“May?” McGovern leaned a little further forward in his chair.
“You know something about what happened to May?”
“I think I do.” Speaking carefully, moving from word to word like a man using steppingstones to cross a treacherous brook, Ralph told McGovern about waking up, going into the living room, and seeing two men come out of Mrs. Locher’s house. He recounted his successful rummage for the binoculars, and told McGovern about the scissors he had seen one of the men carrying. He did not mention his nightmare of Carolyn or the glowing tracks, and he most certainly did not mention his belated impression that the two men might have come right through the door; that would have finished off any remaining tatters of credibility he might still possess. He ended with his anonymous call to 911 and then sat in his chair, looking at McGovern anxiously.
McGovern shook his head as if to clear it. “Auras, oracles, mysterious housebreakers with scissors… you have been living dangerously.”
“What do you think, Bill?”
McGovern sat quietly for several moments. He had rolled his newspaper up while Ralph was talking, and now he began to tap it absently against his leg. Ralph felt an urge to phrase his question even more bluntly-Do you think I’m crazy, Bill?-and quashed it.
Did he really believe that was the sort of question to which people gave honest answers… at least without a healthy shot of sodium pentothal first? That Bill might say Oh yes, I think you’re just as crazy as a bedbug, Ralphie-bak’V, so why don’t we call juniper Hill right away and see if they have a bed for you? Not very likely.
… and since any answer Bill gave would mean nothing, it was better to forgo the question.
“I don’t exactly know what I think,” Bill said at last. “Not yet, at least. What did they look like?”
“Their faces were hard to make out, even with the binoculars, 2 Ralph said. His voice was as steady as it had been yesterday, when he had denied making the 911 call.
“You probably don’t have any idea of how old they were, either?”
“No.”
“Could either of them have been our old pal from up the street?”
“Ed Deepneau?” Ralph looked at McGovern in surprise. “No, neither one was Ed.”
“What about Pickering?”
“No. Not Ed, not Charlie Pickering. I would have known either of them. What are you driving at? That my mind just sort of buckled and put the two guys who’ve caused me the most stress in the last few months on May Locher’s front stoop?”
“Of course not,” McGovern replied, but the steady tap-tap-tap of the newspaper against his leg paused and his eyes flickered. Ralph felt a sinking in the pit of his stomach. Yes; that was in fact exactly what McGovern had been driving at, and it wasn’t really so surprising, was it?
Maybe not, but it didn’t change that sinking feeling.
“And Johnny said all the doors were locked.”
“Yes.”
“From the inside.”
“Uh-huh, but-”
McGovern got up from his chair so suddenly that for one crazy moment Ralph had the idea that he was going to run away, perhaps screaming Watch out for Roberts! He’s gone crazy! as he went. But instead of bolting down the steps, he turned toward the door leading back into the house. In some ways Ralph found this even more alarming.
“What are you going to do?”
“Call Larry Perrault,” McGovern said. “May’s younger brother.
He still lives out in Carriville. She’ll be buried in Carriville, I imagine me.” McGovern gave Ralph a strange, speculative look. “What did you think I was going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said uneasily. “For a second there I thought you were going to run away like the Gingerbread Man.”
“Mope.” McGovern reached out and patted him on the shoulder, but to Ralph the gesture felt cold and comfortless. Perfunctory, “What does Mrs. Locher’s brother have to do with any of this?”
“Johnny said they sent May’s body down to Augusta for a more comprehensive autopsy, right?”
“Well, I think the word he actually used was postmortem-” McGovern waved this away. “Same difference, believe me. If anything odd does crop up-anything suggesting that she was murdered-Larry would have to be informed. He’s her only close living relative.”
“Yes, but won’t he wonder what your interest is?”
“Oh, I don’t think we have to worry about that,” McGovern said, speaking in a soothing tone Ralph didn’t care for at all. “I’ll say the police have sealed off the house and that the old Harris Avenue rumor mill is turning briskly. He knows May and I were school chums, and that I visited her regularly over the last couple of years.
Larry and I aren’t crazy about each other, but we get along reasonably well. He’ll tell me what I want to know if for no other reason than that we’re both Carriville survivors. Get it?”
“I guess so, but-”
“I hope so,” McGovern said, and suddenly he looked like a very old and very ugly reptile-a gila monster, or perhaps a basilisk lizard. He pointed a finger at Ralph. “I’m not a stupid man, and I do know how to respect a confidence. Your face just now said you weren’t sure about that, and I resent it. I resent the hell out of it.”
“I’m sorry,” Ralph said. He was stunned by McGovern’s outburst.
McGovern looked at him a moment longer with his leathery lips pulled back against his too-large dentures, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, apology accepted. You’ve been sleeping like shit, I have to factor that into the equation, and as for me, I can’t seem to get Bob Polhurst off my mind.” He heaved one of his weightiest poor-oldBill sighs.
“Listen-if you’d prefer me not to try calling May’s brother “No, no,” Ralph said, thinking that what he’d like to do was roll the clock back ten minutes or so and cancel this entire conversation.
And then a sentiment he was sure Bill McGovern would appreciate floated into his mind, fully constructed and ready for use. “I’m sorry if I impuned your discretion.”
McGovern sanded, reluctantly at first and then with his whole face.
“Now I know what keeps you awake-thinking up crap like that.
Sit still, Ralph, and think good thoughts about a hippopotamus, as my mother used to say. I’ll be right back. Probably won’t even catch him in, you know; funeral arrangements and all that. Want to look at the paper while you wait?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
McGovern handed him the paper, which still retained the tube shape into which it had been rolled, then went inside. Ralph glanced at the front page. The headline read PRO-CHOICE, PRO-LIFE ADVOCATES READY FOR ACTIVIST’s ARRIVAL. The story was flanked by two news photographs.
One showed half a dozen young women making signs which said things like OUR BODIES, OUR CHOICE and IT’s A BRAND-NEW DAY IN DERRY! The other showed picketers marching in front of WomanCare. They carried no signs and needed none; the hooded black robes they wore and the scythes they carried said it all.
Ralph heaved a sigh of his own, dropped the paper onto the seat of the rocking chair beside him, and watched Tuesday morning unfold along Harris Avenue. It occurred to him that McGovern might well be on the phone with John Leydecker rather than Larry Perrault, and that the two of them might at this very moment be having a little student-teacher conference about that nutty old insomniac Ralph Roberts.
Just thought you’d like to know who really made that 911 call, Johnny.
Thanks, Prof We were pretty sure, anyway, but it’s good to get confirmation. I imagine he’s harmless. I actually sort of like him.
Ralph pushed away his speculations about who Bill might or might not be calling. It was easier just to sit here and not think at all, not even good thoughts about a hippopotamus. Easier to watch the Budweiser truck lumber into the Red Apple parking lot, pausing to give courtesy to the Magazines Incorporated van which had dropped off this week’s ration of tabloids, magazines, and paperbacks and was now leaving. Easier to watch old Harriet Bennigan, who made Mrs. Perrine look like a spring chicken, bent over her walker in her bright red fall coat, out for her morning lurch. Easier to watch the young girl, who was wearing jeans, an oversized white tee-shirt, and a man’s hat about four sizes too big for her, jumping rope in the weedy vacant lot between Frank’s Bakery and Vicky Moon’s Tanning Saloon (Body Wraps Our Specialty). Easier to watch the girl’s small hands penduluming up and down. Easier to listen as she chanted her endless, shuttling rhyme.