They drew together in front of the vacant lot where the Emporium
Galorium had once stood. “Hello, Ace,” Alan said. Ace didn’t seem in the least surprised to see him. He took his sunglasses from the V of his shirt, shook them out one-handed, and slipped them on. “Well, well, well-how they hangin, boss?”
“What are you doing in Castle Rock, Ace?” Alan asked evenly. Ace looked up at the sky with exaggerated interest. Little glints of light twinkled on the lenses of his Ray-Bans. “Nice day for a ride,” he said. “Summery.”
“Very nice,” Alan agreed. “Have you got a valid license, Ace?” Ace looked at him reproachfully. “Would I be out driving if I
didn’t? That wouldn’t be legal, would it?”
“I don’t think that’s an answer.”
“I took the re-exam as soon as they gave me my pink sheet,” Ace said. “I’m street-legal. How’s that, boss? Is that an answer?”
“Maybe I could check for myself.” Alan held out his hand. “Why, I don’t think you trust me!” Ace said. He spoke in the same jocular, teasing voice, but Alan heard the anger beneath it. “Let’s just say I’m from Missouri.” Ace shifted the book to his left hand so he could dig the wallet out of his hip pocket with his right, and Alan got a better look at the cover. The book was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. He looked at the license. It was signed and valid. “The car registration is in the glove compartment, if you want to cross the street and look at that, too,” Ace said. Alan could hear the anger in his voice more clearly now. And the old arrogance as well. “I think I’ll trust you on that one, Ace. Why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing back here in town?”
“I came to look at that,” Ace said, and pointed to the vacant lot. “I don’t know why, but I did. I doubt if you believe me, but it happens to be the truth.” Oddly enough, Alan did believe him. “I see you bought a book, too.”
“I can read,” Ace said. “I doubt if you believe that, either.”
“Well, well.” Alan hooked his thumbs into his belt. “You had a look and you bought a book.”
“He’s a poet and he don’t know it.”
“Why, I guess I am. It’s good of you to point it out, Ace. Now I
guess you’ll be sliding on out of town, won’t you?”
“What if I don’t? You’d find something to bust me for, I guess. Is the word ’rehabilitation’ in your vocabulary, Sheriff
Pangborn?”
“Yes,” Alan said, “but the definition isn’t Ace Merrill.”
“You don’t want to push me, man.”
“I’m not. If I start, you’ll know it.” Ace took off his sunglasses. “You guys never quit, do you? You never… fucking… quit.” Alan said nothing. After a moment Ace seemed to regain his composure. He put his
Ray-Bans back on. “You know,” he said, “I think I will leave.
I’ve got places to go and things to do.”
“That’s good. Busy hands are happy hands.”
“But if I want to come back, I will. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, Ace, and I want to tell you that I don’t think that would be wise at all. Do you hear me?”
“You don’t scare me.”
“If I don’t,” Alan said, “you’re even dumber than I thought.”
Ace looked at Alan for a moment through his dark glasses, then laughed. Alan didn’t care for the sound of it-it was a creepy sort of laugh, strange and off-center. He stood and watched as Ace crossed the street in his outdated hood’s strut, opened the door of his car, and got in. A moment later the engine roared into life.
Exhaust blatted through the straight-pipes; people stopped on the street to look.
That’s an illegal muffler, Alan thought. A glasspack. I could cite him for that.
But what would be the point? He had bigger fish to fry than Ace Merrill, who was leaving town anyway. For good this time, he hoped.
He watched the green Challenger make an illegal U-turn on Main Street and head back toward Castle Stream and the edge of town. Then he turned and looked thoughtfully up the street at the green awning.
Ace had come back to his old home town and bought a book-Treasure Island, to be exact. He had bought it in Needful Things.
I thought that place was closed today, Alan thought. Wasn’t that what the sign said?
He walked up the street to Needful Things. He had not been wrong about the sign; it read
If he’ll see Ace, maybe he’ll see me, Alan thought, and raised his fist to knock. Before he could bring it down, the pager clipped to his belt went off. Alan pushed the button that turned the hateful gadget off and stood indecisively in front of the shop door a moment longer… but there was really no question about what he had to do now. If you were a lawyer or a business executive, maybe you could afford to ignore your pages for awhile, but when you were a County Sheriff-and one who was elected rather than appointed there wasn’t much question about priorities.
Alan crossed the sidewalk, then paused and spun around quickly.
He felt a little like the player who is “it” in a game of Red Light, the one whose job it is to catch the other players in motion so he can send them all the way back to the beginning. The feeling that he was being watched had returned, and it was very strong.
He was positive he would see the surprised twitch of the drawn shade on Mr. Gaunt’s side of the door.
But there was nothing. The shop just went on dozing in the unnaturally hot October sunlight, and if he hadn’t seen Ace coming out with his own eyes, Alan would have sworn the place was empty, watched feeling or no watched feeling.
He crossed to his cruiser, leaned in to grab the mike, and radioed in.
“Henry Payton called,” Sheila told him. “He’s already got preliminary reports on Nettle Cobb and Wilma jerzyck from Henry Ryan-by?”
“I copy. BY.”
“Henry said if you want him to give you the high spots, he’ll be in from right now until about noon. By.”
“Okay. I’m just up Main Street. I’ll be right in. By.”
“Uh, Alan?”
“Yeah?”
“Henry also asked if we’re going to get a fax machine before the turn of the century, so he can just send copies of this stuff instead of calling all the time and reading it to you. By.”
“Tell him to write a letter to the Head Selectman,” Alan said grumpily. “I’m not the one who writes the budget and he knows it.”
“Well, I’m just telling you what he said. No need to get all huffy about it. By.”
Alan thought Sheila sounded rather huffy herself, however.
“Over and out,” he said.
He got into Unit 1 and racked the mike. He glanced at the bank in time to see the big digital read-out over the door announce the time as ten-fifty and the temperature as eighty-two degrees. Jesus, we don’t need this, he thought. Everyone in town’s got a goddam case of prickly heat.
Alan drove slowly back to the Municipal Building, lost in thought.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something going on in Castle Rock, something which was on the verge of slipping out of control. It was crazy, of course, crazy as hell, but he just couldn’t shake it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1
The town’s schools were closed for the holiday, but Brian Rusk wouldn’t have gone even if they had been open.
Brian was sick. it wasn’t any kind of physical illness, not measles or chicken pox or even the Hershey Squirts, the most humiliating and debilitating of them all. Nor was it a mental disease, exactly-his mind was involved, all right, but it felt almost as if that involvement were a side-effect. The part of him which had taken sick was deeper inside him than his mind; some essential part of his make-up which was available to no doctor’s needle or microscope had gone gray and ill.