asked, smiling.

'I don't think that's going to happen. The only thing I'd ask is that you keep me in touch, as well.'

'If something comes up, you mean?'

'Yes. That's what I mean.'

'I'm sorry we couldn't be more helpful,' Liz told him.

   Alan grinned. 'You've helped me a lot. I couldn't decide whether to hang on another day, which would mean another night in a cinderblock Ramada Inn room, or drive back to Castle Rock. Thanks to what you've told me, I'm opting for the drive. Starting now. It'll be good to get back. Just lately my wife Annie's been a little under the weather.'

'Nothing serious, I hope,' Liz said.

    'Migraine,' Alan said briefly. He started down the walk, then turned back, 'There is one other thing.'

  Thad rolled his eyes at Liz. 'Here it comes,' he said. 'It's the old Columbo crumplediraincoat zinger.'

  'Nothing like that,' Alan said, 'but the Washington P.D. is holding back one piece of physical evidence in the Clawson killing. It's common practice; helps to weed out the crazies who like to confess to crimes they didn't commit. Something was written on the wall of Clawson's apartment.' Alan paused and then added, almost apologetically: 'It was written in the victim's blood. If I tell you what it was, will you give me your word you'll keep it under your hats?'

  They nodded.

  'The phrase was 'The sparrows are flying again.' Does that mean anything to either of you?'

'No,' Liz said.

'No,' Thad said in a neutral voice after a momentary hesitation.

Alan's gaze stayed on Thad's face for a moment. 'You are quite sure?'

'Quite sure.'

    Alan sighed. 'I doubted if it would, but it seemed like a shot worth taking. There are so many other weird connections, I thought there just might be one more. Goodnight, Thad, Liz. Remember to get in touch if anything occurs.'

  'We will,' Liz said.

  'Count on it,' Thad agreed.

   A moment later they were both inside again, with the door closed against Alan Pangborn — and the dark through which he would make his long trip home.

Ten

Later That Night

1

They carried the sleeping twins upstairs, then began to get ready for bed themselves. Thad undressed to his shorts and undershirt his form of pajamas — and went into the bathroom. He was brushing his teeth when the shakes hit. He dropped the toothbrush, spat a mouthful of white foam into the basin, and then lurched over to the toilet on legs with no more feeling in them than a pair of wooden stilts.

   He retched once — a miserable dry sound — but nothing came up. His stomach began to settle again . . . at least on a trial basis.

  When he turned around, Liz was standing in the doorway, wearing a blue nylon nightie that stopped several inches north of the knee. She was looking at him levelly.

  'You're keeping secrets, Thad. That's no good. It never was.'

  He sighed harshly and held his hands out in front of him with the fingers splayed. They were still trembling. 'How long have you known?'

   'There's been something off-beat about you ever since the sheriff came back tonight. And when he asked that last question . . . about the thing written on Clawson's wall . . . you might as well have had a neon sign on your forehead.'

'Pangborn didn't see any neon.'

   'Sheriff Pangborn doesn't know you as well as I do . . . but if you didn't see him do a doubletake there at the end, you weren't looking. Even he saw something wasn't quite kosher. It was the way he looked at you.'

   Her mouth drew down slightly. It emphasized the old lines in her face, the ones he had first seen after the accident in Boston and the miscarriage, the ones which had deepened as she watched him struggle harder and harder to bring water from a well which seemed to have gone dry.

   It was around then that his drinking had begun to waver out of control. All these things — Liz's accident, the miscarriage, the critical and financial failure of Purple Haze following the wild success of Machine's Way under the Stark name, the sudden binge drinking had combined to bring on a deep depressive state. He had recognized it as a selfish, inward-turning frame of mind, but recognition hadn't helped. Finally he had washed a handful of sleeping pills down his throat with half a bottle of Jack Daniel's. It had been an unenthusiastic