Desperation Read Online Free PDF Page B

was closed but unlatched. The steps were down. There was a doll lying in the dirt at the foot of them. The dress it was wearing fluttered in the wind.
    Peter’s eyes closed. He didn’t know for sure if he had closed them or if they had closed on their own. Didn’t much care. All he knew was that Officer Friendly had blown by the disabled RV as if he hadn’t even seen it . . . or as if he already knew all about it.
    Words from an old song, floating in his head: Somethin happenin here . . . what it is ain’t exactly clear . . .
    â€œDo we impress you as stupid people?” Mary was asking as the disabled RV began to dwindle behind them—to dwindle as Deirdre’s Acura had done. “Or stoned? Do you think we’re—”
    â€œShut up,” the cop said. He spoke softly, but there was no way to miss the venom in his voice.
    Mary had been sitting forward with her fingers curled into the mesh between the front and back seats. Now her hands dropped away from it, and she turned her shocked face toward Peter. She was a faculty wife, she was a poet who had published in over twenty magazines since her first tentative submissions eight years ago, she went to a women’s discussion group twice a week, she had been seriously considering piercing her nose. Peter wondered when the last time was she had been told to shut up. He wondered if anyone had ever told her to shut up.
    â€œWhat?” she asked, perhaps trying to sound aggressive, even threatening, and only sounding bewildered. “What did you tell me?”
    â€œI’m arresting you and your husband on a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to sell,” the cop said. His voice was uninflected, robotic. Now staring forward, Peter saw there was a little plastic bear stuck to the dashboard, beside the compass and next to what was probably an LED readout for the radar speed-gun. The bear was small, the size of a gumball machine prize. His neck was on a spring, and his empty painted eyes stared back at Peter.
    This is a nightmare, he thought, knowing it wasn’t. It’ s got to be a nightmare. I know it feels real, but it’s got to be.
    â€œYou can’t be serious,” Mary said, but her voice was tiny and shocked. The voice of someone who knew better. Her eyes were filling up with tears again. “Surely you can’t be.”
    â€œYou have the right to remain silent,” the big cop said in his robot’s voice. “If you do not choose to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I’m going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you?”
    She was looking at Peter, her eyes huge and horrified, asking him without speaking if he had heard what the cop had mixed in with the rest of it, that robotic voice never varying. Peter nodded. He had heard, all right. He put a hand into his crotch, sure he would feel dampness there, but he hadn’t wet himself. Not yet, anyway. He put an arm around Mary and could feel her trembling. He kept thinking of the RV back there. Door ajar, dollbaby lying face-down in the dirt, too many flat tires. And then there was the dead cat Mary had seen nailed to the speed-limit sign.
    â€œDo you understand your rights?”
    Act normally. I don ’t think he has the slightest idea what he said, so act normally.
    But what was normal when you were in the back seat of a police-cruiser driven by a man who was clearly as mad as a hatter, a man who had just said he was going to kill you?
    â€œDo you understand your rights?” the robot voice asked him.
    Peter opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a croak.
    The cop turned his head then. His face, pinkish with sun when he had stopped them, had gone pale. His eyes were very large, seeming to bulge out of his face like marbles.