'Stay where you are,' Alan said. 'Swap Alfred Hitchcock Presents stories with Mrs A. until I get there. I always used to like those myself.'
But before he had gone a half a mile, the location of the meeting between himself and his officer had been changed from the Arsenault place to a spot about a mile west of there. A boy named Frank Gavineaux, walking home from a little early fishing down at Strimmer's Brook, had seen a pair of legs protruding from the high weeds on the south side of Route 35. He ran home and told his mother. She had called the sheriff's office. Sheila Brigham relayed the message to Alan Pangborn and Norris Ridgewick. Sheila maintained protocol and mentioned no names on the air
- too many little pitchers with big Cobras and Bearcats were always listening in on the police bands - but Alan could tell by the upset tone of Sheila's voice that even she had a good idea who those legs belonged to.
About the only good thing which had happened all morning was that Norris had finished
emptying his stomach before Alan got there, and had maintained enough wit to throw up on the north side of the road, away from the body and any evidence there might be around it.
'What now?' Norris asked, interrupting the run of his thoughts. Alan sighed heavily and quit waving the flies away from Homer's remains. It was a losing battle. 'Now I get to go down the road and tell Ellen Gamache the widow-maker paid a visit early this morning. You stay here with the body. Try to keep the flies off him.'
'Gee, Sheriff, why? There's an awful lot of em. And he's - '
'Dead, yeah, I can see that. I don't know why. Because it just seems like the right thing to do, I guess. We can't put his f**king arm back on, but at least we can keep the flies from shitting on what's left of his nose.'
'Okay,' Norris said humbly. 'Okay, Sheriff.'
'Norris, do you think you could call me 'Alan' if you really worked on it? If you practiced?'
'Sure, Sheriff, I guess so.'
Alan grunted and turned for one last look at the area of the ditch that would, in all probability, be cordoned off with bright yellow CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS tapes attached to surveyor's poles when he got back. The county coroner would be here. Henry Payton from the Oxford State Police Barracks would be here. The photographer and the technicians from the Attorney General's Capital Crimes Division probably wouldn't be - unless there happened to be a couple of them in the area already on another case - but they would arrive shortly after. By one in the afternoon, the state police's rolling lab would be here, too, complete with hot and cold running forensics experts and a guy whose job it was to mix up plaster and take moulage casts of the tire-prints Norris had either been smart enough or lucky enough not to run over with the wheels of his own cruiser (Alan opted, rather reluctantly, for lucky).
And what would it all come to? Why, just this. A half-drunk old man had stopped to do a favor for a stranger. (Hop on up here, boy, Alan could hear him saying, I ain't going only a couple of.miles, but I'll get you a little further on your way), and the stranger had responded by beating the old man to death and then stealing his truck.
He guessed the man in the business suit had asked Homer to pull over - the most likely pretext would have been to say he needed to take a leak - and once the truck was stopped, he'd clipped the old man, dragged him out, and -
Ah, but that was when it got bad. So very goddam bad.
Alan looked down into the ditch one final time, to where Norris Ridgewick squatted by the bloody piece of meat that had been a man, patiently waving the flies away from what had been Homer's face with his citation clipboard, and felt his stomach turn over again. He was just an old man, you son of a whore - an old man who was half in the bag and only had one honest arm to boot, an old man whose one little pleasure left was his bowling league night. So why didn't you just clip him that one good one in the cab of his truck and then leave him be? It was a warm night, and even if it'd been a little chilly, he most likely would have been okay. I'd bet my watch we're going to find a whole lot of antifreeze in his system. And the truck's license plate number goes out on the wire either way. So why this? Man, I hope I get a chance to ask you. But did the reason matter? It sure didn't to Homer Gamache. Not anymore. Nothing was ever going to matter to Homer again. Because after clipping him that first one, the hitchhiker had pulled him out of the cab and dragged him into the ditch, probably hauling him by the armpits. Alan didn't need the boys from Capital Crimes to read the marks left by the heels of Gamache's shoes. Along the way, the hitcher had discovered Homer's disability. And at The bottom of the trench, he had wrenched the old man's prosthetic arm from his body and bludgeoned him to death with it..
Chapter Five