Danforth Keeton and Ace Merrill

Danforth Keeton and Ace Merrill become partners in a campaign to destroy Castle Rock, joining Keeton’s belief that unseen persecutors must be eliminated to Ace’s criminal experience and capacity for violence. Their alliance makes the town’s unraveling practical: they load dynamite, distribute timed bombs, and attack Norris Ridgewick when explosions draw the authorities’ attention elsewhere.

Formation of the Alliance

By the time they work together, Keeton’s descent has acquired both an administrative cause and a delusional explanation. The State House has demanded a comprehensive audit of Castle Rock’s books, including tax records, revenue sharing, municipal budgets, and the experimental tree farm’s finances. Keeton has in fact concealed his gambling losses by taking money from the town’s petty-cash fund. His first $100 theft followed losses at the track; later, as the losses accumulated, he borrowed from a bookie to place larger bets. The secret correspondence he kept locked away, some of it bearing his initials despite having been typed without his secretary’s help, records the real pressure behind his crisis.

Ace enters the partnership as a criminal who has come to carry out Leland Gaunt’s larger design. Keeton recognizes him when Ace emerges from a service alley carrying a crate, with two automatic pistols tucked into his waistband. The crate contains blasting caps. Keeton asks whether Ace is supposed to help him get rid of the people he calls Them; Ace confirms that he is, and says they will turn the whole town into a flame-broiled ruin. He also admits that a box of blasting caps alone cannot do much damage, but says Gaunt believes Keeton knows what is needed. Keeton’s answer is not merely assent: he has a plan for using the materials, and his readiness turns Gaunt’s recruitment into an operational conspiracy.

Planning and Bomb Placement

The pair’s division of labor combines Ace’s armed presence with Keeton’s participation in transporting and planting the explosives. They load crates of dynamite into a van in less than ten minutes. Afterward, Keeton asks for more of the substance Ace has supplied him, and Ace agrees. Their manner of address has shifted into a grotesque performance of paternal familiarity, but the practical business remains clear: they are preparing an attack on the town, not simply talking about imagined enemies.

They then drive slowly up Main Street in pouring rain, disguised by the appearance of an ordinary television news van. State Police cars pass them twice without stopping. While Gaunt keeps the authorities occupied elsewhere, the two men leave small bombs around town. At the Samuels Funeral Home, they place a timer and five sticks of dynamite in the doorway. Ace breaks a pane in the neighboring barber shop and throws another bomb inside; the timer is already counting down when it comes to rest by the barber’s chair. The measured, almost routine pace of their drive contrasts with the timed destruction they are setting in motion.

Partnership Under Fire

The bombing campaign also exposes the limits of their coordination. During the confrontation with Norris Ridgewick and Trooper Joe Price, the barber shop and funeral home explode. Ace has been waiting for that distraction. Rather than join the others’ attention on the blast, he draws an automatic pistol and shoots Norris at close range. The first bullet strikes Norris high in the shoulder, damaging his lung and breaking his collarbone; subsequent shots hit the wall beside his head and wound his side as he falls.

Keeton is present as Ace turns the explosions into an ambush, and Ace urges him to join the attack. Their alliance has now moved from planning and transport to direct violence against the law. Norris’s injuries are a concrete consequence of the partnership: Keeton’s campaign against Them and Ace’s willingness to shoot a deputy converge in the same moment. The relationship is therefore not a friendship independent of the plot, but a working coalition whose criminal acts give Keeton’s persecution delusion deadly reach.