Black House

He takes another drag on his cigarette, then drops it into the bucket of sand. It is time to go back inside, time to replay last night’s Mark Loretta home run, time to start taking more calls from the Coulee Country’s dedicated sports fans.

And time for us to be off. Seven o’clock has rung from the Lutheran church steeple.

In French Landing, things are getting into high gear. No one lies abed long in this part of the world, and we must speed along to the end of our tour. Things are going to start happening soon, and they may happen fast. Still, we have done well, and we have only one more stop to make before arriving at our final destination.

We rise on the warm summer updrafts and hover for a moment by the KDCU tower (we are close enough to hear the tik-tik-tik of the beacon and the low, rather sinister hum of electricity), looking north and taking our bearings. Eight miles upriver is the town of Great Bluff, named for the limestone outcropping that rises there. The outcropping is reputed to be haunted, because in 1888 a chief of the Fox Indian tribe (Far Eyes was his name) assembled all his warriors, shamans, squaws, and children and told them to leap to their deaths, thereby escaping some hideous fate he had glimpsed in his dreams. Far Eyes’s followers, like Jim Jones’s, did as they were bidden.

We won’t go that far upriver, however; we have enough ghosts to deal with right here in French Landing. Let us instead fly over Nailhouse Row once more (the Harleys are gone; Beezer St. Pierre has led the Thunder Five off to their day’s work at the brewery), over Queen Street and Maxton Elder Care (Burny’s down there, still looking out his window—ugh), to Bluff Street. This is almost the countryside again. Even now, in the twenty-first century, the towns in Coulee Country give up quickly to the woods and the fields.

Herman Street is a left turn from Bluff Street, in an area that is not quite town and not quite city. Here, in a sturdy brick house sitting at the end of a half-mile meadow as yet undiscovered by the developers (even here there are a few developers, unknowing agents of slippage), lives Dale Gilbertson with his wife, Sarah, and his six-year-old son, David.

We can’t stay long, but let us at least drift in through the kitchen window for a moment. It’s open, after all, and there is room for us to perch right here on the counter, between the Silex and the toaster. Sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and shoveling Special K into his mouth without tasting it (he has forgotten both the sugar and the sliced banana in his distress at seeing yet another Wendell Green byline on the front page of the Herald), is Chief Gilbertson himself. This morning he is without doubt the unhappiest man in French Landing. We will meet his only competition for that booby prize soon, but for the moment, let us stick with Dale.

The Fisherman, he thinks mournfully, his reflections on this subject very similar to those of Bobby Dulac and Tom Lund. Why didn’t you name him something a little more turn-of-the- century, you troublesome scribbling fuck? Something a little bit local? Dahmerboy, maybe, that’d be good.

Ah, but Dale knows why. The similarities between Albert Fish, who did his work in New York, and their boy here in French Landing are just too good—too tasty—to be ignored. Fish strangled his victims, as both Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham were apparently strangled; Fish dined on his victims, as both the girl and the boy were apparently dined upon; both Fish and the current fellow showed an especial liking for the . . . well, for the posterior regions of the anatomy.

Dale looks at his cereal, then drops his spoon into the mush and pushes the bowl away with the side of his hand.

And the letters. Can’t forget the letters.

Dale glances down at his briefcase, crouched at the side of his chair like a faithful dog. The file is in there, and it draws him like a rotted, achy tooth draws the tongue. Maybe he can keep his hands off it, at least while he’s here at home, where he plays toss with his son and makes love to his wife, but keeping his mind off it . . . that’s a whole ’nother thing, as they also say in these parts.

Albert Fish wrote a long and horribly explicit letter to the mother of Grace Budd, the victim who finally earned the old cannibal a trip to the electric chair. (“What a thrill electrocution will be!” Fish reputedly told his jailers. “The only one I haven’t tried!”) The current doer has written similar letters, one addressed to Helen Irkenham, the other to Amy’s father, the awful (but genuinely grief-stricken, in Dale’s estimation) Armand “Beezer” St. Pierre. It would be good if Dale could believe these letters were written by some troublemaker not otherwise connected to the murders, but both contain information that has been withheld from the press, information that presumably only the killer could know.

Dale at last gives in to temptation (how well Henry Leyden would understand) and hauls up his briefcase. He opens it and puts a thick file where his cereal bowl lately rested. He returns the briefcase to its place by his chair, then opens the file (it is marked ST. PIERRE/IRKENHAM rather than FISHERMAN). He leafs past heartbreaking school photos of two smiling, gap-toothed children, past state medical examiner reports too horrible to read and crime-scene photos too horrible to look at (ah, but he must look at them, again and again he must look at them— the blood-slicked chains, the flies, the open eyes). There are also various transcripts, the longest being the interview with Spencer Hovdahl, who found the Irkenham boy and who was, very briefly, considered a suspect.

Next come Xerox copies of three letters. One had been sent to George and Helen Irkenham (addressed to Helen alone, if it made any difference). One went to Armand “Beezer” St. Pierre (addressed just that way, too, nickname and all). The third had been sent to the mother of Grace Budd, of New York City, following the murder of her daughter in the late spring of 1928.

Dale lays the three of them out, side by side.

Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. So Fish had written to Mrs. Budd.

Amy sat in my lap and hugged me. I made up my mind to eat her. So had Beezer St. Pierre’s correspondent written, and was it any wonder the man had threatened to burn the French Landing police station to the ground? Dale doesn’t like the son of a bitch, but has to admit he might feel the same way in Beezer’s shoes.

I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. Fish, to Mrs. Budd.

I went around back of the hen-house and stripped all my cloes off. New if I did not I would get his blood on them. Anonymous, to Helen Irkenham. And here was a question: How could a mother receive a letter like that and retain her sanity? Was that possible? Dale thought not. Helen answered questions coherently, had even offered him tea the last time he was out there, but she had a glassy, poleaxed look in her eye that suggested she was running entirely on instruments.