Murder! MURRRDURRRRR!"
The women on the corner of Willow and Ford took no notice.
Wilma had fallen in a bloody heap by the stop-sign, and as Nettle staggered toward her, she pushed herself into a sitting position against its post and held the knife in her lap, pointing upward.
"Come on, you bitch," she snarled. "Come for me, if you're coming."
Nettle came, her mouth working. The ball of her intestines swung back and forth against her dress like a misborn fetus. Her right foot struck Wilma's outstretched left foot and she fell forward.
The carving knife impaled her just below the breastbone. She grunted through a mouthful of blood, raised the cleaver, and brought it down. It buried itself in the top of Wilma Jersyck's head with a single dull sound-chonk! Wilma began to convulse, her body bucking and sunfishing under Nettle's. Each buck and thrash drove the carving knife in deeper.
"Killed... my... doggy," Nettle gasped, spitting a fine mist of blood into Wilma's upturned face with every word. Then she shuddered all over and went limp. Her head honked the post of the stop-sign as it fell forward.
Wilma's jittering foot slid into the gutter. Her good black forchurch shoe flew off and landed in a pile of leaves with its low heel pointing up at the bustling clouds. Her toes flexed once... once more... and then relaxed.
The two women lay draped over each other like lovers, their blood painting the cinnamon-colored leaves in the gutter.
"MURRRRRDURRRRRR!" the old woman across the street trumpeted again, and then she rocked backward and fell full-length on her own hall floor in a faint.
Others in the neighborhood were coming to windows and opening doors now, asking each other what had happened, stepping out on stoops and lawns, first approaching the scene cautiously, then backing away in a hurry, hands over mouths, when they saw not only what had happened, but the gory extent of it.
Eventually, someone called the Sheriff's Office.
18
Polly Chalmers was walking slowly up Main Street toward Needful Things with her aching hands bundled into her warmest pair of mittens when she heard the first police siren. She stopped and watched as one of the county's three brown Plymouth cruisers belted through the intersection of Main and Laurel, lights flashing and twirling. It was doing fifty already and still accelerating. It was closely followed by a second cruiser.
She watched them out of sight, frowning. Sirens and racing police cruisers were a rarity in The Rock. She wondered what had happened-something a little more serious than a cat up a tree, she supposed. Alan would tell her when he called that evening.
Polly looked up the street again and saw Leland Gaunt standing in the doorway of his shop, also watching after the cruisers with an expression of mild curiosity on his face. Well, that answered one question: he was in. Nettle had never called her back to let her know one way or another. This hadn't surprised Polly much; the surface of Nettle's mind was slippery, and things had a way of sliding right off.
She walked on up the street. Mr. Gaunt looked around and saw her. His face lit up in a smile.
"Ms. Chalmers! How nice that you could drop by!"
She smiled wanly. The pain, which had abated for awhile that morning, was now creeping back, thrusting its network of thin, cruel wires through the flesh of her hands. "I thought we'd agreed on Polly."
"Polly, then. Come inside it's awfully good to see you. What's all the excitement?"
"I don't know," she said. He held the door for her and she went past him into the shop. "I suppose someone's been hurt and needs to go to the hospital. Medical Assistance in Norway is awfully slow on the weekends. Although why the dispatcher would send two cruisers..."
Mr. Gaunt closed the door behind them. The bell tinkled. The shade on the door was down, and with the sun now going the other way, the interior of Needful Things was gloomy... but, Polly thought, if gloom could ever be pleasant, this gloom was. A small reading lamp shed a golden circle on the counter by Mr. Gaunt's old-fashioned cash register. A book lay open there. It was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Mr. Gaunt was looking at her closely, and Polly had to smile again at the expression of concern in his eyes.
"My hands have been kicking up the very dickens these last few days," she said. "I guess I don't exactly look like Demi Moore."
"You look like a woman who is very tired and in quite a lot of discomfort," he said.
The smile on her face wavered. There was understanding and deep compassion in his voice, and for a moment Polly was afraid she might burst into tears. The thought which kept the tears at bay was an odd one: His hands. If I cry, he'll try to comfort me. He'll put his hands on me.
She buttressed the smile.