The Dark Half

   Liz came back into the room and sat down, curling her feet under her like a cat and pulling her skirt over her calves. Thad admired the gesture, which seemed to him somehow timeless and eternally graceful.

'Meantime, there are other considerations here, Thad.'

  Thad and Liz exchanged a flicker of a glance at Alan's use of the first name, so swift Alan missed it. He had drawn a battered notebook from his hip pocket and was looking at one of the pages.

  'Do you smoke?' he asked, looking up.

  'No.

  'He quit seven years ago,' Liz said. 'It was very hard for him, but he stuck with it.'

   'There are critics who say the world would be a better place if I'd just pick a spot and die in it, but I choose to spite them,' Thad said. 'Why?'

  'You did smoke, though.'

  'Yes.'

  'Pall Malls?'

    Thad had been raising his can of soda. It stopped six inches shy of his mouth. 'How did you know that?'

'Your blood-type is A-negative?'

    'I'm beginning to understand why you came primed to arrest me this morning,' Thad said. 'If I hadn't been so well alibied, I'd be in jail right now, wouldn't I?'

  'Good guess.'

  'You could have gotten his blood-type from his R.O.T.C. records,' Liz said. 'I assume that's where his fingerprints came from in the first place.'

    'But not that I smoked Pall Mall cigarettes for fifteen years,' Thad said. 'So far as I know, stuff like that's not part of the records the army keeps.'

  'This is stuff that's come in since this morning,' Alan told them. 'The ashtray in Homer Gamache's pick-up was full of Pall Mall cigarette butts. The old man only smoked an occasional pipe. There were a couple of Pall Mall butts in an ashtray in Frederick Clawson's apartment, as well. He didn't smoke at all, except maybe for a joint now and then. That's according to his landlady. We got our perp's blood-type from the spittle on the butts. The serologist's report also gave us a lot of other information. Better than fingerprints.'

  Thad was no longer smiling. 'I don't understand this. I don't understand this at all.'

    'There's one thing which doesn't match,' Pangborn said. 'Blonde hairs. We found half a dozen in Homer's truck, and we found another on the back of the chair the killer used in Clawson's living room. Your hair is black. Somehow I don't think you're wearing a rug.'

'No — Thad's not, but maybe the killer was,' Liz said bleakly.

   'Maybe,' Alan agreed. 'If so, it was made of human hair. And why bother changing the color of your hair, if you're going to leave fingerprints and cigarette butts everywhere? Either the guy is very dumb or he was deliberately trying to implicate you. The blonde hair doesn't fit either way.'

  'Maybe he just didn't want to be recognized,' Liz said. 'Remember, Thad was in People magazine barely two weeks ago. Coast to coast.'

  'Yeah, that's a possibility. Although if this guy also looks like your husband, Mrs Beaumont — '

  'Liz.'

  'Okay, Liz. If he looks like your husband, he'd look like Thad Beaumont with blonde hair, wouldn't he?'

  Liz looked fixedly at Thad for a moment and then began to giggle.

  'What's so funny?' Thad asked.

  'I'm trying to imagine you blonde,' she said, still giggling. 'I think you'd look like a very depraved David Bowie.'

  'Is that funny?' Thad asked Alan. 'I don't think that's funny.'

'Well . . .' Alan said, smiling.

  'Never mind. The guy could have been wearing sunglasses and deelie-boppers as well as a blonde wig, for all we know.'

    'Not if the killer was the same guy Mrs Arsenault saw getting into Homer's truck at quarter of one in the morning of June first,' Alan said.

Thad leaned forward. 'Did he look like me?' he asked.

    'She couldn't tell much except that he was wearing a suit. For what it's worth, I had one of my men, Norris Ridgewick, show her your picture today. She said she didn't think it was you, although she couldn't say for sure. She said she thought the man who got into Homer's truck was bigger.' He added dryly: 'That's one lady who believes in erring on the side of caution.'

  'She could tell a size difference from a picture?' Liz asked doubtfully.

  'She's seen Thad around town, summers,' Alan said. 'And she did say she couldn't be sure.'

    Liz nodded. 'Of course she knows him. Both of us, for that matter. We buy fresh stuff at their vegetable stand all the time. Dumb. Sorry.'

   'Nothing to apologize for,' Alan said. He finished his beer and checked his crotch. Dry. Good. There was a light stain there, probably not anything anyone but his wife would notice. 'Anyhow, that brings me to the last point . . . or aspect . . . or whatever the hell you want to call it. I doubt if it's even a part of this, but it never hurts to check. What's your shoe-size, Mr Beaumont?'

    Thad glanced at Liz, who shrugged. 'I've got pretty small paws for a guy who goes six-one, I guess. I take a size ten, although half a size either way is — '

   'The prints reported to us were probably bigger than that,' Alan said. 'I don't think the prints are a part of it, anyway, and even if they are, footprints can be faked. Stick some newspaper in the toes of shoes two or even three sizes too big for you and you're set.'

  'What footprints are these?' Thad asked.

  'Doesn't matter,' Alan said, shaking his head. 'We don't even have photos. I think we've got almost everything on the table that belongs there, Thad. Your fingerprints, your blood-type, your brand of cigarettes — '

  'He doesn't — ' Liz began.

    Alan held up a placatory hand. 'Old brand of cigarettes. I suppose I could be crazy for letting you in on all this — there's a part of me that says I am, anyway — but as long as we've gone this far, there's no sense ignoring the forest while we look at a few trees. You're tied in other ways, as well. Castle Rock is your legal residence as well as Ludlow, being as how you pay taxes in both places. Homer Gamache was more than just an acquaintance; he did . . . would odd jobs be correct?'

  'Yes,' Liz said. 'He retired from full-time caretaking the year we bought the house — Dave Phillips and Charlie Fortin take turns doing that now — but he liked to keep his hand in.'

  'If we assume that the hitchhiker Mrs Arsenault observed killed Homer — and that's the assumption we're going on — a question arises. Did the hitchhiker kill him because Homer was the first person to come along who was stupid enough — or drunk enough to pick him up, or did he kill him because he was Homer Gamache, acquaintance of Thad Beaumont?'

  'How could he know Homer would come along?' Liz asked.

   'Because it was Homer's bowling night, and Homer is — was — a creature of habit. He was like an old horse, Liz; he always went back to the barn by the same route.'

  'Your first assumption, ' Thad said, 'was that Homer didn't stop because he was drunk but because he recognized the hitchhiker. A stranger who wanted to kill Homer wouldn't have tried the hitchhiking ploy at all. He would have figured it for a long shot, if not a totally lost cause.'

'Yes.'

    'Thad,' Liz said in a voice which would not quite remain steady. 'The police thought he stopped because he saw it was Thad . . . didn't they?'