Bright, who was usually an extremely accurate interpreter of human behavior, had been wrong this time; Hillman was as sane as he was. Now he was mildly disturbed, not because Hillman had turned out to be crazy after all, but because he had turned out to be really crazy. And yet ... there was something oddly persuasive in the old man's calm, reasonable voice and his steady gaze.
'You speak as if everyone in Haven was in on something,' Dugan said, land I think that's impossible. I want you to know that.'
'Yes, any normal person would say that. That's how they've been able to get away with it this long. Fifty years ago, people felt like the atomic, bomb was impossible, and they would have laughed at the idea of TV, let alone a video recorder. Not much changes, Trooper Dugan. Most people see as far as the horizon, and that's all. If someone says there's something over it, people don't listen.'
Ev stood up and extended his hand over Dugan's desk, as if he had every right in the world to expect Dugan to shake it. Which surprised Butch into doing just that.
'Well, I knew when I looked at you that you thought I was nuts,' Ev said with a rueful little smile, 'and I guess I have said enough to double the idea. But I've found out what I needed to know, and said what I needed to say. Do an old man a favor, and peek at the sky once in a while. If you see a purple star-shell . . .'
'The woods are dry this summer,' Dugan said, and even as the words came out of his mouth they seemed helpless and oddly unimportant; almost frivolous. And he realized he was being drawn helplessly toward belief again.
Dugan cleared his throat and pushed on.
'If you've really got a flare-gun, using it could start a hell of a forest fire. If you don't have a permit to use such a thing - and I know goddam well you don't - it could get you thrown into jail.'
Ev's grin widened a little, but there was still no humor in it. 'If you see the star-shell,' he said, 'I got a feeling that being thrown into the pokey up to Bangor is gonna be the least of my worries. Good day to you, Trooper Dugan. '
Ev stepped out and closed the door neatly behind him. Dugan stood for a moment, as perplexed and uneasy as he had ever been in his life. Let him go, he thought, and then got moving.
Something had been troubling Butch Dugan. The disappearance of the two troopers, both of whom he had known and liked, had temporarily driven it out of his mind. Hillman's visit had brought it back, and that was what sent him after the old man.
It was the memory of his last conversation with Ruth. He had been worried about her even before then; her handling of the David Brown search hadn't been like the Ruth McCausland he knew at all. For the only time he could remember, she had been unprofessional.
Then, the night before she died, he had called her about the investigation, to get information and to give it; to kibbitz, in short. He knew neither of them had anything, but sometimes you could spin something out of plain speculation, like straw into gold. In the course of that conversation, the subject of the boy's grandfather had come up. By then Butch had spoken to David Bright of the News -had had a beer with him, in fact - and he passed on to Ruth Ev's idea that the whole town had gone crazy in some strange way.
Ruth hadn't laughed at the story, or clucked over the failure of Ev Hillman's mind, as he had expected she would do. He wasn't sure just what she had said, because just about then the connection had begun to get bad - not that there was anything very unusual in that; most of the lines going into small towns like Haven were still on poles, and the connections regularly went to hell - all it took was a high wind to make you feel like you and the other person were holding tomato soup cans connected by a length of waxed string.
Better tell him to stay away, Ruth had said - he was sure of that much. And then, just before he lost her altogether, it seemed to him that she had said something about