The Dark Half (13 page)

Now his voice had reached full volume, and both the Troopers looked a little abashed. Pangborn did not. He went on staring at Thad in that unsettling way.

In the other room, one of the twins began to cry.

“Oh Jesus,” Liz moaned, “
what is
this? Tell us!”

“Go take care of the kids, babe,” Thad said, not unlocking his gaze from Pangborn's.

“But—”

“Please,” he said, and then both babies were crying. “This will be all right. ”

She gave him a final trembling look, her eyes saying
Do you promise?
and then went into the living room.

“We want to question you in connection with the murder of Homer Gamache.” the second Trooper said.

Thad broke his hard stare at Pangborn and turned to the Trooper.
“Who?”

“Homer Gamache,” Pangborn repeated. “Are you going to tell us the name means nothing to you, Mr. Beaumont?”

“Of course I'm not,” Thad said, astonished. “Homer takes our trash to the dump when we're in town. Makes some small repairs around the house. He lost an arm in Korea. They gave him the Silver Star—”

“Bronze,” Pangborn said stonily.

“Homer's dead? Who killed him?”

The Troopers now looked at each other, surprised. After grief, astonishment may be the most difficult human emotion to fake effectively.

The first Trooper replied in a curiously gentle voice:

“We have every reason to believe you did, Mr. Beaumont. That's why we're here. ”

Thad looked at him with utter blankness for a moment and then laughed. “Jesus. Jesus Christ. This is crazy. ”

“Do you want to get a coat, Mr. Beaumont?” the other Trooper asked. “Raining pretty hard out there. ”

“I'm not going anywhere with you,” he repeated absently, entirely missing Pangborn's sudden expression of exasperation. Thad was thinking.

“I'm afraid you are,” Pangborn said, “one way or the other. ”

“It'll have to be the other, then,” he said, and then came out of himself. “When did this happen?”

“Mr. Beaumont,” Pangborn said, speaking slowly and enunciating carefully—it was as if he were speaking to a four-year-old, and not a terribly bright one at that. “We're not here to give
you
information. ”

Liz came back into the doorway with the babies. All color had drained from her face; her forehead shone like a lamp. “This is crazy,” she said, looking from Pangborn to the Troopers and then back to Pangborn again. “Crazy. Don't you
know
that?”

“Listen,” Thad said, walking over to Liz and putting an arm around her, “I didn't kill Homer, Sheriff Pangborn, but I understand now why you're so pissed. Come on upstairs to my office. Let's sit down and see if we can't figure this out—”

“I want you to get your coat,” Pangborn said. He glanced at Liz. “Forgive my French, but I've had about all the bullshit I can put up with for a rainy Saturday morning. We have you cold. ”

Thad looked at the older of the two State Troopers. “Can you talk some sense to this man? Tell him that he can avoid a whole lot of embarrassment and trouble just by telling me when Homer was killed?” And, as an afterthought: “And where. If it was in The Rock, and I can't imagine what Homer would be doing up here . . . well, I haven't been out of Ludlow, except to go to the University, in the last two and a half months.” He looked at Liz, who nodded.

The Trooper thought it over, and then said: “Excuse us a moment. ”

The three of them went back down the hallway, the Troopers almost appearing to lead Pangborn. They went out the front door. As soon as it was shut, Liz burst into a spate of confused questions. Thad knew her well enough to suspect her terror would have come out as anger—fury, even—at the cops, if not for the news of Homer Gamache's death. As things were, she was on edge of tears.

“It's going to be all right,” he said, and kissed her on the cheek. As an afterthought, he also bussed William and Wendy, who were beginning to look decidedly troubled. “I think the State Troopers already know I'm telling the truth. Pangborn . . . well, he knew Homer. You did, too. He's just pissed as hell.”
And from the look and sound of him, he must have what seems like unshakable evidence tying me to the murder,
he thought but did not add.

He walked down the hall and peered out the narrow side window as Liz had done. If not for the situation, what he saw would have been funny. The three of them were standing on the stoop, almost but not quite out of the rain, having a conference. Thad could get the sound of their voices, but not the sense. He thought they looked like ballplayers conferring on the mound during a lateinning rally by the other team. Both State cops were talking to Pangborn, who was shaking his head and replying heatedly.

Thad went back down the hall.

“What are they doing?” Liz asked.

“I don't know,” Thad said, “but I think the State cops are trying to talk Pangborn into telling me why he's so sure I killed Homer Gamache. Or at least
some
of the why. ”

“Poor Homer,” she muttered. “This is like a bad dream. ”

He took William from her and told her again not to worry.

The policemen came in about two minutes later. Pangborn's face was a thundercloud. Thad surmised the two State cops had told him what Pangborn himself already knew but didn't want to admit: the writer was exhibiting none of the tics and twitches they associated with guilt.

“All right,” Pangborn said. He was trying to avoid surliness, Thad thought, and doing a pretty good job. Not quite succeeding, but doing a pretty good job all the same, considering he was in the presence of his number-one suspect in the murder of a one-armed old man. “These gentlemen would like me to ask you at least one question here, Mr. Beaumont, and so I will. Can you account for your whereabouts during the time-period from eleven p. m. on May thirty-first until four a. m. on June first.

The Beaumonts exchanged a glance. Thad felt a great weight around his heart loosen. It did not quite fall off, not yet, but he felt as if all the catches holding that weight had been unbuckled. Now all it would take was one good push.

“Was it?” he murmured to his wife. He thought it was, but it seemed just a little too good to be true.

“I'm sure it was,” Liz responded. “The thirty-first, did you say?” She was looking at Pangborn with radiant hope.

Pangborn looked back suspiciously. “Yes, ma'am. But I'm afraid your unsubstantiated word won't be—”

She was ignoring him, counting backward on her fingers. Suddenly she grinned like a schoolgirl. “Tuesday! Tuesday
was
the thirty-first!” she cried to her husband. “It
was
! Thank God!”

Pangborn looked puzzled and more suspicious than ever. The Troopers looked at each other and then looked back at Liz. “You want to let us in on it, Mrs. Beaumont?” one asked.

“We had a party here the night of Tuesday the thirty-first!” she replied, and flashed Pangborn a look of triumph and vicious dislike. “We had a
houseful!
Didn't we, Thad?”

“We sure did. ”

“In a case like this, a good alibi itself is cause for suspicion,” Pangborn said, but he looked off-balance.

“Oh, you silly, arrogant man!” Liz exclaimed. Bright color now flamed in her cheeks. Fear was passing; fury was arriving. She looked at the Troopers. “If my husband doesn't have an alibi for this murder you say he committed, you take him to the police station! If he does,
this
man says it probably means he did it anyway! What are you, afraid of a little honest work? Why are you
here?”

“Quit now, Liz,” Thad said quietly. “They've got good reasons for being here. If Sheriff Pangborn were on a wild-goose chase or running on hunch, I believe he would come alone. ”

Pangborn gave him a sour took, then sighed. “Tell us about this party, Mr. Beaumont. ”

“It was for Tom Carroll,” Thad said. “Tom has been in the University English Department for nineteen years, and he's been chairman for the last five. He retired on May twenty-seventh, when the academic year officially ended. He's always been a great favorite in the Department, known to most of us old war-horses as Gonzo Tom because of his great liking for Hunter Thompson's essays. So we decided to throw a retirement party for him and his wife. ”

“What time did this party end?”

Thad grinned. “Well, it was over before four in the morning, but it ran late. When you put a bunch of English teachers together with an almost unlimited supply of booze, you could burn down a weekend. Guests started arriving around eight, and . . . who was last, honey?”

“Rawlie DeLesseps and that awful woman from the History Department he's been going out with since Jesus was a baby,” she said. “The one who goes around blaring: ‘Just call me Billie, everyone does. ' ”

“Right,” Thad said. He was grinning now. “The Wicked Witch of the East. ”

Pangborn's eyes were sending a clear you're-lying-and-we-both-know-it message. “And what time did these friends leave?”

Thad shuddered a little. “Friends? Rawlie, yes. That woman, most definitely not. ”

“Two o'clock,” Liz said.

Thad nodded. “It had to have been at least two when we saw them out. Damn near
poured
them out. As I indicated, it will be a snowy day in bell before I'm inducted into the Wilhemina Burks Fan Club, but I would have insisted they stay over if he'd had more than three miles to drive, or if it had been earlier. No one on the roads at that hour on a Tuesday night—Wednesday morning, sorry—anyhow. Except maybe a few deer raiding the gardens.” He shut his mouth abruptly. In his relief he was close to babbling.

There was a moment's silence. The two Troopers were now looking at the floor. Pangborn had an expression on his face Thad could not read—he didn't believe he had ever seen it before. Not chagrin, although chagrin was a part of it.

“Well, that's very convenient, Mr. Beaumont,” Pangborn said at last, “but it's a long way from rock-solid. We've got the word of you and your wife—or guesstimate —as to when you saw this last couple out. If they were as blasted as you seem to think,
they'll
hardly be able to corroborate what you've said. And if this DeLesseps fellow really is a friend, he might say. . . well, who knows?”

All the same, Alan Pangborn was losing steam. Thad saw it and believed—no,
knew—
the State Troopers did, too. Yet the man wasn't ready to let it go. The fear Thad had felt initially and the anger which had followed it were changing to fascination and curiosity. He thought he had never seen puzzlement and certainty so equally at war. The fact of the party—and he must accept as fact something which could so easily be checked—had shaken him . . . but not convinced him. Nor, he saw, were the Troopers entirely convinced. The only difference was that the Troopers weren't so hot under the collar. They hadn't known Homer Gamache personally, and so they didn't have any personal stake in this. Alan Pangborn had, and did.

I knew him, too,
Thad thought.
So maybe I have a stake in it, too. Apart from my hide, that is.

“Look,” he said patiently, keeping his gaze locked with Pangborn's and trying not to return hostility in kind, “let's get real, as my students like to say. You asked if we could effectively prove our whereabouts—”

“Your
whereabouts. Mr. Beaumont,” Pangborn said.

“Okay,
my
whereabouts. Five pretty difficult hours. Hours when most people are in bed. Thanks to nothing more than blind luck, we—
I,
if you prefer—can cover at least three of those five hours. Maybe Rawlie and his odious lady friend left at two, maybe they left at one-thirty or two-fifteen. Whenever it was, it was
late.
They'll corroborate
that,
and the Burks woman wouldn't lie me an alibi even if Rawlie would. I think if Billie Burks saw me washed up drowning on the beach, she'd throw a bucket of water on me. ”

Liz gave him an odd, grimacing little smile as she took William, who was beginning to squirm, from him. At first he didn't understand that smile, and then it came to him. It was that phrase, of course—
lie me an alibi.
It was a phrase which Alexis Machine, arch-villain of the George Stark novels, sometimes used. It
was
odd, in a way; he could not remember ever using a Stark-ism in conversation before. On the other hand, he had never been accused of murder before, either, and murder was a George Stark kind of situation.

“Even supposing we're off by an hour and the last guests left at one,” he continued, “and
further
supposing I jumped into my car the minute—the
second—
they were gone over the hill, and then drove like a mad bastard for Castle Rock, it would be four-thirty or five o'clock in the morning before I could possibly get there. No turnpike going west, you know. ”

One of the Troopers began: “And the Arsenault woman said it was about quarter of one when she saw—”

“We don't need to go into that right now,” Alan interrupted quickly.

Liz made a rude, exasperated sound, and Wendy goggled at her comically. In the crook of her other arm, William stopped squirming, suddenly engrossed in the wonderfulness of his own twiddling fingers. To Thad she said. “There were still lots of people here at one, Thad.
Lots of
them. ”

Then she rounded on Alan Pangborn—
really
rounded on him this time.