"Toward the river, or away from the river?"
They consult each other again. The question has been asked in English, but no proper answer exists. Finally, Ronnie says, "I don't know. "
"How about you, T. J. ? Do you know?"
T. J. shakes his head.
"Good. That's honest. You don't know because you didn't see him leave, did you? And he didn't really say he had to go somewhere, did he? I bet Ebbie made that up. "
T. J. wriggles, and Ronnie gazes at Jack with wondering awe. He has just revealed himself to be Sherlock Holmes.
"Remember when I drove past in my truck?" They nod in unison. "Tyler was with you. " They nod again. "You'd already left the sidewalk in front of the Allsorts Emporium, and you were riding east on Chase Street ¡ª away from the river. I saw you in my rearview mirror. Ebbie was pedaling very fast. The two of you could almost keep up with him. Tyler was smaller than the rest of you, and he fell behind. So I know he didn't go off on his own. He couldn't keep up. "
Ronnie Metzger wails, "And he got way, way behind, and the Misherfun came out and grabbed him. " He promptly bursts into tears.
Jack leans forward. "Did you see it happen? Either one of you?"
"Noooaa," Ronnie sobs. T. J. slowly shakes his head.
"You didn't see anyone talking with Ty, or a car stopping, or him going into a shop, or anything like that?"
The boys utter an incoherent, overlapping babble to the effect that they saw nothing.
"When did you realize he was gone?"
T. J. opens his mouth, then closes it. Ronnie says, "When we were having the Slurpees. " His face pursed with tension, T. J. nods in agreement.
Two more questions reveal that they had enjoyed the Slurpees at the 7-Eleven, where they also purchased Magic cards, and that it had probably taken them no more than a couple of minutes to notice Tyler Marshall's absence. "Ebbie said Ty would buy us some more cards," helpful Ronnie adds.
They have reached the moment for which Jack has been waiting. Whatever the secret may be, it took place soon after the boys came out of the 7-Eleven and saw that Tyler had still not joined them. And the secret is T. J. 's alone. The kid is practically sweating blood, while the memory of the Slurpees and Magic cards has calmed down his friend to a remarkable degree. There is only one more question he wishes to ask the two of them. "So Ebbie wanted to find Tyler. Did you all get on your bikes and search around, or did Ebbie send just one of you?"
"Huh?" Ronnie says. T. J. drops his chin and crosses his arms on the top of his head, as if to ward off a blow. "Tyler went somewheres," Ronnie says. "We didn't look for him, we went to the park. To trade the Magic cards. "
"I see," Jack says. "Ronnie, thank you. You have been very helpful. I'd like you to go outside and stay with Ebbie and Officer Dulac while I have a short conversation with T. J. It shouldn't take more than five minutes, if that. "
"I can go?" At Jack's nod, Ronnie moves hesitantly out of his chair. When he reaches the door, T. J. emits a whimper. Then Ronnie is gone, and T. J. jerks backward into his chair and tries to become as small as possible while staring at Jack with eyes that have become shiny, flat, and perfectly round.
"T. J. ," Jack says, "you have nothing to worry about, I promise you. " Now that he is alone with the boy who had declared his guilt by falling asleep in the interrogation room, Jack Sawyer wants above all to absolve him of that guilt. He knows T. J. 's secret, and the secret is nothing; it is useless. "No matter what you tell me, I'm not going to arrest you. That's a promise, too. You're not in any trouble, son. In fact, I'm glad you and your friends could come down here and help us straighten things out. "
He goes on in this vein for another three or four minutes, in the course of which T. J. Renniker, formerly condemned to death by firing squad, gradually comprehends that his pardon has come through and his release from what his buddy Ronnie would call vurance dile is imminent. A little color returns to his face. He returns to his former size, and his eyes lose their horror-stricken glaze.
"Tell me what Ebbie did," Jack says. "Just between you and me. I won't tell him anything. Honest. I won't rat you out. "
"He wanted Ty to buy more Magic cards," T. J. says, feeling his way through unknown territory. "If Ty was there, he woulda. Ebbie can get kind of mean. So . . . so he told me, go downstreet and get the slowpoke, or I'll give you an Indian burn. "
"You got on your bike and rode back down Chase Street. "
"Uh-huh. I looked, but I didn't see Ty anywheres. I thought I would, you know? Because where else could he be?"
"And . . . ?" Jack reels in the answer he knows is coming by winding his hand through the air.
"And I still didn't see him. And I got to Queen Street, where the old folks' home is, with the big hedge out front. And, um, I saw his bike there. On the sidewalk in front of the hedge. His sneaker was there, too. And some leaves off the hedge. "
There it is, the worthless secret. Maybe not entirely worthless: it gives them a pretty accurate fix on the time of the boy's disappearance: 8:15, say, or 8:20. The bike lay on the sidewalk next to the sneaker for something like four hours before Danny Tcheda spotted them. Maxton's takes up just about all the land on that section of Queen Street, and no one was showing up for the Strawberry Fest until noon.
T. J. describes being afraid ¡ª if the Fisherman pulled Ty into that hedge, maybe he'd come back for more! In answer to Jack's final question, the boy says, "Ebbie told us to say Ty rode away from in front of the Allsorts, so people wouldn't, like, blame us. In case he was killed. Ty isn't really killed, is he? Kids like Ty don't get killed. "
"I hope not," Jack says.
"Me, too. " T. J. snuffles and wipes his nose on his arm.
"Let's get you on your way home," Jack says, leaving his chair.
T. J. stands up and begins to move along the side of the table. "Oh! I just remembered!"
"What?"
"I saw feathers on the sidewalk. "
The floor beneath Jack's feet seems to roll left, then right, like the deck of a ship. He steadies himself by grasping the back of a chair. "Really. " He takes care to compose himself before turning to the boy. "What do you mean, feathers?"
"Black ones. Big. They looked like they came off a crow. One was next to the bike, and the other was in the sneaker. "
"That's funny," says Jack, buying time until he ceases to reverberate from the unexpected appearance of feathers in his conversation with T. J. Renniker. That he should respond at all is ridiculous; that he should have felt, even for a second, that he was likely to faint is grotesque. T. J. 's feathers were real crow feathers on a real sidewalk. His were dream feathers, feathers from unreal robins, illuso
ry as everything else in a dream. Jack tells himself a number of helpful things like this, and soon he does feel normal once again, but we should be aware that, for the rest of the night and much of the next day, the word feathers floats, surrounded by an aura as charged as an electrical storm, beneath and through his thoughts, now and then surfacing with the sizzling crackle of a lightning bolt.
"It's weird," T. J. says. "Like, how did a feather get in his sneaker?"
"Maybe the wind blew it there," Jack says, conveniently ignoring the nonexistence of wind this day. Reassured by the stability of the floor, he waves T. J. into the hallway, then follows him out.
Ebbie Wexler pushes himself off the wall and stamps up alongside Bobby Dulac. Still in character, Bobby might have been carved from a block of marble. Ronnie Metzger sidles away. "We can send these boys home," Jack says. "They've done their duty. "
"T. J. , what did you say?" Ebbie asks, glowering.
"He made it clear that you know nothing about your friend's disappearance," Jack says.
Ebbie relaxes, though not without distributing scowls all around. The final and most malignant scowl is for Jack, who raises his eyebrows. "I didn't cry," Ebbie says. "I was scared, but I didn't cry. "
"You were scared, all right," Jack says. "Next time, don't lie to me. You had your chance to help the police, and you blew it. "
Ebbie struggles with this notion and succeeds, at least partially, in absorbing it. "Okay, but I wasn't really flippin' at you. It was the stupid music. "
"I hated it, too. The guy who was with me insisted on playing it. You know who he was?"
In the face of Ebbie's suspicious glower, Jack says, "George Rathbun. "
It is like saying "Superman," or "Arnold Schwarzenegger"; Ebbie's suspicion evaporates, and his face transforms. Innocent wonder fills his small, close-set eyes. "You know George Rathbun?"
"He's one of my best friends," Jack says, not adding that most of his other best friends are, in a sense, also George Rathbun.
"Cool," Ebbie says.
In the background, T. J. and Ronnie echo, "Cool. "
"George is pretty cool," Jack says. "I'll tell him you said that. Let's go downstairs and get you kids on your bikes. "
Still wrapped in the glory of having gazed upon the great, the tremendous George Rathbun, the boys mount their bicycles, pedal away down Sumner Street, and swerve off onto Second. Bobby Dulac says, "That was a good trick, what you said about George Rathbun. Sent them away happy. "
"It wasn't a trick. "
So startled that he jostles back into the station house side by side with Jack, Bobby says, "George Rathbun is a friend of yours?"
"Yep," Jack says. "And sometimes, he can be a real pain in the ass. "
Dale and Fred Marshall look up as Jack enters the office, Dale with a cautious expectancy, Fred Marshall with what Jack sees, heartbreakingly, as hope.
"Well?" Dale says.
( feathers)
"You were right, they were hiding something, but it isn't much. "
Fred Marshall slumps against the back of his chair, letting some of his belief in a future hope leak out of him like air from a punctured tire.
"Not long after they got to the 7-Eleven, the Wexler boy sent T. J. down the street to look for your son," Jack says. "When T. J. got to Queen Street, he saw the bike and the sneaker lying on the sidewalk. Of course, they all thought of the Fisherman. Ebbie Wexler figured they might get blamed for leaving him behind, and he came up with the story you heard ¡ª that Tyler left them, instead of the other way around. "
"If you saw all four boys around ten past eight, that means Tyler disappeared only a few minutes later. What does this guy do, lurk in hedges?"
"Maybe he does exactly that," Jack says. "Did you have people check out that hedge?"
( feathers)
"The staties went over it, through it, and under it. Leaves and dirt, that's what they came up with. "
As if driving a spike with his hand, Fred Marshall bangs his fist down onto the desk. "My son was gone for four hours before anyone noticed his bike. Now it's almost seven-thirty! He's been missing for most of the day! I shouldn't be sitting here, I should be driving around, looking for him. "
"Everybody is looking for your son, Fred," Dale says. "My guys, the staties, even the FBI. "
"I have no faith in them," Fred says. "They haven't found Irma Freneau, have they? Why should they find my son? As far as I can see, I've got one chance here. " When he looks at Jack, emotion turns his eyes into lamps. "That chance is you, Lieutenant. Will you help me?"
Jack's third and most troubling thought, withheld until now and purely that of an experienced policeman, causes him to say, "I'd like to talk to your wife. If you're planning on visiting her tomorrow, would you mind if I came along?"
Dale blinks and says, "Maybe we should talk about this. "
"Do you think it would do some good?"
"It might," Jack says.
"Seeing you might do her some good, anyhow," Fred says. "Don't you live in Norway Valley? That's on the way to Arden. I can pick you up about nine. "
"Jack," Dale says.
"See you at nine," Jack says, ignoring the signals of mingled distress and anger emanating from his friend, also the little voice that whispers
( feather).
"Amazing," says Henry Leyden. "I don't know whether to thank you or congratulate you. Both, I suppose. It's too late in the game to make 'bitchrod,' like me, but I think you could have a shot at 'dope. ' "
"Don't lose your head. The only reason I went down there was to keep the boy's father from coming to my house. "
"That wasn't the only reason. "
"You're right. I was feeling sort of edgy and hemmed in. I felt like getting out, changing the scenery. "
"But there was also another reason. "
"Henry, you are hip-deep in pigshit, do you know that? You want to think I acted out of civic duty, or honor, or compassion, or altruism, or something, but I didn't. I don't like having to say this, but I'm a lot less good-hearted and responsible than you think I am. "
" 'Hip-deep in pigshit'? Man, you are absolutely on the money. I have been hip-deep in pigshit, not to mention chest-deep and even chin-deep in pigshit, most of my life. "
"Nice of you to admit it. "
"However, you misunderstand me. You're right, I do think you are a good, decent person. I don't just think it, I know it. You're modest, you're compassionate, you're honorable, you're responsible ¡ª no matter what you think of yourself right now. But that wasn't what I was talking about. "
"What did you mean, then?"
"The other reason you decided to go to the police station is connected to this problem, this concern, whatever it is, that's been bugging you for the past couple of weeks. It's like you've been walking around under a shadow. "
"Huh," Jack said.
"This problem, this secret of yours, takes up half your attention, so you're only half present; the rest of you is somewhere else. Sweetie, don't you think I can tell when you're worried and preoccupied? I might be blind, but I can see. "
"Okay. Let's suppose that something has been on my mind lately. What could that have to do with going to the station house?"
"There are two possibilities. Either you were going off to confront it, or you were fleeing from it. "
Jack does not speak.
"All of which suggests that this problem has to do with your life as a policeman. It could be some old case coming back to haunt you. Maybe a psychotic thug you put in jail was released and is threatening to kill you. Or, hell, I'm completely full of shit and you found out you have liver cancer and a life expectancy of three months. "
"I don't have cancer, at least as far as I know, and no ex-con wants to kill me. All of my old cases, most of them, anyway, are safely asleep in the records warehouse of the LAPD. Of course, something has been bothering me lately, and I should have expected you t
o see that. But I didn't want to, I don't know, burden you with it until I managed to figure it out for myself. "
"Tell me one thing, will you? Were you going toward it, or running away?"
"There's no answer to that question. "
"We shall see. Isn't the food ready by now? I'm starving, literally starving. You cook too slow. I would have been done ten minutes ago. "
"Hold your horses," Jack says. "Coming right up. The problem is this crazy kitchen of yours. "
"Most rational kitchen in America. Maybe in the world. "
After ducking out of the police station quickly enough to avoid a useless conversation with Dale, Jack had yielded to impulse and called Henry with the offer of making dinner for both of them. A couple of good steaks, a nice bottle of wine, grilled mushrooms, a big salad. He could pick up everything they needed in French Landing. Jack had cooked for Henry on three or four previous occasions, and Henry had prepared one stupendously bizarre dinner for Jack. (The housekeeper had taken all the herbs and spices off their rack to wash it, and she had put everything back in the wrong place. ) What was he doing in French Landing? He'd explain that when he got there. At eight-thirty he had pulled up before Henry's roomy white farmhouse, greeted Henry, and carried the groceries and his copy of Bleak House into the kitchen. He had tossed the book to the far end of the table, opened the wine, poured a glass for his host and one for himself, and started cooking. He'd had to spend several minutes reacquainting himself with the eccentricities of Henry's kitchen, in which objects were not located by kind ¡ª pans with pans, knives with knives, pots with pots ¡ª but according to what sort of meal required their usage. If Henry wanted to whip up a grilled trout and some new potatoes, he had only to open the proper cabinet to find all the necessary utensils. These were arranged in four basic groups (meat, fish, poultry, and vegetables), with many subgroups and subsubgroups within each category. The filing system confounded Jack, who often had to peer into several widely separated realms before coming upon the frying pan or spatula he was looking for. As Jack chopped, wandered the shelves, and cooked, Henry had laid the table in the kitchen with plates and silverware and sat down to quiz his troubled friend.
Now the steaks, rare, are transported to the plates, the mushrooms arrayed around them, and the enormous wooden salad bowl installed on the center of the table. Henry pronounces the meal delicious, takes a sip of his wine, and says, "If you still won't talk about your trouble, whatever it is, you'd better at least tell me what happened at the station. I suppose there's very little doubt that another child was snatched. "
"Next to none, I'm sorry to say. It's a boy named Tyler Marshall. His father's name is Fred Marshall, and he works out at Goltz's. Do you know him?"
"Been a long time since I bought a combine," Henry says.
"The first thing that struck me was that Fred Marshall was a very nice guy," Jack says, and goes on to recount, in great detail and leaving nothing out, the evening's events and revelations, except for one matter, that of his third, his unspoken, thought.
"You actually asked to visit Marshall's wife? In the mental wing at French County Lutheran?"
"Yes, I did," Jack says. "I'm going there tomorrow. "
"I don't get it. " Henry eats by hunting the food with his knife, spearing it with his fork, and measuring off a narrow strip of steak. "Why would you want to see the mother?"
"Because one way or another I think she's involved," Jack says.
"Oh, come off it. The boy's own mother?"
"I'm not saying she's the Fisherman, because of course she isn't. But according to her husband, Judy Marshall's behavior started to change before Amy St. Pierre disappeared. She got worse and worse as the murders went on, and on the day her son vanished, she flipped out completely. Her husband had to have her committed. "
"Wouldn't you say she had an excellent reason to break down?"
"She flipped out before anyone told her about her son. Her husband thinks she has ESP! He said she saw the murders in advance, she knew the Fisherman was on the way. And she knew her son was gone before they found the bike ¡ª when Fred Marshall came home, he found her tearing at the walls and talking nonsense. Completely out of control. "
"You hear about lots of cases where a mother is suddenly aware of some threat or injury to her child. A pyschic bond. Sounds like mumbo jumbo, but I guess it happens. "
"I don't believe in ESP, and I don't believe in coincidence. "
"So what are you saying?"
"Judy Marshall knows something, and whatever she knows is a real showstopper. Fred can't see it ¡ª he's much too close ¡ª and Dale can't see it, either. You should have heard him talk about her. "
"So what is she supposed to know?"
"I think she may know the doer. I think it has to be someone close to her. Whoever he is, she knows his name, and it's driving her crazy. "
Henry frowns and uses his inchworm technique to entrap another piece of steak. "So you're going to the hospital to open her up," he finally says.
"Yes. Basically. "
A mysterious silence follows this statement. Henry quietly whittles away at the meat, chews what he whittles, and washes it down with Jordan cabernet.
"How did your deejay gig go? Was it okay?"
"It was a thing of beauty. All the adorable old swingers cut loose on the dance floor, even the ones in wheelchairs. One guy sort of rubbed me the wrong way. He was rude to a woman named Alice, and he asked me to play 'Lady Magowan's Nightmare,' which doesn't exist, as you probably know ¡ª "
"It's 'Lady Magowan's Dream. ' Woody Herman. "
"Good boy. The thing was, he had this terrible voice. It sounded like something out of hell! Anyhow, I didn't have the Woody Herman record, and he asked for the Bunny Berigan 'I Can't Get Started. ' Which happened to be Rhoda's favorite record. What with my goofy ear hallucinations and all, it shook me up. I don't know why. "
For a few minutes they concentrate on their plates.
Jack says, "What do you think, Henry?"
Henry tilts his head, auditing an inner voice. Scowling, he sets down his fork. The inner voice continues to demand his attention. He adjusts his shades and faces Jack. "In spite of everything you say, you still think like a cop. "
Jack bridles at the suspicion that Henry is not paying him a compliment. "What do you mean by that?"
"Cops see differently than people who aren't cops. When a cop looks at someone, he wonders what he's guilty of. The possibility of innocence never enters his mind. To a longtime cop, a guy who's put in ten years or more, everyone who isn't a cop is guilty. Only most of them haven't been caught yet. "
Henry has described the mind-set of dozens of men Jack once worked with. "Henry, how do you know about that?"
"I can see it in their eyes," Henry says. "That's the way policemen approach the world. You are a policeman. "
Jack blurts out, "I am a coppiceman. " Appalled, he blushes. "Sorry, that stupid phrase has been running around and around in my head, and it just popped out. "
"Why don't we clear the dishes and start on Bleak House?"
When their few dishes have been stacked beside the sink, Jack takes the book from the far side of the table and follows Henry toward the living room, pausing on the way to glance, as he always does, at his friend's studio. A door with a large glass insert opens into a small, soundproofed chamber bristling with electronic equipment: the microphone and turntable back from Maxton's and reinstalled before Henry's well-padded, swiveling chair; a disc changer and matching digital-analog converter mount, close at hand, beside a mixing board and a massive tape recorder adjacent to the other, larger window, which looks into the kitchen. When Henry had been planning the studio, Rhoda requested the windows, because, she'd said, she wanted to be able to see him at work. There isn't a wire in sight. The entire studio has the disciplined neatness of the captain's quarters on a ship.
"Looks like you're going to work tonight," Jack says. r />
"I want to get two more Henry Shakes ready to send, and I'm working on something for a birthday salute to Lester Young and Charlie Parker. "
"Were they born on the same day?"
"Close enough. August twenty-seventh and twenty-ninth. You know, I can't quite tell if you'll want the lights on or not. "
"Let's turn them on," Jack says.
And so Henry Leyden switches on the two lamps beside the window, and Jack Sawyer moves to the overstuffed chair near the fireplace and turns on the tall lamp at one of its rounded arms and watches as his friend walks unerringly to the light just inside the front door and the ornate fixture alongside his own, his favorite resting place, the Mission-style sofa, clicking first one, then the other into life, then settles down onto the sofa with one leg stretched out along its length. Even, low light pervades the long room and swells into greater brightness around Jack's chair.
"Bleak House, by Charles Dickens," he says. He clears his throat. "Okay, Henry, we're off to the races. "
"London. Michaelmas Term lately over," he reads, and marches into a world made of soot and mud. Muddy dogs, muddy horses, muddy people, a day without light. Soon he has reached the second paragraph: "Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. "
His voice catches, and his mind temporarily drifts off-focus. What he is reading unhappily reminds him of French Landing, of Sumner Street and Chase Street, of the lights in the window of the Oak Tree Inn, the Thunder Five lurking in Nailhouse Row, and the gray ascent from the river, of Queen Street and Maxton's hedges, the little houses spreading out on grids, all of it choked by unseen fog; ¡ª which engulfs a battered NO TRESPASSING sign on the highway and swallows the Sand Bar and glides hungry and searching down the valleys.
"Sorry," he says. "I was just thinking ¡ª "
"I was, too," Henry says. "Go on, please. "
But for that brief flicker of an old NO TRESPASSING sign completely unaware of the black house he one day will have to enter, Jack concentrates again on the page and continues reading Bleak House. The windows darken as the lamps grow warmer. The case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds through the courts, aided or impeded by attorneys Chizzle, Mizzle, and Drizzle; Lady Dedlock leaves Sir Leicester Dedlock alone at their great estate with its moldy chapel, stagnant river, and "Ghost's Walk"; Esther Summerson begins to chirp away in the first person. Our friends decide that the appearance of Esther demands a small libation, if they are to get through much more chirping. Henry unfolds from the sofa, sails into the kitchen, and returns with two short, fat glasses one-third filled with Balvenie Doublewood single-malt whiskey, as well as a glass of plain water for the reader. A couple of sips, a few murmurs of appreciation, and Jack resumes. Esther, Esther, Esther, but beneath the water torture of her relentless sunniness the story gathers steam and carries both reader and listener along in its train.
Having come to a convenient stopping point, Jack closes the book and yawns. Henry stands up and stretches. They move to the door, and Henry follows Jack outside beneath a vast night sky brilliantly scattered with stars. "Tell me one thing," Henry says.
"Shoot. "
"When you were in the station house, did you really feel like a cop? Or did you feel like you were pretending to be one?"
"Actually, it was kind of surprising," Jack says. "In no time at all, I felt like a cop again. "
"Good. "
"Why is that good?"
"Because it means you were running toward that mysterious secret, not away from it. "
Shaking his head and smiling, deliberately not giving Henry the satisfaction of a reply, Jack steps up into his vehicle and says good-bye from the slight but distinct elevation of the driver's seat. The engine coughs and churns, his headlights snap into being, and Jack is on his way home.