“Hello, Mr. St. Pierre,” he says. “And hello to you, Wendell.”
“I’m lodging a complaint,” Green says. “I’m covering the biggest story of my life, and this lout spoils a whole roll of film. You can’t treat the press that way; we have a right to photograph whatever the hell we like.”
“I guess you woulda said you had a right to photograph my daughter’s dead body, too.” Beezer glares at Jack. “This piece of shit paid Teddy and the other lunkheads to go nuts so nobody would notice him sneaking inside there. He took pictures of the girl.”
Wendell jabs a finger at Jack’s chest. “He has no proof of that. But I’ll tell you something, Sawyer. I did get pictures of you. You were concealing evidence in the back of your truck, and I got you dead to rights. So think twice before you try to mess with me, because I’ll hang you out to dry.”
A dangerous red mist seems to fill Jack’s head. “Were you going to sell photographs of that girl’s body?”
“What’s it to you?” An ugly smirk widens Wendell Green’s mouth. “You’re not exactly lily-white either, are you? Maybe we can do each other some good, huh?”
The red mist darkens and fills Jack’s eyes. “We can do each other some good?”
Standing beside Jack, Beezer St. Pierre clenches and unclenches his enormous fists. Beezer, Jack knows, catches his tone perfectly, but the vision of dollar signs has so gripped Wendell Green that he hears Jack’s threat as a straightforward question.
“You let me reload my camera and get the pictures I need, and I keep quiet about you.”
Beezer lowers his head and balls his hands again.
“Tell you what. I’m a generous guy—maybe I could even cut you in, say ten percent of my total.”
Jack would prefer to break his nose, but he contents himself with a hard punch to the reporter’s stomach. Green clutches his gut and folds in half, then falls to the ground. His face has turned a hectic pink, and he struggles for breath. His eyes register shock and disbelief.
“See, I’m a generous guy, too, Wendell. I probably saved you thousands of dollars in dental work, plus a broken jaw.”
“Don’t forget the plastic surgery,” says Beezer, grinding a fist into the palm of the other hand. He looks as if someone just stole his favorite dessert off the dinner table.
Wendell’s face has become a reddish shade of purple.
“For your information, Wendell, no matter what you think you saw, I am not concealing evidence. If anything I am revealing it, though I hardly expect you to understand.”
Green manages to wheeze in something like a cubic inch of air.
“When your wind starts to come back, get out of here. Crawl, if you have to. Go back to your car and drive away. And for God’s sake, make it snappy, or our friend here is likely to put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.”
Slowly, Wendell Green gets to his knees, takes another noisy sip of oxygen, and levers himself semi-upright. He waggles one open hand at them, but his meaning is unclear. He could be telling Beezer and Jack to stay away from him, or that he will trouble them no further, or both. His trunk tilted over his belt, his hands pressed to his stomach, Green stumbles around the side of the building.
“I guess I oughta thank you,” Beezer says. “You let me keep my promise to my old lady. But I have to say, Wendell Green is one guy I’d really like to deconstruct.”
“Man,” Jack says, “I wasn’t sure if I could get in before you did.”
“It’s true, my restraint was crumbling.”
Both men smile. “Beezer St. Pierre,” Beezer says, and sticks out a hand.
“Jack Sawyer.” Jack takes his hand and experiences no more than a second of pain.
“Are you gonna let the state guys do all the work, or will you keep going on your own?”
“What do you think?” Jack says.
“If you ever need any help, or you want reinforcements, all you have to do is ask. Because I do want to get this son of a bitch, and I figure you have a better chance of finding him than anyone else.”
On the drive back to Norway Valley, Henry says, “Oh, Wendell took a picture of the body, all right. When you came out of the building and went to your truck, I heard someone take a couple of pictures, but I thought it might have been Dale. Then I heard it again when you and Dale were inside with Bobby Dulac, and I realized someone was taking a picture of me! Well, now, I say to myself, this must be Mr. Wendell Green, and I told him to come out from behind the wall. That’s when those people charged out, yelling and screaming. As soon as that happened, I heard Mr. Green trot around from the side, go into the building, and shoot a few pictures. Then he sneaked out and stood by the side of the building, which is where your friend Beezer caught up with him and took care of things. Beezer is a remarkable fellow, isn’t he?”
“Henry, were you going to tell me about this?”
“Of course, but you were running around all over the place, and I knew Wendell Green wasn’t going to leave until he was thrown out. I’ll never read another word he writes. Never.”
“Same here,” Jack says.
“But you’re not giving up on the Fisherman, are you? In spite of what that pompous state cop said.”
“I can’t give up now. To tell you the truth, I think those waking dreams I mentioned yesterday were connected to this case.”
“Ivey-divey. Now, let’s get back to Beezer. Didn’t I hear him say he wanted to ‘deconstruct’ Wendell?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“He must be a fascinating man. I gather from my nephew that the Thunder Five spends Saturday afternoons and evenings in the Sand Bar. Next week, maybe I’ll start up Rhoda’s old car and drive to Centralia, have a few beers and a nice gab with Mr. St. Pierre. I’m sure he has interesting taste in music.”
“You want to drive to Centralia?” Jack stares at Henry, whose only concession to the absurdity of this suggestion is a little smile.
“Blind people can drive perfectly well,” Henry says. “Probably, they can drive better than most sighted people. Ray Charles can, anyhow.”
“Come on, Henry. Why would you think Ray Charles can drive a car?”
“Why, you ask? Because one night in Seattle, this was, oh, forty years ago, back when I had a gig at KIRO, Ray took me out for a spin. Smooth as Lady Godiva’s backside. No trouble at all. We stuck to the side roads, of course, but Ray got up to fifty-five, I’m pretty sure.”
“Assuming this really happened, weren’t you scared?”
“Scared? Of course not. I was his navigator. I certainly don’t think I’d have a problem navigating to Centralia along this sleepy stretch of backcountry highway. The only reason blind people don’t drive is that other people won’t let them. It’s a power issue. They want us to stay marginalized. Beezer St. Pierre would understand perfectly.”
“And here I was, thinking I was going to visit the madhouse this afternoon,” Jack says.
14
AT THE TOP of the steep hill between Norway Valley and Arden, the zigzag, hairpin turns of Highway 93, now narrowed to two lanes, straighten out for the long, ski-slope descent into the town, and on the eastern side of the highway, the hilltop widens into a grassy plateau. Two weatherbeaten red picnic tables wait for those who choose to stop for a few minutes and appreciate the spectacular view. A patchwork of quilted farms stretches out over fifteen miles of gentle landscape, not quite flat, threaded with streams and country roads. A solid row of bumpy, blue-green hills form the horizon. In the immense sky, sun-washed white clouds hang like fresh laundry.
Fred Marshall steers his Ford Explorer onto the gravel shoulder, comes to a halt, and says, “Let me show you something.”
When he climbed into the Explorer at his farmhouse, Jack was carrying a slightly worn black leather briefcase, and the case is now lying flat across his knees. Jack’s father’s initials, P.S.S., for Philip Stevenson Sawyer, are stamped in gold beside the handle at the top of the case. Fred has glanced curiously at the briefcase a couple of times, but has not asked about it, and Jack has volunteered nothing. There will be time for show-and-tell, Jack thinks, after he talks to Judy Marshall. Fred gets out of the car, and Jack slides his father’s old briefcase behind his legs and props it against the seat before he follows the other man across the pliant grass. When they reach the first of the picnic tables, Fred gestures toward the landscape. “We don’t have a lot of what you could call tourist attractions around here, but this is pretty good, isn’t it?”