“Happy to do it, sir. Would you like to leave your card?”

Shit. I’d have to have some of those printed . . . which meant a visit to Derry Business Supply after all. “Left them in my other suit coat,” I said, “but I think he’ll remember me. We had a drink at The Lamplighter.”

That afternoon I began expanding my notes.

10

I got used to the planes coming in for a landing directly over my head. I arranged for newspaper and milk delivery: thick glass bottles brought right to your doorstep. Like the root beer Frank Anicetti had served me on my first jaunt into 1958, the milk tasted incredibly full and rich.

The cream was even better. I didn’t know if artificial creamers had been invented yet, and had no intention of finding out. Not with this stuff around.

The days slipped by. I read Al Templeton’s notes on Oswald until I could have quoted long passages by heart. I visited the library and read about the murders and the disappearances that had plagued Derry in 1957 and 1958. I looked for stories about Frank Dunning and his famous bad temper, but found none; if he had ever been arrested, the story hadn’t made it into the newspaper’s Police Beat column, which was good-sized on most days and usually expanded to a full page on Mondays, when it contained a full summary of the weekend’s didoes (most of which happened after the bars closed). The only story I found about the janitor’s father concerned a 1955 charity drive.

The Center Street Market had contributed ten percent of their profits that fall to the Red Cross, to help out after hurricanes Connie and Diane slammed into the East Coast, killing two hundred and causing extensive flood damage in New England. There was a picture of Harry’s father handing an oversized check to the regional head of the Red Cross. Dunning was flashing that movie-star smile.

I made no more shopping trips to the Center Street Market, but on two weekends—the last in September and the first in October—I followed Derry’s favorite butcher after he finished his half-day Saturday stint behind the meat counter. I rented nondescript Hertz Chevrolets from the airport for this chore. The Sunliner, I felt, was a little too conspicuous for shadowing.

On the first Saturday afternoon, he went to a Brewer flea market in a Pontiac he kept in a downtown pay-by-the-month garage and rarely used during the workweek. On the following Sunday, he drove to his house on Kossuth Street, collected his kids, and took them to a Disney double feature at the Aladdin. Even at a distance, Troy, the eldest, looked bored out of his mind both going into the theater and coming out.

Dunning didn’t enter the house for either the pickup or the drop-off. He honked for the kids when he arrived and let them off at the curb when they came back, watching until all four were inside. He didn’t drive off immediately even then, only sat behind the wheel of the idling Bonneville, smoking a cigarette. Maybe hoping the lovely Doris might want to come out and talk.

When he was sure she wouldn’t, he used a neighbor’s driveway to turn around in and sped off, squealing his tires hard enough to send up little splurts of blue smoke.

I slumped in the seat of my rental, but I needn’t have bothered. He never looked in my direction as he passed, and when he was a good distance down Witcham Street, I followed along after. He returned his car to the garage where he kept it, went to The Lamplighter for a single beer at the nearly deserted bar, then trudged back to Edna Price’s rooms on Charity Avenue with his head down.

The following Saturday, October fourth, he collected his kids and took them to the football game at the University of Maine in Orono, some thirty miles away. I parked on Stillwater Avenue and waited for the game to be over. On the way back they stopped at the Ninety-Fiver for dinner. I parked at the far end of the parking lot and waited for them to come out, reflecting that the life of a private eye must be a boring one, no matter what the movies would have us believe.

When Dunning delivered his children back home, dusk was creeping over Kossuth Street.

Troy had clearly enjoyed football more than the adventures of Cinderella; he exited his father’s Pontiac grinning and waving a Black Bears pennant. Tugga and Harry also had pennants and also seemed energized. Ellen, not so much. She was fast asleep. Dunning carried her to the door of the house in his arms. This time Mrs. Dunning made a brief appearance—just long enough to take the little girl into her own arms.

Dunning said something to Doris. Her reply didn’t seem to please him. The distance was too great to read his expression, but he was wagging a finger at her as he spoke. She listened, shook her head, turned, and went inside. He stood there a moment or two, then took off his hat and slapped it against his leg.

All interesting—and instructive of the relationship—but no help otherwise. Not what I was looking for.

I got that the following day. I had decided to make only two reconnaissance passes that Sunday, feeling that, even in a dark brown rental unit that almost faded into the landscape, more would be risking notice. I saw nothing on the first one and figured he was probably in for the day, and why not? The weather had turned gray and drizzly. He was probably watching sports on TV

with the rest of the boarders, all of them smoking up a storm in the parlor.

But I was wrong. Just as I turned onto Witcham for my second pass, I saw him walking toward downtown, today dressed in blue jeans, a windbreaker, and a wide-brimmed waterproof hat.

I drove past him and parked on Main Street about a block up from the garage he used. Twenty minutes later I was following him out of town to the west. Traffic was light, and I kept well back.

His destination turned out to be Longview Cemetery, two miles past the Derry Drive-In. He stopped at a flower stand across from it, and as I drove by, I saw him buying two baskets of fall flowers from an old lady who held a big black umbrella over both of them during the transaction. I watched in my rearview mirror as he put the flowers on the passenger seat of his car, got back in, and drove up the cemetery’s access road.

I turned around and drove back to Longview. This was taking a risk, but I had to chance it, because this looked good. The parking lot was empty except for two pickups loaded with groundkeeping equipment under tarps and a dinged-up old payloader that looked like war surplus.

No sign of Dunning’s Pontiac. I drove across the lot toward the gravel lane leading into the cemetery itself, which was huge, sprawling over as many as a dozen hilly acres.

In the cemetery proper, smaller lanes split off from the main one. Groundfog was rising up from the dips and valleys, and the drizzle was thickening into rain. Not a good day for visiting the dear departed, all in all, and Dunning had the place to himself. His Pontiac, parked halfway up a hill on one of the feeder lanes, was easy to spot. He was placing the flower baskets before two side-by-side graves. His parents’, I assumed, but I didn’t really care. I turned my car around and left him to it.

By the time I got back to my Harris Avenue apartment, that fall’s first hard rain was pounding the city. Downtown, the canal would be roaring, and the peculiar thrumming that came up through the concrete in the Low Town would be more noticeable than ever. Indian summer seemed to be over. I didn’t care about that, either. I opened my notebook, flipped almost to the end before I found a blank page, and wrote October 5 th , 3:45 PM, Dunning to Longview Cem, puts flowers on parents’ (?) graves. Rain.