'If you think at all, David Emerson Kiddermeister,' said Marge Schmidt, entering the cell area with a great stamping of feet and a rush of snowy air, 'which I doubt. The men in this town have all gone crazy. Look, Esther. It's true. Every word of it. There she is!'
Esther, Marge, and the mayor crowded next to Davy and stared at Quill like owls on a fence. Esther patted a stiffly lacquered curl over one ear and chirped in distress.
'I don't know as how you all are allowed in here,' said Davy. 'Prisoner's only allowed one visitor at a time.'
'Stuff it.' Marge planted a thick palm in Davy's chest and shoved him aside. 'You all right, Quill? Getcha anything?'
'Coffee,' said Quill, `I'd love some coffee. And something to do. A book, maybe?'
'How long they send you up for?' asked the mayor. 'Are you going to need a lot of books? I could set up a fund-raiser, maybe.'
'She isn't going to be here that long,' Esther said stoutly. Esther, whose taste in clothes seemed to have been formed by watching old movies starring the McGuire sisters, adjusted her patent leather belt and added, 'Are you?'
'Seven day's, said Davy. 'Judge says she's supposed to serve the whole time.'
'He can't do that,' said Marge. 'I knew that little squirt Bristol never shoulda been elected. And it's your fault, Mayor. You and your nekkid friends running all through the woods like a bunch of assholes.'
'Maybe the judge can do that,' Esther gasped. 'I mean - if she did what she did, she could be in here for years. Did you do it, Quill? I mean, we heard that you ran over a little child, but which little child? And the child couldn't have died, because we would have heard about it.'
'I ran over a little child?' said Quill. 'What/ What/'
'You got it wrong, Esther. You always do. She didn't run over a little kid.' Elmer sighed, regret all over his round face. 'She almost ran over a little kid. Came this close.' He held a pudgy thumb and forefinger minimally apart.
'I passed a school bus,' said Quill. 'A parked empty school bus. There weren't any little kids within forty blocks of that school bus.'
'Well, there had to have been little kids within forty blocks,' said the mayor reasonably. 'The whole of Hemlock Falls isn't forty blocks, so there must have been little kids around somewhere. But you - '
'I did NOT run over a little kid!'
'You heard it wrong, Elmer, you hopeless little shit.' Marge put her hands on her considerable hips and surveyed the cell and the shoeless Quill with a suspicious touch of satisfaction. 'Just look at this. Cold, hungry, and practically bare nekkid. I'm going to go down to the library and check out a couple of books for Quill, here. Esther, you find some slippers in that shop of yours, and then give Betty a call. She can run over here with some hamburg and a thermos of coffee.' She fixed a malevolent eye on Davy. 'And don't you touch a drop of my coffee, David Emerson Kiddermeister. I ain't subsidizing any damn fool that had a part in this. And speaking of damn fools, where's that useless son of bitch sheriff?'
'You talking to me?'
To her fierce annoyance, Quill jumped and her breath came short. Franklin Douglas Dorset, newly elected sheriff of Tompkins County, didn't look at all like Travis Bickle, he only sounded like him. He looked, as Meg had stigmatized him at the start of his election campaign, like a canned asparagus. He unzipped his quilted winter jacket and regarded the group crushed in front of the cell with speculation. Dorset was tall; his skin, hair, eyes, and clothes a uniformly nondescript pale brown. His hair was thick, standing almost upright, and his shoulders, chest, and hips were of similar circumference, so that if you had an imagination as food-oriented as Meg's it was possible to imagine Dorset as one of the more cylinderlike vegetables. Quill thought he looked more like a bleached-out Elvis Presley than an asparagus.
Meg also claimed Dorset had the brains of a boiled onion. Quill, after one look at his flat brown eyes, wasn't sure about that.
'Deputy?' said Dorset. 'There some good reason why all these people are in here?'
Marge drew breath. Quill waited confidently for the explosion. Blessed with the psychic drive of a Patton tank, Marge could flatten sumo wrestlers with a single glance from her turretlike eye.
'Guess we better be getting along,' Marge said meekly. 'I'm bringing her coffee and a book, Sheriff,' she added. 'And somethin' to put on her feet. If you don't mind.'
'What I mind,' said Sheriff Dorset, lifting a comer of his lip, 'is you taking that intersection at Route 15 and 96 at seventy miles an hour last Sunday at 4:32 p.m., Marge Schmidt. That's a three-hundred-dollar, three-point V&T violation.'
'Route 15 and 96?' Elmer asked alertly.
'Maybe it's there,' Dorset said with relish, 'and maybe it isn't. I'll see you folks sometime, right?' He held an imaginary camera to one eye and pretended to click it.
Quill watched Marge leave, followed by a studiedly careless mayor and a nervous Esther. She said to Dorset, 'You mean you can move the dam thing?'
'The hidden camera? Bet your cute little ass. No use in a town this size if you can't.'
Dorset unclipped the keys to the cell from his belt with a flourish and opened the cell door. His gaze flicked over her carelessly, avoiding her eyes, and concentrating on her breasts. He stood slouched, one hip thrust out.
'Deputy here says you want to go home. Says you're a little scared. Can't say as I blame you.'
Quill thought carefully about her response to this. She probably wouldn't get much more than seven years jail time If she punched Franklin Douglas Dorset right in the nose. On the other hand, her feet were cold and she was going to die if she didn't get a cup of coffee. 'Ahem,' she said, in a noncommittal way.
