Black House (Page 107)

"I didn’t think so," says Fred. "If you don’t mind, I’d like to pull over again when we get to the top."

"I’d like that," Jack says.

Fred drives to the crest of the hill and crosses the narrow highway to park in the gravel turnout. Instead of getting out of the car, he points at the briefcase lying flat on Jack’s knees. "Is what you’re going to show me in there?"

"Yes," Jack says. "I was going to show it to you earlier, but after we stopped here the first time, I wanted to wait until I heard what Judy had to say. And I’m glad I did. It might make more sense to you, now that you’ve heard at least part of the explanation of how I found it."

Jack snaps open the briefcase, raises the top, and from its pale, leather-lined interior removes the Brewers cap he had found that morning. "Take a look," he says, and hands over the cap.

"Ohmygod," Fred Marshall says in a startled rush of words. "Is this . . . is it . . . ?" He looks inside the cap and exhales hugely at the sight of his son’s name. His eyes leap to Jack’s. "It’s Tyler’s. Good Lord, it’s Tyler’s. Oh, Lordy." He crushes the cap to his chest and takes two deep breaths, still holding Jack’s gaze. "Where did you find this? How long ago was it?"

"I found it on the road this morning," Jack says. "In the place your wife calls Faraway."

With a long moan, Fred Marshall opens his door and jumps out of the car. By the time Jack catches up with him, he is at the far edge of the lookout, holding the cap to his chest and staring at the blue-green hills beyond the long quilt of farmland. He whirls to stare at Jack. "Do you think he’s still alive?"

"I think he’s alive," Jack says.

"In that world." Fred points to the hills. Tears leap from his eyes, and his mouth softens. "The world that’s over there somewhere, Judy says."

"In that world."

"Then you go there and find him!" Fred shouts. His face shining with tears, he gestures wildly toward the horizon with the baseball cap. "Go there and bring him back, damn you! I can’t do it, so you have to." He steps forward as if to throw a punch, then wraps his arms around Jack Sawyer and sobs.

When Fred’s shoulders stop trembling and his breath comes in gasps, Jack says, "I’ll do everything I can."

"I know you will." He steps away and wipes his face. "I’m sorry I yelled at you like that. I know you’re going to help us."

The two men turn around to walk back to the car. Far off to the west, a loose, woolly smudge of pale gray blankets the land beside the river.

"What’s that?" Jack asks. "Rain?"

"No, fog," Fred says. "Coming in off the Mississippi."

Part Three

NIGHT’S PLUTONIAN

SHORE

15

BY EVENING, the temperature has dropped fifteen degrees as a minor cold front pushes through our little patch of the Coulee Country. There are no thunderstorms, but as the sky tinges toward violet, the fog arrives. It’s born out of the river and rises up the inclined ramp of Chase Street, first obscuring the gutters, then the sidewalks, then blurring the buildings themselves. It cannot completely hide them, as the fogs of spring and winter sometimes do, but the blurring is somehow worse: it steals colors and softens shapes. The fog makes the ordinary look alien. And there’s the smell, the ancient, seagully odor that works deep into your nose and awakens the back part of your brain, the part that is perfectly capable of believing in monsters when the sight lines shorten and the heart is uneasy.

On Sumner Street, Debbi Anderson is still working dispatch. Arnold "the Mad Hungarian" Hrabowski has been sent home without his badge — in fact, suspended — and feels he must ask his wife a few pointed questions (his belief that he already knows the answers makes him even more heartsick). Debbi is now standing at the window, a cup of coffee in her hand and a puckery little frown on her face.

"Don’t like this," she says to Bobby Dulac, who is glumly and silently writing reports. "It reminds me of the Hammer pictures I used to watch on TV back when I was in junior high."

"Hammer pictures?" Bobby asks, looking up.

"Horror pictures," she says, looking out into the deepening fog. "A lot of them were about Dracula. Also Jack the Ripper."

"I don’t want to hear nothing about Jack the Ripper," Bobby says. "You mind me, Debster." And resumes writing.

In the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, Mr. Rajan Patel stands beside his telephone (still crisscrossed by yellow police tape, and when it will be all right again for using, this Mr. Patel could not be telling us). He looks toward downtown, which now seems to rise from a vast bowl of cream. The buildings on Chase Street descend into this bowl. Those at Chase’s lowest point are visible only from the second story up.

"If he is down there," Mr. Patel says softly, and to no one but himself, "tonight he will be doing whatever he wants."

He crosses his arms over his chest and shivers.

Dale Gilbertson is at home, for a wonder. He plans to have a sit-down dinner with his wife and child even if the world ends because of it. He comes out of his den (where he has spent twenty minutes talking with WSP officer Jeff Black, a conversation in which he has had to exercise all his discipline to keep from shouting), and sees his wife standing at the window and looking out. Her posture is almost exactly the same as Debbi Anderson’s, only she’s got a glass of wine in her hand instead of a cup of coffee. The puckery little frown is identical.

"River fog," Sarah says dismally. "Isn’t that ducky. If he’s out there — "

Dale points at her. "Don’t say it. Don’t even think it."