She steadied herself by thinking of what her father would say to her — what he would do to her — if he found that she had gotten his measuring tape all bloody. Of course, he wouldn't be able to see the blood, but it helped to think that.
She took one of the clean rags — still as warm as fresh bread from the dryer — and went back into the bathroom. Before she began to clean, she put the hard rubber plug in the drain, closing that eye. The blood was fresh, and it cleaned up easily. She went up he r own trail, wiping away the dune-sized drops on the linoleum, then rinsing the rag, wringing it out, and putting it aside.
She got a second rag and used it to clean her father's measuring tape. The blood was thick, viscous. In two places there were clots of the stuff, black and spongy.
Although the blood only went back five or six feet, she cleaned the entire length of the tape, removing from it all traces of pipemuck. That done, she put it back into the cupboard over the sink and took the two stained rags out in back of the apartment. Mrs Doyon was yelling at Jim again. Her voice was clear, almost bell-like in the still hot late afternoon.
In the back yard, which was mostly bare din, weeds, and clothes-lines, there Was a rusty incinerator. Beverly threw the rags into it, then sat down on the back steps. Tears came suddenly, with surprising violence, and this time she made no effort to hold them back.
She put her arms on her knees, her head in her arms, and wept while Mrs Doyon called for J im to come out of that road, did he want to get hit by a car and be killed?
'Quaeque ipsa miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.'
— Virgil
'You don't fuck around with the infinite.'
— Mean Streets
February 14th, 1985 Valentine's Day
Two more disappearances in the past week — both children. Just as I was beginning to relax. One of them a sixteen-year-old boy named Dennis Torrio, the other a girl of just five who was out sledding in back of her house on West Broadway. The hysterical mother found her sled, one of those blue plastic flying saucers, but nothing else. There had been a fresh fall of snow the night before — four inches or so. No tracks but hers, Chief Rademacher said when I called him. He is becoming extremely annoyed with me, I think. Not anything that's going to keep me awake nights; I have worse things to do than that, don't I?
Asked him if I could see the police photos. He refused.
Asked him if her tracks led away toward any sort of drain or sewer grating. This was followed by a long period of silence. Then Rademacher said, 'I'm beginning to wonder if maybe you shouldn't see a doctor, Hanlon. The head-peeper kind of doctor. The kid was snatched by her father. Don't you read the papers?'
'Was the Torrio boy snatched by his father?' I asked. .
Another long pause.
'Give it a rest, Hanlon,' he said. 'Give me a rest.'
He hung up.
Of course I read the papers — don't I put them out in the Reading Room of the Public Library each morning myself? The little girl, Laurie Ann Winterbarger, had been in the custody of her mother following an acrimonious divorce proceeding in the spring of 1982. The police are operating on the theory that Horst Winterbarger, who is supposedly working as a machinery maintenance man somewhere in Florida, drove up to Maine to snatch his daughter. They further theorize that he parked his car beside the house and called to his daughter, who then joined him — hence the lack of any tracks other than the little girl's. They have less to say about the fact that the girl had not seen her father since she was two. Part of the deep bitterness which accompanied the Winterbargers' divorce came from Mrs Winterbarger's allegations that on at least two occasions Horst Winterbarger had sexually molested the child. She asked the court to deny Winterbarger all visitation rights, a request the court granted in spite of Winterbarger's hot denials. Rademacher claims the court's decision, which had the effect of cutting Winterbarger off completely from his only child, may have pushed Winterbarger into taking his daughter. That at least has some dun plausibility, but ask yourself this: would little Laurie Ann have recognized him after three years and run to him when he called her? Rademacher says yes, even though she was two the last time she saw him. I don't think so. And her mother says Laurie Ann had been well trained about not approaching or talking to strangers, a lesson most Derry children learn early and well. Rademacher says he's got Florida State Police looking for Winterbarger and that his responsibility ends there.
'Matters of custody are more the province of the lawyers than that of the police,' this pompous, overweight asshole is quoted as saying in last Friday's Derry News.
But the Torrio boy . . . that's something else. Wonderful home life. Played football for the Derry Tigers. Honor Roll student. Had gone through the Outward Bound Survival School in the summer of '84 and passed with flying colors. No history of drug use. Had a girlfriend that he was apparently head-over-heels about. Had everything to live for. Everything to stay in Derry for, at least for the next couple of years.
All the same, he's gone.
What happened to him? A sudden attack of wanderlust? A drunk driver who maybe hit him, killed him, and buried him? Or is he maybe still in Derry, is he maybe on the nightside
of Derry, keeping company with folks like Betty Ripsom and Patrick Hockstetter and Eddie Corcoran and all the rest? Is it
(later)
I'm doing it again. Going over and over the same ground, doing nothing constructive, only cranking myself up to the screaming point. I jump when the iron stairs leading up to the stacks creak. I jump at shadows. I find myself wondering how I'd react if I was shelving books up therein the stacks, pushing my little rubber-wheeled trolley in front of me, and a hand reached from between two leaning rows of books, a groping hand . . .
Had again a well-nigh insurmountable desire to begin calling them this afternoon. At one point I even got as far as dialing 404, the Atlanta area code, with Stanley Uris's number in front of me. Then I just held the phone against my ear, asking myself if I wanted to call them because I was really sure — one hundred percent sure — or simply because I'm now so badly spooked that I can't stand to be alone; that I have to talk to someone who knows (or will know) what it is I am spooked about.
For a moment I could hear Richie saying Batches? BATCHES? We doan need no stinkin'batches, senhorr! in his Pancho Vanilla Voice, as clearly as if he were standing beside me . . . and I hung up the phone. Because when you want to see someone as badly as I wanted to see Richie — or any of them — at that moment, you just can't trust your own motivations. We lie best when we lie to ourselves. The fact is, I'm still not one hundred percent sure. If another body should turn up, I will call . . . but for now I must suppose that even such a pompous ass as Rademacher may be right. She could have remembered her father; there may have been pictures of him. And I suppose a really persuasive adult could talk a kid into coming to his car, no matter what that child had been taught.
There's another fear that haunts me. Rademacher suggested that I might be going crazy. I don't believe that, but if I call them now, they may think I'm crazy. Worse than that, what if they should not remember me at all? Mike Hanlon? Who? I don't remember any Mike Hanlon. I don't remember you at all. What promise?
I feel that there will come a right time to call them . . . and when that time comes, I'll know that it's right. Their own circuits will open at the same time. It's as if there are two great wheels slowly coming into some sort of powerful convergence with each other, myself and the rest of Derry on one, and all my childhood friends on the other.