APT Pupil - By Stephen King Page 0,90

twice so he could put something in it or take something out of it"

"His fingerprints are on the shovel."

"He'd say he used it to plant a rose-bush in the back yard." Richler took out his cigarettes but the pack was empty. Weiskopf offered him a Player. Richler took one puff and began coughing. "They taste as bad as they smell," he choked.

"Like those hamburgers we had for lunch yesterday," Weiskopf said, smiling. "Those Mac-Burgers."

"Big Macs," Richler said, and laughed. "Okay. So cross-cultural pollination doesn't always work." His smile faded. "He looks so clean-cut, you know?

"Yes."

"This is no jd from Vasco with hair down to his asshole and chains on his motorcycle boots."

"No." Weiskopf stared at the traffic all around them and was very glad he wasn't driving. "He's just a boy. A white boy from a good home. And I find it difficult to believe that - "

"I thought you had them ready to handle rifles and grenades by the time they were eighteen. In Israel."

"Yes. But he was fourteen when all of this started. Why should a fourteen-year-old-boy mix himself up with such a man as Dussander? I have tried and tried to understand that and still I can't."

"I'd settle for how," Richler said, and flicked the cigarette out the window. It was giving him a headache.

"Perhaps, if it did happen, it was just luck. A coincidence. There is a word I like very much, Lieutenant Richler - serendipity. I think there is black serendipity as well as white."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Richler said gloomily. "All I know is the kid is creepier than a bug under a rock."

"What I'm saying is simple. Any other boy would have been more than happy to tell his parents, or the police. To say, "I have recognized a wanted man. He is living at this address. Yes, I am sure." And then let the authorities take over. Or do you feel I am wrong?"

"No, I wouldn't say so. The kid would be in the limelight for a few days. Most kids would dig that. Picture in the paper, an interview on the evening news, probably a school assembly award for good citizenship." Richler laughed. "Hell, the kid would probably get a shot on Real People?

"What's that?"

"Never mind," Richler said. He had to raise his voice slightly because a ten-wheeler was passing the Nova on either side. Weiskopf looked nervously from one to the other. "You don't want to know. But you're right about most kids. Most kids."

"But not this kid," Weiskopf said. "This boy, probably by dumb luck alone, penetrates Dussander's cover. Yet instead of going to his parents or the authorities . . . he goes to Dussander. Why? You say you don't care, but I think you do. I think it haunts you just as it does me."

"Not blackmail," Richler said. "That's for sure. That kid's got everything a kid could want There was even a dune-buggy in the garage, not to mention an elephant gun on the wall. And even if he wanted to squeeze Dussander just for the thrill of it, Dussander was practically unsqueezable. Except for those few stocks, he didn't have a pot to piss in."

"How sure are you that the boy doesn't know you've found the bodies?"

"I'm sure. Maybe I'll go back this afternoon and hit him with that. Right now it looks like our best shot." Richler struck the steering wheel lightly. "If all of this had come out even one day sooner, I think I would have tried for a search warrant."

"The clothes the boy was wearing that night?"

"Yeah. If we could have found soil samples on his clothes that matched the dirt in Dussander's cellar, I almost think we could break him. But the clothes he was wearing that night have probably been washed six times since them."

"What about the other dead winos? The ones your police department has been finding around the city?"

"Those belong to Dan Bozeman. I don't think there's any connection anyhow. Dussander just wasn't that strong . . . and more to the point, he had such a neat little racket already worked out. Promise them a drink and a meal, take them home on the city bus - the fucking city bus! - and waste them right in his kitchen."

Weiskopf said quietly: "It wasn't Dussander I was thinking of."

"What do you mean by th - " Richler began, and then his mouth snapped suddenly closed. There was a long, unbelieving moment of silence, broken