“He met her after school?” Lester asked hoarsely. He gave Slopey a shake brisk enough to rattle the boy’s teeth in his head. “Are you sure of that?”

“Yeah,” Slopey said. “They w-went off in your cub-cub-bar, Coach P-Pratt. The guh-guy was d-d-driving.”

“Driving? He was driving my car?john LaPointe was driving my car with Sally in it?”

“Well, that g-g-guy,” Slopey said, pointing at the driver’s-license photograph again. “B-But before they g-g-got ih-in, he g-gave her a kuh-kuh-kiss.”

“Did he,” Lester said. His face had become very still. “Did he, now.

“Oh, shuh-shuh-shore,” Slopey said. A wide (and rather salacious) grin lit his face.

In a soft, silky tone utterly unlike his usual rough hey-guyslet’s-go-get-em voice, Lester asked: “And did she kiss him back?

What do you think, Slopey?”

Slopey rolled his eyes happily. “I’ll sub-say she d-d-did! They were r-really sub-sub-huckin face, C-Coach Pub-Pratt!”

“Sucking face,” Lester mused in his new soft and silky voice.

“Yep.”

“Really sucking face,” Lester marvelled in his new soft and silky voice.

“You b-b-bet.”

Lester let go of the Slopester (as his few friends called him) and straightened up. The vein in the center of his forehead was pulsing and pumping away. He had begun to grin. It was an unpleasant grin, exposing what seemed like a great many more white, square teeth than a normal man should have. His blue eyes had become small, squinty triangles. His crewcut screamed off his head in all directions.

“Cub-Cub-Coach Pratt?” Slopey asked. “Is something rub-ruhhong?”

“Nope,” Lester Pratt said in his new soft and silky voice. His grin never wavered. “Nothing I can’t put right.” In his mind, his hands were already locked around the neck of that lying, Popeloving, teddy-bear-winning, girl-stealing, shit-eating French frog of a John LaPointe. The asshole that walked like a man. The asshole who had apparently taught the girl Lester loved, the girl who would do no more than part her lips the tiniest bit when Lester kissed her, how to really suck face.

First he would take care of John LaPointe. No problem there.

Once that was done, he’d have to talk to Sally.

Or something.

“Not a thing in the world I can’t put right,” he repeated in his new soft and silky voice, and slid back behind the Mustang’s wheel.

The car leaned appreciably to the left as Lester’s two hundred and twenty pounds of solid hock and loin settled into the bucket seat.

He started the engine, gunned it in a series of hungry tiger-cage roars, then drove away in a screech of rubber. The Slopester, coughing and theatrically waving dust away from his face, walked over to where his skateboard lay.

The neck of his old tee-shirt had been torn completely away from the shirt’s body, leaving what looked like a round black necklace lying over Slopey’s prominent collarbones. He was grinning. He had done just what Mr. Gaunt had asked him to do, and it had gone like gangbusters. Coach Pratt had looked madder than a wet hen.

Now he could go home and look at his teapot.

“I j-j-just wish I didn’t have to stub-stub-butter,” he remarked to no one in particular.

Slopey mounted his skateboard and rode away.

15

Sheila had a hard time connecting Alan with Henry Payton-once she was positive she’d lost Henry, who sounded really excited, and would have to call him back-and she had no more than accomplished this technological feat when Alan’s personal line lit up.

Sheila put aside the cigarette she’d been about to light and answered it. “Castle County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Pangborn’s line.”

“Hello, Sheila. I want to talk to Alan.”

“Polly?” Sheila frowned. She was sure that was who it was, but she had never heard Polly Chalmers sound exactly as she did nowcold and clipped, like an executive secretary in a big company. “Is that you?”

“Yes,” Polly said. “I want to talk to Alan.”

“Gee, Polly, you can’t. He’s talking with Henry Payton right n-”

“Put me on hold,” Polly interrupted. “I’ll wait.”

Sheila began to feel flustered. “Well… uh… I would, but it’s a little more complicated than that. You see, Alan’s… you know, in the field. I had to patch Henry through.”

“If you can patch Henry Payton through, you can patch me through,” Polly said coldly. “Right?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t know how long they’ll be “I don’t care if they talk until hell freezes over,” Polly said. “Put me on hold, and when they’re done, patch me through to Alan. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it weren’t important-you know that, Sheila, don’t you?”

Yes-Sheila knew it. And she knew something else, too: Polly was beginning to scare her. “Polly, are you okay?”

There was a long pause. Then Polly answered with a question of her own. “Sheila, did you type any correspondence for Sheriff Pangborn that was addressed to the Department of Child Welfare in San Francisco?

Or see any envelopes addressed that way go out?”

Red lights-a whole series of them-suddenly went on in Sheila’s mind. She nearly idolized Alan Pangborn, and Polly Chalmers was accusing him of something. She wasn’t sure what, but she knew the tone of accusation when she heard it. She knew it very well.

“That isn’t the sort of information I could give out to anyone,” she said, and her own tone had dropped twenty degrees. “I suppose you’d better ask the Sheriff, Polly.”

“Yes-I guess I’d better. Put me on hold and connect me when you can, please.”

“Polly, what’s wrong? Are you angry at Alan? Because you must know he’d never do anything that was-”

“I don’t know anything anymore,” Polly said. “If I asked you something that was out of line, I’m sorry.

Now will you put me on hold and connect me as soon as you can, or do I have to go out and find him for myself?”

“No, I’ll connect you,” Sheila said. Her heart felt strangely troubled, as if something terrible had happened. She, like many of the women in Castle Rock, had believed Alan and Polly were deeply in love, and, like many of the other women in town, Sheila tended to see them as characters in a dark-tinged fairy-tale where everything would come right in the end… somehow love would find a way.

But now Polly sounded more than angry; she sounded full of pain, and something else as well. To Sheila, the something else sounded almost like hate. “You’re going on hold now, Polly-it may be awhile.”

“That’s fine. Thanks, Sheila.”

“Welcome.” She pushed the hold button and then found her cigarette. She lit it and dragged deeply, looking at the small flickering light with a frown.

16

“Alan?” Henry Payton called. “Alan, you there?” He sounded like an announcer broadcasting from inside a large empty Saltines box.

“Right here, Henry.”

“I got a call from the FBI just half an hour ago,” Henry said from inside his cracker-box. “We caught an incredibly lucky break on those prints.”

Alan’s heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. “The ones on the doorknob of Nettle’s house? The partials?”

“Right. We have a tentative match with a fellow right there in town. One prior-petty larceny in 1977. We’ve also got his service prints.”

“Don’t keep me hanging-who is it?”

“The name of the individual is Hugh Albert Priest.”

“Hugh Priest!” Alan exclaimed. He could not have been more surprised if Payton had named J. Danforth Quayle. To the best of Alan’s knowledge, the two men had known Nettle Cobb equally well. “Why would Hugh Priest kill Nettle’s dog? Or break Wilma Jerzyck’s windows, for that matter?”

“I don’t know the gentleman, so I can’t say,” Henry replied.

“Why don’t you pick him up and ask him? In fact, why don’t you do it right away, before he gets nervous and decides to visit relatives in Dry Hump, South Dakota?”