That nicotine-stained sky.
'Not good,' he muttered, and threw his salvage into the back of the vjan. 'Not good at all.'
6
All three children were at the McClatchey house when he got there, and Qddly subdued for kids who might be acclaimed national heroes by the end of this Wednesday in October, if fortune favored them.
'You guys ready?' Rusty asked, more heartily than he felt. 'Before we go out there we have to stop at Burpee's, but that shouldn't take 1 - '
'They've got something to tell you first,' Claire said. T wish to God they didn't. This just keeps getting worse and worse. Would you like a glass of orange juice? We're trying to drink it up before it goes spunky.'
Rusty held his thumb and forefinger close together to indicate just a little. He'd never been much of an OJ man, but he wanted her out of the room and sensed she wanted to go. She looked pale and sounded scared. He didn't think this was about what the kids had found out on Black Ridge; this was something else.
Just what I need, he thought.
When she was gone he said, 'Spill it.'
Benny and Norrie turned to Joe. He sighed, brushed his hair off his forehead, sighed again. There was little resemblance between this serious young adolescent and the sign-waving, hell-raising kid in Alden Dinsmore's field three days ago. His face was as pale as his mother's, and a few pimples - maybe his first - had appeared on his forehead. Rusty had seen such sudden outbreaks before. They were stress-pimples.
'What is it, Joe?'
'People say I'm smart,' Joe said, and Rusty was alarmed to see the kid was on the verge of tears. 'I guess I am, but sometimes I wish I wasn't.'
'Don't worry,' Benny said, you're stupid in lots of important ways.'
'Shut up, Benny,' Norrie said kindly.
Joe took no notice. 'I could beat my dad at chess when I was six, and my mom by the time I was eight. Get A's in school. Always won the Science Fair. Been writing my own computer programs for two years. I'm not bragging. I know I'm a geek.'
Norrie smiled and put her hand on his. He held it.
'But I just make connections, see? That's all it is. If A, then B. If not A, then B is out to lunch. And probably the whole alphabet.'
'What exactly are we talking about, Joe?'
'I don't think the cook did those murders. That is, we don't.'
He seemed relieved when Norrie and Benny both nodded. But that was nothing to the look of gladness (mixed with incredulity) that came over his face when Rusty said, 'Neither do I.'
'Told you he had major chops,' Benny said. 'Gives awesome stitches, too.'
Claire came back with juice in a tiny glass. Rusty sipped. Warm but drinkable. With no gennie, by tomorrow it wouldn't be.
'Why don't you think he did it?' Norrie asked.
'You guys first.'The generator on Black Ridge had momentarily slipped to the back of Rusty s mind.
'We saw Mrs Perkins yesterday morning,' Joe said. 'We were on the Common, just starting to prospect with the Geiger counter. She was going up Town Common Hill.'
Rusty put his glass on the table next to his chair and sat forward with his hands clasped between his knees. 'What time was this?'
'My watch stopped out at the Dome on Sunday, so I can't say exactly, but the big fight at the supermarket was going on when we saw her. So it had to be, like, quarter past nine. No later than that.'
'And no earlier. Because the riot was going on. You heard it.'
'Yeah,' Norrie said. 'It was really loud.'
'And you're positive it was Brenda Perkins? It couldn't have been some other woman?' Rusty's heart was thumping. If she had been seen alive during the riot, then Barbie was indeed in the clear.
'We all know her,' Norrie said. 'She was even my den mother in Girl Scouts before I quit.'The fact that she'd actually been kicked out for smoking did not seem relevant, so she omitted it.
'And I know from Mom what people are saying about the murders,'Joe said. 'She told me all she knew. You know, the dog tags.'
'Mom did not want to tell all she knew,' Claire said, 'but my son can be very insistent and this seemed important.'
'It is,' Rusty said. 'Where did Mrs Perkins go?'
Benny answered this one. 'First to Mrs GrinnelFs, but whatever she said must not have been cool, because Mrs Grinnell slammed the door in her face.'
Rusty frowned.
'It's true,* Norrie said. 'I think Mrs Perkins was delivering her mail or something. She gave an envelope to Mrs Grinnell. Mrs Grinnell took it, then slammed the door. Like Benny said.
'Huh,' Rusty said. As if there'd been any delivery in Chester's Mill since last Friday. But what seemed important was that Brenda had been alive and running errands at a time when Barbie was alibied. 'Then where did she go?'
'Crossed Main and walked up Mill Street,' Joe said.
'This street.'
'Right.'
Rusty switched his attention to Claire. 'Did she - '
'She didn't come here,' Claire said. 'Unless it was while I was down cellar, seeing what I have left for canned goods. I was down there for half an hour. Maybe forty minutes. I... I wanted to get away from the noise at the market.'
Benny said what he'd said the day before: 'Mill Street's four blocks long. Lot of houses.'
'To me that's not the important part,' Joe said. 'I called Anson Wheeler. He used to be a thrasher himself, and he sometimes still takes his board to The Pit over in Oxford. I asked him if Mr Barbara was at work yesterday morning, and he said yes. He said Mr Barbara went down to Food City when the riot started. He was with Anson and Miz Twitchell from then on. So Mr Barbara's alibied for Miz Perkins, and remember what I said about if not A, then not B? Not the whole alphabet?'
Rusty thought the metaphor was a little too mathematical for human affairs, but he understood what Joe was saying. There were other victims for whom Barbie might not have an alibi, but the same body-dump argued strongly for the same killer. And if Big Jim had done at least one of the victims - as the stitch marks on Coggins's face suggested - then he had likely done them all.