Needful Things (44 page)

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 a while she began to weep in large, flat sobs that made her whole body quake.

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:

MORGUE

UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED

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.”

“I heard it was a double feature in there tonight,” the janitor called after him.

“That's right,” Alan said without turning around.

“Autopsies are bastards, ain't they?”

“Yes,” Alan said.

Behind him, the soft drone of the floor-buffer recommenced. They were bastards, all right. The autopsies of Nettie Cobb and Wilma Jerzyck had been the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of his career, and they had all been bastards, but these two had been the worst by far.

The door the janitor had pointed out was the sort equipped with a panic-bar. Alan looked around for something he could use to prop it open and saw nothing. He pulled the green-gown off, wadded it up, and opened the door. Night air washed in, chilly but incredibly refreshing after the stale alcohol smell of the morgue and adjoining autopsy room. Alan placed the wadded-up gown against the door-jamb and stepped out. He carefully let the door swing back, saw that the gown would keep the latch from engaging, and forgot about it. He leaned against the cinderblock wall next to the pencil-line of light escaping through the slightly ajar door and lit his cigarette.

The first puff made his head feel swimmy. He had been trying to quit for almost two years and kept almost making it. Then something would come up. That was both the curse and the blessing of police work; something always came up.

He looked up at the stars, which he usually found calming, and couldn't see many—the high-intensity lights which ringed the hospital dulled them out. He could make out the Big Dipper, Orion, and a faint reddish point that was probably Mars, but that was all.

Mars,
he thought.
That's it. That's undoubtedly it. The warlords of Mars landed in Castle Rock around noon, and the first people they met were Nettie and the Jerzyck bitch.

The warlords bit them and turned them rabid. It's the only thing that fits.

He thought about going in and telling Henry Ryan, the State of Maine's Chief Medical Examiner,
It was a case of alien intervention, Doc. Case closed.
He doubted if Ryan would be amused. It had been a long night for him, too.

Alan dragged deeply on the cigarette. It tasted absolutely grand, swimmy head or no swimmy head, and he felt he could understand perfectly why smoking was now off-limits in the public areas of every hospital in America. John Calvin had been dead right: nothing that made you feel this way could possibly be good for you. In the meantime, though, hit me wid dat nicotine, boss—it feel so fine.

He thought idly of how nice it would be to buy an entire carton of these selfsame Luckies, rip off both ends, and then light up the whole goddam thing with a blowtorch. He thought how nice it would be to get drunk. This would be a very bad time to get drunk, he supposed. Another inflexible rule of life—
When you really need to get drunk, you can never afford to do it.
Alan wondered vaguely if maybe the alcoholics of the world weren't the only ones who really had their priorities straight.

The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick. Norris stepped out and leaned against the wall next to Alan. He was still wearing his green cap, but it was askew and the tie-ribbons hung down over the back of his gown. His complexion matched his gown.

“Jesus, Alan.”

“They were your first ones, weren't they?”

“No, I saw an autopsy once when I was in North Wyndham. Smoke-inhalation case. But these . . . Jesus, Alan.”

“Yeah,” he said, and exhaled smoke. “Jesus.”

“You got another cigarette?”

“No—sorry. I bummed this one from the janitor.” He looked at the Deputy with mild curiosity. “I didn't know you smoked, Norris.”

“I don't. I thought I might start.”

Alan laughed softly.

“Man, I can't wait to get out fishing tomorrow. Or are off-days on hold while we sort this mess out?”

Alan thought about it, then shook his head. It hadn't really been the warlords of Mars; this business actually looked quite simple. In a way, that was what made it so horrible. He saw no reason to cancel Norris's off-days.

“That's great,” Norris said, and then added, “But I'll come in if you want, Alan. No problem.”

“Shouldn't need you to, Norris,” he said. “John and Clut have both been in touch with me—Clut went with the CID guys to talk with Pete Jerzyck, and John went with the team investigating Nettie's end. They've both been in touch. It's pretty clear. Nasty, but clear.”

And it was . . . yet he was troubled about it, just the same. On some deep level, he was very troubled indeed.

“Well, what happened? I mean, the Jerzyck bitch has been asking for it for years, but when somebody finally called her bluff, I thought she'd end up with a black eye or a broken arm . . . nothing like
this.
Was it just a case of picking on the wrong person?”

“I think that pretty well covers it,” Alan said. “Wilma couldn't have picked a worse person in Castle Rock to start a feud with.”

“Feud?”

“Polly gave Nettie a puppy last spring. It barked a little at first. Wilma did a lot of bitching about it.”

“Really? I don't remember a complaint sheet.”

“She only made one official complaint. I caught it. Polly asked me if I would. She felt partly responsible, since she gave Nettie the dog in the first place. Nettie said she'd keep him inside as much as she could, and that finished it for me.

“The dog stopped the barking, but Wilma apparently went on bitching to Nettie. Polly says that Nettie'd cross the street when she saw Wilma coming, even if Wilma was two blocks away. Nettie did everything but fork the sign of the evil eye at her. Then, last week, she crossed the line. She went over to the Jerzycks' while Pete and Wilma were at work, saw the sheets hanging on the line, and covered them with mud from the garden.”

Norris whistled. “Did we catch
that
complaint, Alan?”

Alan shook his head. “From then until this afternoon, it was all between the ladies.”

“What about Pete Jerzyck?”

“Do you
know
Pete?”

“Well . . .” Norris stopped. Thought about Pete. Thought about Wilma. Thought about the two of them together. Slowly nodded his head. “He was afraid Wilma would chew him up one side and down the other if he tried playing referee . . . so he stood aside. Is that it?”

“Sort of. He actually may have headed things off, at least for a while. Clut says Pete told the CID guys that Wilma wanted to go over to Nettie's as soon as she got a look at her sheets. She was ready to rock and roll. She apparently called Nettie on the phone and told her she was going to rip off her head and shit down her neck.”

Norris nodded. Between the autopsy on Wilma and the autopsy on Nettie, he had called dispatch in Castle Rock and asked for a list of complaints involving each of the two women. Nettie's list was short—one item. She had snapped and killed her husband. End of story. No flare-ups before and none since, including the last few years she'd spent back in town. Wilma was a different kettle of tripe entirely. She had never killed anyone, but the list of complaints—those made by her and those made about her—was a long one, and went back to what had then been Castle Rock Junior High, where she had punched a substitute teacher in the eye for giving her detention. On two occasions, worried women who'd had the ill luck or judgment to get into Wilma's bad books had requested police protection. Wilma had also been the subject of three assault complaints over the years. Ultimately all charges had been dropped, but it didn't take much study to figure out that no one in his or her right mind would have chosen Wilma Jerzyck to fuck with.

“They were bad medicine for each other,” Norris murmured.

“The worst.”

“Her husband talked Wilma out of going over there the first time she wanted to go?”

“He knew better than to even try. He told Clut he dropped two Xanax into a cup of tea and that lowered her thermostat. In fact, Jerzyck says he thought it was all over.”

“Do you believe him, Alan?”

“Yeah—as much as I can believe anyone without actually talking to them face-to-face, that is.”

“What's the stuff he dropped into her tea? Dope?”

“A tranquilizer. Jerzyck told CID he'd used it a couple of times before when she got hot, and it cooled her out pretty well. He said he thought it did this time, too.”

“But it didn't.”

“I think it did at first. Wilma didn't just go over and start chewing Nettie's ass, at least. But I'm pretty sure she went on harassing Nettie; it's the pattern she established when it was just the dog they were fighting over. Making phone-calls. Doing drive-bys. That sort of thing. Nettie's skin was pretty thin. Stuff like that would have really gotten to her. John LaPointe and the CID team I stuck him with went to see Polly around seven o'clock. Polly said she was pretty sure that Nettie was worried about something. She was over to see Polly this morning, and let something slip then. Polly didn't understand it at the time.” Alan sighed. “I guess now she wishes she'd listened a little more closely.”

“How's Polly taking it, Alan?”

“Pretty well, I think.” He had spoken to her twice, once from a house near the crime scene, and a second time from here at K.V.H., just after he and Norris had arrived. On both occasions her voice had been calm and controlled, but he had sensed the tears and confusion just under the carefully maintained surface. He wasn't entirely surprised during the first call to find she already knew most of what had happened; news, particularly bad news, travels fast in small towns.

“What set off the big bang?”

Alan looked at Norris, surprised, and then realized he didn't know yet. Alan had gotten a more or less complete report from John LaPointe between the autopsies, while Norris had been on another phone, talking to Sheila Brigham and compiling lists of complaints involving the two women.

“One of them decided to escalate,” he said. “My guess is Wilma, but the details of the picture are still hazy. Apparently Wilma went over to Nettie's while Nettie was visiting Polly this morning. Nettie must have left without
locking her door, or even latching it securely, and the wind blew it open—you know how windy it was today.”

“Yeah.”

“So maybe it started out to be just another drive-by to keep Nettie's water hot. Then Wilma saw the door standing open and the drive-by turned into something else. Maybe it wasn't
quite
that way, but it feels right to me.”

The words weren't even out of his mouth before he recognized them as a lie. It
didn't
feel right, that was the trouble. It
should
have felt right, he
wanted
it to feel right, and it didn't. What was driving him crazy was that there was no
reason
for that sense of wrongness, at least none he could put his finger on. The closest he could come was to wonder if Nettie would have been careless not only about locking her door but about shutting it tightly if she was as paranoid about Wilma Jerzyck as she had seemed . . . and that wasn't enough to hang a suspicion on. It wasn't enough because not all of Nettie's gear was stowed tightly, and you couldn't make any assumptions about what such a person would and wouldn't do. Still . . .