Стивен Кинг - The Outsider

My conclusion is that the subject’s trip to Dubrow may have been an effort to lay a false trail and thus confuse pursuit. My speculation is that the subject may have returned to Flint City, either with the help of an accomplice or by hitchhiking. It is also possible that he stole a car. The Dubrow Police Department has no reports of vehicles reported stolen in the vicinity of the Vogel Transportation Center on the night in question, but as Security Director Camp points out, one could be taken from the long-term parking lot without being reported for a week or even longer.

Security footage of the long-term lot is available, and will be reviewed upon request, but the coverage there is far from complete. In addition, Security Director Camp informs me that those cameras are due to be replaced and often malfunction. I think that, for the time being, at least, we would be better served pursuing other lines of investigation.

Howie Gold shook hands with Samuels and Ralph Anderson. Then he gazed through the one-way glass at Terry Maitland, in his Golden Dragons jersey and lucky game hat. Terry’s back was straight, his head was up, and his hands were folded neatly on the table. There was no twitching, no fidgeting, no nervous sideways glances. He was not, Ralph admitted to himself, the picture of guilt.

At last Gold turned back to Samuels. “Speak,” he said. As if inviting a dog to do a trick.

“Not much to say at this point, Howard.” Samuels’s hand went to the back of his head. He smoothed the cowlick down. It stayed put for a moment, then sprang up again. Ralph found himself remembering an Alfalfa quote he and his brother used to giggle over when they were kids: You only meet your once-in-a-lifetime friends once in a lifetime. “Just that it’s not a mistake, and no, we haven’t lost our fucking minds.”

“What does Terry say?”

“So far, nothing,” Ralph said.

Gold swung his way, bright blue eyes glittering and slightly magnified behind the round lenses of his spectacles. “You misunderstand me, Anderson. Not tonight, I know he didn’t say anything to you tonight, he knows better. I mean at the initial interview. You might as well tell me, because he will.”

“There was no initial interview,” Ralph said. And there was no need to feel uncomfortable about that, not with the case they’d put together in just four short days, but he did, all the same. Part of it had to do with Howie Gold calling him by his last name, as if they had never bought each other drinks in the Wagon Wheel across from the county courthouse. He felt a ridiculous urge to tell Howie, Don’t look at me, look at the guy beside me. He’s the one with the pedal to the metal.

“What? Wait. Wait just a goddam minute.”

Gold stuck his hands in his front pockets and began to rock back and forth on the balls of his feet. Ralph had seen this many times, in county and district court, and braced himself. Being cross-examined on the stand by Howie Gold was never a pleasant experience. Ralph had never held it against him, though. It was all part of the due process dance.

“Are you telling me you arrested him in front of two thousand people without even giving him a chance to explain himself ?”

Ralph said, “You’re a fine defense attorney, but God himself couldn’t get Maitland out from under this one. And by the way, there might have been twelve hundred people there, fifteen hundred at most. Estelle Barga Field won’t hold two thousand. The bleachers would collapse.”

Gold ignored this feeble stab at lightening the atmosphere. He was staring at Ralph as though he were some new kind of bug. “But you arrested him in a public place, at what one could argue was the moment of his apotheosis—”

“His apothie- whatsis ?” Samuels asked, smiling.

Gold ignored this, as well. He was still studying Ralph. “You did it even though you could have put a quiet police presence around the field and then arrested him at his home, after the game was over. You did it in front of his wife and daughters, which had to be deliberate. What possessed you? What on God’s green earth possessed you?”

Ralph felt his face heating up again. “You really want to know, counselor?”

“Ralph,” Samuels said warningly. He put a restraining hand on Ralph’s arm.

Ralph shook it off. “I wasn’t the one who arrested him. I had a couple of officers do that, because I was afraid I might put my hands around his throat and choke him blue. Which would give a smart lawyer like you a little too much to work with.” He stepped forward, getting into Gold’s space to make him stop the back and forth rocking. “He grabbed Frank Peterson and took him to Figgis Park. There he raped the kid with a tree branch, and there he killed him. Do you want to know how he killed him?”

“Ralph, that’s privileged!” Samuels squawked.

Ralph paid no attention. “Preliminary forensics suggests he tore the kid’s throat open with his teeth. He may even have swallowed some of the flesh, okay? All that got him so excited that he dropped trou and spilled his spunk all over the back of the kid’s thighs. Nastiest, vilest, most unspeakable murder any of us will ever see, God willing. He must have been building up to it for a long time. None of us who were at the scene will ever get it out of our minds. And Terry Maitland did it. Coach T did it, and not so long ago he had his hands on my son’s hands, showing him how to bunt. He just told me all about it, like it was supposed to exonerate him, or something.”

Gold was no longer staring at him like he was a bug. Now there was a kind of wonder on his face, as if he had stumbled upon an artifact left behind by some unknowable extraterrestrial race. Ralph didn’t care. He was beyond caring.

“You’ve got a boy yourself—Tommy, right? Isn’t that why you started coaching Pop Warner with Terry, because Tommy was playing? He had his hands on your son, too. And now you’re going to defend him?”

Samuels said, “For Christ’s sake, shut your trap.”

Gold had stopped rocking, but he gave no ground, and he was still staring at Ralph with that expression of almost anthropological wonder. “Didn’t even interview him,” he breathed. “Didn’t. Even. I have never… I have never …”

“Oh, come on,” Samuels said with forced jollity. “You’ve seen everything, Howie. Most of it twice.”

“I want to conference with him now,” Gold said briskly, “so turn off your audio shit and close the curtain.”

“Fine,” Samuels said. “You can have fifteen minutes, then we’ll join you. See if the coach has anything to say.”

Gold said, “I will have an hour, Mr. Samuels.”

“Half an hour. Then we’ll either take his confession—which could conceivably make a difference between life in McAlester and the needle—or he’s going into a cell until his arraignment on Monday. Up to you. But if you think we did this lightly, you were never more wrong in your life.”

Gold went to the door. Ralph swiped his card across the lock, listened to the clunk as the double bolts let go, then returned to the window to watch the attorney enter. Samuels tensed when Maitland rose from his seat and started toward Gold with his arms out, but the expression on Maitland’s face was one of relief, not aggression. He embraced Gold, who dropped his boxy briefcase and hugged him back.

“Bro hug,” Samuels said. “Ain’t that just the sweetest.”

Gold turned as if he had heard, and pointed to the camera with its little red light. “Turn it off,” came his voice through the overhead speaker. “Sound as well. Then draw the curtain.”