John Cullum squinted an eye and seemed to calculate. “Not that old, I sh’d think. If he’s thirty, he just got there.”

“This book … ’Salem’s Lot … was it a bestseller?”

“Dunno,” Cullum said. “Lots of people around here read it, tell you that much. Because it’s set in Maine. And because of the ads they had on TV, you know. Also there was a movie made out of his first book, but I never went to see it. Looked too bloody.”

“What was it called?”

Cullum thought, then shook his head. “Can’t quite remember. ’Twas just one word, and I’m pretty sure it was a girl’s name, but that’s the best I can do. Maybe it’ll come to me.”

“He’s not a walk-in, you don’t think?”

Cullum laughed. “Born and raised right here in the State of Maine. Guess that makes him a live-in.”

Roland was looking at Eddie with increasing impatience, and Eddie decided to give up. This was worse than playing Twenty Questions. But goddammit, Pere Callahan was real and he was also in a book of fiction written by this man King, and King lived in an area that was a magnet for what Cullum called walk-ins. One of those walk-ins had sounded very much to Eddie like a servant of the Crimson King. A woman with a bald head who seemed to have a bleeding eye in the center of her forehead, John had said.

Time to drop this for now and get to Tower. Irritating he might be, but Calvin Tower owned a certain vacant lot where the most precious rose in the universe was growing wild. Also, he knew all sorts of stuff about rare books and the folks who had written them. Very likely he knew more about the author of ’Salem’s Lot than sai Cullum. Time to let it go. But—

“Okay,” he said, tossing the ball back to the caretaker. “Lock that thing up and we’ll head off to the Dimity Road, if it does ya. Just a couple more questions.”

Cullum shrugged and put the Yaz ball back into the case. “It’s your nickel.”

“I know,” Eddie said … and suddenly, for the second time since he’d come through the door, Susannah seemed weirdly close. He saw her sitting in a room filled with antiquey-looking science and surveillance equipment. Jake’s Dogan, for sure … only as Susannah must have imagined it. He saw her speaking into a mike, and although he couldn’t hear her, he could see her swollen belly and her frightened face. Now very pregnant, wherever she was. Pregnant and ready to pop. He knew well enough what she was saying: Come, Eddie, save me, Eddie, save both of us, do it before it’s too late.

“Eddie?” Roland said. “You’ve come over all gray. Is it your leg?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, although right now his leg didn’t hurt at all. He thought again of whittling the key. The dreadful responsibility of knowing it had to be just right. And here he was again, in much the same situation. He had hold of something, he knew he did … but what? “Yeah, my leg.”