'Salem's Lot(68)

'What's that for?' Parkins asked.

'I'm trying to place the time of death by skin lividity,' Jimmy said. 'Blood tends to seek its lowest level when pumping action ceases, like any other fluid.'  

'Yeah, sort of like that Drano commercial, That's the examiner's job, ain't it?'

'He'll send out Norbert, you know that,' Jimmy said. 'And Brent Norbert was never averse to a little help from his friends.'

'Norbert couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight,' Parkins said, and flipped his cigarette butt out the open window. 'You lost your screen offa this window, Matt. I seen it down on the lawn when I drove in.'

'That so?' Matt asked, his voice carefully controlled.

'Yeah.'

Cody had taken a thermometer from his bag and now he slid it into Ryerson's anus and laid his watch on the crisp sheet, where it glittered in the strong sunlight. It was quarter of seven.

'I'm going downstairs,' Matt said in a slightly strangled voice.

'You might as well all go,' Jimmy said. 'I'll be a little while longer. Would you put on coffee, Mr Burke?'

'Sure.'

They all went out and Ben closed the door on the scene. His last glance back would remain with him: the bright, sun-washed room, the clean sheet turned back, the gold wristwatch heliographing bright arrows of light onto the wallpaper, and Cody himself, with his swatch of flaming red hair, sitting beside the body like a steel engraving.

Matt was making coffee when Brenton Norbert, the assistant medical examiner, arrived in an elderly gray Dodge. He came in with another man who was carrying a large camera.

'Where is it?' Norbert asked.

Gillespie gestured with his thumb toward the stairs. 'Jim Cody's up there.'

'Good deal,' Norbert said. 'The guy's probably jitterbugging by now.' He and the photographer went upstairs.

Parkins Gillespie poured cream into his coffee until it slopped into his saucer, tested it with his thumb, wiped his thumb on his pants, ]it another Pall Mall, and said, 'How did you get into this, Mr Mears?'

And so Ben and Matt started their little song and dance and none of what they said was precisely a lie, but enough was left unsaid to link them together in a tenuous bond of conspiracy, and enough to make Ben wonder uneasily if be wasn't in the process of abetting either a harmless bit of kookery or something more serious, something dark. He thought of Matt saying that he had called Ben because he was the only person in 'salem's Lot who might listen to such a story. Whatever Matt Burke's mental failings might be, Ben thought, inability to read character was not one of them. And that also made him nervous.

7

By nine-thirty it was over.

Carl Foreman's funeral wagon had come and taken Mike Ryerson's body away, and the fact of his passing left the house with him and belonged to the town. Jimmy Cody had gone back to his office; Norbert and the photographer had gone to Portland to talk with the county ME.

Parkins Gillespie stood on the stoop for a moment and watched the hearse trundle slowly up the road, a cigarette dangling between his lips. 'All the times Mike drove that, I bet he never guessed how soon he'd be ridin' in the back.' He turned to Ben. 'You ain't leavin' the Lot just yet, are you? Like you to testify for the coroner's jury, if that's okay by you.'

'No, I'm not leaving.

The constable's faded blue eyes measured him. 'I checked you through with the feds and the Maine State Police R&I in Augusta,' he said. 'You've got a clean rep.'

'That's good to know,' Ben said evenly.

'I hear it around that you're sparkin' Bill Norton's girl.'

'Guilty,' Ben said.

'She's a fine lass,' Parkins said without smiling. The hearse was out of sight now; even the hum of its engine had dwindled to a drone that faded altogether. 'Guess she don't see much of Floyd Tibbits these days.'  

'Haven't you some paper work to do, Park?' Matt prodded gently.

He sighed and cast the butt of his cigarette away. 'Sure do. Duplicate, triplicate, don't-punch-spindle-or-mutilate. This job's been more trouble than a she-bitch with crabs the last couple of weeks. Maybe that old Marsten House has got a curse on it.'

Ben and Matt kept poker faces.

'Well, s'long.' He hitched his pants and walked down to his car. He opened the driver's side door and then turned back to them. 'You two ain't holdin' nothin' back on me, are you?'

'Parkins,' Matt said, 'there's nothing to hold back. He's dead.'

He looked at them a moment longer, the faded eyes sharp and glittering under his hooked brows, and then he sighed. 'I suppose,' he said. 'But it's awful goddamn funny. The dog, the Glick boy, then t'other Glick boy, now Mike. That's a year's run for a pissant little burg like this one. My old grammy used to say things ran in threes, not fours.' He got in, started the engine, and backed out of the driveway. A moment later he was gone over the hill, trailing one farewell honk.

Matt let out a gusty sigh. 'That's over.'

'Yes,' Ben said. 'I'm beat. Are you?'

'I am, but I feel . . . weird. You know that word, the way the kids use it?'

'Yes.'