Dolores Claiborne(66)

McAuliffe whipped around and says to Garrett, 'You agreed to let me handle this.'

Poor old Garrett jerked back in his chair s'fast he almost tipped it over, and I'm sure he gave himself a whiplash. 'Okay, okay, no need to get hot under the collar,' he mumbles.

McAuliffe turned back to me, ready to repeat the question, but I didn't bother lettin him. By then I'd had time to count to ten, pretty near.

'No,' I says. 'I didn't hear nothing but people out on the reach, tootin their boat-horns and yellin their fool heads off once they could see the eclipse had started to happen.'

He waited for me to say some more - his old trick of bein quiet and lettin people rush ahead into the puckerbrush - and the silence spun out between us. I just kep my hands folded on top of my handbag and let her spin. He looked at me and I looked back at him.

Chapter Sixteen

'You're gonna talk to me, woman,' his eyes said. 'You're going to tell me everything I want to hear twice, if that's the way I want it.'

And my own eyes were sayin back, 'No I ain't, chummy. You can sit there drillin on me with those diamond-bit baby-blues of yours until hell's a skatin rink and you won't get another word outta me unless you open your mouth n ask for it.'

We went on that way for damned near a full minute, duellin with our eyes, y'might say, and toward the end of it I could feel myself weakenin, wantin to say some thin to him, even if it was only 'Didn't your Ma ever teach you it ain't polite to stare?' Then Garrett spoke up - or rather his stomach did. It let out a long goiiiinnnnggg sound.

McAuliffe looked at him, disgusted as hell, and Garrett got out his pocket-knife and started to clean under his fingernails. McAuliffe pulled a notebook from the inside pocket of his wool coat (wool! in July!), looked at somethin in it, then put it back.

'He tried to climb out,' he says at last, as casual as a man might say 'I've got a lunch appointment.'

It felt like somebody'd jabbed a meatfork into my lower back, where Joe hit me with the stovelength that time, but I tried not to show it. 'Oh, ayuh?' I says.

'Yes,' McAuliffe says. 'The shaft of the well is lined with large stones (only he said 'stanes,' Andy, like they do), and we found bluidy handprints on several of them. It appears that he gained his feet, then slowly began to make his way up, hand over hand. It must have been a Herculean effort, made despite a pain more excruciating than I can imagine.'

'I'm sorry to hear he suffered,' I said. My voice was as calm as ever - at least I think it was - but I could feel the sweat startin to break in my armpits, and I remember being scairt it'd spring out on my brow or in the little hollows of my temples where he could see it. 'Poor old Joe.'

'Yes indaid,' McAuliffe says, his lighthouse eyes borin n flashin away. 'Poor. . . auld. . . Joe. I think he might have actually got out on his own. He probably would have died soon after even if he had, but yes; I think he might have got out. Something prevented him from doing so, however.'

'What was it?' I ast.

'He suffered a fractured skull,' McAuliffe said. His eyes were as bright as ever, but his voice'd become as soft as a purrin cat. 'We found a large rock between his legs. It was covered wi' your husband's bluid, Mrs St George. And in that bluid we found a small number of porcelain fragments. Do you know what I deduce from them?'

One . . . two . . . three.

'Sounds like that rock must have busted his false teeth as well's his head,' I says. 'Too bad - Joe was partial to em, and I don't know how Lucien Mercier's gonna make him look just right for the viewin without em.'

McAuliffe's lips drew back when I said that n I got a good look at his teeth. No dentures there. I s'pose he meant it to look like a smile, but it didn't. Not a bit.

'Yes,' he says, showin me both rows of his neat little teeth all the way to the gumline. 'Yes, that's my conclusion, as well - those porcelain shards are from his lower plate. Now, Mrs St George - do you have any idea of how that rock might have come to strike your husband just as he was on the verge of escaping the well?'

One . . . two . three.

'Nope,' I says. 'Do you?'

'Yes,' he says. 'I rather suspect someone pulled it out of the earth and smashed it cruelly and wi' malice aforethought into his upturned, pleading face.'

Wasn't nobody said anything after that. I wanted to, God knows; I wanted to jump in as quick as ever I could n say, 'It wasn't me. Maybe somebody did it, but it wasn't me.' I couldn't, though, because I was back in the blackberry tangles and this time there was friggin wells everyplace.

Instead of talkin I just sat there lookin at him, but I could feel the sweat tryin to break out on me again and I could feel my clasped hands wantin to lock down on each other. The fingernails'd turn white if they did that. . . and he'd notice. McAuliffe was a man built to notice such things; it'd be another chink to shine his version of the Battiscan Light into. I tried to think of Vera, and how she woulda looked at him - as if he was only a little dab of dogshit on one of her shoes - but with his eyes borin into me like they was just then, it didn't seem to do any good. Before, it'd been like she was almost there in the room with me, but it wasn't like that anymore. Now there was no one there but me n that neat little Scots doctor, who probably fancied himself just like the amateur detectives in the magazine stories (and whose testimony had already sent over a dozen people up n down the coast to jail, I found out later), and I could feel myself gettin closer n closer to openin my mouth n blurtin somethin out. And the hell of it was, Andy, I didn't have the slightest idear what it'd be when it finally came. I could hear the clock on Garrett's desk tickin - it had a big hollow sound.