Again, Jack sees that flicker. Potter is the one who will be charged for murder by the Wisconsin State Police, but Jack didn’t see that deep flicker in Potter’s eyes a single time during their interview. Because Potter was straight with him.
Dale isn’t being straight.
But I have to be gentle with him, Jack tells himself. Because he doesn’t know he’s not being straight. How is that possible?
As if in answer, he hears Chicago Potsie’s voice: One guy told me the sun never shone there even when it shone . . . he said the guys lost their shadows, just like in a fairy tale.
Memory is a shadow; any cop trying to reconstruct a crime or an accident from the conflicting accounts of eyewitnesses knows it well. Is Potsie’s Black House like this? Something that casts no shadow? Dale’s response (he has now turned full-face to the peeling poster, working on it as seriously as he might work on a heart attack victim in the street, administering CPR right out of the manual until the ambulance arrives) suggests to Jack that it might be something like just that. Three days ago he wouldn’t have allowed himself to consider such an idea, but three days ago he hadn’t returned to the Territories.
“According to Potsie, this place got a reputation as a haunted house even before it was completely built,” Jack says, pressing a little.
“Nope.” Dale moves on to the sign about the A.A. and N.A. meetings. He examines the tape studiously, not looking at Jack. “Doesn’t ring the old chimeroo.”
“Sure? One man almost bled to death. Another took a fall that paralyzed him. People complained—listen to this, Dale, it’s good—according to Potsie, people complained about losing their shadows. Couldn’t see them even at midday, with the sun shining full force. Isn’t that something?”
“Sure is, but I don’t remember any stories like that.” As Jack walks toward Dale, Dale moves away. Almost scutters away, although Chief Gilbertson is not ordinarily a scuttering man. It’s a little funny, a little sad, a little horrible. He doesn’t know he’s doing it, Jack’s sure of that. There is a shadow. Jack sees it, and on some level Dale knows he sees it. If Jack should force him too hard, Dale would have to see it, too . . . and Dale doesn’t want that. Because it’s a bad shadow. Is it worse than a monster who kills children and then eats selected portions of their bodies? Apparently part of Dale thinks so.
I could make him see that shadow, Jack thinks coldly. Put my hands under his nose—my lily-scented hands—and make him see it. Part of him even wants to see it. The coppiceman part.
Then another part of Jack’s mind speaks up in the Speedy Parker drawl he now remembers from his childhood. You could push him over the edge of a nervous breakdown, too, Jack. God knows he’s close to one, after all the goin’s-ons since the Irkenham boy got took. You want to chance that? And for what? He didn’t know the name, about that he was bein’ straight.
“Dale?”
Dale gives Jack a quick, bright glance, then looks away. The furtive quality in that quick peek sort of breaks Jack’s heart. “What?”
“Let’s go get a cup of coffee.”
At this change of subject, Dale’s face fills with glad relief. He claps Jack on the shoulder. “Good idea!”
God-pounding good idea, right here and now, Jack thinks, then smiles. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to find a Black House. It’s been a long day. Best, maybe, to let this go. At least for tonight.
“What about Railsback?” Dale asks as they clatter down the stairs. “You still want to talk to him?”
“You bet,” Jack replies, heartily enough, but he holds out little hope for Andy Railsback, a picked witness who saw exactly what the Fisherman wanted him to see. With one little exception . . . perhaps. The single slipper. Jack doesn’t know if it will ever come to anything, but it might. In court, for instance . . . as an identifying link . . .
This is never going to court and you know it. It may not even finish in this w—
His thoughts are broken by a wave of cheerful sound as they step into the combination ready room and dispatch center. The members of the French Landing Police Department are standing and applauding. Henry Leyden is also standing and applauding. Dale joins in.
“Jesus, guys, quit it,” Jack says, laughing and blushing at the same time. But he won’t lie to himself, try to tell himself he takes no pleasure in that round of applause. He feels the warmth of them; can see the light of their regard. Those things aren’t important. But it feels like coming home, and that is.
When Jack and Henry step out of the police station an hour or so later, Beezer, Mouse, and Kaiser Bill are still there. The other two have gone back to the Row to fill in the various old ladies on tonight’s events.
“Sawyer,” Beezer says.
“Yes,” Jack says.
“Anything we can do, man. Can you dig that? Anything.”
Jack looks at the biker thoughtfully, wondering what his story is . . . other than grief, that is. A father’s grief. Beezer’s eyes remain steady on his. A little off to one side, Henry Leyden stands with his head raised to smell the river fog, humming deep down in his throat.
“I’m going to look in on Irma’s mom tomorrow around eleven,” Jack says. “Do you suppose you and your friends could meet me in the Sand Bar around noon? She lives close to there, I understand. I’ll buy youse a round of lemonade.”
Beezer doesn’t smile, but his eyes warm up slightly. “We’ll be there.”
“That’s good,” Jack says.
“Mind telling me why?”
“There’s a place that needs finding.”
“Does it have to do with whoever killed Amy and the other kids?”
“Maybe.”
Beezer nods. “Maybe’s good enough.”
Jack drives back toward Norway Valley slowly, and not just because of the fog. Although it’s still early in the evening, he is tired to the bone and has an idea that Henry feels the same way. Not because he’s quiet; Jack has become used to Henry’s occasional dormant stretches. No, it’s the quiet in the truck itself. Under ordinary circumstances, Henry is a restless, compulsive radio tuner, running through the La Riviere stations, checking KDCU here in town, then ranging outward, hunting for Milwaukee, Chicago, maybe even Omaha, Denver, and St. Louis, if conditions are right. An appetizer of bop here, a salad of spiritual music there, perhaps a dash of Perry Como way down at the foot of the dial: hot-diggity, dog-diggity, boom what-ya-do-to-me. Not tonight, though. Tonight Henry just sits quiet on his side of the truck with his hands folded in his lap. At last, when they’re no more than two miles from his driveway, Henry says: “No Dickens tonight, Jack. I’m going straight to bed.”
The weariness in Henry’s voice startles Jack, makes him uneasy. Henry doesn’t sound like himself or any of his radio personae; at this moment he just sounds old and tired, on the way to being used up.
“I am, too,” Jack agrees, trying not to let his concern show in his voice. Henry picks up on every vocal nuance. He’s eerie that way.
“What do you have in mind for the Thunder Five, may I ask?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Jack says, and perhaps because he’s tired, he gets this untruth past Henry. He intends to start Beezer and his buddies looking for the place Potsie told him about, the place where shadows had a way of disappearing. At least way back in the seventies they did. He had also intended to ask Henry if he’s ever heard of a French Landing domicile called Black House. Not now, though. Not after hearing how beat Henry sounds. Tomorrow, maybe. Almost certainly, in fact, because Henry is too good a resource not to use. Best to let him recycle a little first, though.
“You have the tape, right?”
Henry pulls the cassette with the Fisherman’s 911 call on it partway out of his breast pocket, then puts it back. “Yes, Mother. But I don’t think I can listen to a killer of small children tonight, Jack. Not even if you come in and listen with me.”
“Tomorrow will be fine,” Jack says, hoping he isn’t condemning another of French Landing’s children to death by saying this.
“You’re not entirely sure of that.”
“No,” Jack agrees, “but you listening to that tape with dull ears could do more harm than good. I am sure of that.”
“First thing in the morning. I promise.”
Henry’s house is up ahead now. It looks lonely with only the one light on over the garage, but of course Henry doesn’t need lights inside to find his way.