The Colorado Kid   ::   Кинг Стивен

“Well,” he said, “George didn’t bother cordoning off the beach, because that just would have drawn folks like flies to a cowpie, don’tcha know, but that didn’t stop those two dummies from the Attorney General’s office from doin it. I asked one of em why they bothered, and he looked at me like I was a stark raving naturalborn fool. ‘Well, it’s a crime scene, ain’t it?’ he says.

“ ‘Maybe so and maybe no,’ I says, ‘but once the body’s gone, what evidence do you think you’re gonna have that the wind hasn’t blown away?’ Because by then that easterly had gotten up awful fresh. But they insisted, and I will admit it made a nice picture on the front page of the paper, didn’t it, Vince?”

“Ayuh, picture with tape reading crime scene in it always sells copies,” Vince agreed. Half of his muffin had already disappeared, and there were no crumbs Stephanie could see on his paper towel.

Dave said, “Devane was there while the Medical Examiner, Cathcart, got a look at the body: the hand with the sand on it, the hand with none, and then into the mouth, but right around the time the Tinnock Funeral Home hearse that had come over on the nine o’clock ferry pulled up, those two detectives realized he was still there and might be getting somethin perilously close to an education. They couldn’t have that, so they sent him to get coffee and doughnuts and danishes for them and Cathcart and Cathcart’s assistant and the two funeral home boys who’d just shown up.

“Devane didn’t have any idea of where to go, and by then I was on the wrong side of the tape they’d strung, so I took him down to Jenny’s Bakery myself. It took half an hour, maybe a little more, most of it spent ridin, and I got a pretty good idea of how the land lay with that young man, although I give him all points for discretion; he never told a single tale out of school, simply said he wasn’t learning as much as he’d hoped to, and seeing the kind of errand he’d been sent on while Cathcart was doing hisin situ examination, I could connect the dots.

“And when we got back the examination was over. The body had already been zipped away in a bodybag. That didn’t stop one of those detectives—a big, beefy guy named O’Shanny—from giving Devane the rough side of his tongue. ‘What took you so long, we’re freezin our butts off out here,’ on and on, yattayattayatta.

“Devane stood up to it well—never complain, never explain, someone surely raised him right, I have to say—so I stepped in and said we’d gone and come back as fast as anyone could. I said, ‘You wouldn’t have wanted us to break any speed laws, now would you, officers?’ Hoping to get a little laugh and kind of lighten the situation, you know.