They had just arrived back at the police station from interviewing Janna, Dale in his personal unit that day, and he'd touched Jack on the shoulder just as Jack was about to get out of the car. "Speak a name, see the face it belongs to before suppertime, that's what my mother used to say. " He pointed down to Second Street, where a broad-shouldered bald fellow had just come out of News 'n Notions, a newspaper under his arm and a fresh deck of smokes in his hand. "That's Thornberg Kinderling, his very own self. "
Jack had bent forward without speaking, looking with the sharpest (and perhaps the most merciless) eyes Dale had ever seen in his life.
"Do you want to approach him?" Dale had asked.
"No. Hush. "
And Jack simply sat with one leg in Dale's car and one out of it, not moving, eyes narrowed. So far as Dale could tell, he didn't even breathe. Jack watched Kinderling open his cigarettes, tap one out, put it in his mouth, and light it. He watched Kinderling glance at the headline of the Herald and then saunter to his own car, an all-wheel-drive Subaru. Watched him get in. Watched him drive away. And by that time, Dale realized he was holding his own breath.
"Well?" he'd asked when the Kinderling-mobile was gone. "What do you think?"
And Jack had said, "I think he's the guy. "
Only Dale had known better. Even then he had known better. Jack was saying I think only because he and Chief Dale Gilbertson of French Landing, Wisconsin, were still on short terms, getting-to-know-you, getting-to-work-with-you terms. What he had meant was I know. And although that was impossible, Dale had quite believed him.
Now, sitting in his office with Jack directly across the desk from him ¡ª his reluctant but scarily gifted deputy ¡ª Dale asks, "What do you think? Did he do it?"
"Come on, Dale, how can I ¡ª "
"Don't waste my time, Jack, because those assholes from WSP are going to be here any minute and they'll take Potter heigh-ho over the hills. You knew it was Kinderling the second you looked at him, and you were halfway down the block. You were close enough to Potter when I brought him in to count the hairs in his nose. So what do you think?"
Jack is quick, at least; spares him the suspense and just administers the chop. "No," he says. "Not Potter. Potter's not the Fisherman. "
Dale has known that Jack believes this ¡ª knew it from his face outside ¡ª but hearing it is still an unhappy thump. He sits back, disappointed.
"Deduction or intuition?" Henry asks.
"Both," Jack says. "And stop looking like I plugged your mother, Dale. You may still have the key to this thing. "
"Railsback?"
Jack makes a seesawing gesture with one hand ¡ª maybe, maybe not, it says. "Railsback probably saw what the Fisherman wanted him to see . . . although the single slipper is intriguing, and I want to ask Rails-back about it. But if Mr. One-Slipper was the Fisherman, why would he lead Railsback ¡ª and us ¡ª to Potter?"
"To get us off his trail," Dale says.
"Oh, have we been on it?" Jack asks politely, and when neither of them answers: "But say he thinks we're on his trail. I can almost buy that, especially if he just remembered some goof he might have made. "
"Nothing back yet on the 7-Eleven phone one way or the other, if that's what you're thinking of," Dale tells him.
Jack appears to ignore this. His eyes gaze off into the middle distance. That little smile is back on his face. Dale looks at Henry and sees Henry looking at Jack. Unc's smile is easier to read: relief and delight. Look at that, Dale thinks. He's doing what he was built to do. By God, even a blind man can see it.
"Why Potter?" Jack finally repeats. "Why not one of the Thunder Five, or the Hindu at the 7-Eleven, or Ardis Walker down at the bait shop? Why not Reverend Hovdahl? What motive usually surfaces when you uncover a frame job?"
Dale thinks it over. "Payback," he says at last. "Revenge. "
In the ready room, a phone rings. "Shut up, shut up!" Ernie bellows to the others. "Let's try to act professional here for thirty seconds or so!"
Jack, meanwhile, is nodding at Dale. "I think I need to question Potter, and rather closely. "
Dale looks alarmed. "Then you better get on it right away, before Brown and Black ¡ª " He comes to a halt, frowning, with his head cocked. A rumbling sound has impinged on his attention. It's low, but rising. "Uncle Henry, what's that?"
"Motors," Henry says promptly. "A lot of them. They're east of here, but coming this way. Edge of town. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but it sounds like the party next door is like, over, dude. "
As if this were a cue, Ernie Therriault's distressed cry comes through the door. "Ohhhh, shit. "
Dit Jesperson: "What's ¡ª "
Ernie: "Get the chief. Aw, never mind, I'll ¡ª " There is a single perfunctory knock and then Ernie's looking in at the brain trust. He's as collected and soldierly as ever, but his cheeks have paled considerably beneath his summer tan, and a vein is pulsing in the middle of his forehead.
"Chief, I just took a call on the 911, twenty was the Sand Bar?"
"That hole," Dale mutters.
"Caller was the bartender. Says about fifty to seventy people are on their way. " By now the sound of approaching engines is very loud. It sounds to Henry like the Indy 500 just before the pace car runs for dear life and the checkered flag drops.
"Don't tell me," Dale says. "What do I need to make my day complete? Let me think. They're coming to take my prisoner. "
"Umm, yes, sir, that's what the caller said," Ernie agrees. Behind him, the other cops are silent. In that moment they don't look like cops at all to Dale. They look like nothing but dismayed faces crudely drawn on a dozen or so white balloons (also two black ones ¡ª can't forget Pam Stevens and Bob Holtz). The sound of the engines continues to grow. "Also might want to know one other thing the caller said?"
"Christ, what?"
"Said the, um . . . " Ernie searches for a word that isn't mob. "The protest group was being led by the Freneau g
irl's mom?"
"Oh . . . my . . . Christ," Dale says. He gives Jack a look of sick panic and utter frustration ¡ª the look of a man who knows he is dreaming but can't seem to wake up no matter how hard he tries. "If I lose Potter, Jack, French Landing is going to be the lead story on CNN tomorrow morning. "
Jack opens his mouth to reply, and the cell phone in his pocket picks that moment to start up its annoying tweet.
Henry Leyden immediately crosses his arms and tucks his hands into his armpits. "Don't hand it to me," he says. "Cell phones give you cancer. We agreed on that. "
Dale, meanwhile, has left the room. As Jack digs for the cell phone (thinking someone has picked a cataclysmically shitty time to ask him about his network television preferences), Henry follows his nephew, walking briskly with his hands now held slightly out, fingers gently fluttering the air, seeming to read the currents for obstacles. Jack hears Dale saying that if he sees a single drawn weapon, the person who drew it will join Arnie Hrabowski on the suspension list. Jack is thinking exactly one thing: no one is taking Potter anywhere until Jack Sawyer has had time to put a few pointed questions. No way.
He flicks the cell phone open and says, "Not now, whoever you are. We've got ¡ª "
"Hidey-ho, Travelin' Jack," says the voice from the phone, and for Jack Sawyer the years once more roll away.
"Speedy?"
"The very one," Speedy says. Then the drawl is gone. The voice becomes brisk and businesslike. "And as one coppiceman to another, son, I think you ought to visit Chief Gilbertson's private bathroom. Right now. "
Outside, there are enough vehicles arriving to shake the building. Jack has a bad feeling about this; has since he heard Ernie say who was leading the fools' parade.
"Speedy, I don't exactly have the time to visit the facilities right n ¡ª "
"You haven't got time to visit anyplace else," Speedy replies coldly. Only now he's the other one. The hard boy named Parkus. "What you're gonna find there you can use twice. But if you don't use it almighty quick the first time, you won't need it the second time. Because that man is gonna be up a lamppost. "
And just like that, Speedy is gone.
When Tansy leads the willing patrons into the Sand Bar's parking lot, there is none of the carnival raucousness that was the keynote of the cluster fuck at Ed's Eats & Dawgs. Although most of the folks we met at Ed's have been spending the evening in the Bar, getting moderately to seriously tanked, they are quiet, even funereal, as they follow Tansy out and fire up their cars and pickups. But it's a savage funereality. She has taken something in from Gorg ¡ª some stone powerful poison ¡ª and passed it along to them.
In the belt of her slacks is a single crow feather.
Doodles Sanger takes her arm and guides her sweetly to Teddy Runkleman's International Harvester pickup. When Tansy heads for the truck bed (which already holds two men and one hefty female in a white rayon waitress's uniform), Doodles steers her toward the cab. "No, honey," Doodles says, "you sit up there. Be comfy. "
Doodles wants that last place in the truck bed. She's spotted something, and knows just what to do with it. Doodles is quick with her hands, always has been.
The fog isn't thick this far from the river, but after two dozen cars and trucks have spun out of the Bar's dirt parking lot, following Teddy Runkleman's dented, one-taillight I. H. , you can barely see the tavern. Inside, only half a dozen people are left ¡ª these were somehow immune to Tansy's eerily powerful voice. One of them is Stinky Cheese, the bartender. Stinky has a lot of liquid assets to protect out here and isn't going anywhere. When he calls 911 and speaks to Ernie Therriault, it will be mostly in the spirit of petulance. If he can't go along and enjoy the fun, by God, at least he can spoil it for the rest of those monkeys.
Twenty vehicles leave the Sand Bar. By the time the caravan passes Ed's Eats (the lane leading to it cordoned off by yellow tape) and the NO TRESPASSING sign alongside the overgrown lane to that queer forgotten house (not cordoned off; not even noticed, for that matter), the caravan has grown to thirty. There are fifty cars and trucks rolling down both lanes of Highway 35 by the time the mob reaches Goltz's, and by the time it passes the 7-Eleven, there must be eighty vehicles or more, and maybe two hundred and fifty people. Credit this unnaturally rapid swelling to the ubiquitous cell phone.
Teddy Runkleman, oddly silent (he is, in fact, afraid of the pallid woman sitting beside him ¡ª her snarling mouth and her wide, unblinking eyes), brings his old truck to a halt in front of the FLPD parking lot entrance. Sumner Street is steep here, and he sets the parking brake. The other vehicles halt behind him, filling the street from side to side, rumbling through rusty mufflers and blatting through broken exhaust pipes. Misaligned headlights stab the fog like searchlight beams at a movie premiere. The night's dank wet-fish smell has been overlaid with odors of burning gas, boiling oil, and cooking clutch lining. After a moment, doors begin to open and then clap shut. But there is no conversation. No yelling. No indecorous yee-haw whooping. Not tonight. The newcomers stand in clusters around the vehicles that brought them, watching as the people in the back of Teddy's truck either jump over the sides or slip off the end of the tailgate, watching as Teddy crosses to the passenger door, at this moment as attentive as a young man arriving with his date at the junior prom, watching as he helps down the slim young woman who has lost her daughter. The mist seems to outline her somehow, and give her a bizarre electric aura, the same blue of the sodium lights on Beezer's upper arms. The crowd gives out a collective (and weirdly amorous) sigh when it sees her. She is what connects them. All her life, Tansy Freneau has been the forgotten one ¡ª even Cubby Freneau forgot her eventually, running off to Green Bay and leaving her here to work odd jobs and collect the ADC. Only Irma remembered her, only Irma cared, and now Irma is dead. Not here to see (unless she's looking down from heaven, Tansy thinks in some distant and ever-receding part of her mind) her mother suddenly idolized. Tansy Freneau has tonight become the dearest subject of French Landing's eye and heart. Not its mind, because its mind is temporarily gone (perhaps in search of its conscience), but certainly of its eye and heart, yes. And now, as delicately as the girl she once was, Doodles Sanger approaches this woman of the hour. What Doodles spotted lying on the floor of Teddy's truck bed was an old length of rope, dirty and oily but thick enough to do the trick. Below Doodles's petite fist hangs the noose that her clever hands have fashioned on the ride into town. She hands it to Tansy, who holds it up in the misty light.
The crowd lets out another sigh.
Noose raised, looking like a female Diogenes in search of an honest man rather than of a cannibal in need of lynching, Tansy walks ¡ª delicate herself in her jeans and bloodstained sweatshirt ¡ª into the parking lot. Teddy, Doodles, and Freddy Saknessum walk behind her, and behind them come the rest. They move toward the police station like the tide.
The Thunder Five are still standing with their backs to the brick wall and their arms folded. "What the fuck do we do?" Mouse asks.
"I don't know about you," Beezer says, "but I'm gonna stand here until they grab me, which they probably will. " He's looking at the woman with the upraised noose. He's a big boy and he's been in a lot of hard corners, but this chick frightens him with her blank, wide eyes, like the eyes of a statue. And there's something stuck in her belt. Something black. Is it a knife? Some kind of dagger? "And I'm not gonna fight, because it won't work. "
"They'll lock the door, right?" Doc asks nervously. "I mean, the cops'll lock the door. "
"I imagine," Beezer says, never taking his eyes from Tansy Freneau. "But if these folks want Potter, they'll have him on the half shell. Look at 'em, for Christ's sake. There's a couple of hundred. "
Tansy stops, the noose still held up. "Bring him out," she says. Her voice is louder than it should be, as if some doctor has cunningly hidden an amplifying gadget in her throat. "Bring him out. Give us the killer!"
Doodles joins in. "Bring him out
!"
And Teddy. "Give us the killer!"
And Freddy. "Bring him out! Give us the killer!"
And then the rest. It could almost be the sound track of George Rathbun's Badger Barrage, only instead of "Block that kick!" or "On Wisconsin!" they are screaming, "BRING HIM OUT! GIVE US THE KILLER!"
"They're gonna take him," Beezer murmurs. He turns to his troops, his eyes both fierce and frightened. Sweat stands out on his broad forehead in large perfect drops. "When she's got 'em pumped up to high, she'll come and they'll be right on her ass. Don't run, don't even unfold your arms. And when they grab you, let it happen. If you want to see daylight tomorrow, let it happen. "
The crowd stands knee-deep in fog like spoiled skim milk, chanting, "BRING HIM OUT! GIVE US THE KILLER!"
Wendell Green is chanting right along with them, but that doesn't keep him from continuing to take pictures.
Because shit, this is the story of a lifetime.
From the door behind Beezer, there's a click. Yeah, they locked it, he thinks. Thanks, you whores.
But it's the latch, not the lock. The door opens. Jack Sawyer steps out. He walks past Beezer without looking or reacting as Beez mutters, "Hey, man, I wouldn't go near her. "
Jack advances slowly but not hesitantly into the no-man's-land between the building and the mob with the woman standing at its head, Lady Liberty with the upraised hangman's noose instead of a torch in her hand. In his simple gray collarless shirt and dark pants, Jack looks like a cavalier from some old romantic tale advancing to propose marriage. The flowers he holds in his own hand add to this impression. These tiny white blooms are what Speedy left for him beside the sink in Dale's bathroom, a cluster of impossibly fragrant white blossoms.
They are lilies of the vale, and they are from the Territories. Speedy left him no explanation about how to use them, but Jack needs none.
The crowd falls silent. Only Tansy, lost in the world Gorg has made for her, continues to chant: "Bring him out! Give us the killer!" She doesn't stop until Jack is directly in front of her, and he doesn't kid himself that it's his handsome face or dashing figure that ends the too loud repetition. It is the smell of the flowers, their sweet and vibrant smell the exact opposite of the meaty stench that hung over Ed's Eats.
Her eyes clear . . . a little, at least.
"Bring him out," she says to Jack. Almost a question.
"No," he says, and the word is filled with heartbreaking tenderness. "No, dear. "
Behind them, Doodles Sanger suddenly thinks of her father for the first time in maybe twenty years and begins to weep.
"Bring him out," Tansy pleads. Now her own eyes are filling. "Bring out the monster who killed my pretty baby. "
"If I had him, maybe I would," Jack says. "Maybe I would at that. " Although he knows better. "But the guy we've got's not the guy you want. He's not the one. "
"But Gorg said ¡ª "
Here is a word he knows. One of the words Judy Marshall tried to eat. Jack, not in the Territories but not entirely in this world right now either, reaches forward and plucks the feather from her belt. "Did Gorg give you this?"
"Yes ¡ª "
Jack lets it drop, then steps on it. For a moment he thinks ¡ª knows ¡ª that he feels it buzzing angrily beneath the sole of his shoe, like a half-crushed wasp. Then it stills. "Gorg lies, Tansy. Whatever Gorg is, he lies. The man in there is not the one. "
Tansy lets out a great wail and drops the rope. Behind her, the crowd sighs.
Jack puts his arm around her and again he thinks of George Potter's painful dignity; he thinks of all the lost, struggling along without a single clean Territories dawn to light their way. He hugs her to him, smelling sweat and grief and madness and coffee brandy.
In her ear, Jack whispers: "I'll catch him for you, Tansy. "
She stiffens. "You . . . "
"Yes. "
"You . . . promise?"
"Yes. "
"He's not the one?"
"No, dear. "
"You swear?"
Jack hands her the lilies and says, "On my mother's name. "
She lowers her nose to the flowers and inhales deeply. When her head comes up again, Jack sees that the danger has left her, but not the insanity. She's one of the lost ones now. Something has gotten to her. Maybe if the Fisherman is caught, it will leave her. Jack would like to believe that.
"Someone needs to take this lady home," Jack says. He speaks in a mild, conversational voice, but it still carries to the crowd. "She's very tired and full of sadness. "
"I'll do it," Doodles says. Her cheeks gleam with tears. "I'll take her in Teddy's truck, and if he don't give me the keys, I'll knock him down. I ¡ª "
And that's when the chant starts again, this time from back in the crowd: "Bring him out! Give us the killer! Give us the Fisherman! Bring out the Fisherman!" For a moment it's a solo job, and then a few other hesitant voices begin to join in and lend harmony.
Still standing with his back against the bricks, Beezer St. Pierre says: "Ah, shit. Here we go again. "
Jack forbade Dale to come out into the parking lot with him, saying that the sight of Dale's uniform might set off the crowd. He didn't mention the little bouquet of flowers he was holding, and Dale barely noticed them; he was too terrified of losing Potter to Wisconsin's first lynching of the new millennium. He followed Jack downstairs, however, and has now commandeered the peephole in the door by right of seniority.
The rest of the FLPD is still upstairs, looking out of the ready-room windows. Henry has ordered Bobby Dulac to give him a running play-by-play. Even in his current state of worry about Jack (Henry thinks there's at least a 40 percent chance the mob will either trample him or tear him apart), Henry is amused and flattered to realize that Bobby is doing George Rathbun without even realizing it.
"Okay, Hollywood's out there . . . he approaches the woman . . . no sign of fear . . . the rest of them are quiet . . . Jack and the woman appear to be talking . . . and holy jeezum, he's givin' her a bouquet of flowers! What a ploy!"
"Ploy" is one of George Rathbun's favorite sports terms, as in The Brew Crew's hit-and-run ploy failed yet again last night at Miller Park.
"She's turnin' away!" Bobby yells jubilantly. He grabs Henry's shoulder and shakes it. "Hot damn, I think it's over! I think Jack turned her off!"
"Even a blind man could see he turned her off," Henry says.
"Just in time, too," Bobby says. "Here's Channel Five and there's another truck with one of those big orange poles on it . . . Fox-Milwaukee, I think . . . and ¡ª "
"Bring him out!" a voice outside begins yelling. It sounds cheated and indignant. "Give us the killer! Give us the Fisherman!"
"Oh nooo!" Bobby says, even now sounding like George Rathbun, telling his morning-after audience how another Badger rally had started to fizzle. "Not nowwww, not with the TV here! That's ¡ª "
"Bring out the Fisherman!"
Henry already knows who that is. Even through two layers of chicken-wire-reinforced glass, that high, yapping cry is impossible to mistake.
Wendell Green understands his job ¡ª don't ever make the mistake of thinking he doesn't. His job is to report the news, to analyze the news, to sometimes photojournalize the news. His job is not to make the news. But tonight he can't help it. This is the second time in the last twelve hours that a career maker of a story has been extended to his grasping, pleading hands, only to be snatched away at the last second.
"Bring him out!" Wendell bawls. The raw strength in his voice surprises, then thrills him "Give us the killer! Give us the Fisherman!"
The sound of other voices joining in with his provides an incredible rush. It is, as his old college roommate used to say, a real zipper buster.
Wendell takes a step forward, his chest swelling, his cheeks reddening, his confidence building. He's vaguely aware that the Action News Five truck is rolling slowly toward him through the crow
d. Soon there will be 10-k's and 5-k's shining through the fog; soon there will be TV cameras rolling tape by their harsh light. So what? If the woman in the blood-spattered sweatshirt was in the end too chicken to stand up for her own kid, Wendell will do it for her! Wendell Green, shining exemplar of civic responsibility! Wendell Green, leader of the people!
He begins to pump his camera up and down. It's exhilarating. Like being back in college! At a Skynyrd concert! Stoned! It's like ¡ª
There is a huge flash in front of Wendell Green's eyes. Then the lights go out. All of them.
"ARNIE HIT HIM WITH HIS FLASHLIGHT!" Bobby is screaming.
He grabs Dale's blind uncle by the shoulders and whirls him in a delirious circle. A thick aroma of Aqua Velva descends toward Henry, who knows Bobby's going to kiss him on both cheeks, French style, a second before Bobby actually does this. And when Bobby's narration resumes, he sounds as transported as George Rathbun on those rare occasions when the local sports teams actually buck the odds and grab the gold.
"Can you believe it, the Mad Hungarian hit him with his ever-lovin' flashlight and . . . GREEN'S DOWN! THE FUCKIN' HUNGARIAN HAS PUT EVERYONE'S FAVORITE ASSHOLE REPORTER ON THE MAT! WAY TO GO, HRABOWSKI!"
All around them, cops are cheering at the tops of their lungs. Debbi Anderson starts chanting "We Are the Champions," and other voices quickly lend support.
These are strange days in French Landing, Henry thinks. He stands with his hands in his pockets, smiling, listening to the bedlam. There's no lie in the smile; he's happy. But he's also uneasy in his heart. Afraid for Jack.
Afraid for all of them, really.
"That was good work, man," Beezer tells Jack. "I mean, balls to the wall. "
Jack nods. "Thanks. "
"I'm not going to ask you again if that was the guy. You say he's not, he's not. But anything we can do to help you find the right one, you just call us. "
The other members of the Thunder Five rumble assent; Kaiser Bill gives Jack a friendly bop on the shoulder. It will probably leave a bruise.
"Thanks," Jack says again.
Before he can knock on the door, it's opened. Dale grabs him and gives him a crushing embrace. When their chests touch, Jack can feel Dale's heart beating hard and fast.
"You saved my ass," Dale says into his ear. "Anything I can do ¡ª "
"You can do something, all right," Jack says, pulling him inside. "I saw another cop car behind the news trucks. Couldn't tell for sure, but I think this one was blue. "
"Oh-oh," Dale says.
"Oh-oh is right. I need at least twenty minutes with Potter. It might not get us anything, but it might get us a lot. Can you hold off Brown and Black for twenty minutes?"
Dale gives his friend a grim little smile. "I'll see you get half an hour. Minimum. "
"That's great. And the 911 tape of the Fisherman's call, do you still have that?"
"It went with the rest of the evidence we were holding after Brown and Black took the case. A trooper picked it up this afternoon. "
"Dale, no!"
"Easy, big boy. I've got a cassette copy, safe in my desk. "
Jack pats his chest. "Don't scare me that way. "
"Sorry," Dale says, thinking, Seeing you out there, I wouldn't have guessed you were afraid of anything.
Halfway up the stairs, Jack remembers Speedy telling him he could use what had been left in the bathroom twice . . . but he has given the flowers to Tansy Freneau. Shit. Then he cups his hands over his nose, inhales, and smiles.
Maybe he still has them after all.