'Right,' Thad said. He was grinning now. 'The Wicked Witch of the East.'
Pangborn's eyes were sending a clear you're-lying-and-we-both-know-it message. 'And what time did these friends leave?'
Thad shuddered a little. 'Friends? Rawlie, yes. That woman, most definitely not.'
'Two o'clock,' Liz said.
Thad nodded. 'It had to have been at least two when we saw them out. Damn near poured them out. As I indicated, it will be a snowy day in hell before I'm inducted into the Wilhelmina Burks Fan Club, but I would have insisted they stay over if he'd had more than three miles to drive, or if it had been earlier. No one on the roads at that hour on a Tuesday night - Wednesday morning, sorry - anyhow. Except maybe a few deer raiding the gardens.' He shut his mouth abruptly. In his relief he was close to babbling.
There was a moment's silence. The two troopers were now looking at the floor. Pangborn had an expression on his face Thad could not read - he didn't believe he had ever seen it before. Not chagrin, although chagrin was a part of it.
What in the f**k is going on here?
'Well, that's very convenient, Mr Beaumont,' Pangborn said at last, 'but it's a long way from rock-solid. We've got the word of you and your wife - or guesstimate - as to when you saw this last couple out. If they were as blasted as you seem to think, they'll hardly be able to corroborate what you've said. And if this DeLesseps fellow really is a friend, he might say . . . well, who
knows?'
All the same, Alan Pangborn was losing steam. Thad saw it and believed - no, knew - the state troopers did, too. Yet the man wasn't ready to let it go. The fear Thad had felt initially and the anger which had followed it were changing to fascination and curiosity. He thought he had never seen puzzlement and certainty so equally at war. The fact of the party - and he must accept as fact something which could so easily be checked - had shaken him . . . but not convinced him. Nor, he saw, were the troopers entirely convinced. The only difference was that the troopers weren't so hot under the collar. They hadn't known Homer Gamache personally, and so they.didn't have any personal stake in this. Alan Pangborn had, and did. I knew him, too, Thad thought. So maybe I have a stake in it, too. Apart from my hide, that is.
'Look,' he said patiently, keeping his gaze locked with Pangborn's and trying not to return hostility in kind, 'let's get real, as my students like to say. You asked if we could effectively prove our whereabouts - '
'Your whereabouts, Mr Beaumont,' Pangborn said.
'Okay, my whereabouts. Five pretty difficult hours. Hours when most people are in bed. Thanks to nothing more than blind luck, we - I, if you prefer - can cover at least three of those five hours. Maybe Rawlie and his odious lady friend left at two, maybe they left at one-thirty or twofifteen. Whenever it was, it was late. They'll corroborate that, and the Burks woman wouldn't lie me an alibi even if Rawlie would. I think if Billie Burks saw me washed up drowning on the beach, she'd throw a bucket of water on me.'
Liz gave him an odd, grimacing little smile as she took William, who was beginning to squirm, from him. At first he didn't understand that smile, and then it came to him. It was that phrase, of course - lie me an alibi. It was a phrase which Alexis Machine, arch-villain of the George Stark novels, sometimes used. It was odd, in a way; he could not remember ever using a Stark-ism in conversation before. On the other hand, he had never been accused of murder before, either, and murder was a George Stark kind of situation.
'Even supposing we're off by an hour and the last guests left at one,' he continued, 'and further supposing I jumped into my car the minute - the second - they were gone over the hill, and then drove like a mad bastard for Castle Rock, it would be four-thirty or five o'clock in the morning before I could possibly get there. No turnpike going west, you know.'
One of the troopers began: 'And the Arsenault woman said it was about quarter of one when she saw - '
'We don't need to go into that right now,' Alan interrupted quickly. Liz made a rude, exasperated sound, and Wendy goggled at her comically. In the crook of her other arm, William stopped squirming, suddenly engrossed in the wonderfulness of his own twiddling fingers. To Thad she said, 'There were still lots of people here at one, Thad. Lots of them.'
Then she rounded on Alan Pangborn - really rounded on him this time.
'What is wrong with you, Sheriff? Why are you so bullheadedly determined to lay this off on my husband? Are you a stupid man? A lazy man? A bad man? You don't look like any of those things, but your behavior makes me wonder. It makes me wonder very much. Perhaps it was a lottery. Was that it? Did you draw his name out of a f**king hat?'
Alan recoiled slightly, clearly surprised - and discomfited - by her ferocity. 'Mrs Beaumont
- '
'I have the advantage, I'm afraid, Sheriff,' Thad said. 'You think I killed Homer Gamache -'
'Mr Beaumont, you have not been charged with - '