Free A Death by Stephen King Page A

and spat at Trusdale. She missed, but there was a spatter of applause.
    At the jail, Sheriff Barclay helped Trusdale down from the wagon. The wind was brisk, and smelled of snow. Tumbleweeds blew straight down Main Street and toward the town water tower, where they piled up against a shakepole fence and rattled there.
    “Hang that baby killer!” a man shouted, and someone threw a rock. It flew past Trusdale’s head and clattered on the board sidewalk.
    Sheriff Barclay turned and held up his lantern and surveyed the crowd that had gathered in front of the mercantile. “Don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t act foolish. This is in hand.”
    The sheriff took Trusdale through his office, holding him by his upper arm, and into the jail. There were two cells. Barclay led Trusdale into the one on the left. There was a bunk and a stool and a waste bucket. Trusdale made to sit down on the stool, and Barclay said, “No. Just stand there.”
    The sheriff looked around and saw the possemen crowding into the doorway. “You all get out of here,” he said.
    “Otis,” the one named Dave said, “what if he attacks you?”
    “Then I will subdue him. I thank you for doing your duty, but now you need to scat.”
    When they were gone, Barclay said, “Take off that coat and give it to me.”
    Trusdale took off his barn coat and began shivering. Beneath he was wearing nothing but an undershirt and corduroy pants so worn the wale was almost gone and one knee was out. Sheriff Barclay went through the pockets of the coat and found a twist of tobacco in a page of an R.W. Sears Watch Company catalogue, and an old lottery ticket promising a payoff in pesos. There was also a black marble.
    “That’s my lucky marble,” Trusdale said. “I had it since I was a boy.”
    “Turn out your pants pockets.”
    Trusdale turned them out. He had a penny and three nickels and a folded-up news clipping about the Nevada silver rush that looked as old as the Mexican lottery ticket.
    “Take off your boots.”
    Trusdale took them off. Barclay felt inside them. There was a hole in one sole the size of a dime.
    “Now your stockings.”
    Barclay turned them inside out and tossed them aside.
    “Drop your pants.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “No more than I want to see what’s in there, but drop them anyway.”
    Trusdale dropped his pants. He wasn’t wearing underdrawers.
    “Turn around and spread your cheeks.”
    Trusdale turned, grabbed his buttocks, and pulled them apart. Sheriff Barclay winced, sighed, and poked a finger into Trusdale’s anus. Trusdale groaned. Barclay removed his finger, wincing again at the soft pop, and wiped his finger on Trusdale’s undershirt.
    “Where is it, Jim?”
    “My hat?”
    “You think I went up your ass looking for your hat? Or through the ashes in your stove? Are you being smart?”
    Trusdale pulled up his trousers and buttoned them. Then he stood shivering and barefoot. An hour earlier he had been at home, reading his newspaper and thinking about starting a fire in the stove, but that seemed long ago.
    “I’ve got your hat in my office.”
    “Then why did you ask about it?”
    “To see what you’d say. That hat is all settled. What I really want to know is where you put the girl’s silver dollar. It’s not in your house, or your pockets, or up your ass. Did you get to feeling guilty and throw it away?”
    “I don’t know about no silver dollar. Can I have my hat back?”
    “No. It’s evidence. Jim Trusdale, I’m arresting you for the murder of Rebecca Cline. Do you have anything you want to say to that?”
    “Yes, sir. That I don’t know no Rebecca Cline.”
    The sheriff left the cell, closed the door, took a key from the wall, and locked it. The tumblers screeched as they turned. The cell mostly housed drunks and was rarely locked. He looked in at Trusdale and said, “I feel sorry for you, Jim. Hell ain’t too hot for a man who’d do such a thing.”
    “What thing?”
    The sheriff clumped