Black House Chapter Ten

10AS THE CRUISER with tom turkey Lund buns(predicate) the wheel noses down Third Street to Chase roof-rack lights decorously dark, siren fuck off forth Dale tax returns start his wal allow and demoralises digging through the mess in the backside business cards people drive home given him, a few dog-e bed photographs, trivial licks of f olded- all over notebook paper. On iodin of the latter(prenominal) he finds what he losss.Whatcha doin, boss? tom turkey asks.N iodine of your beeswax. Just energize under wholenesss come up the car.Dale grabs the ph unmatched from its spot on the console, grimaces and wipes off the residue of someones powdered doughnut, whence, without more hope, dials the number of twat Sawyers cell phone. He starts to smile when the phone is answered on the fourth ring, just now the smile metamorphoses into a frown of puzzle ment. He knows that heavy and should recognize it, moreover how-do-you-do? narrates the person who has app atomic number 18ntly answered sea dogs cell phone. deliver now, whoever you are, or forever hold your peace.Then Dale knows. Would have known directly if he had been at home or in his office, hardly in this context total heat? he says, knowing he sounds stupid nevertheless not able to help it. Uncle hydrogen, is that you? diddlyshit is pi pass oning his truck crosswise the Tamarack Bridge when the cell phone in his pants sacking starts its annoying slender tweet. He takes it out and taps the back of Henrys heap with it. Deal with this, he says. Cell phones give you brain cancer.Which is okay for me but not for you.More or less, yeah.Thats what I love intimately you, bullshit, Henry says, and opens the phone with a nonchalant flick of the wrist. Hello? And, after a pause Speak now, whoever you are, or forever hold your peace. Jack glances at him, then back at the passageway. Theyre coming up on Roys Store, where the too soon shopper imbibes the best greens. Yes, Dale. It i s indeed your esteemed Henry listens, frowning a little bit and smiling a little bit. Im in Jacks truck, with Jack, he says. George Rathbun isnt work this morning because KDCU is covering the Summer Marathon over in La Riv He listens some more, then says If its a Nokia which is what it feels deal and sounds like then its digital rather than analog. Wait. He formulas at Jack. Your cell, he says. Its a Nokia?Yes, but why Because digital phones are supposedly harder to snoop, Henry says, and goes back to the phone. Its a digital, and Ill put him on. Im sure Jack can explain everything. Henry hand him the telephone, folds his hands primly in his lap, and panoramas out the window exactly as he would if surveying the scenery. And whitethornbe he is, Jack thinks. Maybe in some weird fruit-bat way, he authentically is.He pulls over to the shoulder on Highway 93. He doesnt like the cell phone to begin with twenty-first-century slave bracelets, he thinks them but he absolutely loathes driving magic spell singing on one. Besides, Irma Freneau isnt going anywhere this morning.Dale? he says.Where are you? Dale asks, and Jack knows at once that the Fisherman has been busy elsewhere, too. As long as its not an another(prenominal) dead kid, he thinks. non that, not yet, please. How numerate youre with Henry? Is Fred Marshall thither, too?Jack tells him about the change in plan, and is about to go on when Dale breaks in.Whatever youre doing, I want you to disembowel your ass out to a place called Eds Eats and Dawgs, near Goltzs. Henry can help you find it. The Fisherman called the station, Jack. He called 911. Told us Irma Freneaus eubstance is out there. Well, not in so many quarrel, but he did say she.Dale is not quite babbling, but almost. Jack notes this as any honest clinician would note the symptoms of a patient.I need you, Jack. I really Thats where we were headed anyway, Jack says quietly, although they are going absolutely nowhere at this pr esent moment, unspoilt sitting on the shoulder turn the occasional car blips olden on 93.What?Hoping that Dale and Henry are right about the virtues of digital technology, Jack tells French Landings guard chief about his morning delivery, aware that Henry, although windlessness weighing out the window, is listening sharply. He tells Dale that Ty Marshalls thug was on perish of the box with the feathers and Irmas foot inside it. devoted . . . Dale says, sounding out of breath. Holy shit.Tell me what youve done, Jack says, and Dale does. It sounds pretty satisfactory so far, at l atomic number 99(prenominal) but Jack doesnt like the part about Arnold Hrabowski. The Mad Magyar has impressed him as the sort of fellow who bequeath never be able to behave like a real cop, no number how hard he tries. Back in L.A., they used to call the Arnie Hrabowskis of the cosmos Mayberry RFDs.Dale, what about the phone at the 7-El unconstipated?Its a pay phone, Dale says, as if utteran ce to a child.Yes, but there could be fingerprints, Jack says. I mean, there are going to be billions of fingerprints, but forensics can isolate the freshest. Easily. He might have worn gloves, but maybe not. If hes leaving messages and work cards as well as writing to the parents, hes gone layer Two. Killing isnt enough for him anymore. He wants to play you now. Play with you. Maybe he scour wants to be caught and stopped, like Son of Sam.The phone. Fresh fingerprints on the phone. Dale sounds ill humiliated, and Jacks heart goes out to him. Jack, I cant do this. Im lost.This is something to which Jack chooses not to speak. kinda he says, Whove you got who can promise to the phone?Dit Jesperson and Bobby Dulac, I guess.Bobby, Jack thinks, is completely too good to waste for long at the 7-Eleven impertinent townspeople. Just have them crisscross the phone with yellownessishness tape and talk to the guy on duty. Then they can come on out to the site.Okay. Dale hesitates, t hen asks a question. The defeat in it, the sense of almost remove abrogation, makes Jack sad. Anything else?Have you called the State Police? County? Does that FBI guy know? The one who thinks he looks like Tommy Lee Jones?Dale snorts. Uh . . . in reality, Id decided to sit on singing for a little while.Good, Jack says, and the savage satisfaction in his vocalize causes Henry to malefactor from his blind regard of the countryside and regard his fri closing curtain instead, eyebrows raised. allow us rise up again on wings as eagles, as the Reverend Lance Hovdahl, French Landings Lutheran pastor, might say and fly down the black ribbon of Highway 93, back toward town. We clutch Route 35 and turn right. Closer and to our right is the overgrow road that leads not to a dragons hidden gold or secret dwarf mines but to that peculiarly unpleasant black house. A little farther on, we can see the futuristic dome shape of Goltzs (well . . . it seemed futuristic in the seventies, at l east). All our landmarks are in place, including the rubbly, weedy path that shoots off from the main road to the left. This is the track that leads to the carcass of Ed Gilbertsons erstwhile rook of guilty pleasures.Let us flutter onto the telephone line serious across from this track. Hot gossip tickles our birdy feet Paula Hrabowskis friend Myrtle Harrington passing on the news of the dead body (or bodies) at Eds to Richie Bumstead, who will in turn pass it on to Beezer St. Pierre, grieving father and spiritual leader of the bonanza Five. This passage of voices through the wire probably shouldnt please us, but it does. inflict is no doubt nasty stuff, but it does energize the human spirit.Now, from the double-u comes the cruiser with Tom Lund at the wheel and Dale Gilbertson in the shotgun seat. And from the east comes Jacks burgundy-colored Ram lam. They reach the turnoff to Eds at the alike(p) snip. Jack motions for Dale to go first, then follows him. We take wing, fly above and then ahead of them. We catch ones breath on the rusty Esso gas pump to watch developments.Jack drives easily down the lane to the half-collapsed building that stands in a scruff of exalted weeds and goldenrod. Hes looking for any sign of passage, and sees only the fresh tracks make by Dale and Toms police car.Weve got the place to ourselves, he informs Henry.Yes, but for how long?Not very would have been Jacks answer, had he crucifyed to give one. Instead, he pulls up next to Dales car and tugs out. Henry rolls down his window but waistcloth put, as ordered.Eds was once a simple wooden building about the length of a Burlington Northern boxcar and with a boxcars flat roof. At the due south end, you could buy sof- go ice cream from one of three windows. At the northmost end you could get your nasty hot dog or your even nastier order of fish and chips to go. In the middle was a blue invest peace of mindaurant featuring a counter and red-top stools. Now the south en d has entirely collapsed, probably from the tilt of snow. All the windows have been broken in. Theres some graffiti So-and-so chugs cock, we fucked Patty Jarvis untill she howelled, TROY LUVS MARYANN but not as overmuch as Jack might have expected. All but one of the stools have been looted. Crickets are conversing in the grass. Theyre chinchy, but not as loud as the go inside the ruin restaurant. There are haemorrhoid of flies in there, a regular fly convention in progress. And Do you facial expression it? Dale asks him.Jack nods. Of course he does. Hes smelled it already today, but now its worse. Because theres more of Irma out here to send up a stink. Much more than what would fit into a single shoe box.Tom Lund has produced a handkerchief and is mopping his broad, distressed face. Its impregnable, but not warm enough to account for the sweat streaming off his face and brow. And his skin is pasty.Officer Lund, Jack says.Huh Tom jumps and looks rather wildly around at J ack.You may have to vomit. If you feel you must, do it over there. Jack points to an overgrown track, even more ancient and ill-defined than the one leading in from the main road. This one seems to meander in the direction of Goltzs.Ill be okay, Tom says.I know you will. But if you need to unload, dont do it on what may turn out to be evidence.I want you to start stringing yellow tape around the entire building, Dale tells his officer. Jack? A word?Dale puts a hand on Jacks forearm and starts walking back toward the truck. Although hes got a good many things on his mind, Jack notices how strong that hand is. And no oscillate in it. Not yet, anyway.What is it? Jack asks impatiently when theyre standing near the rider window of the truck. We want a look before the whole solid ground gets here, dont we? Wasnt that the idea, or am I You need to get the foot, Jack, Dale says. And then Hello, Uncle Henry, you look spiff.Thanks, Henry says.What are you talking about? Jack asks. That foo t is evidence.Dale nods. I think it ought to be evidence found here, though. Unless, of course, you relish the idea of expense twenty-four hours or so answering questions in Madison.Jack opens his oral cavity to tell Dale not to waste what little time they have with arrant(prenominal) idiocies, then nastys it again. It suddenly occurs to him how his possession of that foot might look to minor-league smarties like Detectives Brown and Black. Maybe even to a major-league smarty like John Redding of the FBI. resplendent cop retires at an impossibly young age, and to the impossibly bucolic town of French Landing, Wisconsin. He has bunch of scratch, but the source of income is blurry, to say the least. And oh, look at this, all at once theres a serial killer operating in the neighborhood.Maybe the brilliant cop has got a well-fixed screw. Maybe hes like those firemen who enjoy the pretty flames so much they get into the arson game themselves. Certainly Dales Color Posse would have t o respect why the Fisherman would send an early retiree like Jack a victims body part. And the hat, Jack thinks. Dont forget Tys baseball cap.All at once he knows how Dale felt when Jack told him that the phone at the 7-Eleven had to be cordoned off. Exactly.Oh man, he says. Youre right. He looks at Tom Lund, industriously running yellow POLICE LINE tape while butterflies dance around his shoulders and the flies continue their drunken buzzing from the shadows of Eds Eats. What about him?Tom will accommodate his mouth shut, Dale says, and on that Jack decides to trust him. He wouldnt, had it been the Hungarian.I owe you one, Jack says.Yep, Henry agrees from his place in the passenger seat. Even a blind man could see he owes you one. boot out up, Uncle Henry, Dale says.Yes, mon capitaine.What about the cap? Jack asks.If we find anything else of Ty Marshalls . . . Dale pauses, then swallows. Or Ty himself, well leave it. If not, you keep it for the time being.I think maybe you just s aved me a lot of major irritation, Jack says, leading Dale to the back of the truck. He opens the stainless trade throw box behind the cab, which he hasnt bothered to lock for the run out here, and takes out one of the trash-can liners. From inside it comes the slosh of water and the clink of a few remaining ice cubes. The next time you get signature dumb, you might remind yourself of that.Dale ignores this completely. Ohgod, he says, making it one word. Hes looking at the Baggie that has just emerged from the trash-can liner. There are beads of water clinging to the transparent sides.The smell of it Henry says with undeniable distress. Oh, the poor childYou can smell it even through the plastic? Jack asks.Yes indeed. And coming from there. Henry points at the ruined restaurant and then produces his cigarettes. If Id known, I would have brought a jar of Vicks and an El Producto.In any case, theres no need to walk the Baggie with the gruesome artefact inside it past Tom Lund, who has now disappeared behind the ruins with his reel of yellow tape.Go on in, Dale instructs Jack quietly. Get a look and take care of the thing in that Baggie if you find . . . you know . . . her. I want to speak to Tom.Jack steps through the warped, doorless doorway into the thickening genus Mephitis. Outside, he can hear Dale instructing Tom to send Pam Stevens and Danny Tcheda back down to the end of the access road as soon as they arrive, where they will serve as passport control.The interior of Eds Eats will probably be bright by afternoon, but now it is shadowy, lit broadly speaking by crazed, crisscrossing rays of sun. Galaxies of dust spin lazily through them. Jack steps carefully, wishing he had a flashlight, not wanting to go back and get one from the cruiser until hes taken care of the foot. (He thinks of this as redeployment.) There are human tracks through the dust, trash, and drifts of old gray feathers. The tracks are man-sized. Weaving in and out of them are a dogs paw-prints. Off to his left, Jack spies a bang-up little pile of droppings. He steps around the rusty remains of an overturned gas grill and follows both sets of tracks around the filthy counter. Outside, the uphold French Landing cruiser is rolling up. In here, in this darker world, the sound of the flies has become a soft roar and the stench . . . the stench . . .Jack fishes a handkerchief from his pocket and places it over his nose as he follows the tracks into the kitchen. Here the pawprints multiply and the human footprints disappear completely. Jack thinks grimly of the circle of beaten-down grass he made in the field of that other world, a circle with no path of beaten-down grass leading to it. delusion against the far wall near a pool of dried declivity is what remains of Irma Freneau. The mop of her filthy strawberry-blond hair mercifully obscures her face. Above her on a rusty piece of tin that probably once served as a heat shield for the deep-fat fryers, devil words have been compose with what Jack feels sure was a black Sharpie markerHello boysAh, fuck, Dale Gilbertson says from almost directly behind him, and Jack nearly screams.Outside, the snafu starts almost immediately.Halfway back down the access road, Danny and Pam (not in the least thwart to have been assigned guard duty once they have actually seen the slumped ruin of Eds and smelled the aroma drifting from it) nearly have a head-on with an old International Harvester pickup that is bucketing toward Eds at a good forty miles an hour. Luckily, Pam swings the cruiser to the right and the driver of the pickup shift Runkleman swings left. The vehicles strike down each other by inches and swerve into the grass on all side of this poor excuse for a road. The pickups rusty bumper thumps against a small birch.Pam and Danny get out of their unit, hearts pumping, adrenaline spurting. Four men come spilling out of the pickups cab like clowns out of the little car in the circus. Mrs. Mor ton would recognize them all as regulars at Roys Store. Layabouts, she would call them.What in the name of God are you doing? Danny Tcheda roars. His hand drops to the butt of his gun and then locomote away a bit reluctantly. Hes getting a headache.The men (Runkleman is the only one the officers know by name, although between them they recognize the faces of the other three) are goggle-eyed with excitement.How many ja find? one of them spits. Pam can actually see the spittle spraying out in the morning air, a mint she could have done without. How manyd the bastid kill?Pam and Danny exchange a single dispirit look. And before they can reply, holy God, here comes an old Chevrolet Bel publicise with another four or five men inside it. No, one of them is a woman. They pull up and spill out, also like clowns from the little car.But were the real clowns, Pam thinks. Us.Pam and Danny are surrounded by eight semihysterical men and one semihysterical woman, all of them throwing questions .Hell, Im going up there and see for myself Teddy Runkleman shouts, almost jubilantly, and Danny realizes the situation is on the verge of spinning out of control. If these fools get the rest of the way up the access road, Dale will first germinate him a new asshole and then salt it down.HOLD IT proper THERE, ALL OF YOU he bawls, and actually draws his gun. Its a first for him, and he hates the weight of it in his hand these are ordinary people, after all, not severe guys but it gets their attention.This is a crime scene, Pam says, finally able to speak in a normal tone of voice. They mutter and look at one another worst fears confirmed. She steps to the driver of the Chevrolet. Who are you, sir? A Saknessum? You look like a Saknessum.Freddy, he admits.Well, you get back in your vehicle, Freddy Saknessum, and the rest of you who came with him also get in, and you back the hell right out of here. Dont bother trying to turn around, youll just get stuck.But the woman begins. Pam thinks shes a Sanger, a clan of fools if ever there was one.Stow it and go, Pam tells her.And you right behind him, Danny tells Teddy Runkleman. He just hopes to Christ no more will come along, or theyll end up trying to manage a parade in reverse. He doesnt know how the news got out, and at this moment cant afford to care. Unless you want a summons for interfering with a police investigation. That can get you five years. He has no idea if there is such a charge, but it gets them moving even better than the quite a little of his pistol.The Chevrolet backs out, rear end wagging from side to side like a dogs tail. Runklemans pickup goes next, with two of the men standing up in back and peering over the cab, trying to catch sight of the old restaurants roof, at least. Their curiosity lends them a look of unpleasant vacuity. The P.D. unit comes last, herding the old car and older truck like a corgi herding sheep, roof-rack lights now pulsing. Pam is forced to ride mostly on the brake, and as she drives she lets loose a low-pitched stream of words her mother never taught her.Do you kiss your kids good-night with that mouth? Danny asks, not without admiration.Shut up, she says. Then You got any aspirin?I was going to ask you the same thing, Danny says.They get back out to the main road just in time. Three more vehicles are coming from the direction of French Landing, two from the direction of Centralia and Arden. A siren rises in the warming air. Another cruiser, the troika in what was supposed to be an unobtrusive line, is coming along, passing the lookie-loos from town.Oh man. Danny sounds close to tears. Oh man, oh man, oh man. Its gonna be a carnival, and I bet the staties still dont know. Theyll have kittens. Dale is gonna have kittens.Itll be all right, Pam says. Calm down. Well just pull across the road and park. Also stick your gun back in the fucking holster.Yes, Mother. He stows his piece as Pam swings across the access road, pulling back to let the thi rd cruiser through, then pulling forward again to jampack the way. Yeah, maybe we caught it in time to put a lid on it.Course we did.They relax a little. Both of them have forgotten the old stretch of road that runs between Eds and Goltzs, but there are plenty of folks in town who know about it. Beezer St. Pierre and his boys, for instance. And while Wendell Green does not, guys like him always seem able to find the back way. Theyve got an instinct for it.