Lisey's Story(160)

"We found the dome-light cover!"

Lisey had no idea what he was talking about. "I beg pardon?"

Chapter 26

"Doolin - the guy you knew as Zack McCool and then as Jim Dooley - stole that PT

Cruiser and used it while he was stalking you, Mrs. Landon. We were positive of that. And he was keeping it stashed out in that old gravel pit between runs, we were positive of that, too. We just couldn't prove it, because - "

"He wiped off all his fingerprints."

"Ayuh, and got em all. But every now n then me n Plug went out there - "

"Plug?"

"I'm sorry, Joe. Deputy Alston?"

Plug, she thought. Aware for the first time, in a clear-seeing way, that these were real men with real lives. With nicknames. Plug, she thought. Deputy Joe Alston, also known as Plug.

"Mrs. Landon? Are you there?"

"Yes, Dan. May I call you Dan?"

"Sure, you bet. Anyway, every now n then we went sniffin round out there to see if we couldn't find some prizes, because there was plenty of sign that he'd spent time in that pit

- candy-wrappers, a couple of RC bottles, things like that."

"RC," she said softly, and thought: Bool, Dan. Bool, Plug. Bool, The End.

"Right, that was the brand he seemed to favor, but not a single print on a single cast-off bottle matched up to one of his. The only match we got was to a fella who stole a car back in the late seventies and now clerks at the Quick-E-Mart over in Oxford. The other prints we got off the bottles, we surmise those were clerk-prints, too. But yest'y noon, Mrs. Landon - "

"Lisey."

There was a pause while he considered this. Then he went on. "Yest'y noon, Lisey, on a little track leadin out of that pit, I found the grand prize - the cover to that dome-light. He'd pulled it off and threw it into the puckies." Boeckman's voice rose, became triumphant - became not the voice of a Deputy Sheriff but perfectly human. "And that was the one thing he forgot to handle with gloves on or wipe off later! A big thumbprint on one side, a big fat old index-finger on the other! Where he gripped it. We got the results back by fax this morning."

"John Doolin?"

"Ayuh. Nine points of comparison. Nine! " There was a pause, and when he spoke again, some of the triumph had gone out of his voice. "Now if we could only find the son-of-a-buck."

"I'm sure he'll turn up in time," she said, and cast a longing glance at her tuna sandwich. She'd lost her train of thought about Amanda, but had regained her appetite. To Lisey that seemed like a fair swap, especially on such a boogery-hot day. "Even if he doesn't, he's stopped harassing me."

"He's left Castle County, I'd stake my reputation on that." A note of unmistakable pride crept into Deputy Sheriff Dan Boeckman's voice. "Got a little too hot for him here, I guess, so he ditched his ride and left. Plug feels the same. Jim Dooley and Elvis have both left the building."

"Plug, is that for chewing tobacco?"

"No, ma'am, not at all. In high school, he and I played the line on the Castle Hills Knights team that won the Class A State Championship. Bangor Rams was favored by three touchdowns, but we shocked em. Only team from our part of the state to win a gold football since the nineteen-fifties. And Joey, no one could stop him, not that whole season. Even with four guys hangin off him, he kept pluggin. So we called him Plug, and I still do."

"If I called him that, do you think he'd swat me?"

Dan Boeckman laughed, delighted. "No! He'd be tickled!"

"Okay, then. I'm Lisey, you're Dan, and he's Plug."

"That's square-john with me."

"And thanks for the call. That was terrific police work."

"Thanks for saying so, ma'am. Lisey." She could hear the glow in his voice, and that made her feel good. "You be in touch, now, if there's anything else we can do. Or if you hear from that lowlife again."

"I will."

Lisey went back to her sandwich with a smile on her face and didn't think about Amanda, or the good ship Hollyhocks, or Boo'ya Moon, for the rest of the day. That night, however, she awoke to the sound of distant thunder and a sense that something vast was - not hunting her, exactly (it wouldn't bother), but musing on her. The idea that she should be in such a thing's unknowable mind made her feel like crying and like screaming. At the same time. It also made her want to sit up watching movies on TCM, smoking cigarettes and drinking high-tension coffee. Or beer. Beer might be better. Beer might call back sleep. Instead of getting up, she turned off the bedside lamp and lay still. I'll never go back to sleep, she thought. I'll just lie here like this until it gets light in the east. Then I can get up and make the coffee I want now.

But three minutes after having this thought she was dozing. Ten minutes later she was sleeping deeply. Later still, when the moon rose and she dreamed of floating over a certain exotic beach of fine white sand on the PILLSBURY magic carpet, her bed was for a few moments empty and the room filled with the smells of frangipani and jasmine and night-blooming cereus, scents that were somehow longing and terrible at the same time. But then she was back and in the morning Lisey barely remembered her dream, her dream of flying, her dream of flying across the beach at the edge of the pool in Boo'ya Moon.