Alan placed the wadded-up gown against the door-jamb and stepped out.
He carefully let the door swing back, saw that the gown would keep the latch from engaging, and forgot about it. He leaned against the cinderblock wall next to the pencil-line of light escaping through the slightly ajar door and lit his cigarette.
The first puff made his head feel swimmy. He had been trying to quit for almost two years and kept almost making it. Then something would come up. That was both the curse and the blessing of police work; something always came up.
He looked up at the stars, which he usually found calming, and couldn't see many-the high-intensity lights which ringed the hospital dulled them out. He could make out the Big Dipper, Orion, and a faint reddish point that was probably Mars, but that was all.
Mars, he thought. That's it. That's undoubtedly it. The warlords of Mars landed in Castle Rock around noon, and the first people they met were Nettle and the Jerzyck bitch. The warlords bit them and turned them rabid. It's the only thing that fits.
He thought about going in and telling Henry Ryan, the State of Maine's Chief Medical Examiner, It was a case of alien intervention, Doc. Case closed. He doubted if Ryan would be amused. It had been a long night for him, too.
Alan dragged deeply on the cigarette. It tasted absolutely grand, swimmy head or no swimmy head, and he felt he could understand perfectly why smoking was now off-limits in the public areas of every hospital in America. John Calvin had been dead right: nothing that made you feel this way could possibly be good for you. In the meantime, though, hit me wid dat nicotine, boss-it feel so fine.
He thought idly of how nice it would be to buy an entire carton of these selfsame Luckies, rip off both ends, and then light up the whole goddam thing with a blowtorch. He thought how nice it would be to get drunk. This would be a very bad time to get drunk, he supposed.
Another inflexible rule of life-when you really need to get drunk, you can never afford to do it. Alan wondered vaguely if maybe the alcoholics of the world weren't the only ones who really had their priorities straight.
The pencil-line of light by his feet fattened to a bar. Alan looked around and saw Norris Ridgewick. Norris stepped out and leaned against the wall next to Alan. He was still wearing his green cap, but it was askew and the tie-ribbons hung down over the back of his gown.
His complexion matched his gown.
"Jesus, Alan."
"They were your first ones, weren't they?"
"No, I saw an autopsy once when I was in North WyndhamSmoke-inhalation case. But these... Jesus, Alan."
"Yeah," he said, and exhaled smoke. "Jesus."
"You got another cigarette?"
"No-sorry. I bummed this one from the janitor." He looked at the Deputy with mild curiosity. "I didn't know you smoked, Norris."
"I don't. I thought I might start."
Alan laughed softly.
"Man, I can't wait to get out fishing tomorrow. Or are off-days on hold while we sort this mess out?"
Alan thought about it, then shook his head. It hadn't really been the warlords of Mars; this business actually looked quite simple. In a way, that was what made it so horrible. He saw no reason to cancel Norris's off-days.
"That's great," Norris said, and then added, "But I'll come in if you want, Alan. No problem."
"Shouldn't need you to, Norris," he said. "John and Clut have both been in touch with me-Clut went with the CID guys to talk with Pete jerzyck, and John went with the team investigating Nettle's end.
They've both been in touch. It's pretty clear. Nasty, but clear."
And it was... yet he was troubled about it, just the same. On some deep level, he was very troubled indeed.
"Well, what happened? I mean, the Jerzyck bitch has been asking for it for years, but when somebody finally called her bluff, I thought she'd end up with a black eye or a broken arm... nothing like this.
Was it just a case of picking on the wrong person?"
"I think that pretty well covers it," Alan said. "Wilma couldn't have picked a worse person in Castle Rock to start a feud with."
"Feud?"
"Polly gave Nettle a puppy last spring. It barked a little at first.
Wilma did a lot of bitching about it."
"Really? I don't remember a complaint sheet."
"She only made one official complaint. I caught it. Polly asked me if I would. She felt partly responsible, since she gave Nettle the dog in the first place. Nettle said she'd keep him inside as much as she could, and that finished it for me.
"The dog stopped the barking, but Wilma apparently went on bitching to Nettle. Polly says that Nettle'd cross the street when she saw Wilma coming, even if Wilma was two blocks away. Nettle did everything but fork the sign of the evil eye at her. Then, last week, she crossed the line. She went over to the jerzycks' while Pete and Wilma were at work, saw the sheets hanging on the line, and covered them with mud from the garden."
Norris whistled. "Did we catch that complaint, Alan?"
Alan shook his head. "From then until this afternoon, it was all between the ladies."