Gwendy’s Final Task

33

GWENDY’S ANGER IS BACK. Her face feels as hot as a furnace and her jaw aches from grinding her teeth. She wipes away tears with a Kleenex, uses it to noisily blow her nose, and then stuffs it in the zero-g wastecan. While her shell-shocked mind is unable to fully comprehend what she’s just witnessed, she knows enough to call it what it is: cold-blooded murder. Someone—the blond stranger from her vision, the strange men in their yellow coats, or maybe even Gareth Winston—lured her husband to Derry and ran him down in the middle of the street like a stray dog. Were they all working for Sombra? Gwendy guesses they were. Are.

Even from across the room and inside the closet, she can hear the steady hum of the button box calling to her. Just because you hear it, she reminds herself, doesn’t mean you have to listen to it. She already knows what it’s saying anyway. Ever since they landed on Many Flags the button box is like a broken fucking record. Just one more piece of chocolate, Gwendy girl, that’s all. Just one more delicious bite-sized animal and you’ll think clearer and you’ll sleep better and you’ll never forget another goddamn thing. Or, better yet, why not press the red button and make all your troubles disappear? Starting with your billionaire friend. You know you want to …

“You’re damn right I want to,” she snaps, yanking another Kleenex from the box. “And if he’d actually been there in the video, I don’t think I could hold back.”

Gwendy shoves the voice into the corner of her broken brain—it’s getting more and more difficult to do this as her journey nears its end—and clicks on the MITCHELL file. There are a series of loud beeps and then the video begins.

The interrogation room is small and plain. Three gray walls. A tinted viewing window occupies the upper portion of the fourth. It’s impossible to tell who is watching from behind the dark glass, but Gwendy guesses that Charlotte Morgan is one of them. Possibly the only one.

There are four men crammed inside the room. One of them, wearing a dark suit and holstered sidearm, leans against the only door. His face is blurred, and for a fleeting instant, Gwendy thinks he’s one of them—the men in the yellow coats—but then she quickly realizes the man’s face has been purposely obscured to protect his identity. A second agent’s face has also been hidden. He’s sitting behind a narrow desk, studying an open laptop. To his immediate right is the agent in charge, whose unblurred face instantly reminds Gwendy of her father’s youngest brother, Uncle Harvey. With his tortoise-shell glasses and bushy mustache, this guy looks like he could be just about anyone’s favorite uncle or maybe even a science teacher from the local high school, the one who gets voted school favorite in the yearbook. Both of the agents sitting behind the desk are dressed in slacks and Oxford shirts. No jackets or ties.

The final man in the room is the guest of honor. Ward Mitchell is wearing a loose-fitting orange jumpsuit with the sleeves rolled up. He’s seated in a straight-backed metal chair that has been securely bolted to the floor. Gwendy can see he’s struggling to keep his head up and his eyes open. There’s a darkening bruise rising beneath one of his eyes and both of his lips appear to be swollen. That dismissive little smile of his is nowhere to be seen. Mitchell’s arms are propped up in front of him atop the desk. A small surgical tube runs from the bend of his right arm to a portable IV stand. A bag of clear fluid hangs on the uppermost hook, honey-dripping top-secret contents into Mitchell’s bloodstream. There’s a pressure cuff wrapped around the detective’s left bicep, as well as a tangle of wires leading from just inside the collar of his jumpsuit to the back of the agent’s laptop.

“Let’s start with your name.” The agent’s voice is firm but pleasant. He even sounds like a science teacher.

Mitchell blinks and looks around the room as if he’s just awakened from a deep sleep. He clears his throat. “Ward Thomas Mitchell.”

“Age?”

“Forty-four.”

You look older, Gwendy thinks, not without satisfaction.

“Address?”

“1920 Tupelo Road. Derry, Maine.”

“And you’re from Derry originally?”

“Born and raised there.”

Well, that explains a lot, the senator thinks.

“Occupation?”

“Derry PD. Almost thirty years. Detective the last twelve.”

“Married?”

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

“One. A boy.”

“How ol—”

She knows what they’re doing, easing him into it with easy questions, but this isn’t what she came for. Gwendy presses the arrow button on her laptop and fast-forwards the video. She forgets what she’s doing for a moment—a mini Brain Freeze, here and gone in a matter of seconds—and advances too far. She quickly hits REWIND and watches as the time code begins to reverse. Finally stopping at the 5:33 mark, she presses PLAY. Her hands are shaking.

“… referenced strange occurrences in Derry. Can you give us an example?”

Mitchell gives a confidential smile. His eyes are drifting around in their sockets. Gwendy thinks she might have seen people this cataclysmically stoned, but not since college. “I’ve heard voices.”

“Like in your head, Detective?”

“No-ooo … from inside the drains at my house.”

“Really?” The head guy glances at the tinted window and wiggles his eyebrows. “From the drains, huh?”

“Once … I’d just turned off the water after taking a shower … someone called out to me from inside the drain. And then they started laughing.”

“They?”

“It sounded like kids. A whole bunch of kids laughing.”

“And this voice, what did it say to you?”

“My name.”

The agent in charge scratches his chin. This time he gives the eyebrow-waggle to his partner.

“Another time I was loading the dishwater and I heard that same voice coming from the kitchen sink. It said ‘We’re saving you a seat, Warthog.’ No one’s called me that since I was a snot-nose kid at Derry Elementary.”

“Anything else?”

Ward Thomas Mitchell, aka Warthog, laughs. But there’s no laughter in his eyes. “There’s the clown.”

“Want to see a clown, Ward, look in the mirror,” one of the others says. He sounds disgusted.

Mitchell pays no attention. “Back when I was a rookie, I started having bad dreams. They got so horrible I was afraid to go to sleep at night. I was being chased in the sewers by someone dressed as a clown.”

Gwendy suddenly thinks of her old friend’s story about a clown with big silver eyes chasing her in Derry. She’s also thinking about her father and his warnings about the town. So out of character for him. She’s almost certain that something happened to her father during his short stay in Derry—something horrible—but he’s never admitted as much, and she doubts he even remembers now. Or maybe he does and is just too frightened, even after all these years, to talk about it.

“Later that same year, my rookie year, I caught a 911 for a domestic right around Christmas. Neighbor reported loud crashes and screaming coming from the house next door. When I pulled up, a man was sitting on the front porch covered in blood. He was crying and holding a butcher knife. He’d just finished slicing and dicing his wife and twin girls, and arranging their bodies around the dining room table. He’d placed salads in front of each of them and laid out napkins on their laps. We found a pan of burnt-to-crisp lasagna still baking in the oven. The man gave up without a fight, and when we cuffed him and put him in the back of a squad car, he said clear as day—and I’m not the only one who heard him that night—“the clown made me do it.” And then he never spoke a single word again. Ever. He’s still up at Juniper Hill as far as I know.”

The lead agent yawns and shuffles his notes.

“Moving ahead, Detective. On Friday, November 29, 2019, Mr. Ryan Brown of Castle Rock was killed in a hit-and-run in your jurisdiction. You were the lead detective on-scene and in charge of the case, correct?”

“I wasn’t first on scene, but yes, I was the detective in charge.”

“And the results of your investigation?”

“We were unable to locate or charge any suspects.” Mitchell once more flashes the goofball smile.

“Did you actually search for any suspects?”

“Nope.”

“Was there, in fact, anything even resembling an official investigation into Ryan Brown’s death?”

“Nope.” This time the goofball smile is accompanied by a small chuckle.

“And why not, Detective?”

“Because of the money.”

“Are you saying you were bribed to not investigate Ryan Brown’s death?”

“Yup.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know. Never got a name.”

“Are there other members of the Derry Police Department involved in this conspiracy?”

“Yup.”

“And who might they be?”

“Officers Ronald Freeman and Kevin Malerman.” Mitchell raises a fist. “My bros!”

“What can you tell us about the man who bribed you?”

“Tall. Thin. White. Wearing a long yellow coat. Old-fashioned, kinda sharp-looking white dress shoes. He talked funny.”

“You mean he spoke with an accent?”

“No, like his tongue was too big for his mouth. Or maybe like his voicebox was stuffed with crickets.”

All the interrogators stir at that.

“Anything else?”

“Yup,” Mitchell says agreeably, “he wasn’t human.”

“Excuse me?”

“His face … it kept changing. Slipping.”

Gwendy’s throat is suddenly desert-dry.

“His face was slipping? Not following you, Mitchell.”

“It was like he was wearing a mask, but not the rubber or cheap plastic kind kids wear on Halloween. It kept slipping, giving me glimpses of what was underneath.”

“And what was that?”

“A monster.”

“Can you describe what you saw under the mask?”

“Dark bristly hair, scaly skin, red lips, black eyes. And some kind of a snout. Like a wolf or a weasel. Maybe a rat.”

“How many times did you meet with this wolf-man?”

“Twice. He initially approached me at the crime scene. And then a second time at my home when he brought me the money.”

“How much did the man pay you?”

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

One of the others says something. It’s off-mike, but Gwendy thinks it might have been Fuck me.

“Did he explain why he wanted the Ryan Brown investigation to go away?”

“Nope.”

“Did he say if he was working for someone else?”

“Nope.”

“The man was alone both times?”

“Yup.” Mitchell pauses and adds, “I thought he might kill me, you know.”

“What kind of vehicle did the man drive?”

“Never saw one. He arrived on foot both times. He had a button on his lapel. At first I thought it was some kind of a badge. But it wasn’t. It was a big crimson eye and it was watching me the whole time we talked.”

The man by the door says, “A tinfoil hat can help with that.” There’s some laughter, but the chief interrogator doesn’t join in and it dies quickly.

“Had you ever met the victim, Ryan Brown, before his death?”

“Nope.”

“Did you play any role in luring Ryan Brown to Derry?”

“Nope.”

“How about Gwendy Peterson? You knew who she was?”

“Sure. The bitch always polluting my TV before the election. All those damn commercials. I couldn’t watch a single Red Sox game that season without having to listen to her libtard drivel.”

Gwendy extends her middle finger to the laptop screen.

“Do you know a man named Gareth Winston?”

“No, but I’ve heard the name.”

“Where?”

Mitchell gives his loopy smile. “Not sure.”

“Last question for now and then we can take a short break. Have you ever heard of the Sombra Corporation?”

“Nope.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“Yup.”

And that’s all there is.