One day in the second week of October-by then the oaks and elms on Kossuth Street were a riot of gold and red-I once more visited the defunct West Side Rec. No self-respecting real estate bounty hunter would fail to fully investigate the possibilities of such a prime site, and I asked several people on the street what it was like inside (the door was padlocked, of course) and when it had closed.
One of the people I spoke to was Doris Dunning. Pretty as a picture, Chaz Frati had said. A generally meaningless cliche, but true in this case. The years had put fine lines around her eyes and deeper ones at the corners of her mouth, but she had exquisite skin and a terrific full-breasted figure (in 1958, the heyday of Jayne Mansfield, full breasts are considered attractive rather than embarrassing). We spoke on the stoop. To invite me in with the house empty and the kids at school would have been improper and no doubt the subject of neighborly gossip, especially with her husband “living out.” She had a dustrag in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There was a bottle of furniture polish poking out of her apron pocket. Like most folks in Derry, she was polite but distant.
Yes, she said, when it was still up and running, West Side Rec had been a fine facility for the kiddos. It was so nice to have a place like that close by where they could go after school and race around to their hearts’ content. She could see the playground and the basketball court from her kitchen window, and it was very sad to see them empty. She said she thought the Rec had been closed in a round of budget cuts, but the way her eyes shifted and her mouth tucked in suggested something else to me: that it had been closed during the round of child-murders and disappearances. Budget concerns might have been secondary.
I thanked her and handed her one of my recently printed business cards. She took it, gave me a distracted smile, and closed the door. It was a gentle close, not a slam, but I heard a rattle from behind it and knew she was putting on the chain.
I thought the Rec might do for my purposes when Halloween came, although I didn’t completely love it. I anticipated no problems getting inside, and one of the front windows would give me a fine view of the street. Dunning might come in his car rather than on foot, but I knew what it looked like. It would be after dark, according to Harry’s essay, but there were streetlights.
Of course, that visibility thing cut both ways. Unless he was totally fixated on what he’d come to do, Dunning would almost certainly see me running at him. I had the pistol, but it was only dead accurate up to fifteen yards. I’d need to be even closer before I dared risk a shot, because on Halloween night, Kossuth Street was sure to be alive with pint-sized ghosts and goblins. Yet I couldn’t wait until he actually got in the house before breaking cover, because according to the essay, Doris Dunning’s estranged husband had gone to work right away. By the time Harry came out of the bathroom, all of them were down and all but Ellen were dead. If I waited, I was apt to see what Harry had seen: his mother’s brains soaking into the couch.
I hadn’t traveled across more than half a century to save just one of them. And so what if he saw me coming? I was the man with the gun, he was the man with the hammer-probably filched from the tool drawer at his boardinghouse. If he ran at me, that would be good. I’d be like a rodeo clown, distracting the bull. I’d caper and yell until he got in range, then put two in his chest.
Assuming I was able to pull the trigger, that was.
And assuming the gun worked. I’d test-fired it in a gravel pit on the outskirts of town, and it seemed fine… but the past is obdurate.
It doesn’t want to change.
Upon further consideration, I thought there might be an even better location for my Halloween-night stakeout. I’d need a little luck, but maybe not too much. God knows there’s plenty for sale in these parts, bartender Fred Toomey had said on my first night in Derry. My explorations had borne that out. In the wake of the murders (and the big flood of ’57, don’t forget that), it seemed that half the town was for sale. In a less standoffish burg, a supposed real-estate buyer like myself probably would have been given a key to the city and a wild weekend with Miss Derry by now.
One street I hadn’t checked out was Wyemore Lane, a block south of Kossuth Street. That meant the Wyemore backyards would abut on Kossuth backyards. It couldn’t hurt to check.
