old and choked and left ... left on the bandstand with her underpants pulled down.”
Suddenly Bannerman began to cry. The tears filled his eyes behind his glasses and then rolled down his face in two streams. At the counter, the two guys from the Bridgton road crew were talking about the Super Bowl. Bannerman took his glasses off again and mopped his face with his handkerchief. His shoulders shook and heaved. Johnny waited, stirring his chili aimlessly.
After a little while, Bannerman put his handkerchief away. His eyes were red, and Johnny thought how oddly naked his face looked without his glasses.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “It’s been a very long day.”
“It’s all right,” Johnny said.
“I knew I was going to do that, but I thought I could hold on until I got home to my wife.”
“Well, I guess that was just too long to wait.”
“You’re a sympathetic ear.” Bannerman slipped his glasses back on. “No, you’re more than that. You’ve got something. I’ll be damned if I know just what it is, but it’s something.”
“What else have you got to go on?”
“Nothing. I’m taking most of the heat, but the state police haven’t exactly distinguished themselves. Neither has the attorney general’s special investigator, or our pet FBI man. The county M.E. has been able to type the sperm, but that’s no good to us at this stage of the game. The thing that bothers me the most is the lack of hair or skin under the victims’ fingernails. They all must have struggled, but we don’t have as much as a centimeter of skin. The devil must be on this guy’s side. He hasn’t dropped a button or a shopping list or left a single damn track. We got a shrink from Augusta, also courtesy of the state A.G., and he tells us all these guys give themselves away sooner or later. Some comfort. What if it’s later ... say about twelve bodies from now?”
“The cigarette pack is in Castle Rock?”
“Yes.”
Johnny stood up. “Well, let’s take a ride.”
“My car?”
Johnny smiled a little as the wind rose, shrieking, outside. “On a night like this, it pays to be with a policeman,” he said.
7
The snowstorm was at its height and it took them an hour and a half to get over to Castle Rock in Bannerman’s cruiser. It was twenty past ten when they came in through the foyer of the Town Office Building and stamped the snow off their boots.
There were half a dozen reporters in the lobby, most of them sitting on a bench under a gruesome oil portrait of some town founding father, telling each other about previous night watches. They were up and surrounding Bannerman and Johnny in no time.
“Sheriff Bannerman, is it true there has been a break in the case?”
“I have nothing for you at this time,” Bannerman said stolidly.
“There’s been a rumor that you’ve taken a man from Oxford into custody, Sheriff, is that true?”
“No. If you folks will pardon us ...”
But their attention had turned to Johnny, and he felt a sinking sensation in his belly as he recognized at least two faces from the press conference at the hospital.
“Holy God!” one of them exclaimed. “You’re John Smith, aren’t you?”
Johnny felt a crazy urge to take the fifth like a gangster at a Senate committee hearing.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s me.”
“The psychic guy?” another asked.
“Look, let us pass!” Bannerman said, raising his voice. “Haven’t you guys got anything better to do than ...”
“According to Inside View, you’re a fake,” a young man in a heavy topcoat said. “Is that true?”
“All I can say about that is Inside View prints what they want,” Johnny said. “Look, really ...”
“You’re denying the Inside View story?”
“Look, I really can’t say anything more.”
As they went through the frosted glass door and into the sheriffs office, the reporters were racing toward the two pay phones on the wall by the dog warden’s office.
“Now the shit has truly hit the fan,” Bannerman said unhappily. “I swear before God I never thought they’d still be here on a night like this. I should have brought you in the back.”
“Oh, didn’t you know?” Johnny asked bitterly. “We love the publicity. All of us psychics are in it for the publicity.”
“No, I don’t believe that,” Bannerman said. “At least not of you. Well, it’s happened. Can’t be helped now.”
But in his mind, Johnny could visualize the headlines: a little extra seasoning in a pot of stew that was already bubbling briskly. CASTLE ROCK SHERIFF DEPUTIZES