Стивен Кинг - The Outsider

Detective Anderson: You’re sure of that.

Rainwater: Hand to God. The lights in that parking lot are bright as day. They keep it that way to discourage muggings and fistfights and drug deals. Because their clientele is such a bunch of gentlemen, you know. Also, I coach Prairie League basketball down at the YMCA. Those teams are coed, but they’re mostly boys. Maitland used to come down—not every Saturday, but a lot of ’em—and sit on the bleachers with the parents and watch the kids play. He told me he was scouting talent for City League baseball, said you could tell a kid with natural defensive talent by watching ’em play hoops, and like a fool I believed him. He was probably sitting there and trying to decide which one he’d like to cornhole. Judging them the way men judge women in a bar. Fucking pervo deviant asshole. Scouting talent, my wide Indian ass!

Detective Anderson: When he came to your cab, did you tell him you recognized him?

Rainwater: Oh yeah. Discretion may be somebody’s middle name, but it ain’t mine. I say, “Hey there, Terry, does your wife know where you are tonight?” And he says, “I had a spot of business to do.” And I say, “Would your spot of business have involved a lap dance?” And he says, “You should call in and tell your dispatcher I’m all set.” So I say, “I’ll do that. Are we headed home, Coach T?” And he says, “Not at all, ma’am. Drive me to Dubrow. The train station.” I say, “That’s gonna be a forty-dollar fare.” And he says, “Make it in time for me to catch the train to Dallas, and I’ll tip you twenty.” So I say, “Jump in and hold onto your jock, Coach, here we go.”

Detective Anderson: So you drove him to the Amtrak station in Dubrow?

Rainwater: I did indeed. Got him there in plenty of time to catch the night train to Dallas–Fort Worth.

Detective Anderson: Did you make conversation with him on the way? I ask because you seem like the conversational type.

Rainwater: Oh, I am! My tongue runs like a supermarket conveyor belt on payday. Just ask anybody. I started by asking him about the City League Tourney, were they gonna beat the Bears, and he said, “I expect good things.” Like getting an answer from a Magic 8 Ball, right? I bet he was thinking about what he’d done, and making a quick getaway. Stuff like that must put a hole in your small talk. My question for you, Detective, is why the hell did he come back to FC? Why didn’t he run all the way across Texas and down to Old Meh-hee-co?

Detective Anderson: What else did he say?

Rainwater: Not much. He said he was going to try and catch a nap. He closed his eyes, but I think he was faking. I think he might have been peeking at me, like maybe he was thinking of trying something. I wish he had. And I wish I’d known then what I know now, about what he done. I would have pulled him out of my cab and tore off his plumbing. I ain’t lying.

Detective Anderson: And when you got to the Amtrak station?

Rainwater: I pulled up to the drop-off and he tossed three twenties on the front seat. I started to tell him to say hello to his wife, but he was already gone. Did he also go into Gentlemen to change his clothes in the men’s room? Because there was blood on them?

Detective Anderson: I’m going to put six pictures of six different men down in front of you, Ms. Rainwater. They all look similar, so take your t—

Rainwater: Don’t bother. That’s him right there. That’s Maitland. Go get him, and I hope he resists arrest. Save the taxpayers a piece of change.

When Marcy Maitland was in junior high (that was what it was still called when she went there), she sometimes had a nightmare that she turned up in home room naked, and everyone laughed. Stupid Marcy Gibson forgot to get dressed this morning! Look, you can see everything! By the time she got to high school, this anxiety dream had been replaced by a slightly more sophisticated one where she arrived in class clothed but realizing she was about to take the biggest test of her life and had forgotten to study.

When she turned off Barnum Street and onto Barnum Court, the horror and the helplessness of those dreams returned, and this time there would be no sweet relief and muttered Thank God when she woke up. In her driveway was a cop car that could have been the twin of the one which had conveyed Terry to the police station. Parked behind it was a windowless truck with STATE POLICE MOBILE CRIME UNIT printed on the side in big blue letters. Bookending the driveway was a pair of black OHP cruisers, with their lightbars strobing in the day’s growing gloom. Four large troopers, their County Mounty hats making them look at least seven feet tall, stood on the sidewalk, their legs spread ( as if their balls are too big to keep them together , she thought). These things were bad enough, but not the worst. The worst was her neighbors, standing out on their lawns and watching. Did they know why this police presence had suddenly materialized in front of the neat Maitland ranchhouse? She guessed that most already did—the curse of cell phones—and they would tell the rest.

One of the troopers stepped into the street, holding up a hand. She stopped and powered down her window.

“Are you Marcia Maitland, ma’am?”

“Yes. I can’t get into my garage with those vehicles in my driveway.”

“Park at the curb there,” he said, pointing behind one of the cruisers.

Marcy felt an urge to lean through the open window, get right up in his face, and scream, MY driveway! MY garage! Get your stuff out of my way!

Instead, she pulled over and got out. She needed to pee, and badly. Probably had needed to since the cop had handcuffed Terry, and she just hadn’t realized until now.

One of the other cops was talking into his shoulder mic, and from around the corner of the house, walkie-talkie in one hand, came the crowning touch of this evening’s malignant surrealism: a hugely pregnant woman in a sleeveless flower-print dress. She cut across the Maitland lawn in that peculiar duck-footed walk—almost a waddle—that all women seem to have when they arrive at the far end of their last trimester. She did not smile as she approached Marcy. A laminated ID hung from her neck. Pinned to her dress, riding the slope of one enormous breast and as out of place as a dog biscuit on a communion plate, was a Flint City police badge.

“Mrs. Maitland? I’m Detective Betsy Riggins.”

She held out her hand. Marcy did not shake it. And although Howie had already told her, she said, “What do you want?”

Riggins looked over Marcy’s shoulder. One of the state cops was standing there. He was apparently the bull goose of the quartet, because he had stripes on his shirtsleeve. He was holding out a sheet of paper. “Mrs. Maitland, I’m Lieutenant Yunel Sablo. We have a warrant to search these premises and take out any items belonging to your husband, Terence John Maitland.”

She snatched the paper. SEARCH WARRANT was printed at the top in gothic type. There followed a bunch of legalistic blah-blah, and it was signed at the bottom by a name she at first misread as Judge Crater. Didn’t he disappear a long time ago? she thought, then blinked water from her eyes—maybe sweat, maybe tears—and saw the name was Carter, not Crater. The warrant bore today’s date and had apparently been signed less than six hours ago.

She turned it over and frowned. “There’s nothing listed here. Does that mean you can even take his underwear, if you want to?”

Betsy Riggins, who knew they would take any underwear they happened to find in the Maitlands’ dirty clothes hamper, said, “It’s at our discretion, Mrs. Maitland.”

“Your discretion? Your discretion ? What is this, Nazi Germany?”