Full Dark, No Stars

“First, I asked myself if the name Marjorie Duval would mean anything to you. I would have liked to answer that question with a big ole no, but sometimes a fel ow has to be a realist. You’re not the

world’s number one news junkie, but I’ve lived with you long enough to know that you fol ow the main stories on TV and in the newspaper. I thought you’d know the name, and even if you didn’t, I thought you’d recognize the picture on the driver’s license. Besides, I said to myself, won’t she be curious as to why I have those ID cards? Women are always curious. Look at Pandora.”

Or Bluebeard’s wife, she thought. The woman who peeked into the locked room and found the severed heads of all her predecessors in matrimony.

“Bob, I swear to you I don’t have any idea what you’re tal—”

“So the first thing I did when I came in was to boot up your computer, open Firefox—that’s the search engine you always use—and check the history.”

“The what?”

He chuckled as if she’d gotten off an exceptional y witty line. “You don’t even know. I didn’t think you did, because every time I check, everything’s there. You never clear it!” And he chuckled again, as a man wil do when a wife exhibits a trait he finds particularly endearing.

Darcy felt the first thin stirrings of anger. Probably absurd, given the circumstances, but there it was.

“You check my computer? You sneak! You dirty sneak!”

“Of course I check. I have a very bad friend who does very bad things. A man in a situation like that has to keep current with those closest to him. Since the kids left home, that’s you and only you.”

Bad friend? A bad friend who does bad things? Her head was swimming, but one thing seemed al too clear: further denials would be useless. She knew, and he knew she did.

“You haven’t just been checking on Marjorie Duval .” She heard no shame or defensiveness in his voice, only a hideous regret that it should have come to this. “You’ve been checking on al of them.”

Then he laughed and said, “Whoops!”

She sat up against the headboard, which pul ed her slightly away from him. That was good. Distance was good. Al those years she’d lain with him hip to hip and thigh to thigh, and now distance was

good.

“What bad friend? What are you talking about?”

He cocked his head to one side, Bob’s body language for I find you dense, but amusingly so. “Brian.”

At first she had no idea who he was talking about, and thought it must be someone from work. Possibly an accomplice? It didn’t seem likely on the face of it, she would have said Bob was as lousy at

making friends as she was, but men who did such things sometimes did have accomplices. Wolves hunted in packs, after al .

“Brian Delahanty,” he said. “Don’t tel me you forgot Brian. I told you al about him after you told me about what happened to Brandolyn.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Your friend from junior high? Bob, he’s dead! He got hit by a truck while he was chasing down a basebal , and he’s dead.”

“Wel …” Bob’s smile grew apologetic. “Yes… and no. I almost always cal ed him Brian when I talked about him to you, but that’s not what I cal ed him back in school, because he hated that name. I

cal ed him by his initials. I cal ed him BD.”

She started to ask him what that had to do with the price of tea in China, but then she knew. Of course she knew. BD.

Beadie.

- 9 -

He talked for a long time, and the longer he talked, the more horrified she became. Al these years she’d been living with a madman, but how could she have known? His insanity was like an underground sea. There was a layer of rock over it, and a layer of soil over the rock; flowers grew there. You could strol through them and never know the madwater was there… but it was. It always had been. He blamed BD (who had become Beadie only years later, in his notes to the police) for everything, but Darcy suspected Bob knew better than that; blaming Brian Delahanty only made it easier to

keep his two lives separate.

It had been BD’s idea to take guns to school and go on a rampage, for instance. According to Bob, this inspiration had occurred in the summer between their freshman and sophomore years at

Castle Rock High School. “1971,” he said, shaking his head goodnaturedly, as a man might do when recal ing some harmless childhood peccadil o. “Long before those Columbine oafs were even a

twinkle in their daddies’ eyes. There were these girls that snooted us. Diane Ramadge, Laurie Swenson, Gloria Haggerty… there were a couple of others, too, but I forget their names. The plan was to get a bunch of guns—Brian’s dad had about twenty rifles and pistols in his basement, including a couple of German Lugers from World War I that we were just fascinated with—and take them to school. No searches or metal detectors back then, you know.