The plant - By Stephen King Page 0,10

look almost real, don't they?"

Iverson stopped. "Do you have any reason to believe they aren't?" he asked.

"Well, when I went into that flower-shop this morning to check on that guy Detweiller, this dude getting the informal heart-surgery was sitting off to one side behind the counter, playing solitaire and watching Ryan's Hope on TV."

"Are you sure of that?" Iverson demanded.

The plainclothesman tapped the first of the "Sacrifice Photos," where the face of the "victim" was clearly shown. "No mistake," he said. "This guy."

"Well why in God's name didn't you say he was there?" Iverson demanded, no doubt with visions of Detweiller bringing charges of false and malicious detainment beginning to dance dolefully in his head.

"Because no one asked me about this guy," the detective said, reasonably enough. "I was supposed to verify Detweiller, which I did. If somebody had asked me to verify this guy, I would have. No one did. See you." And he walked away, leaving Iverson holding the bag. So that was that.

I looked at Tyndale.

Tyndale looked back at me.

After a moment or two he softened. "For whatever it's worth, Mr. Kenton, that particular photo did look real... real as hell. But so do the effects in some of these horror movies. There's one guy-Tom Savini-and the effects he does - "

"So they let him go." A dread was surfacing inside my head like one of those little Russian submarines the Swedes are never quite able to trap.

"For whatever else it's worth, your ass is covered with three sets of skivvies and four sets of pants, the middle two sets iron-clad," Tyndale said, and then added, with a sobriety that was positively Alexander Haigian: "I'm speaking legally-wise, you understand. You acted in good faith, as a citizen. If the guy could prove malice, that would be one thing... but hell, you didn't even know him."

The submarine came up a little more. Because I felt right then like I was starting to know him, Ruth, and my feelings about Carlos Detweiller were not then and are not now anything I would describe as jolly or benign.

"Besides, it's never the informant they want to sue for false arrest anyway-it's the cop who came and read them their rights and then took them downtown in a car with no doorhandles in the back doors."

Informant. That was the source of the dread. The submarine was all the way up, floating on the surface like a dead fish in the moonlight. Informant. I didn't know Carlos Detweiller from a psychic begonia... but he knew something about me. Not that I was the head of the Brown University literary society, or that I'm prematurely balding, or that I'm engaged to marry a pretty miss from Pasadena named Ruth Tanaka... not any of those things (and please God, not my home address, never my home address), but he knows I'm the editor who had him taken into custody for a murder he did not commit.

"Do you know," I asked him, "if Iverson or anyone else at the Central Falls Police Department mentioned me to him by name?" Tyndale lit a cigarette. "No," he said, "but I'm pretty sure no one there did."

"Why not?"

"It would have been unprofessional. When you're building a case-even one that dies as fast as this one did-every name the perp doesn't know or even might not know becomes a poker chip."

Any relief I might have felt was short-lived.

"But the guy would have to be pretty dumb not to know. Unless, that is, he mailed the photos to every publisher in New York. Think he might have done that?"

"No," I said dismally. "No other publisher in New York would have responded to his query letter in the first place."

"I see."

Tyndale was up, clearing away the styrofoam coffee cups, making those end-of-the-party gestures that meant he was hoping I'd put an egg in my shoe and beat it.

"One more question and I'll get out of your hair," I said. "The other photos were obvious fakes. Pififul. How come they look so bad and these other fakes look so damn good?"

"Maybe Detweiller himself set up the 'Sakred Seance' photos and someone else-Central Fall's answer to Tom Savini, say-made up the 'sakrifice victim. ' Or maybe Detweiller did them all and purposely made the other ones look bad so you'd take these more seriously."

"Why would he do that?"

"So you'd stub your toe just the way you have, maybe. Maybe that's how he gets off."

"But he got arrested in the process!"

He looked at me, almost