Firestarter by Stephen King Read Free Book Online

plane, and he had been in the custody of the “real” cops when he committed suicide by opening up his carotid artery with his own fingernails. Nice going, guys.
    â€œLook … sir. I asked if the man was her father to try and find out if there’s a family resemblance. Those pictures make it a little hard to tell.”
    â€œThey look a bit alike. Different hair colors.”
    That much I can see for myself, you asshole, the airport cop thought. “I saw them both,” the cop told the driver of the green car. “He’s a big guy, bigger than he looks in that picture. He looked sick or something.”
    â€œDid he?” The driver seemed pleased.
    â€œWe’ve had a big night here, all told. Some fool also managed to light his own shoes on fire.”
    The driver sat bolt upright behind the wheel. “Say what? ”
    The airport cop nodded, happy to have got through the driver’s bored façade. He would not have been so happy if the driver had told him he had just earned himself a debriefing in the Shop’s Manhattan offices. And Eddie Delgardo probably would have beaten the crap out of him, because instead of touring the singles bars (and the massage parlors, and the Times Square porno shops) during the Big Apple segment of his leave, he was going to spend most of it in a drug-induced state of total recall, describing over and over again what had happened before and just after his shoes got hot.
9
    The other two men from the green sedan were talking to airport personnel. One of them discovered the skycap who had noticed Andy and Charlie getting out of the cab and going into the terminal.
    â€œSure I saw them. I thought it was a pure-d shame, a man as drunk as that having a little girl out that late.”
    â€œMaybe they took a plane,” one of the men suggested.
    â€œMaybe so,” the skycap agreed. “I wonder what that child’s mother can be thinking of. I wonder if she knows what’s going on.”
    â€œI doubt if she does,” the man in the dark-blue Botany 500 suit said. He spoke with great sincerity. “You didn’t see them leave?”
    â€œNo, sir. Far as I know, they’re still round here somewhere … unless their flight’s been called, of course.”
10
    The two men made a quick sweep through the main terminal and then through the boarding gates, holding their IDs up in their cupped hands for the security cops to see. They met near the United Airlines ticket desk.
    â€œDry,” the first said.
    â€œThink they took a plane?” the second asked. He was the fellow in the nice blue Botany 500.
    â€œI don’t think that bastard had more than fifty bucks to his name … maybe a whole lot less than that.”
    â€œWe better check it.”
    â€œYeah. But quick.”
    United Airlines. Allegheny. American. Braniff. The commuter airlines. No broad-shouldered man who looked sick had bought tickets. The baggage handler at Albany Airlines thought he had seen a little girl in red pants and a green shirt, though. Pretty blond hair, shoulder-length.
    The two of them met again near the TV chairs where Andy and Charlie had been sitting not long ago. “What do you think?” the first asked.
    The agent in the Botany 500 looked excited. “I think we ought to blanket the area,” he said. “I think they’re on foot.”
    They headed back to the green car, almost trotting.
11
    Andy and Charlie walked on through the dark along the soft shoulder of the airport feeder road. An occasional car swept by them. It was almost one o’clock. A mile behind them, in the terminal, the two men had rejoined their third partner at the green car. Andy and Charlie were now walking parallel to the Northway, which was to their right and below them, lit by the depthless glare of sodium lights. It might be possible to scramble down the embankment and try to thumb a ride in the breakdown lane, but if a cop came