needed to be bigger for the slide-projector device to work (and too much enlarging would give their clock-tower illusion an odd, grainy look), but because she needed a slightly bigger image to work with.
She's going to turn a negative, Hazel said in his mind, then airbrush out the hands on the clock-face. Bobby Tremain is going to put them back in with an X-acto knife, so they say 3:05. He's got a steady hand and a little talent. Right now a steady hand seems more important.
I thought if you made a negative from a positive it came out blurry, Dick Allison said. Specially if the positive's color.
She's improved her developing equipment, Hazel said. She didn't need to add that seventeen-year-old Christina Lindley now had what was probably the most advanced darkroom on earth.
So how long?
Midnight, she thinks, Hazel said.
Christ on a pony! Dick shouted, loud enough to make the people in Henry's field wince.
We'll need about thirty D-cells, Bobbi Anderson's voice cut in calmly. Be a love and see to that, Dick. And we understand about the police. Play Hee-Haw for them, you understand?
He paused. Yes, he said. Buck and Roy, Junior Sample.
Exactly, And hold them. It's their radio I'm really worried about, not them - they'll only send one unit, two at most, to start with. But if they see ... if they radio it in ...
There was a murmur of assent like the sound of the ocean in a conch shell.
Is there a way you can damp out their transmissions from town? Bobbi asked.
Andy Baker suddenly cut in, gleeful: I got a better idea. Get Buck Peters to shuck his fat ass over to the gas station right now.
Yes! Bobbi overrode him, her thought shrill with excitement. Good! Great! And when they leave town, someone . . . Beach, I think ...
Beach was honored to be chosen.
6
Bent Rhodes and Jingles Gabbons of the Maine state police arrived in Haven at five-fifteen. They came expecting to find the smoky, uninteresting aftermath of a furnace explosion - one old pumper-truck idling at the curb, twenty or thirty onlookers idling on the sidewalk. Instead, they found the entire Haven town-hall clock tower blown off like a Roman candle. Bricks littered the street, windows were blown out, there were dismembered dolls everywhere ... and too damned many people going about their business.
Dick Allison greeted them with weird cordiality, as if this was a Republican bean supper instead of what now looked like a disaster of real magnitude.
'Christ almighty, man, what happened here?' Bent asked him.
'Well, I guess maybe it was a little worse than I made out over the phone,'
Dick said, surveying the brick-littered street and then giving the two troopers
an incongruous ain't-I-a-bad-boy? smile. 'Guess I didn't think anyone would
believe it unless they saw it.'
Jingles muttered, 'I'm seeing it and I don't believe it.' They had both dismissed Dick Allison as a small-town bumbler, probably crazy in the bargain. That was all right. He stood behind them, watching them stare at the wreckage. The smile faded gradually from his face and his expression became cold.
Rhodes spotted the human arm amid all the tiny make-believe limbs. When he turned back to Dick, his face was whiter than it had been, and he looked considerably younger.
'Where's Mrs McCausland?' he asked. His voice rose uncontrollably and broke on the last syllable.
'Well, you know, I think that might be part of our problem,' Dick began. 'You see...'
7
Dick did hold them in town as long as he could without being conspicuous about it. lt was a quarter to eight before they left, and by then twilight was drawing down. Also, Dick knew, if they didn't leave soon, they would start wondering how come none of the backup units they had requested were arriving.
They had both talked on their cruiser's radio to Derry Base, and both hung the mike up again looking puzzled and distracted. The responses they were getting from the other end were right; it was the voice that seemed a little off. But neither of them could be bothered with such a minor matter, at least not for the time being. There were too many other things to cope with. The magnitude of the accident, for one thing. The fact that they had known the victim, for another. Trying to lay the groundwork of a potentially big case without committing any of the procedural fuckups that would muddy the waters later on, for a third.
Also, they were beginning to feel the effects of being in