Sometime shortly before midnight, he fell into a troubled doze which quickly deepened into the dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion.
12
He slept later than he had in years, awakening on Tuesday morning at a quarter past ten. He felt refreshed and whole for the first time in a long while. The sleep had done him a power of good, too: during it he had thought of how he could maybe get back into Haven and out again. Maybe. For David's sake, and Hilly's, that was a risk he would take.
He thought he could get in and out of Haven on the day of Ruth McCausland's funeral.
13
Butch 'Monster' Dugan was the biggest man Ev had ever seen. Ev believed that Justin Hurd's father Henry might have been within a shout - Henry had stood six-six, weighed three hundred and eighty pounds, and had shoulders so broad he had to go through most doors sideways - but Ev thought this fellow was a tad bigger. Twenty or thirty pounds lighter, maybe, but that was all.
When Ev shook his hand, he saw that word on him had been getting around. lt was in Dugan's face.
'Sit down, Mr Hillman,' Dugan said, and seated himself in a swivel chair that looked as if it might have been rammed out of a huge oak. 'What can I do for you?'
He expects me to start raving, Ev thought calmly, just the way we always expected Frank Garrick to start when he caught up to one of us on the street. And I guess I ain't going to disappoint him. But if you step careful, Ev, you may still get your way. You know now where you want to go, anyway.
'Well, maybe you could do something, at that,' Ev said. At least he hadn't been drinking; trying to talk to that reporter after those beers had been a bad mistake. 'Paper says you'll be going to Ruth McCausland's funeral tomorrow.'
Dugan nodded. 'I'm going. Ruth was a personal friend.'
'And there are others from Derry barracks that'll be going? Paper said her husband was a trooper, and she was in the line of policework herself - oh bein a town constable's no great shakes, I know, but you get what I mean. There will be others, won't there?'
Dugan was frowning now, and he had a lot of face to frown with.
'Mr Hillman, if you have a point to make, I'm not getting it.' And I'm a busy man this morning, in case you didn't know it, his face added. I've got two cops missing, it's starting to look more and more like they ran into some guys jacking deer and the jackers panicked and shot them; I'm in the hot-seat on that one, and on top of it all my old friend Ruth McCausland has died, and I don't have either the time or the patience for bullshit.
'I know you're not. But you will. Did she have other friends who'll be going?'
'Yes. Half a dozen or more. I'm going by myself, starting a little early, so I can talk to some people about a related case.'
Ev nodded. 'I know about the related case,' he said, 'and I guess you know about me. Or think you do.'
'Mr Hillman -'
'I have talked foolishly, and to the wrong people, and at the wrong times,' Ev said in that same calm voice. 'Under other circumstances I would known better, but I've been upset. One of my grandsons is missing. The other is in a sort of coma.'
'Yes. I know.'
'I've been so confused I haven't really known if I was comin' or goin'. So I blabbed to some of the nurses, and then I went up to Bangor and talked to a reporter. Bright. I kind of got the idea you'd heard most of the things I had to say to him.'
'I understand you believe there was some sort of ... of conspiracy in the matter of David Brown's disappearance - '
Ev had to struggle to keep from laughing. The word was both bizarre and apt. He never would have thought of it himself. Oh, there was a conspiracy going on, all right. One hell of a conspiracy.
'Yessir. I believe there was a conspiracy, and I think you've got three cases that are a lot more related than you understand - the disappearance of my grandson, the disappearance of those two troopers, and the death of Ruth McCausland - my friend as well as yours.'