In Haven, Bobbi Anderson was showing Jim Gardener some modified breathing apparatus. Ev Hillman would have recognized it; the respirators looked very similar to the one he had picked up for the cop, Butch Dugan. But that one had been to protect Dugan from the Haven air; the respirators Bobbi was demonstrating drew on reserves of just that-Haven air was what they were used to, and Haven air was what the two of them would breathe if they got inside the Tommyknockers” ship. It was nine-thirty.
At that same time, in Derry, John Leandro had pulled over to the side of the road not far from the place where the gutted deer and the cruiser requisitioned to officers Rhodes and Gabbons had been found. He thumbed open the glove compartment to check on the Smith amp; Wesson. 38 he had picked up in Bangor the week before. He took it out for a moment, not putting his forefinger anywhere near the trigger even though he knew it was unloaded. He liked the compact way the gun fitted his palm, its weight, the feeling of simple power it somehow conveyed. But it also made him feel a trifle skittery, as if he might have torn off a chunk of something that was far too big for the likes of him to chew.
A chunk of what?
He wasn't quite sure. Some sort of strange meat.
Microbes, his mother's voice spoke up in his mind. Food in places like that can make a person very, very sick.
He checked to make sure the carton of bullets was still in the glove compartment, then put the gun back. He guessed that transporting a handgun in the glove compartment of a motor vehicle was probably against the law (he thought again of his mother, this time without even realizing he was doing so). He could imagine a cop pulling him over for something routine, asking to see his registration, and getting a glimpse of the. 38 when Leandro opened the glove compartment. That was the way the murderers always got caught on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which he and his mother watched every Saturday night on the cable station that showed it. It would also be a scoop of a different sort: BANGOR “DAILY NEWS” REPORTER ARRESTED ON ILLEGAL WEAPONS CHARGE.
Well then, take your registration out of the glove compartment and put it in your wallet, if you're so worried.
But he wouldn't do that. The idea made perfect sense, but it also seemed like buying trouble… and that voice of reason sounded altogether too much like the voice of Mother, warning him about microbes or instructing him (as she had when he was a boy) on the horrors which might result if he forgot to put paper all over the ring of a public toilet before sitting on it.
Leandro drove on instead, aware that his heart was beating a little too fast, and that he felt just a little sweatier than the heat of the day could explain.
Something big… some days I can almost smell it.
Yes. Something was out there, all right. The death of the McCausland woman (a furnace explosion in July? oh really?); the disappearance of the investigating troopers; the suicide of the cop who had supposedly been in love with her. And before any of those things, there had been the disappearance of the little boy. David Bright had said David Brown's grandfather had been spouting a lot of crazy nonsense about telepathy and magic tricks that really worked.
I only wish you'd come to me instead of Bright, Mr Hillman, Leandro thought for perhaps the fiftieth time.
Except now Hillman had disappeared. Hadn't been back to his rooming house in over two weeks. Hadn't been back to Derry Home Hospital to visit his grandson, although the nurses had had to boot him out nights before. The official state-police line was that Ev Hillman hadn't disappeared, but that was catch-22 because a legal adult couldn't disappear in the eyes of the law until another legal adult actually so reported that person, filling out the proper forms in consequence. So all was jake in the eyes of the law. All was far from jake in the eyes of John Leandro. Hillman's landlady in Derry had told him that the old man had stiffed her for sixty bucks-as far as Leandro had been able to find out, it was the first unpaid bill the old guy had left in his life.
Something big… strange meat.
Nor was that all of the weirdness emanating out of Haven these days. A fire, also in July, had killed a couple on the Nista Road. This month a doctor piloting a small plane had crashed and burned. That had happened in Newport, true, but the FAA controller at BIA had confirmed that the unfortunate doc had overflown Haven, and at an illegally low altitude. Phone service in Haven had begun to get oddly glitchy. Sometimes people could get through, sometimes they couldn't. He had sent to the Augusta Bureau of Taxation for a list of Haven voters (paying the required fee of six dollars to get the nine computer sheets), and had managed to trace relatives of nearly sixty of these Havenites-relatives living in Bangor, Derry, and surrounding areas-in his spare time.
He couldn't find one-not one-who had seen his or her Haven relations since July 10th or so… over a month before. Not one.
Of course, a lot of those he interviewed didn't find this strange at all. Some of them weren't on good terms with their Haven relations and couldn't care less if they didn't hear from or see them in the next six months… or six years. Others seemed first surprised, then thoughtful when Leandro pointed out the length of the lapse they were talking about. Of course, summer was an active season for most people. Time passed with a light easiness that winter knew nothing about. And, of course, they had spoken to Aunt Mary or Brother Bill a time or two on the phone -sometimes you couldn't get through, but mostly you could.
There were other suspicious similarities in the testimony of the people
Leandro interviewed, similarities that had made his nose flare with the smell of something decidedly off:
Ricky Berringer was a house-painter in Bangor. His older brother, Newt, was a carpenter-contractor who also happened to be a Haven selectman. “We invited Newt up for dinner near the end of July,” Ricky said, “but he said he had the flu.”
Don Blue was a Derry realtor. His Aunt Sylvia, who lived in Haven, had been in the habit of coming up to take dinner with Don and his wife every Sunday or so. The last three Sundays she had begged off-once with the flu (flu seems to be going around in Haven, Leandro thought, nowhere else, you understand-just in Haven), and the other times because it was so hot she just didn't feel like traveling. After further questioning Blue realized it had been more like five Sundays since his aunt had favored them-and maybe as many as six.
Bill Spruce kept a herd of dairy cows in Cleaves Mills. His brother Frank kept a herd in Haven. They usually got together every week or two, merging two extremely large families for a few hours-the clan Spruce would eat tons of barbecue, drink gallons of beer and Pepsi-Cola, and Frank and Bill would sit either at the picnic table in Frank's back yard or on the front porch of Bill's house and compare notes about what they simply called the Business. Bill admitted it had been a month or more since he'd seen Frank-there had been some problem first with his feed supplier, Frank had told him, then with the milk inspectors. Bill, meanwhile, had had a few problems of his own. Half a dozen of his holsteins had died during this last hot-spell. And, he added as an afterthought, his wife had had a heart attack. He and his brother just hadn't had time to visit much this summer… but the man had still expressed unfeigned surprise when Leandro dragged out his wallet calendar and the two of them figured out just how long it had been: the two brothers hadn't gotten together since June 30th. Spruce whistled and tilted his cap back on his head. “Gorry, that is a long time,” he had said. “Guess I'll have to take a ride down Haven and see Frank, now that my Evelyn's on the mend.”