Black House

you’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

Wendell holds up his hands to ward off Beezer. “Hey, we may have had our differences in the past, but—”

Still looking him in the eye, Beezer folds his right hand around the camera and plants his left on Wendell Green’s chest. He jerks the right hand back and gives Green a massive shove with the left. One of two things is going to break, Green’s neck or the camera strap, and he does not much care which it is to be.

To a sound like the crack of a whip, the reporter flails backward, barely managing to remain upright. Beezer is pulling the camera out of the case, from which dangle two strips of severed leather. He drops the case and rotates the camera in his big hands.

“Hey, don’t do that!” Wendell says, his voice louder than speech but softer than a shout.

“What is it, an old F2A?”

“If you know that, you know it’s a classic. Give it back to me.”

“I’m not going to hurt it, I’m going to clean it out.” Beezer snaps open the back of the camera, gets one thick finger under the exposed length of film, and rips out the entire roll. He smiles at the reporter and tosses the film into the weeds. “See how much better it feels without all that crap in there? This is a nice little machine—you shouldn’t fill it with garbage.”

Wendell does not dare show how furious he is. Rubbing the sore spot on the back of his neck, he growls, “That so-called garbage is my livelihood, you oaf, you moron. Now give me back my camera.”

Beezer casually holds it out before him. “I didn’t quite catch all of that. What did you say?”

His only response a bleak glance, Wendell snatches the camera from Beezer’s hand.

When the two state cops finally step forward, Jack feels a mixture of disappointment and relief. What they are going to do is obvious, so let them do it. Perry Brown and Jeff Black will take the Fisherman case away from Dale and run their own investigation. From now on, Dale will be lucky to get random scraps from the state’s table. Jack’s greatest regret is that Brown and Black should have walked into this madhouse, this circus. They have been waiting for their moment all along—in a sense, waiting for the local guy to prove his incompetence—but what is going on now is a public humiliation for Dale, and Jack wishes it weren’t happening. He could not have imagined feeling grateful for the arrival of a biker gang at a crime scene, but that’s how bad it is. Beezer St. Pierre and his companions kept the crowd away more efficiently than Dale’s officers. The question is, how did all those people find out?

Apart from the damage to Dale’s reputation and self-esteem, however, Jack has few regrets about the case passing to another jurisdiction. Let Brown and Black scour every basement in French County: Jack has the feeling they won’t get any further than the Fisherman permits. To go further, he thinks, you’d have to travel in directions Brown and Black could never understand, visit places they are certain do not exist. Going further means making friends with opopanax, and men like Brown and Black distrust anything that even smells like opopanax. Which means that, in spite of everything Jack has said to himself since the murder of Amy St. Pierre, he will have to catch the Fisherman by himself. Or maybe not entirely by himself. Dale is going to have a lot more time on his hands, after all, and no matter what the State Police do to him, Dale is too wrapped up in this case to walk away from it.

“Chief Gilbertson,” says Perry Brown, “I believe we have seen enough here. Is this what you call securing an area?”

Dale gives up on Teddy Runkleman and turns in frustration to the state cops, who stand side by side, like storm troopers. In his expression, Jack can see that he knows exactly what is going to happen, and that he hopes it will not be humiliatingly brutal. “I did everything in my power to make this area secure,” Dale says. “After the 911 call came in, I talked to my men face to face and ordered them to come out in pairs at reasonable intervals, to keep from arousing any curiosity.”

“Chief, you must have used your radio,” says Jeff Black. “Because for sure somebody was tuned in.”

“I did not use the radio,” Dale says. “And my people knew better than to spread the news. But you know what, Officer Black? If the Fisherman called us on 911, maybe he also made a couple of anonymous calls to the citizens.”

Teddy Runkleman has been attending to this discussion like a spectator at a tennis final. Perry Brown says, “Let’s handle first things first. What do you intend to do with this man and his friends? Are you going to charge them? The sight of his face is getting on my nerves.”

Dale thinks for a moment, then says, “I’m not going to charge them. Get out of here, Runkleman.” Teddy moves backward, and Dale says, “Hold it for a second. How did you get here?”

“The back road,” Teddy says. “Comes straight down from behind Goltz’s. Thunder Five came the same way. So did that big-shot reporter, Mr. Green.”

“Wendell Green is here?”

Teddy points to the side of the ruin. Dale glances over his shoulder, and Jack looks in the same direction and witnesses Beezer St. Pierre ripping film from the back of a camera while Wendell Green watches in dismay.

“One more question,” Dale says. “How did you learn that the Freneau girl’s body was out here?”

“They was five or six bodies up at Ed’s, is what I heard. My brother Erland called up and told me. He heard it from his girlfriend.”

“Go on, get out of here,” Dale says, and Teddy Runkleman ambles away as if he has been awarded a medal for good citizenship.

“All right,” Perry Brown says. “Chief Gilbertson, you have reached the end of your leash. As of now, this investigation is to be conducted by Lieutenant Black and myself. I’ll want a copy of the 911 tape and copies of all notes and statements taken by you and your officers. Your role is to be entirely subordinate to the state’s investigation, and to cooperate fully when called upon. You will be given updates at the discretion of Lieutenant Black and myself.

“If you ask me, Chief Gilbertson, you are getting far more than you deserve. I have never seen a more disorganized crime scene. You violated the security of this site to an unbelievable degree. How many of you walked into the . . . the structure?”