The side yard - which she supposed she'd go to her grave thinking of as the dooryard - was already too dark for comfort, although Venus, the wishing-star, had yet to make her appearance in the sky. The shadows where the barn joined the toolshed were especially dark, and the BMW was parked less than twenty feet from there. Of course Dooley wasn't hiding in that well of shadows, and if he was on the place, he might be anywhere: leaning against the changing-hut by the pool, peering around the corner of the house where the kitchen was, crouched behind the cellar bulkhead...
Lisey whirled on her heels at that idea, but there was still enough light to see there was nothing on either side of the bulkhead. And the bulkhead doors themselves were locked, so she didn't have to worry about Dooley in the cellar. Unless, of course, he'd broken into the house somehow and hidden down there before she got home.
Stop it Lisey you're creeping yourself ou -
She paused with her fingers curled around the handle of the BMW's rear door. She stood that way for maybe five seconds, then let her cigarette drop from her free hand and stamped out the butt. There was someone standing in the deep angle where the barn and the toolshed met. Standing there very tall and still.
Lisey opened the Beemer's rear passenger door and snatched out the silver spade. The light inside the car stayed on when she closed the door again. She'd forgotten that, how the inside lights of cars now stayed on for a little while, the courtesy light they called it, but she found nothing courteous about the idea that Dooley could see her and she could no longer see him thanks to the way that smucking light was screwing up her vision. She stepped away from the car, holding the shaft of the spade diagonally across her br**sts. The light inside the BMW finally went out. For a moment that made things worse. She could see only a world of indistinct purple shapes under the fading lavender sky, and she fully expected him to leap out at her, calling her Missus and asking why she hadn't listen as his hands closed around her throat and her breath rattled to an end.
It didn't happen and in another three seconds or so, her eyes re-adapted to the low light. Now she could see him again, tall and straight, grave and still, standing there in the angle of the big building and the small one. With something at his feet. Some kind of square package. It could have been a suitcase.
Good God, he doesn't think he can get all of Scott's papers in there, does he? she thought, and took another cautious step to her left, holding the silver spade so tightly that her fists throbbed. "Zack, is that you?" Another step. Two. Three.
She heard a car coming and understood that its headlights were going to sweep the yard, revealing him fully. When that happened, he would leap at her. She swung the silver spade back over her shoulder just as she had in August of 1988, finishing her windup as the approaching car breasted Sugar Top Hill, flooding her yard with momentary light and revealing the power-mower she herself had left in the angle of the barn and the shed. The shadow of its handle leaped upward on the side of the barn, then faded as the car's headlights faded. Once more the lawnmower could have been a man with a suitcase at his feet, she supposed, although once you'd seen the truth... In a horror movie, she thought, this is where the monster would leap out of the darkness and grab me. Just as I'm starting to relax.
Nothing leaped out to grab her, but Lisey didn't think it would hurt to take the silver spade inside with her, if only for good luck. Carrying it in one hand now, down by the collar where the shaft met the silver scoop, Lisey went to call Norris Ridgewick, the Castle County Sheriff.
VII. Lisey and The Law
(Obsession and The Exhausted Mind)
1
The woman who took Lisey's call identified herself as Communications Officer Soames and said she couldn't put Lisey through to Sheriff Ridgewick, because Sheriff Ridgewick had been married the week before. He and his new bride were on the island of Maui, and would be for the next ten days.
"Who can I talk to?" Lisey asked. She didn't like the closeto-strident sound of her voice, but she understood it. Oh God, did she. This had been one long goddam day.
"Hold on, ma'am," CO Soames said. Then Lisey was in limbo with McGruff the Crime Dog, who was talking about Neighborhood Watch groups. Lisey thought this a considerable improvement on the Two Thousand Comatose Strings. After a minute or so of McGruff, a cop with a name Scott would have loved came on the line.
"This is Deputy Andy Clutterbuck, ma'am, how can I help you?"
For the third time that day - third time's the charm, Good Ma would have said, third time pays for all - Lisey introduced herself as Mrs. Scott Landon. Then she told Deputy Clutterbuck a slightly edited version of the Zack McCool story, beginning with the call she had received the previous evening and finishing with the one she'd made tonight, the one that had netted the Jim Dooley name. Clutterbuck contented himself with uh-huhs and variations thereof until she had finished, then asked her who had given her "Zack McCool"'s other, possibly real name.
With a twinge of conscience (tattle-tale tit all the dogs in town come to have a little bit) that caused her a moment of bitter amusement, Lisey gave up the King of the Incunks. She did not call him Woodsmucky.
"Are you going to talk to him, Deputy Clutterbuck?"