Black House (29 page)

But Henry doesn’t ask. “I’ll be standing at the end of my driveway,” he said. “Just tell me when.”

Jack calculates his remaining chores with the evidence, chores that will end with stowing everything in the lockbox in the bed of his truck. Reminds himself to take his cell phone, which usually does nothing but stand on its little charging device in his study. He’ll want to call everything in as soon as he has seen Irma’s remains in situ and finished that vital first walk-through. Let Dale and his boys come then. Let them bring along the high school marching band, if they want to. He glances at his watch and sees that it’s almost eight o’clock. How did it get so late so early? Distances are shorter in the other place, this he remembers, but does time go faster as well? Or has he simply lost track?

“I’ll be there at eight-fifteen,” Jack says. “And when we get to Ed’s Eats, you’re going to sit in my truck like a good little boy until I tell you you can get out.”

“Understood,
mon capitaine.
”

“Ding-dong.” Jack hangs up and heads back out to the porch.

Things aren’t going to turn out the way Jack hopes. He’s not going to get that clear first look and smell. In fact, by this afternoon the situation in French Landing, volatile already, will be on the verge of spinning out of control. Although there are many factors at work here, the chief cause of this latest escalation will be the Mad Hungarian.

There’s a dose of good old small-town humor in this nickname, like calling the skinny bank clerk Big Joe or the trifocal-wearing bookstore proprietor Hawkeye. Arnold Hrabowski, at five foot six and one hundred and fifty pounds, is the smallest man on Dale Gilbertson’s current roster. In fact, he’s the smallest
person
on Dale’s current roster, as both Debbi Anderson and Pam Stevens outweigh him and stand taller (at six-one, Debbi could eat scrambled eggs off Arnold Hrabowski’s head). The Mad Hungarian is also a fairly inoffensive fellow, the sort of guy who continues to apologize for giving tickets no matter how many times Dale has told him that this is a very bad policy, and who has been known to start interrogations with such unfortunate phrases as
Excuse me, but I was wondering.
As a result, Dale keeps him on desk as much as possible, or downtown, where everyone knows him and most treat him with absent respect. He tours the county grammar schools as Officer Friendly. The little ones, unaware that they are getting their first lessons on the evils of pot from the Mad Hungarian, adore him. When he gives tougher lectures on dope, drink, and reckless driving at the high school, the kids doze or pass notes, although they do think the federally funded DARE car he drives—a low, sleek Pontiac with
JUST SAY NO
emblazoned on the doors—is way cool. Basically, Officer Hrabowski is about as exciting as a tuna on white, hold the mayo.

But in the seventies, you see, there was this relief pitcher for St. Louis and then the Kansas City Royals, a
very
fearsome fellow indeed, and his name was
Al
Hrabosky. He stalked rather than walked in from the bullpen, and before beginning to pitch (usually in the ninth inning with the bases juiced and the game on the line), Al Hrabosky would turn from the plate, lower his head, clench his fists, and pump them once, very hard, psyching himself up. Then he would turn and begin throwing nasty fastballs, many of them within kissing distance of the batters’ chins. He was of course called the Mad Hungarian, and even a blind man could see he was the best damn reliever in the majors. And of course Arnold Hrabowski is now known,
must
be known, as the Mad Hungarian. He even tried to grow a Fu Manchu mustache a few years back, like the one the famed reliever wore. But whereas Al Hrabosky’s Fu was as fearsome as Zulu warpaint, Arnold’s only provoked chuckles—a Fu sprouting on that mild accountant’s face, just imagine!—and so he shaved it off.

The Mad Hungarian of French Landing is not a bad fellow; he does his absolute level best, and under normal circumstances his level best is good enough. But these aren’t ordinary days in French Landing, these are the slippery slippage days, the abbalah-opopanax days, and he is exactly the sort of officer of whom Jack is afraid. And this morning he is, quite without meaning to, going to make a bad situation very much worse.

The call from the Fisherman comes in to the 911 phone at 8:10
A.M.,
while Jack is finishing his notes on the yellow legal pad and Henry is strolling down his driveway, smelling the summer morning with great pleasure in spite of the shadow Jack’s news has cast over his mind. Unlike some of the officers (Bobby Dulac, for instance), the Mad Hungarian reads the script taped next to the 911 phone word for word.

ARNOLD HRABOWSKI:
Hello, this is the French Landing Police Department, Officer Hrabowski speaking. You’ve dialed 911. Do you have an emergency?

[
Unintelligible sound
.
.
.
throat-clearing?
]

AH:
Hello? This is Officer Hrabowski answering on 911. Do you—

CALLER:
Hello, asswipe.

AH:
Who is this? Do you have an emergency?

C:
You have an emergency. Not me. You.

AH:
Who is this, please?

C:
Your worst nightmare.

AH:
Sir, could I ask you to identify yourself?

C:
Abbalah. Abbalah-doon. [
Phonetic.
]

AH:
Sir, I don’t—

C:
I’m the Fisherman.

[
Silence.
]

C:
What’s wrong? Scared? You ought to be scared.

AH:
Sir. Ah, sir. There are penalties for false—

C:
There are whips in hell and chains in shayol. [
Caller may be saying “Sheol.
”
]

AH:
Sir, if I could have your name—

C:
My name is legion. My number is many. I am a rat under the floor of the universe. Robert Frost said that. [
Caller laughs.
]

AH:
Sir, if you hold, I can put on my chief—

C:
Shut up and listen, asswipe. Your tape running? I hope so. I could shag [
Caller may be saying “scram” but word is indistinct
] it if I wanted to but I don’t want to.

AH:
Sir, I—

C:
Kiss my scrote, you monkey. I left you one and I’m tired of waiting for you to find her. Try Ed’s Eats and Dogs. Might be a little rotten now, but when she was new she was very [
Caller rolls
r
’s, turning the word into “verrry
”
] tasty.

AH:
Where are you? Who is this? If this is a joke—

C:
Tell the coppiceman I said hello.

When the call began, the Mad Hungarian’s pulse was lub-dubbing along at a perfectly normal sixty-eight beats a minute. When it ends at 8:12, Arnold Hrabowski’s ticker is in overdrive. His face is pale. Halfway through the call he looked at the Caller I.D. readout and wrote down the number displayed there with a hand shaking so badly that the numbers jigged up and down over three lines on his pad. When the Fisherman hangs up and he hears the sound of an open line, Hrabowski is so flustered that he tries to dial the callback on the red phone, forgetting that 911 is a one-way street. His fingers strike the smooth plastic front of the phone and he drops it back into the cradle with a frightened curse. He looks at it like something that has bitten him.

Hrabowski grabs the receiver from the black telephone beside 911, starts to punch in the callback, but his fingers betray him and hit two numbers at once. He curses again, and Tom Lund, passing by with a cup of coffee, says, “What’s wrong there, Arnie?”

“Get Dale!” the Mad Hungarian shouts, startling Tom so badly he spills coffee on his fingers. “Get him out here
no
w
!”

“What the hell’s wrong with y—”

“NOW, goddamnit!”

Tom stares at Hrabowski a moment longer, eyebrows raised, then goes to tell Dale that the Mad Hungarian seems to have really gone mad.

The second time Hrabowski tries, he succeeds in dialing the callback number. It rings. It rings. And it rings some more.

Dale Gilbertson appears with his own cup of coffee. There are dark circles under his eyes, and the lines at the corners of his mouth are a lot more prominent than they used to be.

“Arnie? What’s—”

“Play back the last call,” Arnold Hrabowski says. “I think it was . . . hello!” He barks this last, sitting forward behind the dispatch desk and shoving papers every which way. “Hello, who is this?”

Listens.

“It’s the police, that’s who it is. Officer Hrabowski, FLPD. Now you talk to me. Who is this?”

Dale, meanwhile, has got the earphones on his head and is listening to the most recent call to French Landing 911 with mounting horror.
Oh dear God,
he thinks. His first impulse—the very first—is to call Jack Sawyer and ask for help. To
bawl
for it, like a little kid with his hand caught in a door. Then he tells himself to take hold, that this is his job, like it or not, and he had better take hold and try to do it. Besides, Jack has gone up to Arden with Fred Marshall to see Fred’s crazy wife. At least that was the plan.

Cops, meanwhile, are clustering around the dispatch desk: Lund, Tcheda, Stevens. What Dale sees when he looks at them is nothing but big eyes and pale, bewildered faces. And the ones on patrol? The ones currently off duty? No better. With the possible exception of Bobby Dulac, no better. He feels despair as well as horror. Oh, this is a nightmare. A truck with no brakes rolling downhill toward a crowded school playground.

He pulls the earphones off, tearing a small cut by his ear, not feeling it. “Where’d it come from?” he asks Hrabowski. The Mad Hungarian has hung up the telephone and is just sitting there, stunned. Dale grabs his shoulder and gives it a shake.
“Where’d it come from?”

“The 7-Eleven,” the Mad Hungarian replies, and Dale hears Danny Tcheda grunt. Not too far from where the Marshall boy’s bike disappeared, in other words. “I just spoke with Mr. Rajan Patel, the day clerk. He says the callback number belongs to the pay phone, just outside.”

“Did he see who made the call?”

“No. He was out back, taking a beer delivery.”

“You positive Patel himself didn’t—”

“Yeah. He’s got an Indian accent. Heavy. The guy on 911 . . . Dale, you heard him. He sounded like
anybody.
”

“What’s going on?” Pam Stevens asks. She has a good idea, though; they all do. It’s just a question of details. “What’s happened?”

Because it’s the quickest way to get them up to speed, Dale replays the call, this time on speaker.

In the stunned silence that follows, Dale says: “I’m going out to Ed’s Eats. Tom, you’re coming with me.”

“Yessir!” Tom Lund says. He looks almost ill with excitement.

“Four more cruisers to follow me.” Most of Dale’s mind is frozen; this procedural stuff skates giddily on top of the ice.
I’m okay at procedure and organization,
he thinks.
It’s just catching the goddamn psycho murderer that’s giving me a little trouble.
“All pairs. Danny, you and Pam in the first. Leave five minutes after Tom and I do. Five minutes by the clock, and no lights or siren. We’re going to keep this quiet just as long as we can.”

Danny Tcheda and Pam Stevens look at each other, nod, then look back at Dale. Dale is looking at Arnold “the Mad Hungarian” Hrabowski. He ticks off three more pairs, ending with Dit Jesperson and Bobby Dulac. Bobby is the only one he really wants out there; the others are just insurance and—God grant it not be necessary—crowd control. All of them are to come at five-minute intervals.

“Let me go out, too,” Arnie Hrabowski pleads. “Come on, boss, what do you say?”

Dale opens his mouth to say he wants Arnie right where he is, but then he sees the hopeful look in those watery brown eyes. Even in his own deep distress, Dale can’t help responding to that, at least a little. For Arnie, police life is too often standing on the sidewalk while the parade goes by.

Some parade,
he thinks.

“I tell you what, Arn,” he says. “When you finish all your other calls, buzz Debbi. If you can get her in here, you can come out to Ed’s.”

Arnold nods excitedly, and Dale almost smiles. The Mad Hungarian will have Debbi in here by nine-thirty, he guesses, even if he has to drag her by the hair like Alley Oop. “Who do I pair with, Dale?”

“Come by yourself,” Dale says. “In the DARE car, why don’t you? But, Arnie, if you leave this desk without relief waiting to drop into the chair the second you leave it, you’ll be looking for a new job come tomorrow.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Hrabowski says, and, Hungarian or not, in his excitement he sounds positively Suh-vee-dish. Nor is that surprising, since Centralia, where he grew up, was once known as Swede Town.

“Come on, Tom,” Dale says. “We’ll grab the evidence kit on our—”

“Uh . . . boss?”

“
What,
Arnie?” Meaning, of course,
What now?

“Should I call those State Police guys, Brown and Black?”

Danny Tcheda and Pam Stevens snicker. Tom smiles. Dale doesn’t do either. His heart, already in the cellar, now goes even lower.
Subbasement, ladies and gentlemen—false hopes on your left, lost causes on your right. Last stop, everybody out.

Perry Brown and Jeff Black. He had forgotten them, how funny. Brown and Black, who would now almost certainly take his case away from him.

“They’re still out at the Paradise Motel,” the Mad Hungarian goes on, “although I think the FBI guy went back to Milwaukee.”

“I—”

“And County,” the Hungarian plows relentlessly along. “Don’t forget them. You want me to call the M.E. first, or the evidence wagon?” The evidence wagon is a blue Ford Econoline van, packed with everything from quick-drying plaster for taking tire impressions to a rolling video studio. Stuff the French Landing P.D. will never have access to.