I think he told me something about -
That was when the phone rang, shattering the fragile glass of Lisey's recollection. And as she picked it up, a crazy certainty came to her: it would be Dooley. Hello, Missus, the Black Prince of the Incunks would say. I'm callin from inside the belly of the beast. How y'all doin today?
"Hello?" she said. She knew she was gripping the phone too tightly, but was helpless to do anything about it.
"Danny Boeckman here, Mrs. Landon," the voice at the other end said, and the Mrs. was too close for comfort, but here came out heah, a comfortable Yankee pronunciation, and Deputy Boeckman sounded uncharacteristically excited, almost bubbly, and therefore boyish. "Guess what?"
"Can't guess," Lisey said, but another crazy idea came to her: he was going to say they drew straws down at the Sheriff's Office to see who was going to call up and ask her out on a date and he drew the short one. Except why would he sound excited about that?
"We found the dome-light cover!"
Lisey had no idea what he was talking about. "I beg pardon?"
Chapter 26
"Doolin - the guy you knew as Zack McCool and then as Jim Dooley - stole that PT
Cruiser and used it while he was stalking you, Mrs. Landon. We were positive of that. And he was keeping it stashed out in that old gravel pit between runs, we were positive of that, too. We just couldn't prove it, because - "
"He wiped off all his fingerprints."
"Ayuh, and got em all. But every now n then me n Plug went out there - "
"Plug?"
"I'm sorry, Joe. Deputy Alston?"
Plug, she thought. Aware for the first time, in a clear-seeing way, that these were real men with real lives. With nicknames. Plug, she thought. Deputy Joe Alston, also known as Plug.
"Mrs. Landon? Are you there?"
"Yes, Dan. May I call you Dan?"
"Sure, you bet. Anyway, every now n then we went sniffin round out there to see if we couldn't find some prizes, because there was plenty of sign that he'd spent time in that pit
- candy-wrappers, a couple of RC bottles, things like that."
"RC," she said softly, and thought: Bool, Dan. Bool, Plug. Bool, The End.
"Right, that was the brand he seemed to favor, but not a single print on a single cast-off bottle matched up to one of his. The only match we got was to a fella who stole a car back in the late seventies and now clerks at the Quick-E-Mart over in Oxford. The other prints we got off the bottles, we surmise those were clerk-prints, too. But yest'y noon, Mrs. Landon - "
"Lisey."
There was a pause while he considered this. Then he went on. "Yest'y noon, Lisey, on a little track leadin out of that pit, I found the grand prize - the cover to that dome-light. He'd pulled it off and threw it into the puckies." Boeckman's voice rose, became triumphant - became not the voice of a Deputy Sheriff but perfectly human. "And that was the one thing he forgot to handle with gloves on or wipe off later! A big thumbprint on one side, a big fat old index-finger on the other! Where he gripped it. We got the results back by fax this morning."
"John Doolin?"
"Ayuh. Nine points of comparison. Nine! " There was a pause, and when he spoke again, some of the triumph had gone out of his voice. "Now if we could only find the son-of-a-buck."
"I'm sure he'll turn up in time," she said, and cast a longing glance at her tuna sandwich. She'd lost her train of thought about Amanda, but had regained her appetite. To Lisey that seemed like a fair swap, especially on such a boogery-hot day. "Even if he doesn't, he's stopped harassing me."
"He's left Castle County, I'd stake my reputation on that." A note of unmistakable pride crept into Deputy Sheriff Dan Boeckman's voice. "Got a little too hot for him here, I guess, so he ditched his ride and left. Plug feels the same. Jim Dooley and Elvis have both left the building."
"Plug, is that for chewing tobacco?"
"No, ma'am, not at all. In high school, he and I played the line on the Castle Hills Knights team that won the Class A State Championship. Bangor Rams was favored by three touchdowns, but we shocked em. Only team from our part of the state to win a gold football since the nineteen-fifties. And Joey, no one could stop him, not that whole season. Even with four guys hangin off him, he kept pluggin. So we called him Plug, and I still do."
"If I called him that, do you think he'd swat me?"
Dan Boeckman laughed, delighted. "No! He'd be tickled!"
"Okay, then. I'm Lisey, you're Dan, and he's Plug."
"That's square-john with me."
"And thanks for the call. That was terrific police work."
"Thanks for saying so, ma'am. Lisey." She could hear the glow in his voice, and that made her feel good. "You be in touch, now, if there's anything else we can do. Or if you hear from that lowlife again."