far, surely. He was in a circle whose diameter might be as small as fifteen miles, or as large as forty-five. Annie Wilkes’s house was in that circle, and the Roydmans’, and downtown Sidewinder, however pitifully small that might be....
And my car. My Camaro’s somewhere in that circle, too. Did the police find it?
He thought not. He was a well-known person; if a car had been found with tags registered in his name, a little elementary checking would have shown he had been in Boulder and had then dropped out of sight. The discovery of his wrecked and empty car would have prompted a search, stories on the news....
She never watches the news on TV, never listens to the radio at all—unless she’s got one with an earplug, or phones.
It was all a little like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story—the one that didn’t bark. His car hadn’t been found because the cops hadn’t come. If it had been found, they would have checked everyone in his hypothetical circle, wouldn’t they? And just how many people could there be in such a circle, here close to the top of the Western Slope? The Roydmans, Annie Wilkes, maybe ten or twelve others?
And just because it hadn’t been found so far didn’t mean it wouldn’t be found.
His vivid imagination (which he had not gotten from anyone on his mother’s side of the family) now took over. The cop was tall, handsome in a cold way, his sideburns perhaps a bit longer than regulation. He was wearing dark sunglasses in which the person being questioned would see his own face in duplicate. His voice had a flat Midwestern twang.
We’ve found an overturned car halfway down Humbuggy Mountain which belongs to a famous writer named Paul Sheldon. There’s some blood on the seats and the dashboard, but no sign of him. Must have crawled out, may even have wandered away in a daze—
That was a laugh, considering the state of his legs, but of course they would not know what injuries he might have sustained. They would only assume that, if he was not here, he must have been strong enough to get at least a little way. The course of their deductions was not apt to lead to such an unlikely possibility as kidnapping, at least not at first, and probably never.
Do you remember seeing anyone on the road the day of the storm? Tall man, forty-two years old, sandy hair? Probably wearing blue jeans and a checked flannel shirt and a parka? Might have looked sort of bunged up? Hell, might not even have known who he was?
Annie would give the cop coffee in the kitchen; Annie would be mindful that all the doors between there and the spare bedroom should be closed. In case he should groan.
Why, no, officer—I didn’t see a soul. In fact, I came back from town just as quick as I could chase when Tony Roberts told me that bad old storm wasn’t turning south after all.
The cop, setting down the coffee cup and getting up: Well, if you should see anyone fitting the description, ma’am, I hope you’ll get in touch with us just as fast as you can. He’s quite a famous person. Been in People magazine. Some other ones, too.
I certainly will, officer!
And away he would go.
Maybe something like that had already happened and he just didn’t know about it. Maybe his imaginary cop’s actual counterpart or counterparts had visited Annie while he was doped out. God knew he spent enough time doped out. More thought convinced him it was unlikely. He wasn’t Joe Blow from Kokomo, just some transient blowing through. He had been in People (first best-seller) and Us (first divorce); there had been a question about him one Sunday in Walter Scott’s Personality Parade. There would have been re-checks, maybe by phone, probably by the cops themselves. When a celebrity—even a quasi-celebrity like a writer—disappeared, the heat came on.
You’re only guessing, man.
Maybe guessing, maybe deducing. Either way it was better than just lying here and doing nothing.
What about guardrails?
He tried to remember and couldn’t. He could only remember reaching for his cigarettes, then the amazing way the ground and the sky had switched places, then darkness. But again, deduction (or educated guesswork, if you wanted to be snotty) made it easier to believe there had been none. Smashed guardrails and snapped guywires would have alerted roadcrews.
So what exactly had happened?
He had lost control at a place where there wasn’t much