Needful Things (76 page)

Frank settled in behind the door. He was pretty well loaded for bear; there was a Winchester shotgun leaning against the wall, a Llama .32 automatic stuffed into his belt, and a Sheffington steak-knife in his hand. From where he stood he could see the heap of yellow feathers that had been Tammy Faye. A small grin twitched Frank's Mr. Weatherbee mouth and his eyes—utterly mad eyes now—rolled ceaselessly back and forth behind his round rimless Mr. Weatherbee spectacles.

“You better be good for goodness' sake!” he admonished under his breath. He sang this line several times as he stood there, and several more times after he had made himself more comfortable, sitting behind the door with his legs crossed, his back propped against the wall, and his weapons in his lap.

He began to feel alarmed at how sleepy he was becoming. It seemed nuts to be on the verge of dozing off when he was waiting to cut a man's throat, but that didn't change the fact. He thought he had read someplace (perhaps in one of his classes at the University of Maine at Farmington, a cow college from which he had graduated with absolutely no honors at all) that a severe shock to the nervous system sometimes had that very effect . . . and he'd suffered a severe shock, all right. It was a wonder his heart hadn't blown like an old tire when he saw those magazines scattered all over his office.

Frank decided it would be unwise to take chances. He moved George T. Nelson's long, oatmeal-colored sofa away from the wall a little bit, crawled behind it, and lay down on his back with the shotgun by his left hand. His right hand, still curled around the handle of the steak-knife, lay on his chest. There. Much better. George T. Nelson's deep-pile carpeting was actually quite comfortable.

“You better be good for goodness' sake,” Frank sang
under his breath. He was still singing in a low, snory voice ten minutes later, when he finally dozed off.

“Unit One!” Sheila screamed from the radio slung under the dash as Alan crossed the Tin Bridge on his way back into town. “Come in, Unit One! Come in
right now!”

Alan felt a sickening lift-drop in his stomach. Clut had run into a hornet's nest up at Hugh Priest's house on Castle Hill Road—he was sure of it. Why in Christ's name hadn't he told Clut to rendezvous with John before bracing Hugh?

You know why—because not all your attention was on your job when you were giving orders. If something's happened to Clut because of that, you'll have to face it and own the part of it that's yours. But that comes later. Your job right now is to
do
your job. So do it, Alan—forget about Polly and do your damned job.

He snatched the microphone off its prongs. “Unit One, come back?”

“Someone's beating John up!” she screamed. “Come quick, Alan, he's hurting him
bad!”

This information was so completely at odds with what Alan had expected that he was utterly flummoxed for a moment.

“What? Who?
There?”

“Hurry up, he's killing him!”

All at once it clicked home. It was Hugh Priest, of course. For some reason Hugh had come to the Sheriff's Office, had arrived before John could get rolling for Castle Hill, and had started swinging. It was John LaPointe, not Andy Clutterbuck, who was in danger.

Alan grabbed the dash-flash, turned it on, and stuck it on the roof. When he reached the town side of the bridge he offered the old station wagon a silent apology and floored the accelerator.

Clut began to suspect Hugh wasn't home when he saw that all the tires on the man's car were not just flat but cut to pieces. He was about to approach the house anyway when he finally heard thin cries for help.

He stood where he was for a moment, undecided, then hurried back down the driveway. This time he saw Lenny lying on the side of the road and ran, holster flapping, to where the old man lay.

“Help me!” Lenny wheezed as Clut knelt by him. “Hugh Priest's gone crazy, tarnal fool's busted me right to Christ up!”

“Where you hurt, Lenny?” Clut asked. He touched the old man's shoulder. Lenny let out a shriek. It was as good an answer as any. Clut stood up, unsure of exactly what to do next. Too many things had gotten crammed up in his mind. All he knew for sure was that he desperately did not want to fuck this up.

“Don't move,” he said at last. “I'm going to go call Medical Assistance.”

“I ain't got no plans to get up and do the tango, y'goddam fool,” Lenny said. He was crying and snarling with pain. He looked like an old bloodhound with a broken leg.

“Right,” Clut said. He started to run back to his cruiser, then returned to Lenny again. “He took your car, right?”

“No!” Lenny gasped, holding his hands against his broken ribs. “He busted me up and then flew off on a magic fuckin carpet. Sure, he took my car! Why do you think I'm layin here? Get a fuckin tan?”

“Right,” Clut repeated, and sprinted back down the road. Dimes and quarters bounced out of his pockets and spun across the macadam in bright little arcs.

He leaned in the window of his car so fast he almost knocked himself out on the door-ledge. He snagged the mike. He had to get Sheila to send help for the old man, but that wasn't the most important thing. Both Alan and the State Police had to know that Hugh Priest was now driving Lenny Partridge's old Chevrolet Bel-Air. Clut
wasn't sure what year it was, but nobody could miss that dust-colored oil-burner.

But he could not raise Sheila in dispatch. He tried three times and there was no answer. No answer at all.

Now he could hear Lenny starting to scream again, and Clut went into Hugh's house to call Rescue Services in Norway on the telephone.

One hell of a fine time for Sheila to have to be on the john, he thought.

Henry Beaufort was also trying to reach the Sheriff's Office, He stood at the bar with the telephone pressed against his ear. It rang again and again and again. “Come on,” he said, “answer the fucking phone. What are you guys doing over there? Playing gin rummy?”

Billy Tupper had gone outside. Henry heard him yell something and looked up impatiently. The yell was followed by a sudden loud bang. Henry's first thought was that one of Lenny's old tires had blown . . . and then there were two more bangs.

Billy walked back into the Tiger. He was walking very slowly. He was holding one hand against his throat, and blood was pouring through his fingers.

“ 'Enry!”
Billy cried in a weird, strangled Cockney voice. “ 
'Enry!' En—”

He reached the Rock-Ola, stood there swaying for a moment, and then everything in his body seemed to let go at once and he collapsed in a loose tumble.

A shadow fell over his feet, which were almost out the door, and then the shadow's owner appeared. He was wearing a foxtail around his neck and holding a pistol in one hand. Smoke drifted from its barrel. Tiny jewels of perspiration nestled in the sparse mat of hair between his nipples. The skin under his eyes was puffy and brown. He stepped over Billy Tupper and into the dimness of The Mellow Tiger.

“Hello, Henry,” said Hugh Priest.

John LaPointe didn't know why this was happening, but be knew Lester was going to kill him if he kept it up—and Lester showed no sign of even slowing down, let alone stopping. He tried to slide down the wall and out of Lester's reach, but Lester grabbed his shirt and yanked him back up. Lester was still breathing easily. His own shirt had not even come untucked from the elastic waistband of his sweatpants.

“Here you go, Johnny-boy,” Lester said, and smashed another fist into John's upper lip. John felt it split apart on his teeth.” Grow your goddam pussy-tickler over
that.”

Blindly, John stuck out one leg behind Lester and pushed as hard as he could. Lester uttered a surprised yell and went over, but he shot both hands out as he toppled, snagged them in John's blood-spattered shirt, and pulled the Deputy over on top of him. They began to roll across the floor, butting and punching.

Both were far too busy to see Sheila Brigham dart out of the dispatcher's cubicle and into Alan's office. She snatched the shotgun off the wall, cocked it, and ran back into the bullpen area, which was now a shambles. Lester was sitting on top of John, industriously banging his head against the floor.

Sheila knew how to use the gun she held; she had been target-shooting since she was eight years old. Now she socked the butt-plate against her shoulder and screamed: “
Get away from him, John! Give me a clear field!”

Lester turned at the sound of her voice, his eyes glaring. He bared his teeth at Sheila like an angry bull gorilla, then went back to banging John's head on the floor.

As Alan approached the Municipal Building, he saw the first unqualifiedly good thing of the day: Norris Ridgewick's VW approaching from the other direction. Norris
was in plain clothes, but Alan cared not at all about that. He could use him this afternoon. Oh boy, how he could use him.

Then that went to hell, too.

A large red car—a Cadillac, license plate
KEETON
1—suddenly shot out of the narrow alley which gave access to the Municipal Building's parking lot. Alan watched, gape-mouthed, as Buster drove his Cadillac into the side of Norris's Beetle. The Caddy wasn't going fast, but it was roughly four times the size of Norris's car. There was a crunch of crimping metal and the VW toppled over onto the passenger side with a hollow bang and a tinkle of glass.

Alan slammed on the brakes and got out of his cruiser.

Buster was getting out of his Cadillac.

Norris was struggling out through the window of his Volkswagen with a dazed expression on his face.

Buster began to stalk toward Norris, his hands closing into fists. A frozen grin was rising on his fat round face.

Alan took one look at that grin and began to run.

The first shot Hugh fired shattered a bottle of Wild Turkey on the backbar. The second shattered the glass over a framed document which hung on the wall just above Henry's head and left a round black hole in the liquor license beneath. The third tore off Henry Beaufort's right cheek in a pink cloud of blood and vaporized flesh.

Henry shrieked, grabbed the box with the sawed-off shotgun inside, and dropped behind the bar. He knew Hugh had shot him, but he didn't know if it was bad or not. He was only aware that the right side of his face was suddenly as hot as a furnace, and that blood, warm, wet, and sticky, was pouring down the side of his neck.

“Let's talk about cars, Henry,” Hugh was saying as he approached the bar. “Even better than that, let's talk about my foxtail—what do you say?”

Henry opened the box. It was lined with red velvet. He stuck his jittery, unstable hands in and pulled out the sawed-off Winchester. He started to break it, then realized
there was no time. He would just have to hope it was loaded.

He gathered his legs under him, getting ready to spring up and give Hugh what he sincerely hoped would be a big surprise.

Sheila realized John wasn't going to get out from under the crazy man, who she now believed was Lester Platt or Pratt . . . the gym teacher at the high school, anyway. She didn't think John
could
get out from under. Lester had stopped banging John's head against the floor and had closed his big hands around John's throat instead.

Sheila reversed the gun, locked her hands on the barrel, and cocked it back over her shoulder like Ted Williams. Then she brought it around in a hard, smooth swing.

Lester turned his head at the last moment, just in time to catch the gun's steel-edged walnut stock between his eyes. There was a nasty crunch as the gunstock smashed a hole into Lester's skull to jelly. It sounded as if someone had stepped very hard on a full box of popcorn. Lester Pratt was dead before he hit the floor.

Sheila Brigham looked at him and began to scream.

“Did you think I wouldn't know who it was?” Buster Keeton was grunting as he dragged Norris—who was dazed but unhurt—the rest of the way out of the VW's driver's-side window. “Did you think I wouldn't know, with your name right at the bottom of every goddam sheet of paper you taped up? Did you? Did you?”

He cocked one fist back to strike Norris, and Alan Pangborn slipped a handcuff around it just as neatly as you please.

“Huh!” Buster exclaimed, and wheeled ponderously around.

Inside the Municipal Building, someone started to scream.

Alan glanced in that direction, then used the cuff on the other end of the chain to pull Buster over to the open door of his own Cadillac. Buster flailed at him as he did so. Alan took several punches harmlessly on his shoulder, and snapped the free cuff around the door handle of the car.

He turned around and Norris was there. He had time to register the fact that Norris looked just terrible, and to dismiss it as a consequence of being rammed amidships by the Head Selectman.

“Come on,” he said to Norris. “We've got trouble.”

But Norris ignored him, at least for the moment. He brushed past Alan and punched Buster Keeton squarely in the eye. Buster let out a startled squawk and fell back against the door of his car. It was still open and his weight drove it shut, catching the tail of his sweat-soaked white shirt in the latch.

“That's for the rattrap, you fat shit!” Norris cried.

“I'll get you!” Buster screamed back. “Don't think I won't! I'll get
All of You People!”

“Get
this,”
Norris growled. He was moving in again with his fists cocked at the sides of his puffed-up pigeon chest when Alan grabbed him and hauled him back.

“Quit it!” he shouted into Norris's face. “We've got trouble inside! Bad trouble!”