The Dark Half(29)

'Even supposing we're off by an hour and the last guests left at one,' he continued, 'and further supposing I jumped into my car the minute - the second - they were gone over the hill, and then drove like a mad bastard for Castle Rock, it would be four-thirty or five o'clock in the morning before I could possibly get there. No turnpike going west, you know.'

One of the troopers began: 'And the Arsenault woman said it was about quarter of one when she saw - '

'We don't need to go into that right now,' Alan interrupted quickly. Liz made a rude, exasperated sound, and Wendy goggled at her comically. In the crook of her other arm, William stopped squirming, suddenly engrossed in the wonderfulness of his own twiddling fingers. To Thad she said, 'There were still lots of people here at one, Thad. Lots of them.'

Then she rounded on Alan Pangborn - really rounded on him this time.

'What is wrong with you, Sheriff? Why are you so bullheadedly determined to lay this off on my husband? Are you a stupid man? A lazy man? A bad man? You don't look like any of those things, but your behavior makes me wonder. It makes me wonder very much. Perhaps it was a lottery. Was that it? Did you draw his name out of a f**king hat?'

Alan recoiled slightly, clearly surprised - and discomfited - by her ferocity. 'Mrs Beaumont

- '

'I have the advantage, I'm afraid, Sheriff,' Thad said. 'You think I killed Homer Gamache -'

'Mr Beaumont, you have not been charged with - '

'No. But you think it, don't you?'

Color, solid and bricklike, not embarrassment, Thad thought, but frustration, had beef slowly climbing into Pangborn's cheeks like color in a thermometer. 'Yes, sir,' he said. 'I do think it. In spite of the things you and your wife have said.'

This reply filled Thad with wonder. What, in God's name, could have happened to make this man (who, as Liz had said, did not look at all stupid) so sure? So goddamned sure?

Thad felt a shiver go up his spine . . . and then a peculiar thing happened. A phantom sound filled his mind - not his head but his mind - for a moment. It was a sound which imparted an.aching sense of d?j vu for it had been almost thirty years since he had last heard it. It was the ghostly sound of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small birds. He put a hand up to his head and touched the small scar there, and the shiver came again, stronger this time, twisting through his flesh like wire. Lie me an alibi, George, he thought. I'm in a bit of a tight here, so lie me an alibi.

'Thad?' Liz asked. 'Are you all right?'

'Hmmm?' He looked around at her.

'You're pale.'

'I'm fine,' he said, and he was. The sound was gone. If it had really been there at all.

He turned back to Pangborn.

'As I said, Sheriff, I have a certain advantage in this matter. You think I killed Homer. I, however, know I didn't. Except in books, I've never killed anyone.'

'Mr Beaumont - '

'I understand your outrage. He was a nice old man with an overbearing wife, a funky sense of humor, and only one arm. I'm outraged, too. I'll do anything I can to help, but you'll have to drop this secret police stuff and tell me why you're here - what in the world led you to me in the first place. I'm bewildered.'

Alan looked at him for a very long time and then said: 'Every instinct in my body says you are telling the truth.'

'Thank God,' Liz said. 'The man sees sense.'

'If it turns out you are,' Alan said, looking only at Thad, 'I will personally find the person in A.S. R. and I. who screwed up this ID and pull his skin off.'

'What's A.S. and whatever?' Liz asked.

'Armed Services Records and Identification,' one of the troopers said, 'Washington.'

'I've never known them to screw up before,' Alan went on in the same slow tone. 'They say there's a first time for everything, but . . . if they haven't screwed up and if this party of yours checks out, I'm going to be pretty damned bewildered myself.'

'Can't you tell us what this is all about?' Thad asked.

Alan sighed. 'We've come this far; why not? In all truth, the last guests to leave your party don't matter that much anyway. If you were here at midnight, if there are witnesses who can swear you were - '

'Twenty-five at least,' Liz said.

' - then you're off the hook. Putting together the eyewitness account of the lady the trooper mentioned and the medical examiner's postmortem, we can be almost positive Homer was killed between one and three a.m. on June first. He was bludgeoned to death with his own prosthetic arm.'

'Dear Jesus,' Liz muttered. 'And you thought Thad - '

'Homer's truck was found two nights ago in the parking lot of a rest stop on I-95 in Connecticut, close to the New York border' ' Alan paused. 'There were fingerprints all over it, Mr Beaumont. Most were Homer's, but a good many belonged to the perpetrator. Several of the perp's were excellent. One was almost moulage-cast in a wad of gum the guy took out of his mouth and then stuck on the dashboard with his thumb. It hardened there. The best one of all, though, was on the rear view mirror. It was every bit as good as a print made in a police station. Only the one on the mirror was rolled in blood instead of ink.'

'Then why Thad?' Liz was demanding indignantly. 'Party or no party, how could you think that Thad - ?'.Alan looked at her and said, 'When the people at A.S. R. and I. fed the prints into their graphics