'Do you have some actual place to go in mind?' Dugan asked after a moment. 'Or are you just going to ramble around the town until you get tired of it?'
'I've got a place in mind,' Ev said quietly. He thought: Oh yes. Yessirree Bob. Up behind the old Garrick place, on the outskirts of Big Injun Woods, where compasses have never worked worth a tin shit in a goldmine. And I believe we'll strike on a pretty good path through the woods to it - whatever 'it' is - because equipment like the stuff Bobbi Anderson and her friend have been using leaves a backtrail as wide as a freeway. No, I don't believe there will be any trouble finding it at all.
'Okay. Give me the address of the place you're staying in Derry, and I'll pick you up at nine in my personal car. We'll get to Haven just about the time the service starts.'
'The car's my treat,' Ev said quietly. 'Not this one; it's known in Haven. I'll have a rental. And you'll want to show up at eight, because we'll be doing a bit of backroading.'
'I can get us into Haven and still keep clear of the village,' Dugan said. 'You don't have to worry about that.'
'I ain't. But I want us to skirt the whole town and come in from the Albion side, and I think I know just the way to do it.'
'Why the hell does it have to be that end of town?'
'Because it's the furthest from where they'll be, and that's where I want to come back into Haven. As far from 'em as I can get.'
'You're really scared, aren't you?'
Ev nodded.
'Why a rental car?'
'Criminy, don't you ask a lot of questions!' And Ev rolled his eyes in such a comical way that Butch Dugan grinned.
'It's my job,' he said. 'Why do you want to go in a rental? No one in Haven is going to know my personal car.' He paused, thinking. 'At least, not now that Ruth's dead.'
'Because it's my obsession,' Ev Hillman said. His face suddenly cracked into a smile of startling sweetness. 'And a person ought to pay the freight on his own obsession.'
'All right,' Butch said. 'I give up. Eight o'clock. Your route, your car, your obsession. I must be crazy. I really must be.'
'By tomorrow at this time, I think you're going to have a much better idea of what crazy is,' Ev said, and climbed into his old purple Valiant before Dugan could ask him any more questions.
Butch, in fact. had no more questions to ask. He felt glum, as if he had 'bought the Brooklyn Bridge his first day in New York City, shelling out even though he knew a thing that big probably couldn't be for sale. No one gets taken who doesn't want to get taken, he thought. He had worked Fraud and Bunco out of Augusta for three years, and that was the first thing they taught you. The old man had been queerly persuasive, but Butch Dugan knew that he had not been persuaded into this; he had jumped. Because he had loved Ruth McCausland, and in another year or so he probably would have plucked up sufficient nerve to propose to her. Because when someone you love dies, it leaves a black hole in the middle of your heart, and one way to plug such a hole is to refuse to admit that he or she was taken away by a stupid mischance. Better if you can believe - even for a little while - that someone or something you can get hold of was responsible. It makes the hole a little smaller. Even a rube knows that much.
Sighing, suddenly feeling much older than his age, Dugan trudged back to the barracks.
Ev went to the hospital and sat for most of that day's remainder with Hilly. Around three o'clock, he wrote two notes. One he put on Hilly's night table, anchored against the breeze that pawed with occasional playfulness through the open window with a little pot of flowers. The other note was longer, and when he was done with it, he folded it and put it in his pocket. Then he left the hospital.
He drove to a small building in the Derry Industrial Park. MAINE MED SUPPLIES, the sign over the door read. And below that: Specializing in Respiration Supplies and Respiration Therapy Since 1946.