Black House

Three letters, two new, one almost seventy-five years old. And yet all three are so similar. The St. Pierre letter and the Irkenham letter had been hand-printed by someone who was left-handed, according to the state experts. The paper was plain white Hammermill mimeo, available in every Office Depot and Staples in America. The pen used had probably been a Bic—now, there was a lead.

Fish to Mrs. Budd, back in ’28: I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

Anonymous to Beezer St. Pierre: I did NOT fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a VIRGIN.

Anonymous to Helen Irkenham: This may comfort you I did NOT fuck him tho I could of had I wished. He died a VIRGIN.

Dale’s out of his depth here and knows it, but he hopes he isn’t a complete fool. This doer, although he did not sign his letters with the old cannibal’s name, clearly wanted the connection to be made. He had done everything but leave a few dead trout at the dumping sites.

Sighing bitterly, Dale puts the letters back into the file, the file back into the briefcase.

“Dale? Honey?” Sarah’s sleepy voice, from the head of the stairs.

Dale gives the guilty jump of a man who has almost been caught doing something nasty and latches his briefcase. “I’m in the kitchen,” he calls back. No need to worry about waking Davey; he sleeps like the dead until at least seven-thirty every morning.

“Going in late?”

“Uh-huh.” He often goes in late, then makes up for it by working until seven or eight or even nine in the evening. Wendell Green hasn’t made a big deal of that . . . at least not so far, but give him time. Talk about your cannibals!

“Give the flowers a drink before you go, would you? It’s been so dry.”

“You bet.” Watering Sarah’s flowers is a chore Dale likes. He gets some of his best thinking done with the garden hose in his hand.

A pause from upstairs . . . but he hasn’t heard her slippers shuffling back toward the bedroom. He waits. And at last: “You okay, hon?”

“Fine,” he calls back, pumping what he hopes will be the right degree of heartiness into his voice.

“Because you were still tossing around when I dropped off.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Do you know what Davey asked me last night while I was washing his hair?”

Dale rolls his eyes. He hates these long-distance conversations. Sarah seems to love them. He gets up and pours himself another cup of coffee. “No, what?”

“He asked, ‘Is Daddy going to lose his job?’ ”

Dale pauses with the cup halfway to his lips. “What did you say?”

“I said no. Of course.”

“Then you said the right thing.”

He waits, but there is no more. Having injected him with one more dram of poisonous worry—David’s fragile psyche, as well as what a certain party might do to the boy, should David be so unlucky as to run afoul of him— Sarah shuffles back to their room and, presumably, to the shower beyond.

Dale goes back to the table, sips his coffee, then puts his hand to his forehead and closes his eyes. In this moment we can see precisely how frightened and miserable he is. Dale is just forty-two and a man of abstemious habits, but in the cruel morning light coming through the window by which we entered, he looks, for the moment, anyway, a sickly sixty.

He is concerned about his job, knows that if the fellow who killed Amy and Johnny keeps it up, he will almost certainly be turned out of office the following year. He is also concerned about Davey . . . although Davey isn’t his chief concern, for, like Fred Marshall, he cannot actually conceive that the Fisherman could take his and Sarah’s own child. No, it is the other children of French Landing he is more worried about, possibly the children of Centralia and Arden as well.

His worst fear is that he is simply not good enough to catch the son of a bitch. That he will kill a third, a fourth, perhaps an eleventh and twelfth.

God knows he has requested help. And gotten it . . . sort of. There are two State Police detectives assigned to the case, and the FBI guy from Madison keeps checking in (on an informal basis, though; the FBI is not officially part of the investigation). Even his outside help has a surreal quality for Dale, one that has been partially caused by an odd coincidence of their names. The FBI guy is Agent John P. Redding. The state detectives are Perry Brown and Jeffrey Black. So he has Brown, Black, and Redding on his team. The Color Posse, Sarah calls them. All three making it clear that they are strictly working support, at least for the time being. Making it clear that Dale Gilbertson is the man standing on ground zero.

Christ, but I wish Jack would sign on to help me with this, Dale thinks. I’d deputize him in a second, just like in one of those corny old Western movies.

Yes indeed. In a second.

When Jack had first come to French Landing, almost four years ago, Dale hadn’t known what to make of the man his officers immediately dubbed Hollywood. By the time the two of them had nailed Thornberg Kinderling—yes, inoffensive little Thornberg Kinderling, hard to believe but absolutely true—he knew exactly what to make of him. The guy was the finest natural detective Dale had ever met in his life.

The only natural detective, that’s what you mean.