Black House (19 page)

He fills the glass, then goes back into the bedroom with the water, the pill, and the bottle of Mercurochrome. Her eyes are shut. She is breathing so slowly that he has to put one hand on her chest to make sure she’s breathing at all.

He looks at the sleeping pill, debates, then gives her a shake. “Judy! Jude! Wake up a little, hon. Just long enough to take a pill, okay?”

She doesn’t even mutter, and Fred sets the Sonata aside. It won’t be necessary after all. He feels some faint optimism at how fast she’s fallen asleep and how deep she has gone. It’s as if some vile sac has popped, discharged its poison, left her weak and tired but possibly okay again. Could that be? Fred doesn’t know, but he’s positive that she isn’t just shamming sleep. All of Judy’s current woes began with insomnia, and the insomnia has been the one constant throughout. Although she’s only been exhibiting distressing symptoms for a couple of months—talking to herself and doing that odd and rather disgusting thing with her tongue, to mention only a couple of items—she hasn’t been sleeping well since January. Hence the Sonata. Now it seems that she has finally tipped over. And is it too much to hope that when she wakes from a normal sleep she’ll be her old normal self again? That her worries about her son’s safety during the summer of the Fisherman have forced her to some sort of climax? Maybe, maybe not . . . but at least it has given Fred some time to think about what he should do next, and he had better use it well. One thing seems to him beyond argument: if Ty is here when his mother wakes up, Ty is going to have a much happier mother. The immediate question is how to locate Tyler as soon as possible.

His first thought is to call the homes of Ty’s friends. It would be easy; those numbers are posted on the fridge, printed in Judy’s neat back-slanting hand, along with the numbers of the fire department, the police department (including Dale Gilbertson’s private number; he’s an old friend), and French Landing Rescue. But it takes Fred only a moment to realize what a bad idea this is. Ebbie’s mother is dead and his father is an unpleasant moron—Fred met him just once, and once is more than enough. Fred doesn’t much like his wife labeling some people “low-raters” (
Who do you think you are,
he asked her once,
Queen of the doggone Realm?
), but in the case of Pete Wexler, the shoe fits. He won’t have any idea of where the boys are today and won’t care.

Mrs. Metzger and Ellen Renniker might, but having once been a boy on summer vacation himself—the whole world laid at your feet and at least two thousand places to go—Fred doubts it like hell. There’s a chance the boys might be eating lunch (it’s getting to be that time) at the Metzgers’ or Rennikers’, but is that slight chance worth scaring the hell out of two women? Because the killer will be the first thing they think of, just as sure as God made little fishes . . . and fishermen to catch ’em.

Once more sitting on the bed beside his wife, Fred feels his first real tingle of apprehension on his son’s behalf and dismisses it brusquely. This is no time to give in to the heebie-jeebies. He has to remember that his wife’s mental problems and his son’s safety are not linked—except in her mind. His job is to present Ty, front and center and all squared away, thus proving her fears groundless.

Fred looks at the clock on his side of the bed and sees that it’s quarter past eleven.
How the time flies when you’re having fun,
he thinks. Beside him, Judy utters a single gaspy snore. It’s a small sound, really quite ladylike, but Fred jumps anyway. How she scared him when he first saw her in Ty’s room! He’s still scared.

Ty and his friends may come here for lunch. Judy says they often do because the Metzgers don’t have much to eat and Mrs. Renniker usually serves what the boys call “goop,” a mystery dish consisting of noodles and some gray meat. Judy makes them Campbell’s soup and baloney sandwiches, stuff they like. But Ty has money enough to treat them all to McDonald’s out by the little mall on the north side, or they could go into Sonny’s Cruisin’ Restaurant, a cheap diner with a cheesy fifties ambience. And Ty isn’t averse to treating. He’s a generous boy.

“I’ll wait until lunch,” he murmurs, completely unaware that he is talking as well as thinking. Certainly he doesn’t disturb Judy; she has gone deep. “Then—”

Then what? He doesn’t know, exactly.

He goes downstairs, kicks the Mr. Coffee back into gear, and calls work. He asks Ina to tell Ted Goltz he’ll be out the rest of the day—Judy’s sick. The flu, he tells her. Throwing up and everything. He runs down a list of people he was expecting to see that day and tells her to speak to Otto Eisman about handling them. Otto will be on that like white on rice.

An idea occurs to him while he’s talking to her, and when he’s done, he calls the Metzgers’ and Rennikers’ after all. At the Metzgers’ he gets an answering machine and hangs up without leaving a message. Ellen Renniker, however, picks up on the second ring. Sounding casual and cheerful—it comes naturally, he’s a hell of a salesman—he asks her to have Ty call home if the boys show up there for lunch. Fred says he has something to tell his son, making it sound like something good. Ellen says she will, but adds that T.J. had four or five dollars burning a hole in his jeans when he left the house that morning, and she doesn’t expect to see him until suppertime.

Fred goes back upstairs and checks on Judy. She hasn’t moved so much as a finger, and he supposes that’s good.

No. There’s nothing good about any of this.

Instead of receding now that the situation has stabilized—sort of—his fear seems to be intensifying. Telling himself that Ty is with his friends no longer seems to help. The sunny, silent house is creeping him out. He realizes he no longer wants Ty front and center simply for his wife’s sake. Where would the boys go? Is there any one place—?

Of course there is. Where they can get Magic cards. That stupid, incomprehensible game they play.

Fred Marshall hurries back downstairs, grabs the phone book, hunts through the Yellow Pages, and calls the 7-Eleven. Like most of French Landing, Fred is in the 7-Eleven four or five times a week—a can of soda here, a carton of orange juice there—and he recognizes the lilt of the Indian day clerk’s voice. He comes up with the man’s name at once: Rajan Patel. It’s that old salesman’s trick of keeping as many names as possible in the active file. It sure helps here. When Fred calls the man Mr. Patel, the day clerk immediately becomes friendly, perfectly willing to help. Unfortunately, there isn’t much help he can give. Lots of boys in. They are buying Magic cards, also Pokémon and baseball cards. Some are trading these cards outside. He
does
recall three that came in that morning on bikes, he says. They bought Slurpees as well as cards, and then argued about something outside. (Rajan Patel doesn’t mention the cursing, although this is chiefly why he remembers these boys.) After a little while, he says, they went on their way.

Fred is drinking coffee without even remembering when he poured it. Fresh threads of unease are spinning spider-silky webs in his head. Three boys.
Three.

It means nothing, you know that, don’t you?
he tells himself. He
does
know it, and at the same time he
doesn’t
know it. He can’t even believe he’s caught a little of Judy’s freakiness, like a cold germ. This is just . . . well . . . freakiness for freakiness’s sake.

He asks Patel to describe the kids and isn’t too surprised when Patel can’t. He thinks one of them was a bit of a fat boy, but he’s not even sure of that. “Sorry, but I see so many,” he says. Fred tells him he understands. He does, too, only all the understanding in the world won’t ease his mind.

Three boys. Not four but three.

Lunchtime has come, but Fred is not the least bit hungry. The spooky, sunny silence maintains itself. The spiderwebs continue to spin.

Not four but three.

If it was Ty’s bunch that Mr. Patel saw, the fattish boy was certainly Ebbie Wexler. The question is, who were the other two? And which one was missing? Which one had been stupid enough to go off on his own?

Ty’s gone.
Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him.

Crazy talk, no doubt about it . . . but Fred’s arms nevertheless break out in a lush of goose bumps. He puts his coffee mug down with a bang. He’ll clean up the broken glass, that’s what he’ll do. That’s the next step, no doubt about it.

The
actual
next step, the
logical
next step, whispers through his mind as he climbs the stairs, and he immediately pushes it away. He’s sure the cops are just lately overwhelmed with queries from hysterical parents who have lost track of their kids for an hour or so. The last time he saw Dale Gilbertson, the poor guy looked careworn and grim. Fred doesn’t want to be marked down as part of the problem instead of part of the solution. Still . . .

Not four but three.

He gets the dustpan and broom out of the little utility closet next to the laundry room and begins sweeping up broken glass. When he’s done he checks on Judy, sees she’s still sleeping (more deeply than ever, from the look of her), and goes down to Ty’s room. If Ty saw it like this, he’d be upset. He’d think his mom was a lot more than a Coke short of a Happy Meal.

You don’t have to worry about that,
his mind whispers.
He won’t be seeing his room, not tonight, not ever. Gorg fascinated him and the abbalah took him.

“Stop it,” Fred tells himself. “Stop being an old woman.”

But the house is too empty, too silent, and Fred Marshall is afraid.

Setting Tyler’s room to rights takes longer than Fred ever would have expected; his wife went through it like a whirlwind. How can such a little woman have such strength in her? Is it the strength of the mad? Perhaps, but Judy doesn’t
need
the strength of the mad. When she sets her mind to something, she is a formidable engine.

By the time he’s finished cleaning up, almost two hours have passed and the only obvious scar is the scratched-out rectangle of wallpaper where the Irish travel poster hung. Sitting on Ty’s remade bed, Fred finds that the longer he looks at that spot, the less he can stand the white wallboard, peering through as brazenly as a broken bone through outraged skin. He has washed away the streaks of blood, but can do nothing about the scratch marks she made with her nails.

Yes I can,
he thinks.
Yes I can, too.

Ty’s dresser is mahogany, a piece of furniture that came to them from the estate of some distant relative on Judy’s side. Moving it really isn’t a one-man job, and under the circumstances, that suits Fred just fine. He slides a rug remnant under it to keep from marking up the floor, then pulls it across the room. Once it’s been placed against the far wall, it covers most of the scratched area. With the bald spot out of sight, Fred feels better. Saner. Ty hasn’t come home for lunch, but Fred didn’t really expect he would. He’ll be home by four, at the latest. Home for supper. Take it to the bank.

Fred strolls back to the master bedroom, massaging the small of his back as he walks. Judy
still
hasn’t moved, and once again he puts an anxious hand on her chest. Her breathing is slow, but steady as she goes.
That’s
all right. He lies down beside her on the bed, goes to loosen his tie, and laughs when he feels his open collar. Coat and tie, both back at Goltz’s. Well, it’s been a crazy day. For the time being it’s just good to lie here in the air-conditioned cool, easing his aching back. Moving that dresser was a bitch, but he’s glad he did it. Certainly there’s no chance he’ll drop off; he’s far too upset. Besides, napping in the middle of the day has never been his thing.

So thinking, Fred falls asleep.

Beside him, in her own sleep, Judy begins to whisper. Gorg . . . abbalah . . . the Crimson King. And a woman’s name.

The name is Sophie.

6

I
N THE READY ROOM
of the French Landing P.D., the phone on the desk rings. Bobby Dulac has been mining for nose-gold. Now he squashes his latest treasure on the sole of his shoe and picks up the phone.

“
Yell-
o, Police Department, Officer Dulac speaking, how can I help you?”

“Hey, Bobby. It’s Danny Tcheda.”

Bobby feels a prink of unease. Danny Tcheda—last name pronounced
Cheetah—
is one of French Landing’s fourteen full-time RMP cops. He’s currently on duty, and ordinary procedure dictates that duty cops radio in—that’s what the
R
in RMP stands for, after all. The only exception to the rule has to do with the Fisherman. Dale has mandated that patrol officers call in on a landline if they think they have a situation involving the killer. Too many people have their ears on out there, doubtless including Wendell “Pisshead” Green.

“Danny, what’s up?”

“Maybe nothing, maybe something not so good. I got a bike and a sneaker in the trunk of my car. I found ’em over on Queen Street. Near Maxton Elder Care?”

Bobby draws a pad toward him and begins to jot. The tickle of unease has become a sinking feeling.

“Nothing wrong with the bike,” Danny continues, “just sitting there on its kickstand, but combined with the sneaker . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, I see your point, Danny, but you never should have fooled with what could be evidence of a crime.”
Please God don’t let it be evidence of a crime,
Bobby Dulac is thinking.
Please God don’t let it be another one.

Irma Freneau’s mother has just been in to see Dale, and while there was no screaming or shouting, she came out with tears on her cheeks and looking like death on the half shell. They can’t still be sure the little girl has become the Fisherman’s third victim, but—

“Bobby, I
had
to,” Danny is saying. “I’m ridin’ solo, I didn’t want to put this out on the air, I hadda find a phone. If I’d left the bike there, someone
else
coulda monkeyed with it. Hell, stolen it. This is a good bike, Schwinn three-speed. Better’n the one my kid’s got, tell you that.”

“What’s your twenty?”

“7-Eleven, up the hill on 35. What I did was mark the location of the bike and the sneaker with chalk X’s on the sidewalk. I handled them with gloves and put the sneaker in an evidence bag.” Danny is sounding more and more anxious. Bobby knows how he must feel, sympathizes with the choices Danny had to make. Riding solo is a bitch, but French Landing is already supporting as many cops—full-time and part-time—as the budget will bear. Unless, of course, this Fisherman business gets totally out of control; in that case, the town fathers will no doubt discover a bit more elastic in the budget.

Maybe it’s already out of control,
Bobby thinks.

“Okay, Danny. Okay. See your point.”
Whether or not
Dale
sees it is a whole ’nother thing,
Bobby thinks.

Danny lowers his voice. “No one needs to know I broke the chain of evidence, do they? I mean, if the subject ever came up. In court, or something.”

“I guess that’s up to Dale.”
Oh God,
Bobby thinks. A new problem has just occurred to him. All calls that come in on this phone are automatically taped. Bobby decides the taping machinery is about to have a malfunction, retroactive to about two o’clock in the afternoon.

“And you want to know the other thing?” Danny is asking. “The
big
thing? I didn’t want people to see it. A bike standing all by itself that way, you don’t have to be Sherlock Fucking Holmes to draw a certain conclusion. And folks’re getting close to the panic line, especially after that goddamned irresponsible story in the paper this morning. I didn’t want to call from Maxton’s for the same reason.”

“I’m gonna put you on hold. You better talk to Dale.”

In a vastly unhappy voice, Danny says: “Oh boy.”

In Dale Gilbertson’s office there is a bulletin board dominated by enlarged photographs of Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham. A third photo will be added soon, he fears—that of Irma Freneau. Beneath the two current photos, Dale sits at his desk, smoking a Marlboro 100. He’s got the fan on. It will, he hopes, blow the smoke away. Sarah would just about kill him if she knew he was smoking again, but dear Jesus Christ, he needs
something.

His interview with Tansy Freneau had been short and nothing short of purgatorial. Tansy is a juicer, a regular patron of the Sand Bar, and during their interview the smell of coffee brandy was so strong it almost seemed to be coming out of her pores (another excuse for the fan). Half drunk, she had been, and Dale was glad. It kept her calm, at least. It didn’t put any sparkle in her dead eyes, coffee brandy was no good for that, but she had been calm. Hideously, she had even said “Thank you for helping me, sir” before leaving.

Tansy’s ex—Irma’s father—lives across the state in Green Bay (“Green Bay is the devil’s town,” Dale’s father used to say, God knows why), where he works in a garage and, according to Tansy, supports several bars with names like the End Zone and the Fifty-Yard Line. Until today, there has been some reason to believe—at least to hope—that Richard “Cubby” Freneau snatched his daughter. An e-mail from the Green Bay Police Department has put paid to that little idea. Cubby Freneau is living with a woman who has two kids of her own, and he was in jail—D & D—the day Irma disappeared. There is still no body, and Tansy hasn’t received a letter from the Fisherman, but—

The door opens. Bobby Dulac sticks his head in. Dale mashes his cigarette out on the inside lip of the wastebasket, burning the back of his hand with sparks in the process.

“Gosh ’n’ fishes, Bobby, do you know how to
knock
?”

“Sorry, Chief.” Bobby looks at the smoke ribboning up from the wastebasket with neither surprise nor interest. “Danny Tcheda’s on the phone. I think you better take it.”

“What’s it about?” But he knows. Why else would it be the phone?

Bobby only repeats, not without sympathy, “I think you better take it.”

The car sent by Rebecca Vilas delivers Henry to Maxton Elder Care at three-thirty, ninety minutes before the Strawberry Fest! dance is scheduled to begin. The idea is for the old folks to work up an appetite on the floor, then troop down to the caff—suitably decorated for the occasion—for a glamorously late (seven-thirty is
quite
late for Maxton’s) dinner. With wine, for those who drink it.

A resentful Pete Wexler has been drafted by Rebecca Vilas to bring in the deejay’s shit (Pete thinks of Henry as “the blind record-hopper”). Said shit consists of two speakers (very large), one turntable (light, but awkward as a motherfucker to carry), one preamp (very heavy), assorted wires (all tangled up, but that’s the blind record-hopper’s problem), and four boxes of actual records, which went out of style about a hundred years ago. Pete guesses that the blind record-hopper never heard a CD in his whole life.

The last item is a suit bag on a hanger. Pete has peeked in and ascertained that the suit is white.

“Hang it in there, please,” Henry says, pointing with unerring accuracy toward the supply closet that has been designated his dressing room.

“Okay,” Pete says. “What exactly is it, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Henry smiles. He knows perfectly well that Pete has already had a peep. He heard the plastic bag rattling and the zipper chinking in a duet that only occurs when someone pulls the bag away from the hanger at the neck. “Inside that bag, my friend, Symphonic Stan, the Big-Band Man, is just waiting for me to put him on and bring him to life.”

“Oh, uh-huh,” Pete says, not knowing if he has been answered or not. All he’s really sure of is that those records were almost as heavy as the preamp. Someone should really give the blind record-hopper some information about CDs, the next great leap forward.

“You asked me one; may I ask you one?”

“Be my guest,” Pete says.

“There appears to have been a police presence at Maxton Elder Care this afternoon,” the blind record-hopper says. “They’re gone now, but they were here when I arrived. What’s that about? There hasn’t been a robbery or an assault among the geriatrics, I hope?”

Pete stops in his tracks beneath a large cardboard strawberry, holding the suit bag and looking at the blind record-hopper with an amazement Henry can almost touch. “How’d you know the cops were here?”

Henry puts a finger to the side of his nose and tips his head to one side. He replies in a hoarse, conspiratorial whisper. “Smelled something blue.”

Pete looks puzzled, debates whether or not to inquire further, and decides not to. Resuming his march toward the supply closet–dressing room, he says: “They’re playing it cagey, but I think they’re looking for another lost kid.”

The look of amused curiosity fades from Henry’s face. “Good Christ,” he says.

“They came and went in a hurry. No kids here, Mr . . . uh, Leyden?”

“Leyden,” Henry confirms.

“A kid in this place would stand out like a rose in a patch of poison ivy, if you know what I mean.”

Henry doesn’t consider old folks in any way analogous to poison ivy, but he does indeed get Mr. Wexler’s drift. “What made them think—?”

“Someone found sumpin’ on the sidewalk,” Pete says. He points out the window, then realizes the blind guy can’t see him pointing.
Duh,
as Ebbie would say. He lowers his hand. “If a kid got snatched, someone probably came along in a car and snatched him. No kidnapers in here, I can tell you that much.” Pete laughs at the very idea of a Maxton moldy oldie snatching any kid big enough to ride a bike. The kid would probably break the guy over his knee like a dry stick.

“No,” Henry says soberly, “that hardly seems likely, does it?”

“But I guess the cops got to dot all the
t
’s and cross all the
i
’s.” He pauses. “That’s just a little joke of mine.”

Henry smiles politely, thinking that with some people, Alzheimer’s disease might be an actual improvement. “When you hang my suit up, Mr. Wexler, would you be so good as to give it a gentle shake? Just to banish any incipient wrinkles?”

“Okay. Want me to take it out of the bag forya?”

“Thanks, that won’t be necessary.”

Pete goes into the supply closet, hangs up the suit bag, and gives it a little shake.
Incipient,
just what the hell does
that
mean? There’s a rudiment of a library here at Maxton’s; maybe he’ll look it up in the dictionary. It pays to increase your word power, as it says in the
Reader’s Digest,
although Pete doubts it will pay him much in this job.

When he goes back out to the common room, the blind record-hopper—Mr. Leyden, Symphonic Stan, whoever the hell he is—has begun unraveling wires and plugging them in with a speed and accuracy Pete finds a trifle unnerving.

Poor old Fred Marshall is having a terrible dream.
Knowing
it’s a dream should make it less horrible but somehow doesn’t. He’s in a rowboat with Judy, out on a lake. Judy is sitting in the bow. They are fishing.
He
is, at least; Judy is just holding her pole. Her face is an expressionless blank. Her skin is waxy. Her eyes have a stunned, hammered look. He labors with increasing desperation to make contact with her, trying one conversational gambit after another. None work. To make what is, under the circumstances, a fairly apt metaphor, she spits every lure. He sees that her empty eyes appear fixed on the creel sitting between them in the bottom of the boat. Blood is oozing through the wickerwork in fat red dribbles.

It’s nothing, just fishblood,
he tries to assure her, but she makes no reply. In fact, Fred isn’t so sure himself. He’s thinking he ought to take a look inside the creel, just to be sure, when his pole gives a tremendous jerk—if not for quick reflexes, he would have lost it over the side. He’s hooked a big one!

Fred reels it in, the fish on the other end of the line fighting him for every foot. Then, when he finally gets it near the boat, he realizes he has no net.
Hell with it,
he thinks,
go for broke.
He whips the pole backward, just
daring
the line to snap, and the fish—biggest goddamned lake trout you’d ever hope to see—flies out of the water and through the air in a gleaming, fin-flipping arc. It lands in the bottom of the boat (beside the oozing creel, in fact) and begins thrashing. It also begins to make gruesome choking noises. Fred has never heard a fish make noises like that. He bends forward and is horrified to see that the trout has Tyler’s face. His son has somehow become a weretrout, and now he’s dying in the bottom of the boat. Strangling.

Fred grabs at it, wanting to remove the hook and throw it back while there’s still time, but the terrible choking thing keeps slipping through his fingers, leaving only a shiny slime of scales behind. It would be tough to get the hook out, in any case. The Ty-fish has swallowed it whole, and the barbed tip is actually protruding from one of the gills, just below the point where the human face melts away. Ty’s choking becomes louder, harsher, infinitely more horrible—

Fred sits up with a low cry, feeling as if he’s choking himself. For a moment he’s completely adrift as to place and time—lost in the slippage, we might say—and then he realizes he’s in his own bedroom, sitting up on his side of the bed he shares with Judy.

He notices that the light in here is much dimmer, because the sun has moved to the other side of the house.
My God,
he thinks,
how long have I been asleep? How could I—

Oh, but here is another thing: that hideous choking sound has followed him out of his dream. It’s louder than ever. It will wake Judy, scare her—

Judy is no longer on the bed, though.

“Jude?
Judy?
”

She’s sitting in the corner. Her eyes are wide and blank, just as they were in his dream. A corsage of crumpled paper is protruding from her mouth. Her throat is grotesquely swelled, looks to Fred like a sausage that has been grilled until the casing is ready to pop.

More paper,
he thinks.
Christ, she’s choking on it.