“You only have Matt’s word for that,” she pointed out.

“He wouldn’t lie, because he would know that an examination of the victim’s stomach is an important part of any autopsy. And a hypo would leave tracks. But for the sake of argument, let’s say it could be done. And a man like Matt could surely take something that would fake a heart attack. But where is the motive?”

She shook her head helplessly.

“Even granting some motive we don’t suspect, why would he go to such Byzantine lengths, or invent such a wild cover story? I suppose Ellery Queen could explain it somehow, but life isn’t an Ellery Queen plot.”

“But this…this other is lunacy, Ben.”

“Yes, like Hiroshima.”

“Will you stop doing that!” she whipcracked at him suddenly. “Don’t go playing the phony intellectual! It doesn’t fit you! We’re talking about wives’ tales, bad dreams, psychosis, anything you want to call it—”

“That’s shit,” he said. “Make connections. The world is coming down around our ears and you’re sticking at a few vampires.”

“’Salem’s Lot is my town,” she said stubbornly. “If something is happening there, it’s real. Not philosophy.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” he said, and touched the bandage on his head with a rueful finger. “And your ex packs a hell of a right.”

“I’m sorry. That’s a side of Floyd I never saw. I can’t understand it.”

“Where is he now?”

“In the town drunk tank. Parkins Gillespie told my mom he should turn him over to the county—to Sheriff McCaslin, that is—but he thought he’d wait and see if you wanted to prefer charges.”

“Do you have any feelings in the matter?”

“None whatever,” she said steadily. “He’s out of my life.”

“I’m not going to.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“But I want to talk to him.”

“About us?”

“About why he came at me wearing an overcoat, a hat, sunglasses…and Playtex rubber gloves.”

“What?”

“Well,” he said, looking at her, “the sun was out. It was shining on him. And I don’t think he liked that.”

They looked at each other wordlessly. There seemed to be nothing else on the subject to say.

FIVE

When Nolly brought Floyd his breakfast from the Excellent Café, Floyd was fast asleep. It seemed to Nolly that it would be a meanness to wake him up just to eat a couple of Pauline Dickens’s hard-fried eggs and five or six pieces of greasy bacon, so Nolly disposed of it himself in the office and drank the coffee, too. Pauline did make nice coffee—you could say that for her. But when he brought in Floyd’s lunch and Floyd was still sleeping and still in the same position, Nolly got a little scared and set the tray on the floor and went over and banged on the bars with a spoon.

“Hey! Floyd! Wake up, I got y’dinner.”

Floyd didn’t wake up, and Nolly took his key ring out of his pocket to open the drunk-tank door. He paused just before inserting the key. Last week’s Gunsmokehad been about a hard guy who pretended to be sick until he jumped the turnkey. Nolly had never thought of Floyd Tibbits as a particularly hard guy, but he hadn’t exactly rocked that Mears guy to sleep.

He paused indecisively, holding the spoon in one hand and the key ring in the other, a big man whose open-throat white shirts always sweat-stained around the armpits by noon of a warm day. He was a league bowler with an average of 151 and a weekend barhopper with a list of Portland red-light bars and motels in his wallet right behind his Lutheran Ministry pocket calendar. He was a friendly man, a natural fall guy, slow of reaction and also slow to anger. For all these not inconsiderable advantages, he was not particularly agile on his mental feet and for several minutes he stood wondering how to proceed, beating on the bars with the spoon, hailing Floyd, wishing he would move or snore or do something. He was just thinking he better call Parkins on the citizen’s band and get instructions when Parkins himself said from the office doorway:

“What in hell are you doin’, Nolly? Callin’ the hogs?”

Nolly blushed. “Floyd won’t move, Park. I’m afraid that maybe he’s…you know, sick.”

“Well, do you think beatin’ the bars with that goddamn spoon will make him better?” Parkins stepped by him and unlocked the cell.

“Floyd?” He shook Floyd’s shoulder. “Are you all r—”

Floyd fell off the chained bunk and onto the floor.

“Goddamn,” said Nolly. “He’s dead, ain’t he?”

But Parkins might not have heard. He was staring down at Floyd’s uncannily reposeful face. The fact slowly dawned on Nolly that Parkins looked as if someone had scared the bejesus out of him.

“What’s the matter, Park?”

“Nothin’,” Parkins said. “Just…let’s get out of here.” And then, almost to himself, he added: “Christ, I wish I hadn’t touched him.”

Nolly looked down at Floyd’s body with dawning horror.

“Wake up,” Parkins said. “We’ve got to get the doctor down here.”

SIX

It was midafternoon when Franklin Boddin and Virgil Rathbun drove up to the slatted wooden gate at the end of the Burns Road fork, two miles beyond Harmony Hill Cemetery. They were in Franklin’s 1957 Chevrolet pickup, a vehicle that had been Corinthian ivory back in the first year of Ike’s second term but which was now a mixture of shit brown and primer-paint red. The back of the truck was filled with what Franklin called Crappie. Once every month or so, he and Virgil took a load of Crappie to the dump, and a great deal of said Crappie consisted of empty beer bottles, empty beer cans, empty half-kegs, empty wine bottles, and empty Popov vodka bottles.

“Closed,” Franklin Boddin said, squinting to read the sign nailed to the gate. “Well I’ll be dipped in shit.” He took a honk off the bottle of Dawson’s that had been resting comfortably against the bulge of his crotch and wiped his mouth with his arm. “This is Saturday, ain’t it?”

“Sure is,” Virgil Rathbun said. Virgil had no idea if it was Saturday or Tuesday. He was so drunk he wasn’t even sure what month it was.

“Dump ain’t closed on Saturday, is it?” Franklin asked. There was only one sign, but he was seeing three. He squinted again. All three signs said “Closed.” The paint was barn-red and had undoubtedly come out of the can of paint that rested inside the door of Dud Rogers’s caretaker shack.

“Never was closed on Saturday,” Virgil said. He swung his bottle of beer toward his face, missed his mouth, and poured a blurt of beer on his left shoulder. “God, that hits the spot.”

“Closed,” Franklin said, with mounting irritation. “That son of a whore is off on a toot, that’s what. I’ll close him.” He threw the truck into first gear and popped the clutch. Beer foamed out of the bottle between his legs and ran over his pants.

“Wind her, Franklin!” Virgil cried, and let out a massive belch as the pickup crashed through the gate, knocking it onto the can-littered verge of the road. Franklin shifted into second and shot up the rutted, chuck-holed road. The truck bounced madly on its worn springs. Bottles fell off the back end and smashed. Seagulls took to the air in screaming, circling waves.

A quarter of a mile beyond the gate, the Burns Road fork (now known as the Dump Road) ended in a widening clearing that was the dump. The close-pressing alders and maples gave way to reveal a great flat area of raw earth which had been scored and runneled by the constant use of the old Case bulldozer which was now parked by Dud’s shack. Beyond this flat area was the gravel pit where current dumping went on. The trash and garbage, glitter-shot with bottles and aluminum cans, stretched away in gigantic dunes.

“Goddamn no-account hunchbacked pisswah, looks like he ain’t plowed nor burned all the week long,” Franklin said. He jammed both feet on the brake pedal, which sank all the way to the floor with a mechanical scream. After a while the truck stopped. “He’s laid up with a case, that’s what.”