Goliath. He had a rumbling Midwestern voice, roughened by cigarettes.
Around four, Annie said. Give or take. She had just finished mowing the grass and she didn’t wear a watch. It had been devilish hot; she remembered that well enough.
“How long did he stay, Mrs. Wilkes?” David asked.
“It’s Miss Wilkes, if you don’t mind.”
“Excuse me.”
Annie said she couldn’t reckon on how long for sure, only it hadn’t been long. Five minutes, maybe.
“He showed you a picture?”
Yes, Annie said, that was why he came. Paul marvelled at how composed she sounded, how pleasant.
“And had you seen the man in the picture?”
Annie said certainly, he was Paul Sheldon, she knew that right away. “I have all his books,” she said. “I like them very much. That disappointed Officer Kushner. He said if that was the case, he guessed I probably knew what I was talking about. He looked very discouraged. He also looked very hot.”
“Yeah, it was a hot day, all right,” Goliath said, and Paul was alarmed by how much closer his voice was. In the parlor? Yes, almost certainly in the parlor. Big or not, the guy moved like a goddamned lynx. When Annie responded, her own voice was closer. The cops had moved into the parlor. She was following. She hadn’t asked them, but they had gone in there anyway. Looking the place over.
Although her pet writer was now less than thirty-five feet away, Annie’s voice remained composed. She had asked if he would like to come in for an iced coffee; he said he couldn’t. So she had asked if he’d like to take along a cold bottle of—
“Please don’t break that,” Annie interrupted herself, her voice sharpening. “I like my things, and some of them are quite fragile.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” That had to be David, his voice low and whispery, both humble and a little startled. That tone coming from a cop would have been amusing under other circumstances, but these were not other circumstances and Paul was not amused. He sat stiffly, hearing the small sound of something being set carefully back down (the penguin on his block of ice, perhaps), his hands clasped tightly on the arms of the wheelchair. He imagined her fiddling with the shoulder-bag. He waited for one of the cops—Goiiath, probably—to ask her just what the hell it was she had in there.
Then the shooting would start.
“What were you saying?” David asked.
“That I asked him if he’d like to take along a cold Pepsi from the fridge because it was such a hot day. I keep them right next to the freezer compartment, and that keeps them as cold as you can get them without freezing them. He said that would be very kind. He was a very polite boy. Why did they let such a young boy out alone, do you know?”
“Did he drink the soda here?” David asked, ignoring her question. His voice was closer still. He had crossed the parlor. Paul didn’t have to close his eyes to imagine him standing there, looking down the short hall which passed the little downstairs bathroom and ended in the closed guest-room door. Paul sat tight and upright, a pulse beating rapidly in his scrawny throat.
“No,” Annie said, as composed as ever. “He took it along. He said he had to keep rolling.”
“What’s down there?” Goliath asked. There was a double thud of booted heels, the sound slightly hollow, as he stepped off the parlor carpet and onto the bare boards of the hallway.
“A bath and a spare bedroom. I sometimes sleep there when it’s very hot. Have a look, if you like, but I promise you I don’t have your trooper tied to the bed.”
“No, ma‘am, I’m sure you don’t,” David said, and, amazingly, their footfalls and voices began to fade toward the kitchen again. “Did he seem excited about anything while he was here?”
“Not at all,” Annie said. “Just hot and discouraged.” Paul was beginning to breathe again.
“Preoccupied about anything?”
“No.”
“Did he say where he was going next?”
Although the cops almost surely missed it, Paul’s own practiced ear sensed the minutest of hesitations—there could be a trap here, a snare which might spring at once or after a short delay. No, she said at last, although he had headed west, so she assumed he must have gone toward Springer’s Road and the few farms out that way.
“Thank you, ma’am, for your cooperation,” David said. “We may have to check back with you.”
“All right,” Annie said. “Feel free. I don’t see much company