Black House

From the door behind Beezer, there’s a click. Yeah, they locked it, he thinks. Thanks, you whores.

But it’s the latch, not the lock. The door opens. Jack Sawyer steps out. He walks past Beezer without looking or reacting as Beez mutters, “Hey, man, I wouldn’t go near her.”

Jack advances slowly but not hesitantly into the no-man’s-land between the building and the mob with the woman standing at its head, Lady Liberty with the upraised hangman’s noose instead of a torch in her hand. In his simple gray collarless shirt and dark pants, Jack looks like a cavalier from some old romantic tale advancing to propose marriage. The flowers he holds in his own hand add to this impression. These tiny white blooms are what Speedy left for him beside the sink in Dale’s bathroom, a cluster of impossibly fragrant white blossoms.

They are lilies of the vale, and they are from the Territories. Speedy left him no explanation about how to use them, but Jack needs none.

The crowd falls silent. Only Tansy, lost in the world Gorg has made for her, continues to chant: “Bring him out! Give us the killer!” She doesn’t stop until Jack is directly in front of her, and he doesn’t kid himself that it’s his handsome face or dashing figure that ends the too loud repetition. It is the smell of the flowers, their sweet and vibrant smell the exact opposite of the meaty stench that hung over Ed’s Eats.

Her eyes clear . . . a little, at least.

“Bring him out,” she says to Jack. Almost a question.

“No,” he says, and the word is filled with heartbreaking tenderness. “No, dear.”

Behind them, Doodles Sanger suddenly thinks of her father for the first time in maybe twenty years and begins to weep.

“Bring him out,” Tansy pleads. Now her own eyes are filling. “Bring out the monster who killed my pretty baby.”

“If I had him, maybe I would,” Jack says. “Maybe I would at that.” Although he knows better. “But the guy we’ve got’s not the guy you want. He’s not the one.”

“But Gorg said—”

Here is a word he knows. One of the words Judy Marshall tried to eat. Jack, not in the Territories but not entirely in this world right now either, reaches forward and plucks the feather from her belt. “Did Gorg give you this?”

“Yes—”

Jack lets it drop, then steps on it. For a moment he thinks—knows—that he feels it buzzing angrily beneath the sole of his shoe, like a half-crushed wasp. Then it stills. “Gorg lies, Tansy. Whatever Gorg is, he lies. The man in there is not the one.”

Tansy lets out a great wail and drops the rope. Behind her, the crowd sighs.

Jack puts his arm around her and again he thinks of George Potter’s painful dignity; he thinks of all the lost, struggling along without a single clean Territories dawn to light their way. He hugs her to him, smelling sweat and grief and madness and coffee brandy.

In her ear, Jack whispers: “I’ll catch him for you, Tansy.”

She stiffens. “You . . .”

“Yes.”

“You . . . promise?”

“Yes.”

“He’s not the one?”

“No, dear.”

“You swear?”

Jack hands her the lilies and says, “On my mother’s name.”

She lowers her nose to the flowers and inhales deeply. When her head comes up again, Jack sees that the danger has left her, but not the insanity. She’s one of the lost ones now. Something has gotten to her. Maybe if the Fisherman is caught, it will leave her. Jack would like to believe that.

“Someone needs to take this lady home,” Jack says. He speaks in a mild, conversational voice, but it still carries to the crowd. “She’s very tired and full of sadness.”

“I’ll do it,” Doodles says. Her cheeks gleam with tears. “I’ll take her in Teddy’s truck, and if he don’t give me the keys, I’ll knock him down. I—”

And that’s when the chant starts again, this time from back in the crowd: “Bring him out! Give us the killer! Give us the Fisherman! Bring out the Fisherman!” For a moment it’s a solo job, and then a few other hesitant voices begin to join in and lend harmony.

Still standing with his back against the bricks, Beezer St. Pierre says: “Ah, shit. Here we go again.”

Jack forbade Dale to come out into the parking lot with him, saying that the sight of Dale’s uniform might set off the crowd. He didn’t mention the little bouquet of flowers he was holding, and Dale barely noticed them; he was too terrified of losing Potter to Wisconsin’s first lynching of the new millennium. He followed Jack downstairs, however, and has now commandeered the peephole in the door by right of seniority.

The rest of the FLPD is still upstairs, looking out of the ready-room windows. Henry has ordered Bobby Dulac to give him a running play-by-play. Even in his current state of worry about Jack (Henry thinks there’s at least a 40 percent chance the mob will either trample him or tear him apart), Henry is amused and flattered to realize that Bobby is doing George Rathbun without even realizing it.

“Okay, Hollywood’s out there . . . he approaches the woman . . . no sign of fear . . . the rest of them are quiet .