Стивен Кинг - The Outsider

“Hey, before we get started, I’ve got a question,” Ralph said, striving for cheeriness. “Just one. Okay, counselor? It’s nothing we won’t find out, anyway.”

Howie seemed grateful enough to turn his attention away from Samuels. “Let’s hear it.”

“What’s your blood type, Terry? Do you know?”

Terry looked at Howie, who shrugged, then back at Ralph. “I ought to. I give six times a year at the Red Cross, because it’s pretty rare.”

“AB positive?”

Terry blinked. “How did you know that?” And then, realizing what the answer must be: “But not that rare. If you want really rare, you want AB negative. One per cent of the population. The Red Cross has people with that type on speed-dial, believe me.”

“When it comes to rare, I always think of fingerprints,” Samuels remarked, as if just passing the time of day. “I suppose because they come up so often in court.”

“Where they rarely figure in the jury’s decision,” Howie said.

Samuels ignored him. “No two sets exactly alike. There are even minute variations in the prints of identical twins. You don’t happen to have an identical twin, do you, Terry?”

“You’re not saying you have mine at the scene where the Peterson boy was killed, are you?” Terry’s expression was pure incredulity. Ralph had to give it to him; he was a hell of an actor, and apparently meant to play the string out right to the end.

“We’ve got so many fingerprints I can barely count them,” Ralph said. “They’re all over the white van you used to abduct the Peterson boy. They’re on the boy’s bike, which we found in the back of the van. They’re on the toolbox that was in the van. They’re all over the Subaru you switched to behind Shorty’s Pub.” He paused. “And they’re on the branch that was used to sodomize the Peterson boy, an attack so vicious that the internal injuries alone might well have killed him.”

“No need for fingerprint powder or UV light on those,” Samuels said. “Those prints are in the boy’s blood.”

This was where most perps—like ninety-five per cent—would break down, lawyer or no lawyer. Not this one. Ralph saw shock and amazement on the man’s face, but no guilt.

Howie rallied. “You have prints. Fine. It wouldn’t be the first time fingerprints were planted.”

“A few, maybe,” Ralph said. “But seventy? Eighty? And in blood, on the weapon itself?”

“We also have a chain of witnesses,” Samuels said. He began ticking them off on his fingers. “You were seen accosting Peterson in the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries. You were seen putting his bicycle in the back of the van you used. He was seen getting into the van with you. You were seen exiting the woods where the murder took place, covered with blood. I could go on, but my mother always told me that I should save some for later.”

“Eyewitnesses are rarely reliable,” Howie said. “The fingerprints are iffy, but eyewitnesses…” He shook his head.

Ralph jumped in. “I’d agree, at least in most cases. Not in this one. I interviewed someone recently who said Flint City is really just a small town. I don’t know if I buy that completely, but the West Side is pretty tightly knit, and Mr. Maitland here is widely known. Terry, the woman who ID’d you at Gerald’s is a neighbor, and the girl who saw you coming out of the woods in Figgis Park knows you very well, not just because she lives a little way down from you, on Barnum Street, but because you once brought back her lost dog.”

“June Morris?” Terry was looking at Ralph with frank disbelief. “Junie?”

“There are others,” Samuels said. “Many.”

“Willow?” Terry sounded out of breath, as if he’d been punched. “Her, too?”

“Many,” Samuels repeated.

“Every one of them picked you out of six-packs,” Ralph said. “No hesitation.”

“And was the photo of my client perhaps wearing a Golden Dragons cap and a shirt with a big C on it?” Howie asked. “Was that one perhaps tapped by the finger of the questioning officer?”

“You know better,” Ralph said. “At least I hope you do.”

Terry said, “This is a nightmare.”

Samuels smiled sympathetically. “I understand that. And all you have to do to end it is to tell us why you did it.”

As if there might be a reason on God’s green earth that any sane person could understand , Ralph thought.

“It might make a difference.” Samuels was almost wheedling now. “But you should do it before the DNA comes back. We’ve got plenty, and when it matches those cheek swabs…” He shrugged.

“Tell us,” Ralph said. “I don’t know if it was temporary insanity, or something you did in a fugue state, or a sexual compulsion, or just what, but tell us.” He heard his voice rising, thought about clamping down on it, then thought what the hell. “Be a man and tell us!”

Speaking more to himself than to the men on the other side of the table, Terry said, “I don’t know how any of this can be. I wasn’t even in town on Tuesday.”

“Where were you, then?” Samuels asked. “Go ahead, lay it on us. I love a good story. Read my way through most of Agatha Christie in high school.”

Terry turned to look up at Gold, who nodded. But Ralph thought Howie looked worried now. The stuff about the blood type and the fingerprints had rocked him hard, the eyewitnesses even harder. He’d been rocked most of all, perhaps, by little Junie Morris, whose lost dog had been returned by good old reliable Coach T.

“I was in Cap City. Left at ten on Tuesday morning, got back late Wednesday night. Well, nine thirty or so, late for me.”

“I don’t suppose you had anyone with you,” Samuels said. “Just off on your own and kind of gathering your thoughts, right? Getting ready for the big game?”

“I—”

“Did you take your car or the white van? By the way, where did you have that van stashed? And how did you happen to steal one with New York plates in the first place? I’ve got a theory about that, but I’d love to have you confirm or deny—”

“Do you want to hear this or not?” Terry asked. He had, incredibly, begun to smile again. “Maybe you’re afraid to hear it. And maybe you should be afraid. You’re in shit up to your waist, Mr. Samuels, and it’s getting deeper.”

“Is that so? Then why am I the one who can walk out of here and go home when this interview is over?”

“Cool it,” Ralph said quietly.

Samuels turned to him, cowlick springing back and forth. Ralph saw nothing comical about it now. “Don’t tell me to cool it, Detective. We’re sitting here with a man who raped a kid with a tree branch and then tore out his throat like… like a fucking cannibal!”

Gold looked directly up at the camera in the corner, now speaking for some future judge and jury. “Stop acting like an angry child, Mr. District Attorney, or I’ll terminate this interview right here.”

“I wasn’t alone,” Terry said, “and I don’t know anything about a white van. I went with Everett Roundhill, Billy Quade, and Debbie Grant. The entire Flint High School English Department, in other words. My Expedition was in the shop because the air conditioner died, so we took Ev’s car. He’s the department chairman, and he’s got a BMW. Plenty of room. We left from the high school at ten.”

Samuels looked temporarily too perplexed by this to ask the obvious question, so Ralph did it. “What was in Cap City that would take four English teachers there in the middle of summer vacation?”

“Harlan Coben,” Terry said.

“Who’s Harlan Coben?” Bill Samuels asked. His interest in mystery stories had apparently peaked with Agatha Christie.