Free Needful Things by Stephen King Page B

Then she came in.
    Few of the women circulating among the displays gave her more than a glance, but Nettie Cobb looked at the newcomer with an extraordinary expression of mingleddismay and hate. Then she scuttled away from the carnival glass. Her movement caught the newcomer’s eye. She glanced at Nettie with a kind of massive contempt, then dismissed her.
    The bell over the door jingled as Nettie left the shop. Mr. Gaunt observed all of this with great interest.
    He walked over to Rosalie and said, “Mrs. Cobb has left without you, I’m afraid.”
    Rosalie looked startled. “Why—” she began, and then her eyes settled on the newcomer with the Casino Nite button pinned adamantly between her breasts. She was studying the Turkish rug hung on the wall with the fixed interest of an art student in a gallery. Her hands were planted on her vast hips. “Oh,” Rosalie said. “Excuse me, I really ought to go along.”
    â€œNo love lost between those two, I’d say,” Mr. Gaunt remarked.
    Rosalie smiled distractedly.
    Gaunt glanced at the woman in the kerchief again. “Who is she?”
    Rosalie wrinkled her nose. “Wilma Jerzyck,” she said. “Excuse me . . . I really ought to catch up with Nettie. She’s high-strung, you know.”
    â€œOf course,” he said, and watched Rosalie out the door. To himself he added, “Aren’t we all.”
    Then Cora Rusk was tapping him on the shoulder. “How much is that picture of The King?” she demanded.
    Leland Gaunt turned his dazzling smile upon her. “Well, let’s talk about it,” he said. “How much do you think it’s worth?”

CHAPTER THREE
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1
    Castle Rock’s newest port of commerce had been closed for nearly two hours when Alan Pangborn rolled slowly down Main Street toward the Municipal Building, which housed the Sheriff’s Office and Castle Rock Police Department. He was behind the wheel of the ultimate unmarked car: a 1986 Ford station wagon. The family car. He felt low and half-drunk. He’d only had three beers, but they had hit him hard.
    He glanced at Needful Things as he drove past, approving of the dark-green canopy which jutted out over the street, just as Brian Rusk had done. He knew less about such things (having no relations who worked for the Dick Perry Siding and Door Company in South Paris), but he thought it did lend a certain touch of class to Main Street, where most shopowners had added false fronts and called it good. He didn’t know yet what the new place sold—Polly would, if she had gone over this morning as she had planned—but it looked to Alan like one of those cozy French restaurants where you took the girl of your dreams before trying to sweet-talk her into bed.
    The place slipped from his mind as soon as he passed it. He signalled right two blocks farther down, and turned up the narrow passage between the squat brick block of the Municipal Building and the white clapboard Water District building. This lane was marked OFFICIAL VEHICLES ONLY.
    The Municipal Building was shaped like an upsidedown L, and there was a small parking lot in the angle formed by the two wings. Three of the slots were marked SHERIFF’S OFFICE . Norris Ridgewick’s bumbling old VW Beetle was parked in one of them. Alan parked in another, cut the headlights and the motor, reached for the door-handle.
    The depression which had been circling him ever since he left The Blue Door in Portland circling the way wolves often circled campfires in the adventure stories he had read as a boy, suddenly fell upon him. He let go of the door-handle and just sat behind the wheel of the station wagon, hoping it would pass.
    He had spent the day in Portland’s District Court, testifying for the prosecution in four straight trials. The district encompassed four counties—York, Cumberland, Oxford, Castle—and of all the lawmen who served in