He turned around in his seat and looked directly at Old Dor.
Dorrance folded over the top corner of the page he was reading, closed his book, and looked back at Ralph with polite interest.
"They told us we weren't to go near either Ed Deepneau or Doc #3," Ralph said. He spoke slowly and with great clarity. "They told us very specifically that we weren't even to think of doing that, because the situation had invested both of them with great power and we were apt to get swatted like flies. In fact, I think Lachesis said that if we tried getting near either Ed or Atropos, we might end up having a visit from one of the upper-level honchos... someone Ed calls the Crimson King. Not a very nice fellow, either, by all reports." Id us on the "Yes," Lois said in a faint voice. "That's what they to hospital roof. They said we had to convince the women in charge to cancel Susan Day's appearance. That's why we went out to High Ridge."
"And did you succeed in convincing them?" Wyzer asked.
"No. Ed's crazy friends came before we could get there, set the place on fire, and killed at least two of the women. Shot them. One was the woman we really wanted to talk to."
"Gretchen Tillbury," Ralph said.
"Yes," Lois agreed. "But surely we don't need to do any more-I can't believe they'll go ahead with the rally now. I mean, how could they? My God, at least four people are dead! Probably more! They'll have to cancel her speech or at least postpone it. Isn't that so?"
Neither Dorrance nor Joe replied. Ralph didn't reply, either-he was thinking of Helen's red-rimmed, furious eyes. How can you even ask? she'd said. If they stop us now, they win.
If they stop us now, they win.
Was there any legal way the police could stop them? Probably not.
The City Council, then? Maybe. Maybe they could hold a special meeting and revoke WomanCare's rally permit. But would they? If there were two thousand angry, grief-stricken women marching around the Municipal Building and yelling If they stop us now they win in unison, would the Council revoke the permit?
Ralph began to feel a deep sinking sensation in his gut.
Helen clearly considered tonight's rally more important than ever, and she wouldn't be the only one. It was no longer just about choice and who had the right to decide what a woman did with her own body; now it was about causes important enough to die for and honoring the friends who had done just that. Now they were talking not just about politics but about a kind of secular requiem mass for the dead.
Lois had grabbed his shoulder and was shaking it hard. Ralph came back to the here and now, but slowly, like a man being shaken awake in the middle of an incredibly vivid dream.
"They will cancel it, won't they? And even if they don't, if for some crazy reason they don't, most people will stay away, right-,) After what happened at High Ridge, they'll be afraid to come!"
Ralph thought about that and then shook his head. "Most people will think the danger's over. The news reports are going to say that two of the radicals who attacked High Ridge are dead, and the third is catatonic, or something."
"But Ed! What about Ed?" she cried. "He's the one who got them to attack, for heaven's sake! He's the one who sent them out there in the first place."
"That may be true, probably is true, but how would we prove it?
Do you know what I think the cops will find at wherever Charlie Pickering's been banging his hat? A note saying it was all his idea.
A note exonerating Ed completely, probably in the guise of an accusation... how Ed deserted them in their time of greatest need.
And if they don't find a note like that in Charlie's rented rooi-n, they'll find it in Frank Felton's. Or Sandra McKay's."
"But that... that's..." Lois stopped, biting at her lower lip.
Then she looked at Wyzer with hopeful eyes. "What about Susan Day? Where is she? Does anybody know? Do you? Ralph and I will call her on the telephone and-"
"She's already in Derry," Wyzer said, although I doubt if even the police know for sure where she is. But what I heard on the news while the old fella and I were driving out here is that the rally is