8

Nettle had just gotten down to business when Keeton’s red Cadillac crossed the Tin Bridge and started up Watermill Lane toward Castle View.

“Danforth?” Myrtle asked suddenly. “Could you let me out at Amanda Williams’s house? I know it’s a little out of the way, but she’s got my fondue pot. I thought-” The shy smile came and went on her face again. “I thought I might make you-us-a little treat.

For the football game. You could just drop me off.”

He opened his mouth to tell her the Williamses’ was a lot out of his way, the game was about to start, and she could get her goddam fondue pot tomorrow. He didn’t like cheese when it was hot and runny anyway. The goddamned stuff was probably full of bacteria.

Then he thought better of it. Aside from himself, the Board of Selectmen was made up of two dumb bastards and one dumb bitch.

Mandy Williams was the bitch. Keeton had been at some pains to see Bill Fullerton, the town barber, and Harry Samuels, Castle Rock’s only mortician, on Friday. He was also at pains to make these seem like casual calls, but they weren’t. There was always the possibility that the Board of Taxation had begun sending them letters as well. He had satisfied himself that they were not-not yet, at least-but the Williams bitch had been out of town on Friday.

“All right,” he said, then added: “You might ask her if any town business has come to her attention. Anything I should get in touch with her about.”

“Oh, honey, you know I can never keep that stuff straight-”

“I do know that, but you can ask, can’t you? You’re not too dumb to ask, are you?”

“No,” she said hastily, in a small voice.

He parted her hand. “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him with a wonderstruck expression. He had apologized to her. Myrtle thought he might have done this at some time or other in their years of marriage, but she could not remember when.

“Just ask her if the State boys have been bothering about anything lately,” he said. “Land-use regulations, the damn sewage… taxes, maybe. I’d come in and ask myself, but I really want to catch the kick-off.”

“All right, Dan.”

The Williams house was halfway up Castle View. Keeton piloted the Cadillac into the driveway and parked behind the woman’s car.

It was foreign, of course. A Volvo. Keeton guessed she was a closet Communist, a lesbo, or both.

Myrtle opened her door and got out, flashing him the shy, slightly nervous smile again as she did so.

“I’ll be home in half an hour.”

“Fine. Don’t forget to ask if she’s aware of any new town business,” he said. And if Myrt’s description-garbled though it would surely b f what Amanda Williams said raised even one single hackle on Keeton’s neck, he would check in with the bitch personally… tomorrow. Not this afternoon. This afternoon was his.

He was feeling much too good to even look at Amanda Williams, let alone make chitchat with her.

He hardly waited for Myrtle to close her door before throwing the Cadillac in reverse and backing down to the street again.

9

Nettle had just taped the last of the pink sheets to the door of the closet in Keeton’s study when she heard a car turn into the driveway.

A muffled squeak escaped her throat. For a moment she was frozen in place, unable to move.

Caught! her mind screamed as she listened to the soft, wellpadded burble of the Cadillac’s big engine. Caught! Oh jesus Savior meek and mild I’m caught! He’ll kill me!

Mr. Gaunt’s voice spoke in answer. It was not friendly now; it was cold and it was commanding and it came from a place deep in the center of her brain. He probably WILL kill you if he catches you, Nettle. And if you panic, he’ll catch you for sure. The answer is simple: don’t panic. Leave the room. Do it now. Don’t run, hut walk fast. And as quietly as you can.

She hurried across the second-hand Turkish rug on the study floor, her legs as stiff as sticks, muttering “Mr. Gaunt knows best” in a low litany, and entered the living room. Pink rectangles of paper glared at her from what seemed like every available surface.

One even dangled from the central light-fixture on a long strand of tape.

Now the car’s engine had taken on a hollow, echoey sound.

Buster had driven into the garage.

Go, Nettle! Go right away! Now is your only chance!

She fled across the living room, tripped over a hassock, and went sprawling. She banged her head on the floor almost hard enough to knock herself out-would have knocked herself out, almost certainly, but for the thin cushion of a throw-rug. Bright globular lights skated across her field of vision. She scrambled up again, vaguely aware that her forehead was bleeding, and began fumbling at the knob of the front door as the car engine cut off in the garage. She cast a terrified glance back over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. She could see the door to the garage, the door he would come through. One of the pink slips of paper was taped to it.

The doorknob turned under her hand, but the door wouldn’t open.

It seemed stuck shut.

From the garage came a hefty swoop-chunk as Keeton slammed his car door. Then the rattle of the motorized garage door starting down on its tracks. She heard his footsteps gritting across the concrete.

Buster was whistling.

Nettle’s frantic gaze, partially obscured by blood from her cut forehead, fell upon the thumb-bolt. It had been turned. That was why the door wouldn’t open for her. She must have turned it herself when she came in, although she couldn’t remember doing it. She flicked it up, pulled the door open, and stepped through.

Less than a second later, the door between the garage and the kitchen opened. Danforth Keeton stepped inside, unbuttoning his overcoat. He stopped. The whistle died on his lips. He stood there with his hands frozen in the act of undoing one of the lower coatbuttons, his lips still pursed, and looked around the kitchen. His eyes began to widen.

If he had gone to the living-room window right then, he would have seen Nettle running wildly across his lawn, her unbuttoned coat billowing around her like the wings of a bat. He might not have recognized her, but he would surely have seen it was a woman, and this might have changed later events considerably. The sight of all those pink slips froze him in place, however, and in his first shock his mind was capable of producing two words and two words only. They flashed on and off inside his head like a giant neon sign with letters of screaming scarlet: THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS!

10

Nettle reached the sidewalk and ran down Castle View as fast as she could. The heels of her loafers rattled a frightened tattoo, and her ears convinced her that she was hearing more feet than her own-Buster was behind her, Buster was chasing her, and when Buster caught her he might hurt her… but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because he could do worse than just hurt her. Buster was an important man in town, and if he wanted her sent back to juniper Hill, she would be sent. So Nettle ran. Blood trickled down her forehead and into her eye, and for a moment she saw the world through a pale red lens, as if all the nice houses on the View had begun to ooze blood.

She wiped it away with the sleeve of her coat and went on running.

The sidewalk was deserted, and most eyes inside the houses which were occupied this early Sunday afternoon were trained on the Patriots-jets game. Nettle was seen by only one person.

Tansy Williams, fresh from two days in Portland where she and her mommy had gone to visit Grampa, was looking out the livingroom window, sucking a lollypop and holding her teddy bear, Owen, under her left arm, when Nettle went by with wings on her heels.