Black House

Danny Tcheda and Pam Stevens look at each other, nod, then look back at Dale. Dale is looking at Arnold "the Mad Hungarian" Hrabowski. He ticks off three more pairs, ending with Dit Jesperson and Bobby Dulac. Bobby is the only one he really wants out there; the others are just insurance and — God grant it not be necessary — crowd control. All of them are to come at five-minute intervals.

"Let me go out, too," Arnie Hrabowski pleads. "Come on, boss, what do you say?"

Dale opens his mouth to say he wants Arnie right where he is, but then he sees the hopeful look in those watery brown eyes. Even in his own deep distress, Dale can’t help responding to that, at least a little. For Arnie, police life is too often standing on the sidewalk while the parade goes by.

Some parade, he thinks.

"I tell you what, Arn," he says. "When you finish all your other calls, buzz Debbi. If you can get her in here, you can come out to Ed’s."

Arnold nods excitedly, and Dale almost smiles. The Mad Hungarian will have Debbi in here by nine-thirty, he guesses, even if he has to drag her by the hair like Alley Oop. "Who do I pair with, Dale?"

"Come by yourself," Dale says. "In the DARE car, why don’t you? But, Arnie, if you leave this desk without relief waiting to drop into the chair the second you leave it, you’ll be looking for a new job come tomorrow."

"Oh, don’t worry," Hrabowski says, and, Hungarian or not, in his excitement he sounds positively Suh-vee-dish. Nor is that surprising, since Centralia, where he grew up, was once known as Swede Town.

"Come on, Tom," Dale says. "We’ll grab the evidence kit on our — "

"Uh . . . boss?"

"What, Arnie?" Meaning, of course, What now?

"Should I call those State Police guys, Brown and Black?"

Danny Tcheda and Pam Stevens snicker. Tom smiles. Dale doesn’t do either. His heart, already in the cellar, now goes even lower. Subbasement, ladies and gentlemen — false hopes on your left, lost causes on your right. Last stop, everybody out.

Perry Brown and Jeff Black. He had forgotten them, how funny. Brown and Black, who would now almost certainly take his case away from him.

"They’re still out at the Paradise Motel," the Mad Hungarian goes on, "although I think the FBI guy went back to Milwaukee."

"I — "

"And County," the Hungarian plows relentlessly along. "Don’t forget them. You want me to call the M.E. first, or the evidence wagon?" The evidence wagon is a blue Ford Econoline van, packed with everything from quick-drying plaster for taking tire impressions to a rolling video studio. Stuff the French Landing P.D. will never have access to.

Dale stands where he is, head lowered, looking dismally at the floor. They are going to take the case away from him. With every word Hrabowski says, that is clearer. And suddenly he wants it for his own. In spite of how he hates it and how it scares him, he wants it with all his heart. The Fisherman is a monster, but he’s not a county monster, a state monster, or a Federal Bureau of Investigation monster. The Fisherman is a French Landing monster, Dale Gilbertson’s monster, and he wants to keep the case for reasons that have nothing to do with personal prestige or even the practical matter of holding on to his job. He wants him because the Fisherman is an offense against everything Dale wants and needs and believes in. Those are things you can’t say out loud without sounding corny and stupid, but they are true for all that. He feels a sudden, foolish anger at Jack. If Jack had come on board sooner, maybe —

And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. He has to notify County, if only to get the medical examiner out at the scene, and he has to notify the State Police, in the persons of Detectives Brown and Black, as well. But not until he has a look at what’s out there, in the field beyond Goltz’s. At what the Fisherman has left. By God, not until then.

And, perhaps, has one final swing at the bastard.

"Get our guys rolling at five-minute intervals," he said, "just as I told you. Then get Debbi in the dispatch chair. Have her call State and County." Arnold Hrabowski’s puzzled face makes Dale feels like screaming, but somehow he retains his patience. "I want some lead time."

"Oh," Arnie says, and then, when he actually does get it: "Oh!"

"And don’t tell anyone other than our guys about the call or our response. Anyone. You’d likely start a panic. Do you understand?"

"Absolutely, boss," says the Hungarian.

Dale glances at the clock: 8:26 A.M. "Come on, Tom," he says. "Let’s get moving. Tempus fugit."

The Mad Hungarian has never been more efficient, and things fall into place like a dream. Even Debbi Anderson is a good sport about the desk. And yet through it all, the voice on the phone stays with him. Hoarse, raspy, with just a tinge of accent — the kind anyone living in this part of the world might pick up. Nothing unusual about that. Yet it haunts him. Not that the guy called him an asswipe — he’s been called much worse by your ordinary Saturday night drunks — but some of the other stuff. There are whips in hell and chains in shayol. My name is legion. Stuff like that. And abbalah. What was an abbalah? Arnold Hrabowski doesn’t know. He only knows that the very sound of it in his head makes him feel bad and scared. It’s like a word in a secret book, the kind you might use to conjure up a demon.

When he gets the willies, there’s only one person who can take them away, and that’s his wife. He knows Dale told him not to tell anybody about what was going down, and he understands the reasons, but surely the chief didn’t mean Paula. They have been married twenty years, and Paula isn’t like another person at all. She’s like the rest of him.