Black House

“The Fisherman,” Jack says.

“How did you know?”

“He’s a great communicator,” Jack says. “How bad was it?”

“You tell me, and then we’ll both know. I’m piecing it together from what I gathered from Judy and what Dr. Spiegleman told me later.” Fred Marshall’s voice begins to waver. “The Fisherman was taunting her. Can you believe that? He said, Your little boy is very lonely. Then he said something like, He’s been begging and begging to call home and say hello to his mommy. Except Judy says he had a weird foreign accent, or a speech impediment, or something, so he wasn’t easy to understand right away. Then he says, Say hello to your mommy, Tyler, and Tyler . . .” Fred’s voice breaks, and Jack can hear him stifling his agony before he begins again. “Tyler, ah, Tyler was apparently too distressed to do much but scream for help.” A long, uncertain inhalation comes over the phone. “And he cried, Jack, he cried.” Unable to contain his feelings any longer, Fred weeps openly, unguardedly. His breath rattles in his throat; Jack listens to all the wet, undignified, helpless noises people make when grief and sorrow cancel every other feeling, and his heart moves for Fred Marshall.

The sobbing relents. “Sorry. Sometimes I think they’ll have to put me in restraints.”

“Was that the end of the tape?”

“He got on again.” Fred breathes noisily for a moment, clearing his head. “Boasting about what he was going to do. Dere vill be morrr mur-derts, and morrr afder dat, Choo-dee, we are all goink zu haff sotch fun—Spiegleman quoted this junk to me! The children of French Landing will be harvested like wheat. Havv-uz-ted like wheed. Who talks like that? What kind of person is this?”

“I wish I knew,” Jack says. “Maybe he was putting on an accent to sound even scarier. Or to disguise his voice.” He’d never disguise his voice, Jack thinks, he’s too delighted with himself to hide behind an accent. “I’ll have to get the tape from the hospital and listen to it myself. And I’ll call you as soon as I have some information.”

“There’s one more thing,” Marshall says. “I probably made a mistake. Wendell Green came over about an hour ago.”

“Anything involving Wendell Green is automatically a mistake. So what happened?”

“It was like he knew all about Tyler and just needed me to confirm it. I thought he must have heard from Dale, or the state troopers. But Dale hasn’t made us public yet, has he?”

“Wendell has a network of little weasels that feed him information. If he knows anything, that’s how he heard about it. What did you tell him?”

“More or less everything,” Marshall says. “Including the tape. Oh, God, I’m such a dope. But I thought it’d be all right—I thought it would all get out anyhow.”

“Fred, did you tell him anything about me?”

“Only that Judy trusts you and that we’re both grateful for your help. And I think I said that you would probably be going in to see her this afternoon.”

“Did you mention Ty’s baseball cap?”

“Do you think I’m nuts? As far as I’m concerned, that stuff is between you and Judy. If I don’t get it, I’m not going to talk about it to Wendell Green. At least I got him to promise to stay away from Judy. He has a great reputation, but I got the feeling he isn’t everything he’s cracked up to be.”

“You said a mouthful,” Jack says. “I’ll be in touch.”

When Fred Marshall hangs up, Jack punches in Henry’s number.

“I may be a little late, Henry. I’m on my way to French County Lutheran. Judy Marshall got a tape from the Fisherman, and if they’ll let me have it, I’ll bring it over. There’s something strange going on here—on Judy’s tape, I guess he has some kind of foreign accent.”

Henry tells Jack there is no rush. He has not listened to the first tape yet, and now will wait until Jack comes over with the second one. He might hear something useful if he plays them in sequence. At least, he could tell Jack if they were made by the same man. “And don’t worry about me, Jack. In a little while, Mrs. Morton is coming by to take me over to KDCU. George Rathbun butters my bread today, baby—six or seven radio ads. ‘Even a blind man knows you want to treat your honey, your sweetheart, your lovey-dovey, your wife, your best friend through thick and thin, to a mm-mmm fine dinner tonight, and there’s no better place to show your appreciation to the old ball and chain than to take her to Cousin Buddy’s Rib Crib on South Wabash Street in beautiful downtown La Riviere!’ ”

“ ‘The old ball and chain’?”

“You pay for George Rathbun, you get George Rathbun, warts and all.”

Laughing, Jack tells Henry he will see him later that day, and pushes the Ram up to seventy. What is Dale going to do, give him a speeding ticket?

He parks in front of the hospital instead of driving around to the parking lot, and trots across the concrete with his mind filled with the Territories and Judy Marshall. Things are hurtling forward, picking up pace, and Jack has the sense that everything converges on Judy—no, on Judy and him. The Fisherman has chosen them more purposefully than he did his first three victims: Amy St. Pierre, Johnny Irkenham, and Irma Freneau were simply the right age—any three children would have done—but Tyler was Judy Marshall’s son, and that set him apart. Judy has glimpsed the Territories, Jack has traveled through them, and the Fisherman lives there the way a cancer cell lives in a healthy organism. The Fisherman sent Judy a tape, Jack a grisly present. At Tansy Freneau’s, he had seen Judy as his key and the door it opened, and where did that door lead but into Judy’s Faraway?

Faraway. God, that’s pretty. Beautiful, in fact.

Aaah . . . the word evokes Judy Marshall’s face, and when he sees that face, a door in his mind, a door that is his and his alone, flies open, and for a moment Jack Sawyer stops moving altogether, and in shock, dread, and joyous expectation, freezes on the concrete six feet from the hospital’s entrance.