The Dark Half(32)

although none of them are as perfect as the bubble-gum print and the mirror print - do seem to match yours exactly. Which means if you didn't do it, we have two people with exactly the same prints, and that one belongs in the Guinness Book of World Records.'

He looked at William and Wendy, who were trying to play pat-a-cake in their playpen. They seemed to be mostly endangering each other's eyesight. 'Are they identical?' he asked.

'No,' Liz said. 'They do look alike, but they're brother and sister, and brother-sister twins are never identical.'

Alan nodded. 'Not even identical twins have identical prints,' he said. He paused for a moment and then added in a casual voice which Thad believed was completely counterfeit: 'You don't happen to have a twin brother, do you, Mr Beaumont?'

Thad shook his head slowly. 'No,' he said. 'I don't have any siblings at all, and my folks are dead. William and Wendy are my only living blood relatives.' He smiled at the children, then looked back at Pangborn. 'Liz had a miscarriage back in 1974,' he said. 'Those . . . those first ones .

. . were also twins, I understand, although I don't suppose there's any way of telling if they would have been identical - not when the miscarriage comes in the second month. And if there is, who would want to know?'

Alan shrugged, looking a little embarrased.

'She was shopping at Filene's. In Boston. Someone pushed her. She fell all the way down an escalator, cut one arm pretty badly - if a security cop hadn't been there to put a tourniquet right on it, it would have been touch and go for her, too - and she lost the twins.'

'Is this in the People article?' Alan asked.

Liz smiled humorlessly and shook her head. 'We reserved the right to edit our lives when we agreed to do the story, Sheriff Pangborn. We didn't tell Mike Donaldson, the man who came to do the interview, of course, but that's what we did.'

'Was the push deliberate?'

'No way to tell,' Liz said. Her eyes settled on William and Wendy . . . brooded upon them. 'If it was an accidental bump, it was a damned hard one, though. I went flying - didn't touch the escalator at all until I was almost halfway down. All the same, I've tried to convince myself that's.what it was. It's easier to get along with. The idea that someone would push a woman down a steep

escalator just to see what happened . . . that's an idea guaranteed to keep you awake nights.'

Alan nodded.

'The doctors we saw told us Liz would probably never have another child,' Thad said. 'When she got pregnant with William and Wendy, they told us she'd probably never carry them all the way to term. But she sailed through it. And, after over ten years, I've finally gotten to work on a new book under my own name. It'll be my third. So you see, it's been good for both of us.'

'The other name you wrote under was George Stark.'

Thad nodded. 'But that's over now. It started being over when Liz got into her eighth month, still safe and sound. I decided if I was going to be a father again, I ought to start being myself again, as well.'

4

There was a kind of beat in the conversation then - not quite a pause. Then Thad said, 'Confess, Sheriff Pangborn.

Alan raised his eyebrows. 'Beg your pardon?'

A smile touched the corners of Thad's mouth. 'I won't say you had the scenario all worked out, but I bet you at least had the broad strokes. If I had an identical twin brother, maybe he hosted our party. That way I could have been in Castle Rock, murdering Homer Gamache and putting my fingerprints all over his truck. But it couldn't stop there, could it? My twin sleeps with my wife and keeps my appointments while I drive Homer's truck to that rest stop in Connecticut, steal another car there, drive to New York, ditch the hot car, then take a train or a plane to Washington, D.C. Once I'm there, I waste Clawson and hurry back to Ludlow, pack my twin off to wherever he was, and he and I both take up the threads of our lives again. Or all three of us, if you assume Liz here was part of the deception.'

Liz stared at him for a moment, and then began to laugh. She did not laugh long, but she laughed hard while she did. There was nothing forced about it, but it was grudging laughter, all the same - an expression of humor from a woman who has been surprised into it. Alan was looking at Thad with frank and open surprise. The twins laughed at their mother for a moment - or perhaps with her - and then resumed rolling a large yellow ball slowly back and forth in the playpen.

'Thad, that's horrible,' Liz said when she had gained control of herself.

'Maybe it is,' he said. 'If so, I'm sorry.'

'It's . . . pretty involved,' Alan said.

Thad grinned at him. 'You're not a fan of the late George Stark, I take it.'

'Frankly, no. But I have a deputy, Norris Ridgewick, who is. He had to explain to me what all

the hoop-de-doo was about.'

'Well, Stark messed with some of the conventions of the mystery story. Never anything so Agatha Christie as the scenario I just suggested, but that doesn't mean I can't think that way if I put my mind to it. Come on, Sheriff - had the thought crossed your mind, or not? If not, I really do owe my wife an apology.'

Alan was silent for a moment, smiling a little and clearly thinking a lot. At last he said, 'Maybe I was thinking along those lines. Not seriously, and not just that way, but you don't have to.apologize to your good lady. Since this morning I've found myself willing to consider even the most outrageous possibilities.'