What if Buster knew about it and had decided to break it in two?

“If he did that, I’d break him in two,” Norris said. He spoke in a low, angry growl Henry Payton-nor many of his other law enforcement colleagues, for that matter-would not have recognized. He forgot all about locking up when he left the office. He had even temporarily forgotten the pain in his hand. The only thing that mattered was getting home. Getting home and making sure the Bazun rod was still all right.

The shape under the blankets didn’t move when Alan eased into the room, and he thought Polly was asleep-probably with the help of a Percodan at bedtime. He undressed quietly and slid into bed beside her. As his head settled on the pillow, he saw that her eyes were open, watching him. It gave him a momentary start and he jerked.

“What stranger comes to this maiden’s bed?” she asked softly.

“Only I,” he replied, smiling a little. “I apologize for waking you, maiden.”

“I was awake,” she said, and put her arms around his neck. He slipped his own about her waist. The deep bed-warmth of her pleased him-she was like a sleepy furnace. He felt something hard against his chest for a moment, and it almost registered that she was wearing something under her cotton nightgown. Then it shifted, tumbling down between her left breast and her armpit on its fine silver chain.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

She pressed the side of her face against his cheek, still holding him. He could feel her hands locked together at the nape of his neck.

“No,” she said. The word came out in a trembling sigh, and then she began to sob.

He held her while she cried, stroking her hair.

“Why didn’t she tell me what that woman was doing, Alan?”

Polly asked at last. She drew away from him a little. Now his eyes had ad usted to the dark, and he could see her face-dark eyes, dark hair, white skin.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“If she’d told me, I would have taken care of it! I would have gone to see Wilma Jersyck myself, and… and…

It was not the moment to tell her that Nettle had apparently played the game with almost as much vigor and malice as Wilma herself.

Nor was it the moment to tell her that there came a time when the Nettle Cobbs of the world-and the Wilma Jersycks, too, he supposed-could no longer be fixed. There came a time when they went beyond anyone’s ability to repair.

“It’s three-thirty in the morning,” he said. “That’s a bad time to talk about should-haves and would-haves.” He hesitated for a moment before speaking again. “According to John LaPointe, Nettle said something to you about Wilma this morning-yesterday morning, now. What was it?”

Polly thought it over. “Well, I didn’t know it was about Wilmanot then, anyway. Nettle brought over a lasagna. And my hands… my hands were really bad. She saw it right away. Nettle is-wasmay have been-I don’t know-vague about some things, but I couldn’t hide a thing from her.”

“She loved you very much,” Alan said gravely, and this brought on a fresh spate of sobbing. He had known it would, just as he knew that some tears have to be cried no matter what the houruntil they are, they simply rave and burn inside.

After awhile, Polly was able to go on. Her hands crept back around Alan’s neck as she spoke.

“She got those stupid thermal gloves out, only this time they really helped-the current crisis seems to have passed, anywayand then she made coffee. I asked her if she didn’t have things to do at home and she said she didn’t. She said Raider was on guard and then she said something like, ’i think she’ll leave me alone, anyway. I haven’t seen her or heard from her, so I guess she finally got the message.’ That isn’t exact, Alan, but it’s pretty close.”

“What time did she come by?”

“Around quarter past ten. It might have been a little earlier or a little later, but not much. Why, Alan? Does it mean anything?”

When Alan slid between the sheets, he felt that he would be asleep ten seconds after his head hit the pillow. Now he was wide awake again, and thinking hard.

“No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t think it means anything, except that Nettle had Wilma on her mind.”

“I just can’t believe it. She seemed so much better-she really did. Remember me telling you about how she got up the courage to go into Needful Things all on her own last Thursday?”

“Yes.”

She released him and rolled fretfully onto her back. Alan heard a small metallic chink! as she did so, and again thought nothing of it.

His mind was still examining what Polly had just told him, turning it this way and that, like a jeweller examining a suspect stone.

“I’ll have to make the funeral arrangements,” she said. “Nettle has got people in Yarmouth-a few, anyway-but they didn’t want to have anything to do with her when she was alive, and they’ll want to have even less to do with her now that she’s dead. But I’ll have to call them in the morning. Will I be able to go into Nettle’s house, Alan?

I think she had an address book.”

“I’ll bring you. You won’t be able to take anything away, at least not until Dr. Ryan has published his autopsy findings, but I can’t see any harm in letting you copy down a few telephone numbers.”

“Thank you.”

A sudden thought occurred to him. “Polly, what time did Nettle leave here?”

“Quarter of eleven, I guess. It might have been as late as eleven o’clock. She didn’t stay a whole hour, I don’t think. Why?”

“Nothing,” he said. He’d had a momentary flash: if Nettle had stayed long enough at Polly’s, she might not have had time to go back home, find her dog dead, collect the rocks, write the notes, attach them to the rocks, go over to Wilma’s, and break the windows. But if Nettle had left Polly’s at quarter to eleven, that gave her better than two hours. Plenty of time.

Hey, Alan! the voice the falsely cheery one that usually restricted its input to the subject of Annie and Todd-spoke up. How come you’re trying to bitch this up for yourself, good buddy?

And Alan didn’t know. There was something else he didn’t know, either-how had Nettle gotten that load of rocks over to the jerzyck house in the first place? She had no driver’s license and didn’t have a clue about operating a car.

Cut the crap, good buddy, the voice advised. She wrote the notes at her house-probably right down the hall from her dog’s dead bodyand got the rubber bands from her own kitchen drawer, She didn’t have to carry the rocks; there were Plenty of those in Wilma’s back-yard garden.

Right?

Right. Yet he could not get rid of the idea that the rocks had been brought with the notes already attached. He had no concrete reason to think so, but it just seemed right… the kind of thing you’d expect from a kid or someone who thought like a kid.

Someone like Nettle Cobb.

Quit it… let it go!

He couldn’t, though.

Polly touched his cheek. “I’m awfully glad you came, Alan. It must have been a horrible day for you, too.”

“I’ve had better, but it’s over now. You should let it go, too.

Get some sleep. You have a lot of arrangements to make tomorrow.

Do you want me to get you a pill?”

“No, my hands are a little better, at least. Alan-” She broke off, but stirred restlessly under the covers.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It wasn’t important. I think I can sleep, now that you’re here. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, honey.”

She rolled away from him, pulled the covers up, and was still.

For a moment he thought of how she had hugged him-the feel of her hands locked about his neck. If she was able to flex her fingers enough to do that, then she really was better. That was a good thing, maybe the best thing that had happened to him since Clut had phoned during the football game. If only things would stay better.