“Miss Hendrie, I really do need to talk with Sean Rusk. I think I need to talk to him very badly.”

“Oh?” Her voice was cool.

“Something-” Alan suddenly thought of Polly and his voice cracked.

He cleared his throat and pushed on. “Something is going on in my town. The suicide of Brian Rusk is only part of it, I believe. And I also believe that Sean Rusk may have the key to the rest of it.”

“Sheriff Pangborn, Sean Rusk is only seven years old. And if he does know something, why aren’t there other policemen here?”

Other policemen, he thought. What she means are qualified policemen. Policemen who don’t interview eleven-year-old boys on the street and then send them home to commit suicide in the garage.

“Because they’ve got their hands full,” Alan said, “and because they don’t know the town the way I do.”

“I see.” She turned to go again.

“Miss Hendrie.”

“Sheriff, I’m short-handed this evening and very b-”

“Brian Rusk wasn’t the only Castle Rock fatality today. There were at least three others. Another man, the owner of the local tavern, has been taken to the hospital in Norway with gunshot trauma. He may live, but it’s going to be touch and go with him for the next thirty-six hours or so. And I have a hunch the killing isn’t done.”

He had finally succeeded in capturing all of her attention.

“You believe Sean Rusk knows something about this?”

“He may know why his brother killed himself. If he does, that may open up the rest of it. So if he wakes up, will you tell me?”

She hesitated, then said, “That depends on his mental state when he does, Sheriff. I’m not going to allow you to make a hysterical little boy’s condition worse, no matter what is going on in your town.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Good.” She gave him a look which said,just sit there and don’t make trouble for me, then, and went back behind the high desk. She sat down, and he could hear her putting bottles and boxes on the med-cart.

Alan got up, went to the pay phone in the hall, and dialled Polly’s number again. And once again it simply rang on and on. He dialled You Sew and Sew, got the answering machine, and racked the phone. He went back to his chair, sat in it, and stared at the Mother Goose mural some more.

You forgot to ask me one question, Miss Hendrie, Alan thought.

You forgot to ask me why I’m here if there’s so much going on in the seat of the county I was elected to preserve and protect. You forgot to ask me why I’m not leading the investigation while some lessessentialofficer@IdSeatThomas,forinstance sitshere,waiting for Sean Rusk to wake up. You forgot to ask those things, Miss Hendrie, and I know a secret. I’m glad you forgot. That’s the secret.

The reason was as simple as it was humiliating. Except in Portland and Bangor, murder belonged not to the Sheriff’s Office but to the State Police. Henry Payton had winked at that in the wake of Nettle and Wilma’s duel, but he was not winking anymore. He couldn’t afford to. Representatives of every southern Maine newspaper and TV station were either in Castle Rock right now or on their way. They would be joined by their colleagues from all over the state before very much longer… and if this really was not over, as Alan suspected, they would shortly be joined by more media people from points south.

That was the simple reality of the situation, but it didn’t change the way Alan felt. He felt like a pitcher who can’t get the job done and is sent to the showers by the coach. It was an indescribably shitty way to feel. He sat in front of Simple Simon and once again began to add up the score.

Lester Pratt, dead. He had come to the Sheriff’s Office in a jealous frenzy and had attacked John LaPointe. It was over his girl, apparently, althoughjohn had told Alan before the ambulance came that he had not dated Sally Ratcliffe in over a year. “I only thaw her to thpeek to wunth in awhile on the thtreet, and even then thee cut me dead motht of the time. Thee dethided I’m one of the hellhound.” He had touched his broken nose and winced. “Right now I feel hellhound.”

John was now hospitalized in Norway with a broken nose, a fractured jaw, and possible internal injuries.

Sheila Brigham was also in the hospital. Shock.

Hugh Priest and Billy Tupper were both dead. That news had come in just as Sheila was beginning to fall apart. The call came from a beer deliveryman, who’d had the sense to call Medical Assistance before calling the Sheriff. The man had been almost as hysterical as Sheila Brigham, and Alan hadn’t blamed him. By then he had been feeling pretty hysterical himself.

Henry Beaufort, in critical condition as a result of multiple gunshot wounds.

Norris Ridgewick, missing… and that somehow hurt the most.

Alan had looked around for him after receiving the deliveryman’s call, but Norris was just gone. Alan had assumed at the time that he must have gone outside to formally arrest Danforth and would return with the Heacl Selectman in tow, but events shortly proved that no one had arrested Keeton. Alan supposed the Staties would arrest him if they ran across him while they pursued other lines of investigation, but otherwise, no. They had more important things to do. In the meantime, Norris was just gone. Wherever he was, he’d gotten there on foot; when Alan left town, Norris’s VW had still been lying on its side in the middle of Lower Main Street.

The witnesses said Buster had crawled into his Cadillac through the window and simply driven away. The only person who had tried to stop him had paid a steep price. Scott Garson was hospitalized here at Northern Cumberland with a broken jaw, broken cheekbone, broken wrist, and three broken fingers. It could have been worse; the bystanders claimed Buster had actively tried to run the man down as he lay in the street.

Lenny Partridge, broken collarbone and God knew how many broken ribs, was also here someplace. Andy Clutterbuck had weighed in with news of this fresh disaster while Alan was still trying to comprehend the fact that the town’s Head Selectman was now a fugitive from justice handcuffed to a big red Cadillac. Hugh Priest had apparently stopped Lenny, tossed him across the road, and driven away in the old man’s car. Alan supposed they would find Lenny’s car in the parking lot of The Mellow Tiger, since Hugh had bitten the dust there.

And, of course, there was Brian Rusk, who had eaten a bullet at the ripe old age of eleven. Clut had barely begun to tell his tale when the phone rang again. Sheila was gone by then, and Alan had picked up on the voice of a screaming, hysterical little boy-Sean Rusk, who had dialled the number on the bright orange sticker beside the kitchen telephone.

All in all, Medical Assistance ambulances and Rescue Services units from four different towns had made afternoon stops in Castle Rock.

Now, sitting with his back to Simple Simon and the pie-man, watching the plastic birds as they swung and dipped around their spindle, Alan turned once more to Hugh and Lenny Partridge. Their confrontation was hardly the biggest to take place in Castle Rock today, but it was one of the oddest… and Alan sensed that a key to this business might be hidden in its very oddity.

“Why in God’s name didn’t Hugh take his own car, if he had a hard-on for Henry Beaufort?” Alan had asked Clut, running his hands through hair which was already wildly disarranged. “Why bother with Lenny’s old piece of shit?”

“Because Hugh’s Buick was standing on four flats. Looked like somebody ripped the shit out of them with a knife.” Clut had shrugged, looking uneasily at the shambles the Sheriff’s Office had become.

“Maybe he thought Henry Beaufort did it.”

Yes, Alan thought now. Maybe so. It was crazy, but was it any crazier than Wilma jerzyck thinking Nettle Cobb had first splattered mud on her sheets and then thrown rocks through the windows of her house? Any crazier than Nettle thinking Wilma had killed her dog?