“By tomorrow at this time, I think you're going to have a much better idea of what crazy is,” Ev said, and climbed into his old purple Valiant before Dugan could ask him any more questions.

Butch, in fact. had no more questions to ask. He felt glum, as if he had “bought the Brooklyn Bridge his first day in New York City, shelling out even though he knew a thing that big probably couldn't be for sale. No one gets taken who doesn't want to get taken, he thought. He had worked Fraud and Bunco out of Augusta for three years, and that was the first thing they taught you. The old man had been queerly persuasive, but Butch Dugan knew that he had not been persuaded into this; he had jumped. Because he had loved Ruth McCausland, and in another year or so he probably would have plucked up sufficient nerve to propose to her. Because when someone you love dies, it leaves a black hole in the middle of your heart, and one way to plug such a hole is to refuse to admit that he or she was taken away by a stupid mischance. Better if you can believe-even for a little while-that someone or something you can get hold of was responsible. It makes the hole a little smaller. Even a rube knows that much.

Sighing, suddenly feeling much older than his age, Dugan trudged back to the barracks.

Ev went to the hospital and sat for most of that day's remainder with Hilly. Around three o'clock, he wrote two notes. One he put on Hilly's night table, anchored against the breeze that pawed with occasional playfulness through the open window with a little pot of flowers. The other note was longer, and when he was done with it, he folded it and put it in his pocket. Then he left the hospital.

He drove to a small building in the Derry Industrial Park. MAINE MED SUPPLIES, the sign over the door read. And below that: Specializing in Respiration Supplies and Respiration Therapy Since 1946.

He told the man inside what he wanted. The man told him it sounded as if he really ought to take a ride up to Bangor and talk to the folks at Downeast ScubaDive. Ev explained that a scuba tank was the last thing he wanted; he was interested in as much dry-land portability as he could get. He and the fellow talked a while longer, and Ev left after signing a thirty-six-hour rental agreement, with a rather specialized piece of equipment. The fellow at Maine Med Supplies stood at the door watching him go, scratching his head.

The nurse read the note by Hilly's bed.

Hilly -

I may not see you for a while now, but I just wanted to tell you I think you'll get over this bad patch, and if I can help you do it, I guess I will be just about the happiest grampa in the world. I believe David is still alive, and I don't think it's your fault that he got lost in the first place. I love you, Hilly, and I hope to see you soon.

Gramp

But he never saw Hilly Brown again.

Chapter 9

The Funeral

From nine o'clock on, out-of-towners who had known or worked with Ruth McCausland began to come into Haven Village. Soon almost every parking space along Main Street was taken. The Haven Lunch did a brisk business. Beach kept busy short-ordering eggs, bacon, sausages, and home-fries. He brewed pot after pot of coffee. Representative Brennan hadn't come, but he had sent a close aide. Should have come y'self, Joe, Beach thought with a little sunken smile. Might have got a whole slew of new ideas “bout how to run the gov'mint.

The day dawned brisk and clear, more like late September than late July. The sky was bright blue, the temperature a moderate sixty-eight degrees, the wind out of the west at about twenty miles an hour. Once more there were outsiders in Haven, and once more Haven had gotten lucky weather for them. And soon it wouldn't matter whether they were lucky or not, the townsfolk told each other without speaking; soon they would be in charge of their own luck.

A good day, you would have said; the best kind of New England summer's day, the sort the tourists come for. A day to prick the appetite fully alive. Those who came to Haven from out of town ordered hearty breakfasts, as people with lively appetites are apt to do, but Beach noted that most of those breakfasts came back only half-eaten. The newcomers lost their appetites quickly; the light went out of their eyes, and they began to look, for the most part, sallow and a little sick.

The Lunch was crowded, but conversation lagged.

Must be that the air here in our little town don't quite agree with you folks, Beach thought. He imagined going into the storeroom, where the device he had used to get rid of the two nosy cops was hidden under a pile of tablecloths. He imagined bringing it out here, a great big deadly bazooka, and just washing his lunchroom clean of all these outsiders with a purifying blast of green fire.

No; not now. Not yet. Soon it wouldn't matter. Next month. But for now…

He looked down at the plate he was scraping and saw a tooth in someone's scrambled eggs.

Tommyknockers coming, my friends, Beach thought. Only when they finally get here, I don't think they'll even bother knocking; I think they'll just blow the fucking door right down.

Beach's grin widened. He scraped the tooth off the plate with the rest of the garbage.

Dugan could be silent when he wanted, and this morning that was what he wanted. Apparently it was what the old man wanted, too. Dugan had gotten to Ev Hillman's apartment building on Lower Main promptly at eight, and had found a Jeep Cherokee standing at the curb behind the old party's Valiant. There was a big gunnysack in the back, its top tied with hayrope.

“Did you rent this in Bangor?”

“Leased it at Derry AMC,” Ev said.

“Must have been expensive.”

“Twasn't too dear.”

That ended the conversation. They arrived somewhere near the AlbionHaven town line an hour and forty minutes later. We'll be doing a bit Of backroading, the old man had said, and if that wasn't a classic understatement, Butch didn't know what was. He had been driving in this part of Maine for almost twenty years, and before today had thought he knew it like the back of his hand. Now he knew better. Hillman knew it like the back of his hand; by comparison, Butch Dugan had a general working knowledge of the area, no more.

They went from the turnpike to Route 69; from 69 to two-lane blacktop; then to gravel in western Troy; then to hardpan; then to rutted dirt with grass growing up the middle; finally to an overgrown logging track that looked as if it might have last been seriously used around 1950.

“Do you know where the fuck you're going?” Butch shouted as the Cherokee crashed through rotted corduroy, then hauled itself out, engine howling, all four wheels spinning up mud and chewed splinters.

Ev only nodded. He clung to the Cherokee's big wheel like an old, balding monkey.

One woods road led into another, and finally they crashed out of a scree of foliage and onto a dirt road Butch recognized as Albion Town Road No. 5. Butch had thought it impossible, but the old man had done exactly what he promised: brought them all the way around Haven without ever once going in.

Now Ev brought the Cherokee to a stop just a hundred feet short of the marker announcing the Haven town line. He turned off the engine and unrolled his window. There was no sound but the tick of the engine. There was no birdsong, and Butch thought this odd.

“What's in that gunnysack back there?” Butch asked.

“All kinds of things. No need to worry about it now.”

“What are you waiting for?”