removed
He feels so good, so triumphant, that he almost decides to forget about the four idiots waiting for his signal and just pack it in. But hey, let’s not get all warm and fuzzy here. The supermarket tabloids are panting for a nice, gruesome photograph of Irma Freneau’s dead body, and Wendell Green is the man to give it to them.
Wendell takes another cautious step toward the front of the ruined building and sees something that stops him cold. Four of the bikers have gone down to the end of the overgrown lane, where they seem to be helping Tcheda and Stevens turn away the people who want to get a good look at all the bodies. Teddy Runkleman heard that the Fisherman stowed at least six, maybe eight half-eaten kids in that shack: the news grew more and more sensational as it filtered through the community. So the cops can use the extra help, but Wendell wishes that Beezer and crew were blowing the lid off things instead of helping to keep it on. He comes to the end of the building and peers around it to see everything that is going on. If he is to get what he wants, he will have to wait for the perfect moment.
A second FLPD car noses in through the vehicles hovering out on 35 and moves up past Tcheda’s car to swing onto the weeds and rubble in front of the old store. Two youngish part-time cops named Holtz and Nestler get out and stroll toward Dale Gilbertson, trying hard not to react to the stench that gets more sickening with each step they take. Wendell can see that these lads have even more difficulty concealing their dismay and astonishment at seeing their chief engaged in apparently amiable conversation with Beezer St. Pierre, whom they probably suspect of myriad nameless crimes. They are farm boys, UW–River Falls dropouts, who split a single salary and are trying so hard to make the grade as police officers that they tend to see things in rigid black-and-white. Dale calms them down, and Beezer, who could pick each of them up with one hand and smash their skulls like soft-boiled eggs, smiles benignly. In response to what must have been Dale’s orders, the new boys trot back down to the highway, on the way casting worshipful glances at Jack Sawyer, the poor saps.
Jack wanders up to Dale for a little confab. Too bad Dale doesn’t know that his buddy is concealing evidence, hah! Or, Wendell considers,
In the meantime, the dude in the straw hat and the sunglasses just stands there with his arms folded across his chest, looking serene and confident, like he has everything so under control that even the smell can’t reach him. This guy is obviously a key player, Wendell thinks. He calls the shots. Golden Boy and Dale want to keep him happy; you can see it in their body language. A touch of respect, of deference. If they are covering something up, they’re doing it for him. But why? And what the devil is he? The guy is middle-aged, somewhere in his fifties, a generation older than Jack and Dale; he is too stylish to live in the country, so he’s from Madison, maybe, or Milwaukee. He is obviously not a cop, and he doesn’t look like a businessman, either. This is one self-reliant mother; that comes through loud and clear.
Then another police car breaches the defenses down on 35 and rolls up beside the part-timers’. Golden Boy and Gilbertson walk up to it and greet Bobby Dulac and that other one, the fat boy, Dit Jesperson, but the dude in the hat doesn’t even look their way. Now,
Before the three cops and Sawyer begin to shuffle toward the front end of the store, Wendell leans out, aims his camera, and snaps a photograph of the mystery man. To his horror, the Cat in the Hat instantly looks in his direction and says, “Who took my picture?” Wendell jerks himself back into the protection of the wall, but he knows the guy must have seen him. Those sunglasses were pointed right at him! The guy has ears like a bat—he picked up the noise of the shutter. “Come on out,” Wendell hears him say. “There’s no point in hiding; I know you’re there.”
From his reduced vantage point, Wendell can just see a State Police car, followed by French Landing’s DARE Pontiac, barreling up from the congestion at the end of the lane. Things seem to have reached the boiling point down there. Unless Wendell is wrong, he thinks he glimpses one of the bikers pulling a man out through the window of a nice-looking green Olds.
Time to call in the cavalry, for sure. Wendell steps back from the front of the building and waves to the troops. Teddy Runkleman yells,
13
DANNY TCHEDA and Pam Stevens already have their hands full with would-be gate-crashers when they hear the sound of motorcycles gunning toward them, and the arrival of the Thunder Five is all they need to make their day really complete. Getting rid of Teddy Runkleman and Freddy Saknessum had been easy enough, but not five minutes later the eastbound lanes of Highway 35 filled up with people who thought they had a perfect right to gawk at all the little corpses that were supposed to be stacked up in the wreckage of Ed’s Eats. For every car they finally manage to send away, two more show up in its place. Everybody demands a long explanation of why they, as taxpayers and concerned citizens, should not be allowed to enter a crime scene, especially one so tragic, so poignant, so . . . well, so exciting. Most of them refuse to believe that the only body inside that tumbledown building is Irma Freneau’s; three people in a row accuse Danny of abetting a cover-up, and one of them actually uses the word “Fishergate.” Yikes. In a weird way, lots of these corpse hunters almost think that the local police are protecting the Fisherman!
Some of them finger rosaries while they chew him out. One lady waves a crucifix in his face and tells him he has a dirty soul and is bound for hell. At least half of the people he turns away are carrying cameras. What kind of person sets off on a Saturday morning to take pictures of dead children? What gets Danny is this: they all think they’re perfectly normal. Who’s the creep?
The husband of an elderly couple from Maid Marian Way says, “Young man, apparently you are the only person in this county who does not understand that history is happening all around us. Madge and I feel we have the right to a keepsake.”
Sweaty, out of sorts, and completely fed up, Danny loses his cool. “Buddy, I agree with you right down the line,” he says. “If it was up to me, you and your lovely wife would be able to drive away with a bloodstained T-shirt, maybe even a severed finger or two, in your trunk. But what can I say? The chief is a very unreasonable guy.”
