Alan went back to his officers on the scene. "Which one of you verified that the women are dead?"

Clut and Seat Thomas looked at each other in uneasy surprise, and Alan felt his heart sink. One point for the Monday-morning quarterbacks-or maybe not. The first Crime Investigation Unit wasn't here yet, although he could hear more sirens approaching. Alan ducked under the tape and approached the stop-sign, walking on tiptoe like a kid trying to sneak out of the house after curfew.

The spilled blood was mostly pooled between the victims and in the leaf-choked gutter beside them, but a fine spray of droplets-what the forensics boys called backsplatter-dotted the area around them in a rough circle. Alan dropped on one knee just outside this circle, stretched out a hand, and found he could reach the corpses-he had no doubt that was what they were-by leaning forward to the very edge of balance with one arm stretched out.

He looked back at Seat, Norris, and Clut. They were cl.u.s.tered together in a knot, staring at him with big eyes.

"Photograph me," he said.

Clut and Seaton only looked at him as if he had given an order in Tagalog, but Norris ran to Alan's cruiser and rooted around in back until he found the old Polaroid there, one of two they used for taking crime-scene photographs. When the appropriations committee met, Alan was planning to ask for at least one new camera, but this afternoon the appropriations committee meeting seemed very unimportant.

Norris hurried back with the camera, aimed, and triggered it. The drive whined.

"Better take another one just to be safe," Alan said. "Get the bodies, too. I'm not going to have those guys saying we broke the chain of evidence. Be d.a.m.ned if I will." He was aware that his voice sounded a shade querulous, but there was nothing he could do about it.

Norris took another Polaroid, doc.u.menting Alan's position outside the circle of evidence and the way the bodies were lying at the foot of the stop-sign. Then Alan leaned cautiously forward again and placed his fingers against the bloodstained neck of the woman lying on top. There was no pulse, of course, but after a second the pressure of his fingers caused her head to fall away from the signpost and turn sideways. Alan recognized Nettie at once, and it was Polly he thought of.

Oh Jesus, he thought dolefully. Then he went through the motions of feeling for Wilma's pulse, even though there was a meat-cleaver buried in her skull. Her cheeks and forehead were printed with small dots of blood. They looked like heathen tattoos. he thought dolefully. Then he went through the motions of feeling for Wilma's pulse, even though there was a meat-cleaver buried in her skull. Her cheeks and forehead were printed with small dots of blood. They looked like heathen tattoos.

Alan got up and returned to where his men were standing on the other side of the tapes. He couldn't seem to stop thinking of Polly, and he knew that was wrong. He had to get her off his mind or he was going to b.i.t.c.h this up for sure. He wondered if any of the gawkers had ID'd Nettie already. If so, Polly would surely hear before he could call her. He hoped desperately that she wouldn't come down to see for herself.

You can't worry about that now, he admonished himself. You've got a double murder on your hands, from the look You've got a double murder on your hands, from the look.

"Get out your book," he told Norris. "You're club secretary."

"Jesus, Alan, you know how lousy my spelling is."

"Just write."

Norris gave the Polaroid to Clut and got his notebook out of his back pocket. A pad of Traffic Warnings with his name rubberstamped at the bottom of each sheet fell out with it. Norris bent, picked the pad up off the sidewalk, and stuffed it absently into his pocket again.

"I want you to note that the head of the woman on top, designated Victim 1, was resting against the post of the stop-sign. I inadvertently pushed it off, checking for pulse."

How easy it is to slip into Police Speak, Alan thought, where cars become "vehicles" and crooks become "perpetrators" and dead townspeople become "designated victims." Police Speak, the wonderful sliding gla.s.s barrier where cars become "vehicles" and crooks become "perpetrators" and dead townspeople become "designated victims." Police Speak, the wonderful sliding gla.s.s barrier.

He turned to Clut and told him to photograph this second configuration of the bodies, feeling extremely grateful that he'd had Norris doc.u.ment the original position before he touched the women.

Clut took the picture.

Alan turned back to Norris. "I want you to further note that when the head of Victim 1 moved, I was able to identify her as Net.i.tia Cobb."

Seaton whistled. "You mean it's Nettie?" Nettie?"

"Yes. That's what I mean."

Norris wrote the information down on his pad. Then he asked, "What do we do now, Alan?"

"Wait for CID's Investigation Unit and try to look alive when they get here," Alan said.

The CIU arrived less than three minutes later in two cars, followed by Ray Van Allen in his cranky old Subaru Brat. Five minutes later a State Police ID team arrived in a blue station wagon. All the members of the State Police team then lit cigars. Alan had known they would do this. The bodies were fresh and they were outdoors, but the ritual of the cigars was immutable.

The unpleasant work known in Police Speak as "securing the scene" began. It went on until after dark. Alan had worked with Henry Payton, head of the Oxford Barracks (and thus in nominal charge of this case and the CIU guys working it), on several other occasions. He had never seen the slightest hint of imagination in Henry. The man was a plodder, but a thorough, conscientious plodder. It was because Henry had been a.s.signed that Alan had felt safe to creep off for a bit and call Polly.

When he returned, the hands of the victims were being secured in gallon-sized Ziploc Baggies. Wilma Jerzyck had lost one of her shoes, and her stockinged foot was accorded the same treatment. The ID team moved in and took close to three hundred photos. More State Police had arrived by then. Some held back the crowd, which was trying to draw closer again, and others shunted the arriving TV people down to the Munic.i.p.al Building. A police artist did a quick sketch on a Crime-Scene Grid.

At last the bodies themselves were taken care of-except, that was, for one final matter. Payton gave Alan a pair of disposable surgical gloves and a Ziploc Baggie. "The cleaver or the knife?"

"I'll take the cleaver," Alan said. It would be the messier of the two implements, still clotted with Wilma Jerzyck's brains, but he didn't want to touch Nettie. He had liked her.

With the murder weapons removed, tagged, bagged, and on their way to Augusta, the two CIU teams moved in and began to search the area around the bodies, which still lay in their terminal embrace with the blood pooled between them now hardening to a substance like enamel. When Ray Van Allen was finally allowed to load them into the Medical a.s.sistance van, the scene was lit with police cruiser high beams and the orderlies first had to peel Wilma and Nettie apart.

During most of this, Castle Rock's Finest stood around feeling like b.u.mps on a log.

Henry Payton joined Alan on the sidelines during the conclusion of the oddly delicate ballet known as On-Scene Investigation. "Lousy d.a.m.ned way to spend a Sunday afternoon," he said.

Alan nodded.

"I'm sorry the head moved on you. That was bad luck."

Alan nodded again.

"I don't think anyone's going to bother you about it, though. You've got at least one good pic of the original position." He looked toward Norris, who was talking with Clut and the newly arrived John LaPointe. "You're just lucky that old boy there didn't put his finger over the lens."

"Aw, Norris is all right."

"So's K-Y Jelly... in its place. Anyway, the whole thing looks pretty simple."

Alan agreed. That was the trouble; he had known that long before he and Norris finished their Sunday tour of duty in an alley behind Kennebec Valley Hospital. The whole thing was too too pretty simple, maybe. pretty simple, maybe.

"You planning to attend the cutting party?" Henry asked.

"Yes. Is Ryan going to do it?"

"That's what I understand."

"I thought I might take Norris with me. The bodies will go to Oxford first, won't they?"

"Uh-huh. That's where we log them in."

"If Norris and I left now, we could be in Augusta before they get there."

Henry Payton nodded. "Why not? I think it's b.u.t.toned up here."

"I'd like to send one of my men with each of your CIU teams. As observers. Do you have a problem with that?"

Payton thought it over. "Nope-but who's going to keep the peace? Ole Scat Thomas?"

Alan felt a sudden flash of something which was a little too hot to be dismissed as mere annoyance. It had been a long day, he'd listened to Henry rag on his deputies about as much as he wanted to... yet he needed to stay on Henry's good side in order to hitch a ride on what was technically a State Police case, and so he held his tongue.

"Come on, Henry. It's Sunday night. Even The Mellow Tiger's closed."

"Why are you so hot to stick with this, Alan? Is there something hinky about it? I understand there was bad feeling between the two women, and that the one on top already offed someone. Her husband, no less."

Alan thought about it. "No-nothing hinky. Nothing that I know about, anyway. It's just that..."

"It doesn't quite jell in your head yet?"

"Something like that."

"Okay... just as long as your men understand they're there to listen and no more."

Alan smiled a little. He thought of telling Payton that if he instructed Clut and John LaPointe to ask questions, they would probably run the other way, and decided not to. "They'll keep their lips zipped," he said. "You can count on it."

3.

And so here they were, he and Norris Ridgewick, after the longest Sunday in living memory. But the day had one thing in common with the lives of Nettie and Wilma: it was over.

"Were you thinking about checking into a motel room for the night?" Norris asked hesitantly. Alan didn't have to be a mindreader to know what he he was thinking about: the fishing he would miss tomorrow. was thinking about: the fishing he would miss tomorrow.

"h.e.l.l, no." Alan bent and picked up the gown he had used to prop the door open. "Let's beat feet."

"Great idea," Norris said, sounding happy for the first time since Alan had met him at the crime scene. Five minutes later they were headed toward Castle Rock along Route 43, the headlights of the County cruiser boring holes in the windy darkness. By the time they arrived, it had been Monday morning for almost three hours.

4.

Alan pulled in behind the Munic.i.p.al Building and got out of the cruiser. His station wagon was parked next to Norris's dilapidated VW Beetle on the far side of the lot.

"You headed right home?" he asked Norris.

Norris offered a small, embarra.s.sed grin and dropped his eyes. "Soon's I change into my civvies."

"Norris, how many times have I told you about using the men's room as a changing booth?"

"Come on, Alan-I don't do it all the time." They both knew, however, that Norris did just that.

Alan sighed. "Never mind-it's been a h.e.l.l of a long day for you. I'm sorry."

Norris shrugged. "It was murder. They don't happen around here very often. When they do, I guess everybody pulls together."

"Get Sandy or Sheila to write you up an overtime chit if either of them is still here."

"And give Buster something else to b.i.t.c.h about?" Norris laughed with some bitterness. "I think I'll pa.s.s. This one's on me, Alan."

"Has he been giving you s.h.i.t?" Alan had forgotten all about the town's Head Selectman these last couple of days.

"No-but he gives me a real hairy eyeball when we pa.s.s on the street. If looks could kill, I'd be as dead as Nettie and Wilma."

"I'll write up the chit myself tomorrow morning."

"If your name's on it, that's okay," Norris said, starting for the door marked TOWN EMPLOYEES ONLY. "Goodnight, Alan."

"Good luck with the fishing."

Norris brightened at once. "Thanks-you should see the rod I got down at the new store, Alan-it's a dandy."

Alan grinned. "I bet it is. I keep meaning to go see that fellow-he seems to have something for everyone else in town, so why not something for me?"

"Why not?" Norris agreed. "He's got all kinds of stuff, all right. You'd be surprised."

"Goodnight, Norris. And thanks again."

"Don't mention it." But Norris was clearly pleased.

Alan got into his car, backed out of the lot, and turned down Main Street. He checked the buildings on both sides automatically, not even registering his own examination... but storing the information just the same. One of the things he noticed was the fact that there was a light on in the living area above Needful Things. It was mighty late for small-town folks to be up. He wondered if Mr. Leland Gaunt was an insomniac, and reminded himself again that he had that call to make-but it would keep, he reckoned, until he had the sad business of Nettie and Wilma sorted out to his satisfaction.

He reached the corner of Main and Laurel, signaled a left turn, then halted in the middle of the intersection and turned right instead. To h.e.l.l with going home. That was a cold and empty place with his remaining son living it up with his friend on Cape Cod. There were too many closed doors with too many memories lurking behind them in that house. On the other side of town there was a live woman who might need someone quite badly just now. Almost as badly, perhaps, as this live man needed her.

Five minutes later Alan killed the headlights and rolled quietly up Polly's driveway. The door would be locked, but he knew which corner of the porch steps to look under.

5.

"What are you still doing here, Sandy?" Norris asked as he walked in, loosening his tie.

Sandra McMillan, a fading blonde who had been the county's part-time dispatcher for almost twenty years, was slipping into her coat. She looked very tired.

"Sheila had tickets to see Bill Cosby in Portland," she told Norris. "She said she'd stay here, but I made her go-practically pushed her out the door. I mean, how often does Bill Cosby come to Maine?"

How often do two women decide to cut each other to pieces over a dog that probably came from the Castle County Animal Shelter in the first place? Norris thought... but did not say. "Not that often, I guess." Norris thought... but did not say. "Not that often, I guess."

"Hardly ever ever." Sandy sighed deeply. "Tell you a secret, though-now that it's all over, I almost wish I'd said yes when Sheila offered to stay. It's been so crazy crazy tonight-I think every TV station in the state called at least nine times, and until eleven o'clock or so, this place looked like a department store Christmas Eve sale." tonight-I think every TV station in the state called at least nine times, and until eleven o'clock or so, this place looked like a department store Christmas Eve sale."