The Dark Half(50)

'If you need further assistance,' the robot voice was continuing, please remain on the line for an operator - '

'Liz?' he pleaded. 'Pen? Something to write with?'

There was a Bic tucked into her address book and she handed it to him. The operator - the human operator - came back on the line. Thad told her he hadn't noted the number down. The.operator summoned the robot, who recited once again in her jig-jagging, vaguely female voice. Thad jotted the number on the cover of a book, almost hung up, then decided to double-check by listening to the second programmed recital. The second rendition showed he had transposed two of the numbers. Oh, he was getting right on top of his panic, that was crystal clear. He punched the disconnect button. Light sweat had broken out all over his body.

'Take it easy, Thad.'

'You didn't hear her,' he said grimly, and dialed the sheriff's office. The phone rang four times before a bored Yankee voice said, 'Castle County sheriff 's office,

Deputy Ridgewick speaking, may I help you?'

'This is Thad Beaumont. I'm calling from Ludlow.'

'Oh?' No recognition. None. Which meant more explanations. More cobwebs. The name Ridgewick rang a faint bell. Of course - the officer who had interviewed Mrs Arsenault and found Gamache's body. Jesus bleeding Christ, how could he have found the old man Thad was supposed to have murdered and not know who he was?

'Sheriff Pangborn came up here to . . . to discuss the Homer Gamache murder with me, Deputy Ridgewick. I have some information on that, and it's important that I speak to him right away.

'Sheriff's not here,' Ridgewick said, sounding monumentally unimpressed with the urgency in Thad's voice.

'Well, where is he?'

'T'home.'

'Give me the number, please.'

And, unbelievably: 'Oh, I don't know's I should, Mr Bowman. The sheriff - Alan, I mean - hasn't had much time off just lately, and his wife has been a trifle poorly. She has headaches.'

'I have to talk to him!'

'Well,' Ridgewick said comfortably, 'it's pretty clear you think you do, anyway. Maybe you even do. Really do, I mean. Tell you what, Mr Bowman! Why don't you just lay it out for me and kind of let me be the ju - '

'He came up here to arrest me for the murder of Homer Gamache, Deputy, and something else has happened, and if you don't give me his number right Now - '

'Oh, holy crow!' Ridgewick cried. Thad heard a faint bang and could imagine Ridgewick's feet coming down off his desk - or, more likely, Pangborn's desk - and landing on the floor as he straightened up in his seat. 'Beaumont, not Bowman!'

'Yes, and - '

'Oh, Judas! Judas Priest! The sheriff - Alan - said if you was to call, I should see you got through right away!'

'Good. Now - '

'Judas Priest! I'm a damn lunkhead!'

Thad, who could not have agreed more, said: 'Give me his number, please.' Somehow, calling upon reserves he'd had no idea he possessed, he managed not to scream it.

'Sure. Just a sec. Uh . . .' An excruciating pause ensued. Seconds only, of course, but it seemed to Thad that the pyramids could have been built during that pause. Built and then tom down again. And all the while, Miriam's life could be draining out on her living-room rug five hundred miles away. I may have killed her, he thought, simply by deciding to call Pangborn and getting this congenital idiot instead of calling the New York Police Department in the first place. Or 911. That's what I probably should have done; dialed 911 and thrown it into their laps..Except that option did not seem real, even now. It was the trance, he supposed, and the words he had written while in that trance. He did not think he had foreseen the attack on Miriam . . . but he had, in some dim way, witnessed Stark's preparations for the attack. The ghostly cries of those thousands of birds seemed to make this whole crazy thing his responsibility. But if Miriam died simply because he had been too panicked to dial 911, how would he ever be able to face Rick again?

Fuck that; how would he ever be able to look at himself again in a mirror?

Ridgewick the Down-Home Yankee Idiot was back. He gave Thad the sheriff's number, speaking each digit slowly enough for a retarded person to have taken the number down . . .but Thad made him repeat it anyway, in spite of the burning, digging urge to hurry. He was still shaken by how effortlessly he had screwed up the sheriff's office number, and what could be done once could be done again.

'Okay,' he said. 'Thanks.'

'Uh, Mr Beaumont? Sure would appreciate it if you'd kinda soft-pedal any stuff about how I - Thad hung up on him without the slightest twinge of remorse and dialed the number Ridgewick had given him. Pangborn would not answer the phone, of course; that was simply too much to hope for on The Night of the Cobwebs. And whoever did answer would tell him (after the obligatory few minutes of verbal ring-around-the-rosy, that was) that the sheriff had gone out for a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. In Laconia, New Hampshire, probably, although Phoenix was not entirely out of the question.

He uttered a wild bark of laughter, and Liz looked at him, startled. 'Thad? Are you all right?'

He started to answer, then just flapped a hand at her to show he was, as the phone was picked up. It wasn't Pangborn; he'd had that much right, anyway. It was a little boy who sounded about ten.