Black House (Page 83)

"Dale, what about the phone at the 7-Eleven?"

"It’s a pay phone," Dale says, as if speaking to a child.

"Yes, but there could be fingerprints," Jack says. "I mean, there are going to be billions of fingerprints, but forensics can isolate the freshest. Easily. He might have worn gloves, but maybe not. If he’s leaving messages and calling cards as well as writing to the parents, he’s gone Stage Two. Killing isn’t enough for him anymore. He wants to play you now. Play with you. Maybe he even wants to be caught and stopped, like Son of Sam."

"The phone. Fresh fingerprints on the phone." Dale sounds badly humiliated, and Jack’s heart goes out to him. "Jack, I can’t do this. I’m lost."

This is something to which Jack chooses not to speak. Instead he says, "Who’ve you got who can see to the phone?"

"Dit Jesperson and Bobby Dulac, I guess."

Bobby, Jack thinks, is entirely too good to waste for long at the 7-Eleven outside town. "Just have them crisscross the phone with yellow tape and talk to the guy on duty. Then they can come on out to the site."

"Okay." Dale hesitates, then asks a question. The defeat in it, the sense of almost complete abrogation, makes Jack sad. "Anything else?"

"Have you called the State Police? County? Does that FBI guy know? The one who thinks he looks like Tommy Lee Jones?"

Dale snorts. "Uh . . . actually, I’d decided to sit on notification for a little while."

"Good," Jack says, and the savage satisfaction in his voice causes Henry to turn from his blind regard of the countryside and regard his friend instead, eyebrows raised.

Let us rise up again — on wings as eagles, as the Reverend Lance Hovdahl, French Landing’s Lutheran pastor, might say — and fly down the black ribbon of Highway 93, back toward town. We reach Route 35 and turn right. Closer and to our right is the overgrown lane that leads not to a dragon’s hidden gold or secret dwarf mines but to that peculiarly unpleasant black house. A little farther on, we can see the futuristic dome shape of Goltz’s (well . . . it seemed futuristic in the seventies, at least). All our landmarks are in place, including the rubbly, weedy path that shoots off from the main road to the left. This is the track that leads to the remains of Ed Gilbertson’s erstwhile palace of guilty pleasures.

Let us flutter onto the telephone line just across from this track. Hot gossip tickles our birdy feet: Paula Hrabowski’s friend Myrtle Harrington passing on the news of the dead body (or bodies) at Ed’s to Richie Bumstead, who will in turn pass it on to Beezer St. Pierre, grieving father and spiritual leader of the Thunder Five. This passage of voices through the wire probably shouldn’t please us, but it does. Gossip is no doubt nasty stuff, but it does energize the human spirit.

Now, from the west comes the cruiser with Tom Lund at the wheel and Dale Gilbertson in the shotgun seat. And from the east comes Jack’s burgundy-colored Ram pickup. They reach the turnoff to Ed’s at the same time. Jack motions for Dale to go first, then follows him. We take wing, fly above and then ahead of them. We roost on the rusty Esso gas pump to watch developments.

Jack drives slowly down the lane to the half-collapsed building that stands in a scruff of high weeds and goldenrod. He’s looking for any sign of passage, and sees only the fresh tracks made by Dale and Tom’s police car.

"We’ve got the place to ourselves," he informs Henry.

"Yes, but for how long?"

Not very would have been Jack’s answer, had he bothered to give one. Instead, he pulls up next to Dale’s car and gets out. Henry rolls down his window but stays put, as ordered.

Ed’s was once a simple wooden building about the length of a Burlington Northern boxcar and with a boxcar’s flat roof. At the south end, you could buy sof’-serve ice cream from one of three windows. At the north end you could get your nasty hot dog or your even nastier order of fish and chips to go. In the middle was a small sit-down restaurant featuring a counter and red-top stools. Now the south end has entirely collapsed, probably from the weight of snow. All the windows have been broken in. There’s some graffiti — So-and-so chugs cock, we f**ked Patty Jarvis untill she howelled, TROY LUVS MARYANN — but not as much as Jack might have expected. All but one of the stools have been looted. Crickets are conversing in the grass. They’re loud, but not as loud as the flies inside the ruined restaurant. There are lots of flies in there, a regular fly convention in progress. And —

"Do you smell it?" Dale asks him.

Jack nods. Of course he does. He’s smelled it already today, but now it’s worse. Because there’s more of Irma out here to send up a stink. Much more than what would fit into a single shoe box.

Tom Lund has produced a handkerchief and is mopping his broad, distressed face. It’s warm, but not warm enough to account for the sweat streaming off his face and brow. And his skin is pasty.

"Officer Lund," Jack says.

"Huh!" Tom jumps and looks rather wildly around at Jack.

"You may have to vomit. If you feel you must, do it over there." Jack points to an overgrown track, even more ancient and ill-defined than the one leading in from the main road. This one seems to meander in the direction of Goltz’s.

"I’ll be okay," Tom says.

"I know you will. But if you need to unload, don’t do it on what may turn out to be evidence."

"I want you to start stringing yellow tape around the entire building," Dale tells his officer. "Jack? A word?"

Dale puts a hand on Jack’s forearm and starts walking back toward the truck. Although he’s got a good many things on his mind, Jack notices how strong that hand is. And no tremble in it. Not yet, anyway.