Chapter 9 Chapter 8 Fingerprints

one At 7:15 that night, the doorbell rang again, and it was Liz who answered the door again, because she had packed William up for bed and Ted was still packing Wendy.Many books said that childcare was a learned skill, independent of the gender of the parents, but Liz was skeptical.Ted was conscientious and serious about his job, but he was slow.On Sunday afternoons, he could go to the store and get home in a fraction of the time, but not when it was time to put the twins to bed. Ted was still changing Wendy's diaper while William had showered, put on a dry diaper, and put on his green pajamas for the playpen (and he didn't soap her hair, she saw it, but nothing Say, prepare to wipe it off with a washcloth yourself later).

Liz walked across the living room to the front door and looked out the side window.She saw Sheriff Pangbo standing outside, alone this time, but that didn't lessen her concern. She turned her head and yelled over there to the downstairs bathroom and nursery, "He's back!" Her voice was a little panicked. After a long time, Ted stepped into the porch on the other side of the living room.He was barefoot, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. "Who?" he asked in a strange, slow voice. "Pangpo," she said, "Ted, are you all right?" Wendy was on his arm, wearing nothing but a diaper, her hands on his face... But Leah I can still see that something is wrong with Ted's face.

"I'm fine. Let him in, and I'll come as soon as I put the child in his pajamas." Before Liz had time to say anything, he left suddenly. Meanwhile, Alain Pangborn stood patiently on the steps.He didn't ring the bell again when Liz looked out, with the look on his face of a man wishing he had his hat on so he could hold it in his hand, maybe even twist it. Slowly and impassively, she unchained the door and let him in. two Wendy fidgeted happily, which made him very difficult to deal with.Ted managed to get her feet into the pajamas, then her arms, and finally her hands out of the cuffs.She immediately raised a hand and pressed his nose hard.He didn't smile like he usually did, but drew back, and Wendy looked up at him from the changing table, a little confused.He reached for the zipper, which ran from his left leg to his throat.Suddenly he stopped, and stretched out his hands in front of him, and they were trembling, not so much, but trembling.

"What are you afraid of? Or have you committed another crime?" No, not a crime.He almost wishes it were.The truth is, he experienced yet another panic in a day already filled with such panics. First the police came and charged him with outlandish charges and were convinced he had committed a crime.Then there was that strange, haunting, chirping sound.He didn't know what it was, although he was familiar with it. It came again after dinner. He went upstairs to his study to review the manuscript he had written that day, which was part of the new book he was writing, "The Golden Dog".When he lowered his head to correct a small mistake in the manuscript, suddenly, the sound filled his brain, thousands of birds were chirping at the same time, and this time, there was an illusion accompanying the sound.

sparrow. Thousands of sparrows lined roofs and telephone wires, as they do every early spring, when the last March snows were still fresh and the ground was in hard, dirty heaps Snow. Ah, here comes the headache, he thought in panic, as the voice of a terrified boy revived his memory.Fear jumped up his throat and seemed to grab the side of his brain with a stiff hand. Is it a tumor?It's back again?Is it vicious this time? The ghostly sound—the sound of a bird—suddenly grew louder, almost deafening, and was followed by a faint, sullen flapping of wings.Now he could see all the sparrows flying together, thousands of little birds darkening the white spring sky.

"Fly to the north," he heard himself say in a low, hoarse voice that was not his own.Suddenly, the vision and sound of the flock of birds disappeared.It was 1988, not 1960, and he was in his study.He is a grown man with a wife, two children and a typewriter. He opened his mouth and took a deep breath.No ensuing headaches.Not then, not now.He feels fine.Apart from…… Except when he looked down at the manuscript again, he saw what he had written on it.It runs across neatly printed lines in capital letters. "The sparrow took off again. ’” he wrote. He threw away the Scritto and wrote the words with a Black Beauty Belloire, though he couldn't remember when he changed it.He doesn't even use pencils much anymore, the Belloires belong to a dead age...a dark age.He threw his used pens back into the bottle, and put them all in a bundle in a drawer.His hands were unsteady as he did this.

Then Liz told him to help put the twins to bed, and he went downstairs to help her.He wanted to tell her what had happened, but found that the fear—the fear of a recurrence of the tumor as a child, the fear that this time it would be malignant—had shut his mouth.He would still tell her...but then the doorbell rang, Liz answered, and she said very inappropriate things in very inappropriate tones. He is back!cried Liz, her voice full of understandable unease and panic, fear blowing through him like a cold wind.Fear, there is another word: Stark.For a second before he woke up, he thought he knew exactly who she was referring to, that she was referring to George Stark.The sparrow flew again, and Stark returned.Stark is dead and publicly buried, he never really existed, but that's okay; real or not, he's back.

Don't think about it, he told himself.You're not one to be easily scared, and there's no need for this weird situation to make you one.The sound you're hearing—the bird sound—is nothing but a psychological phenomenon called "memory persistence," which is caused by tension and stress, so just keep yourself in check. But a certain fear still lingers.Bird calls evoke not only a sense of past experience, but also a feeling of near-premonition, or more precisely, a misplaced memory. "It's all bullshit, that's what you're trying to say." He held out his hands, staring at them.The trembling became extremely slight and then stopped completely.When he was sure he wasn't going to get Wendy's pink skin in the zipper of her pajamas, he zipped her up, carried her into the living room, put her in the pen to join her brother, and walked out into the foyer where Liz and Alan Pangborn was standing there.It was very much like this morning all over again, except this time Pangbo was alone.

It was the right time and place for a reenactment, he thought, but there was nothing funny about it.He couldn't change his mood all of a sudden... In addition, the sound of the sparrow he heard just now affected him. "What can I do for you, Sheriff?" he asked, without smiling. Ah, there's a change, Pangbo with a half-pack of beer in one hand.Now he holds it up. "I don't know if we can talk calmly," he said, "and drink while we talk." three Liz and Alan Pangble drank beers, and Ted drank a Bait Coke from the refrigerator.As they talked, they watched the twins play in their oddly dignified way.

"I'm not here on official business," Allan said. "I'm dealing with a man who is now a suspect in not only one but two murders." "Two!" cried Liz. "I'll tell you. I'm going to tell you everything, actually, because I'm sure your husband also has an alibi for this second murder. The State Police think so too, and they're at a loss now." "Who was killed?" Ted asked. "A young man named Frederick Clausen in Washington, D.C." He saw Liz jerk, beer spilled on the back of her hand. "I see you know the name, Mrs. Beaumont," he added, without apparent sarcasm.

"What happened?" she whispered feebly. "I have no idea what's going on, and I'm trying desperately to find out. I'm not here to arrest you or harass you, Mr. Beaumont, though I don't understand at all how anyone else could commit either crime. I'm here I've come to ask for your help." "Why don't you call me Ted?" Pangborn shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I think I'm more used to Mr. Beaumont, at least for now." Ted nodded. "Whatever you want. So Clausen is dead," he looked down for a moment in thought, then looked up at Pangbol again. "This crime scene is full of my fingerprints too, isn't it?" "Yes—in more than one way. The Popular magazine had a story on you recently, didn't it, Mr. Beaumont?" "Two weeks ago," Ted agreed. "The article was found in Clausen's apartment, and one page appears to have been used as a symbol in a ritualized murder." "My God!" said Liz, sounding tired and panicked. "Will you tell me who he is to you?" Pangbol asked. Ted nodded. "No reason not to tell you. Did you read that article, Sheriff?" "My wife brought home a copy from the supermarket," he said, "but I better tell you the truth - I only looked at the pictures. I want to see the article as soon as I get back." "It's okay if you don't read the article—but Frederick Clausen is the reason it's published. Look—" Pang Bo raised a hand: "We'll talk about him, but let's go back to Homer Gamazzi first. We contacted the Army Records and Identification Department again, and rechecked the fingerprints and Crowe on Gamazzi's car." Mori's fingerprints in the apartment, although the fingerprints in the apartment are not as clear as those in the car, the corners of these fingerprints are exactly the same as yours. Meaning if you don't do it, we have two people with the exact same fingerprints, that person can Into the Guinness Book of World Records." He looked at William and Wendy, who were playing patty in the pen and seemed likely to poke each other's eyes. "Are they fellow countrymen?" he asked. "No," said Liz, "they look alike, but they're brother and sister. Brother and sister twins are never siblings." Pang Bo nodded. "Even sibling twins don't have the same fingerprints," he said.He paused, then added in what Ted thought was an act of casualness, "You don't happen to have a brother, do you, Mr. Beaumont?" Ted shook his head slowly. "No," he said, "I don't have any siblings, all my relatives are dead. William and Wendy are my only living blood relatives." He smiled at the children, then looked back at Pangbol. "Liz had a miscarriage in 1974," he said, "those...the first ones...were twins too, although I don't think there's any way of telling if they're siblings—when a miscarriage occurs in the third trimester, It can't be done. And, even if there was a way, who would want to know?" Pangbol shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. "She was shopping in Fenny's, Boston, and someone pushed her, and she fell off an escalator with a badly broken arm—if it wasn't for a security guard who put a tourniquet on the wound, it would have become infected, so It had to be removed—she fell, miscarried, and lost her twin." "Is this also in the article in The Popular?" Alan asked. Liz smiled wryly and shook her head. "When we agreed to do that story, we reserved the right to redact it. Of course we didn't tell Mike Donaldson that he was the one who came to do the interview." "Did you push it on purpose?" "I don't know," Liz said.Her eyes fell on William and Wendy... looking at them and thinking, "If it was an accidental collision, it could be said that it was a very hard collision. I flew up - didn't touch the escalator at all, and didn't fall until halfway ...but I'm trying to convince myself that it was accidental so it's easier to accept. The idea of ​​someone pushing a woman down a tall escalator on purpose just to see what happens... the idea is horrible I can't sleep at night." Pang Bo nodded. "The doctors told us that Liz might never have another baby," Ted said. "When she got pregnant with William and Wendy, they told us she might have a miscarriage, but she had the baby. Ten years later, I'm finally starting a new book under my own name, it's going to be my third, so lo and behold, we're both fine now." "Another name you use is George Stark?" Ted nodded. "But that was over. It started to end when Liz got pregnant safely into her eighth month. I figured that if I could be a dad again, I should be myself again." .” Four There was a brief pause in the conversation, and then Thad said, "Frankly, Sheriff Pombo." Pang Bo raised his eyebrows: "What did you say?" A smile flicked across Ted's mouth: "I don't want to say you've thought it through, but I bet you have at least an outline. If I have a twin brother, maybe he's hosting a party so I can go to Fort Rock, murdering Homer Gammazzi and getting my fingerprints all over his car. But it won't stop there, will it? My twin sleeps with my wife, keeps appointments for me while I drive Take Homer's car to a parking lot in Connecticut, steal another car there, drive to New York, dump the stolen car, and take a train or plane to Washington, D.C. Once I get there, kill Get off Clausen, hurry back to Ludlow, send my twin brother to where he came from, and he and I start our separate lives again, or all three of us, if you assume Liz is part of the scam Part of the words." Liz stared at him for a moment, then began to laugh, not very long, but very hard.It's not forced, but it's forced laughter—a humorous expression of a woman who is suddenly amused. Pangbol looked at Ted, making no secret of his surprise.The twins smiled at their mother for a moment, then continued to slowly roll a big yellow ball between them. "Ted, this is horrible," Liz said when she finally got herself under control. "Maybe," he said, "if so, I'm sorry." "It's... very complicated," Pang Bo said. Ted grinned at him. "I don't think you're an admirer of the late George Stark." "Frankly, no. But I had a deputy, Norris Rijwick, who was, and he had to explain all the ins and outs of it to me." "Ah, you're conflating Stark with some sort of detective story. I'm not talking about Agatha Christie plots, but that doesn't mean I don't think so. Hey, Sheriff—the idea Did it cross your mind? If not, I do apologize to my wife." Pang Bo didn't say a word, smiled and thought about it for a while, and finally he said: "Maybe I'm thinking in this direction, not very seriously, not exactly that way, but you don't have to apologize to the lovely lady. Today Since morning, I have found myself willing to consider even the most outlandish possibilities." "Because of the current situation." "Yes, due to the current situation." Ted himself smiled and said, "Sheriff, I was born in Bergenfield, New Jersey, you can go and check the records to see if I have a twin brother, maybe I forgot." Pang Bo shook his head and took a sip of beer: "That's an absurd idea. I feel stupid, but this feeling is not very new. I have had this feeling since this morning, when you suddenly mentioned That party. By the way, we found those people, and they testified.” "Of course they testified," said Liz a little bitterly. "Since you don't have a twin brother, it closes the subject." "Imagine," said Ted, "that this is purely for argument, and that it actually happens as I say. It would bring an unusual story ... to a point." "At what point?" Pangbo asked. "Fingerprints. Why would I go to the trouble of having someone like me keep an alibi here...and then completely negate it by leaving fingerprints at the crime scene?" Liz said, "I bet you actually check birth records, don't you, Sheriff?" Pangbo said flatly, "The basics of police procedure is to go after it, but I already know what I'm going to find if I do." He paused, then added, "It's not just a party. You're A man who tells the truth, Mr. Beaumont, I have experience in distinguishing lies from truth. As a police officer, I think so far that there are very few good liars in the world. They can appear from time to time in those you speak of detective novels, but in real life they are very rare." "So what the hell are the fingerprints?" Ted asked. "That's what intrigues me. Are you looking for an amateur with my fingerprints? I doubt it. You've thought about not having fingerprints from Fundamentally unreliable? You're talking specious. I did some research on fingerprints for writing the Stark novels, and I know a thing or two about them, but by the end I've gotten so bored with them - sitting at a typewriter making up Much easier. But wouldn't there have to be a certain amount of similarity before fingerprints could even be used as evidence?" "In Maine it's six," Pangbourne said, "and to accept a fingerprint as evidence, six outright identities must be presented." "In most cases, the fingerprint is only half or quarter, just a blot with a ring or thread, right?" "Right. In real life, almost no criminal goes to jail because of fingerprint evidence." "But in this case you have one on the rearview mirror, you say it's clear like it was pressed at the police station, and another one on the gum. That's what confuses me, like the fingerprints are there for Let you find out." "I've thought about that, too." In fact, he's thought about it very seriously, and it's the most puzzling point in the case.The Clausen murder looked like a typical underworld punishment for a tongue-twister: the tongue was cut out, the genitals were stuffed in the victim's mouth, bloody, brutal, and no one in the building heard a sound.But if it had been done by a hitman, why were Beaumont's fingerprints all over the place?Isn't something that looks so much like a fingerprint a fingerprint?Unless someone uses one of the latest inventions.Meanwhile, the old adage still holds true for Alan Pumpberg: If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, it probably is a duck. "Can fingerprints be transplanted?" Ted asked. "You can read people's minds, Mr. Beaumont?" "I can read other people's minds, but, my dear, I don't put windows up." With a mouth full of beer, Alan burst out laughing and nearly sprayed the beer all over the carpet.He swallowed the beer as hard as he could but choked his windpipe and coughed.Liz got up and hit him hard on the back a few times. It might have been weird, but she didn't think it was; living with two babies had made her used to it.William and Wendy stared from the fence, the yellow ball parked among them forgotten.William started laughing, and Wendy laughed too. For some reason, this made Alan laugh even harder. Ted joins in.Liz couldn't help laughing while patting Pangbo's back. "I'm fine," Alan coughed and laughed, "I'm really fine." Liz gave him a final slap.Beer burst from the neck of Alan's wine bottle, splashing down on his crotch like steam from a boiler. "It's all right," Ted said, "we have diapers." They laughed together again.The three of them were temporarily friends, at least for the time that Alain Pangble started coughing until he finally stopped laughing. Fives "As far as I know, fingerprints can't be transplanted," Pangbo said, picking up the conversation again—by ​​this time they had reached the second round, the embarrassing stain on his crotch had begun to dry, and the twins were asleep in the pen No, Liz left the living room to go to the bathroom. "Of course we're still checking because until this morning we had no reason to suspect that anything like that happened in this case. I know it was tried; a kidnapper killed his abductee a few years ago before took his fingerprints, turned them into... impressions, I think you'd call them that... and stamped them onto very thin plastic. He put plastic fingertips on his own fingertips, tried to leave fingerprints in the victim's mountain cabin so the cops would think the whole kidnapping was a hoax and the guy was innocent." "He didn't succeed?" "The cops got some lovely prints," said Pombo, "that were from the criminals. The natural oils on the guy's hands smoothed out the fake prints, and because the plastic is so thin that it accepts the slightest molding, the guy Put your fingerprints on it." "Perhaps a different material—" "Indeed, maybe. That happened in the mid-fifties, and I guess over a hundred new polymeric plastics have been invented since then. It might be made. Now all we can say is that in court and in crime No one in the school has ever heard of it being made, and I don't think it ever will be." Liz went back to the living room and sat down, curling her legs cat-like around her body, her skirt draped over her calves, a position that Ted admired and found extremely elegant. "Also, there are other reasons, Ted." Hearing Pombo call his first name, Ted and Liz exchanged a look so quickly that Alan didn't see it.He pulled a battered notebook from his back pocket and looked at a page. "Do you smoke?" he asked looking up. "No smoking." "He quit smoking seven years ago," Liz said. "It was very difficult for him, but he stuck with it." “I scoff at critics who say the world would be a better place if I dig a hole and die in it,” Ted said. “Why ask that question?” "You did smoke." "right." "Pyle Morse?" Ted was holding up his soda can when it stopped six inches from his mouth: "How do you know?" "Your blood type is A--negative?" "I'm starting to understand why you were going to arrest me this morning," Ted said. "If I didn't have such a strong alibi, I'd be in jail by now, wouldn't I?" "That's a good guess." "You can get his blood type from his ROTC," Liz said, "and I guess his fingerprints are from there, too." "But there's no information on my fifteen years of smoking Pyle Morse cigarettes," Ted said. "As far as I know, that kind of material isn't kept in Army records." "Here's the stuff I got this morning," Alain told them. "The ashtray in the Homer Gamache van was full of Pyle Morse cigarette butts. The old man smoked cigarette butts now and then. In Frederick There are also two Pyle Morse cigarette butts in the ashtray at Clausen's apartment. He doesn't smoke at all, only occasionally does drugs, according to his landlady. We get the killer's blood type from the saliva of the cigarette butts. Serum expert The report also gave us a lot of other information, better than fingerprints." Ted stopped smiling. "I don't understand. I don't understand at all." "There's one thing that doesn't fit," Pombo said, "blonde hair. We found a dozen in the Homer car, and we found another on the back of the chair the killer used in Clausen's living room. Your hair It's black, and I don't think you wear a wig." "No—Ted no, but maybe Day the Killer," said Liz gloomily. "Maybe," Pangbo agreed, "if so, it's made of human hair. If you leave fingerprints and cigarette butts all over the place, then why would you bother changing the color of your hair? Either that guy is very stupid, or he did it on purpose To involve you in it. Blonde hair doesn't fit either of those assumptions." "Maybe he just doesn't want to be recognized," Liz said. "Remember, Ted was just in Popular magazine two weeks ago, nationally known." "Yes, that's a possibility. Though if the fellow looks like your husband too, Mrs. Beaumont—" "Liz." "Well, Liz. If he looked like your husband, he'd be like Ted Beaumont even with blond hair, wouldn't he?" Liz stared at Tad for a moment, then started giggling. "What's so funny?" Ted asked. "I'm trying to picture you with blond hair," she giggled, "and I think that would still look like an evil David Boye." "Is that funny?" Ted asked Pangbol, "I don't think that's funny." "Ah..." Alan said with a smile. "Never mind, the guy was probably wearing sunglasses and a blond wig for all we know." "If the murderer was the man Mrs. Arsent saw getting into the Homer's car at one fifteen in the morning on June 1st, he wasn't wearing these." Ted leaned forward. "Does he really look like me?" he asked. "She couldn't tell, except he was wearing a suit. True or not, today I asked one of my men, Norris, to show her a picture of you. She said she didn't think it was you, though she wasn't sure. She said she Think the one in the Homer is taller." He added dryly, "That's a very discreet lady." "Can she tell the difference in figure from the photo?" Liz asked skeptically. "She saw Tad in town, Summer," Pangble said, "and she did say she wasn't sure." Liz nodded. "Of course she knows him, knows both of us, and we've been buying fresh vegetables at her vegetable stand. I'm stupid for asking, sorry." "There's nothing to apologize for," Pangbol said.He finishes his beer and looks at his crotch, it's dry, good.Just a small blemish that no one but his wife would notice. "Anyway, that brings us to the last point...or aspect...I'll call it what you will. I doubt it's part of it, but it never hurts to check. What size are your shoes, Mr. Beaumont ?” Tad glanced at Liz, who shrugged. "I think my feet are pretty small for a guy like me, and I wear size ten shoes, though—" "The footprints reported to us are probably bigger than that," said Pangbo, "I don't think the footprints are part of it, and even if they were, the footprints could be faked, by stuffing some newspapers into something two or even three sizes bigger than you." The top of the shoe will do." "What kind of footprints are those?" Ted asked. "Irrelevant," Pangble shook his head. "We don't even have a picture. I think we've got pretty much everything on the table, Ted. Your fingerprints, your blood type, your cigarette brand—" "He doesn't—" Liz wanted to say something. Alan raised a hand reassuringly: "Past cigarette brands. I think I'd be crazy to let you know these - I say in the back of my mind that I'm crazy - but we've come so far we can't see the tree Lin is pointless. You have been involved in another way too. Fort Rock is your legal residence as is Ludlow, and you pay taxes in both places. Homer Gammazzi is not only a Someone you know who does... odd jobs for you, right?" "Yeah," said Liz, "he retired the year we bought the house and stopped running the house full time—David Phillips and Charlie Fortin are now in charge—but he likes to have a hand in it." "If we assume that the hitchhiker that Mrs. Arsenter saw killed Homer, a problem arises: the hitchhiker killed him because Homer was the first person on the road stupid enough—or drunk enough—to put him on the road. The man in the car, or because he was an acquaintance of Homer Gammazzi, Ted Beaumont?" "How did he know Homer was coming?" Liz asked. "Because Homer goes bowling at night, and Homer is—was—a man of habit. He's like an old horse, Liz; he always comes back to the barn the same way." "Your first hypothesis," said Tad, "was that Homer didn't pull over because he was talking, but because he recognized the hitchhiker. A stranger who wanted to kill Homer wouldn't use a hitch at all, He'll think it's difficult, if not impossible." "right." "Ted," Liz said, her voice trembling, "the cops think he stopped because he saw it was Ted . . . did they?" "Yeah," Tad said, reaching for her hand, "they think only people like me—people who knew him—would use that. I think even suits would fit, when dapper What else is there for a writer to wear when he's ready to kill at one o'clock in the morning? A fine tweed suit, of course...a coat of brown buckskin at the elbow, which all English fiction insists is obligatory." He looked at Pang Bo. "It's fucking weird, isn't it? The whole thing." Alan Pumpborn nodded: "That's really weird. Homer came over in his van just when Mrs. Arsent thought he was starting to cross the road, or at least was about to do so. But the Clausen incident made it look more like This way: Homer was killed because of him, not just because he was too drunk to pull over. So, let's talk about Frederick Clausen, Ted. Tell me about him." Ted and Liz exchanged glances. "I think," says Ted, "my wife does this job faster and more concisely than I do, and she uses less profanity." "You really want me to tell?" Liz asked him. Ted nodded.So Liz started talking, slowly at first, then faster.Ted interrupted once or twice at first, then settled back and listened.For the next half hour, he barely spoke.Alain Pangble took out his notebook and wrote in it, but after the first few questions he didn't interject.