Black House

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 fucked 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.

“What is it?” Jack asks impatiently when they’re standing near the passenger window of the truck. “We want a look before the whole world gets here, don’t we? Wasn’t that the idea, or am I—”

“You need to get the foot, Jack,” Dale says. And then: “Hello, Uncle Henry, you look spiff.”

“Thanks,” Henry says.

“What are you talking about?” Jack asks. “That foot is evidence.”

Dale nods. “I think it ought to be evidence found here, though. Unless, of course, you relish the idea of spending twenty-four hours or so answering questions in Madison.”

Jack opens his mouth to tell Dale not to waste what little time they have with arrant idiocies, then closes it again. It suddenly occurs to him how his possession of that foot might look to minor-league smarties like Detectives Brown and Black. Maybe even to a major-league smarty like John Redding of the FBI. Brilliant cop retires at an impossibly young age, and to the impossibly bucolic town of French Landing, Wisconsin. He has plenty of scratch, but the source of income is blurry, to say the least. And oh, look at this, all at once there’s a serial killer operating in the neighborhood.

Maybe the brilliant cop has got a loose screw. Maybe he’s like those firemen who enjoy the pretty flames so much they get into the arson game themselves. Certainly Dale’s Color Posse would have to wonder why the Fisherman would send an early retiree like Jack a victim’s body part. And the hat, Jack thinks. Don’t forget Ty’s baseball cap.

All at once he knows how Dale felt when Jack told him that the phone at the 7-Eleven had to be cordoned off. Exactly.

“Oh man,” he says. “You’re right.” He looks at Tom Lund, industriously running yellow POLICE LINE tape while butterflies dance around his shoulders and the flies continue their drunken buzzing from the shadows of Ed’s Eats. “What about him?”

“Tom will keep his mouth shut,” Dale says, and on that Jack decides to trust him. He wouldn’t, had it been the Hungarian.

“I owe you one,” Jack says.

“Yep,” Henry agrees from his place in the passenger seat. “Even a blind man could see he owes you one.”

“Shut up, Uncle Henry,” Dale says.

“Yes, mon capitaine.”

“What about the cap?” Jack asks.

“If we find anything else of Ty Marshall’s . . .” Dale pauses, then swallows. “Or Ty himself, we’ll leave it. If not, you keep it for the time being.”

“I think maybe you just saved me a lot of major irritation,” Jack says, leading Dale to the back of the truck. He opens the stainless steel box behind the cab, which he hasn’t bothered to lock for the run out here, and takes out one of the trash-can liners. From inside it comes the slosh of water and the clink of a few remaining ice cubes. “The next time you get feeling dumb, you might remind yourself of that.”