The Dark Half

Frankais.

  Alan didn't think there was any way Thad could have gotten from Ludlow to Castle Rock in three hours short of rocket travel, not with a side-trip back to his house thrown in for good measure — a little side-trip during which, incidentally, he had kidnapped his wife and kids and killed a couple of state troopers. Maybe if it had been a straight shot right from Ludlow, but to come from someplace else, stop in Ludlow, and then get here in time to pick a lock and drive away in a Toronado he just happened to have conveniently stashed in Fuzzy Martin's barn? No way.

   But suppose someone else had killed the troopers at the Beaumont house and snatched Thad's people? Someone who didn't have to mess around losing a police escort, switching vehicles,. and making side—trips? Someone who had simply piled Liz Beaumont and her twins into a car and headed for Castle Rock? Alan thought they could have gotten here in time for Fuzzy Martin to have seen them at just past three. They could have done it without even breathing hard.

   The police — read Trooper Harrison, at least for the time being thought it had to be Thad, but Harrison and his compadres didn't know about the Toronado.

Mississippi plates, Fuzzy had said.

    Mississippi was George Stark's home state, according to Thad's fictional biography of the man. If Thad was schizo enough to think he was Stark, at least some of the time, he might well have provided himself with a black Toronado to enhance the illusion, or fantasy, or whatever it was . . . but in order to get plates, he'd not only have to have visited Mississippi, he'd have to claim residency there.

  That's dumb. He could have stolen some Mississippi plates. Or bought an old set. Fuzzy didn't say anything about what year the tags were from the house he probably couldn't have read them, anyway, not even with binoculars.

  But it wasn't Thad's car. Couldn't have been. Liz would have known, wouldn't she?

  Maybe not. If he's crazy enough, maybe not.

   Then there was the locked door. How could Thad have gotten into the barn without breaking the lock? He was a writer and a teacher, not a cracksman.

  Duplicate key, his mind whispered, but Alan didn't think so. If Fuzzy was storing wacky tobaccy in there from time to time, Alan thought Fuzzy would be pretty careful of where he left his keys lying around, no matter how careless he was of his cigarette ends.

    And one final question, the killer: How come Fuzzy had never seen that black Toronado before if it had been in his barn all along? How could that be?

  Try this, a voice in the back of his mind whispered as he grabbed his hat and left the office. This is a pretty funny idea, Alan. You'll laugh. You'll laugh like hell. Suppose Thad Beaumont was light all the way from the jump? Suppose there really is a monster named George Stark running around out there . . . and the elements of his life, the elements Thad created, come into being when he needs them? WHEN he needs them, but not always WHERE he needs them. Because they'd always show up at places connected to the primary creator's life. So Stark would have to get his car out of storage where Thad stores his, just like he had to start from the graveyard where Thad symbolically buried him. Don't you love it? Isn't it a scream?

    He didn't love it. It wasn't a scream. It wasn't even remotely funny. It drew an ugly scratch not just across everything he believed but across the way he had been taught to think.

  He found himself remembering something Thad had said. I don't know who I am when I'm writing. That wasn't exact, but it was close. And what's even more amazing, it never occurred to me to wonder until now.

   'You were him, weren't you?' Alan said softly. 'You were him and he was you and that's the way the killer grew, pop goes the weasel.'

    He shivered and Sheila Brigham looked up from her typewriter at the dispatcher's desk in time to see it. 'It's too hot to do that, Alan. You must be coming down with a cold.'

    'Coming down with something, I guess,' Alan said. 'Cover the telephone, Sheila. Relay anything small to Seat Thomas. Anything big to me. Where's Clut?'

'I'm in here!' Clut's voice came drifting out of the john.

   'I expect to be back in forty-five minutes or so!' Alan yelled at him. 'You got the desk until I get back!'

'Where you going, Alan?' Clut came out of the men's room tucking in his khaki shirt.

   'The lake,' Alan said vaguely, and left before either Clut or Sheila could ask any more questions . . . or before he could reflect on what he was doing. Leaving without a stated destination in a situation like this was a very bad idea. It was asking for more than trouble; it was asking to get killed.

  But what he was thinking

  (the sparrows are flying)

  simply couldn't be true. Couldn't. There had to be a more reasonable explanation.

   He was still trying to convince himself of this as he drove his prowl-car out of town and into the worst trouble of his life.

6

There was a rest area on Route 5 about half a mile from Fuzzy Martin's property. Alan turned in, operating on something which was half hunch and half whim. The hunch part was simple enough: black Toronado or no black Toronado, they hadn't come down here from Ludlow on a magic carpet. They must have driven. Which meant there had to be a ditched car around someplace. The man he was hunting had ditched Homer Gamache's truck in a roadside parking area when he was through with it, and what a perp would do once he would do again.

   There were three vehicles parked in the turnaround: a beer truck, a new Ford escort, and a roaddusty Volvo.

   As he got out of the prowler-car, a man in green fatigues came out of the men's convenience and walked toward the cab of the beer truck. He was short, dark-haired, narrow-shouldered. No George Stark here.

    'Officer,' he said, and gave Alan a little salute. Alan nodded at him and walked down to where three elderly ladies were sitting at one of the picnic tables, drinking coffee from a Thermos and talking.

  'Hello, Officer,' one of them said. 'Can we do something for you?' Or did we maybe do something wrong? the momentarily anxious eyes asked.

  'I just wondered if the Ford and the Volvo up there belonged to you ladies,' Alan said.

   'The Ford is mine,' a second said. 'We all came in that. I don't know anything about a Volvo. Is it that sticker thing? Did that sticker thing run out again? My son is supposed to take care of that sticker thing, but he's so forgetful! Forty-three years old, and I still have to tell him ev — '

  'The sticker's fine, ma'am,' Alan said, smiling his best The Policeman Is Your Friend smile. 'None of you happened to see the Volvo drive in, did you?'

  They shook their heads.

  'Have you seen anyone else during the last few minutes who might belong to it?'

   'No,' the third lady said. She looked at him with bright little gerbil's eyes. 'Are you on the scent, Officer?'

  'Pardon, ma'am?'

  'Tracking a criminal, I mean.'

    'Oh,' Alan said. He felt a moment of unreality. Exactly what was he doing here? Exactly what had he been thinking to get here? 'No, ma'am. I just like Volvos.' Boy, that sounded intelligent. That sounded just . . . fucking . . . crackerjack.

   'Oh,' the first lady said. 'Well, we haven't seen anyone. Would you like a cup of coffee, Officer? I believe there's just about one good one left.'

  'No, thank you,' Alan said. 'You ladies have a nice day.'

  'You too, Officer,' they chorused in an almost perfect three-part harmony. It made Alan feel more unreal than ever.

    He walked back up to the Volvo. Tried the driver's side door. It opened. The inside of the car had a hot attic feel. It had been sitting here awhile. He looked in the back and saw a packet, a little bigger than a Sweet 'n Low packet, on the floor. He leaned between the seats and picked it up.

  HANDI-WIPE, the packet said, and he felt someone drop a bowling-ball in his stomach.

  It doesn't mean anything, the voice of Protocol and Reason spoke up at once. At least, not necessarily. I know what you're thinking: you're thinking babies. But, Alan, they give those things out at the roadside stands when you buy fried chicken, for heaven's sake.

  All the same . . .

   Alan stuck the Handi-Wipe in one of the pockets of his uniform blouse and got out of