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Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 162 из 425I believe her, but… he said something ordid something. I’m almost sure of it.”
“Could be no more than the sound of his breathing getting worse,” I said. “That alone might be enough to scare a child. Or maybe he had some kind of spell while she was there. What about you, Mattie?”
“Well. . one day in February Lindy Briggs told me that George Footman had been in to check the fire extinguishers and the smoke detectors in the library. He also asked if Lindy had found any beer cans or liquor bottles in the trash lately. Or cigarette butts that were obviously homemade.”
“Roaches, in other words.”
“Uh-huh. And Dickie Osgood has been visiting my old friends, I hear. Chatting. Panning for gold.
Digging the dirt.”
“Is there any to dig?”
“Not much, thank God.” I hoped she was right, and I hoped that if there was stuff she wasn’t telling me, John Storrow would get it out of her. “But through all this you let Ki go on seeing him.”
“What would pulling the plug on the visits have accomplished? And I thought that allowing them to go on would at least keep him from speeding up any plans he might have.” That, I thought, made a lonely kind of sense. “Then, in the spring, I started to get some extremely creepy, scary feelings.”
“Creepy how? Scary how?”
“I don’t know.” She took out her cigarettes, looked at them, then stuffed the pack back in her pocket. “It wasn’t just that my father-in-law was looking for dirty laundry in my closets, either. It was Ki. I started to worry about ICI all the time she was with him… with them. Rogette would come in the BMW they’d bought or leased, and Ki would be sitting out on the steps waiting for her. With her bag of toys if it was a day-visit, with her little pink Minnie Mouse suitcase if it was an overnight. And she’d always come back with one more thing than she left with. My father-in-law’s a great believer in presents. Before popping her into the car, Rogette would give me that cold little smile of hers and say, “Seven o’clock then, we’ll give her supper’ or “Eight o’clock then, and a nice hot breakfast before she leaves.” I’d say okay, and then Rogette would reach into her bag and hold out a Hershey’s Kiss to Ki just the way you’d hold a biscuit out to a dog to make it shake hands. She’d say a word and Kyra would rhyme it. Rogette would toss her her treat—woof-woof, good dog, I always used to think—and off they’d go. Come seven in the evening or eight in the morning, the BMW would pull in right where your car’s parked now. You could set your clock by the woman.
“Could be no more than the sound of his breathing getting worse,” I said. “That alone might be enough to scare a child. Or maybe he had some kind of spell while she was there. What about you, Mattie?”
“Well. . one day in February Lindy Briggs told me that George Footman had been in to check the fire extinguishers and the smoke detectors in the library. He also asked if Lindy had found any beer cans or liquor bottles in the trash lately. Or cigarette butts that were obviously homemade.”
“Roaches, in other words.”
“Uh-huh. And Dickie Osgood has been visiting my old friends, I hear. Chatting. Panning for gold.
Digging the dirt.”
“Is there any to dig?”
“Not much, thank God.” I hoped she was right, and I hoped that if there was stuff she wasn’t telling me, John Storrow would get it out of her. “But through all this you let Ki go on seeing him.”
“What would pulling the plug on the visits have accomplished? And I thought that allowing them to go on would at least keep him from speeding up any plans he might have.” That, I thought, made a lonely kind of sense. “Then, in the spring, I started to get some extremely creepy, scary feelings.”
“Creepy how? Scary how?”
“I don’t know.” She took out her cigarettes, looked at them, then stuffed the pack back in her pocket. “It wasn’t just that my father-in-law was looking for dirty laundry in my closets, either. It was Ki. I started to worry about ICI all the time she was with him… with them. Rogette would come in the BMW they’d bought or leased, and Ki would be sitting out on the steps waiting for her. With her bag of toys if it was a day-visit, with her little pink Minnie Mouse suitcase if it was an overnight. And she’d always come back with one more thing than she left with. My father-in-law’s a great believer in presents. Before popping her into the car, Rogette would give me that cold little smile of hers and say, “Seven o’clock then, we’ll give her supper’ or “Eight o’clock then, and a nice hot breakfast before she leaves.” I’d say okay, and then Rogette would reach into her bag and hold out a Hershey’s Kiss to Ki just the way you’d hold a biscuit out to a dog to make it shake hands. She’d say a word and Kyra would rhyme it. Rogette would toss her her treat—woof-woof, good dog, I always used to think—and off they’d go. Come seven in the evening or eight in the morning, the BMW would pull in right where your car’s parked now. You could set your clock by the woman.