Black House js-2 Read online

  Herman Street is a left turn from Bluff Street, in an area that is not quite town and not quite city. Here, in a sturdy brick house sitting at the end of a half-mile meadow as yet undiscovered by the developers (even here there are a few developers, unknowing agents of slippage), lives Dale Gilbertson with his wife, Sarah, and his six-year-old son, David.

  We can’t stay long, but let us at least drift in through the kitchen window for a moment. It’s open, after all, and there is room for us to perch right here on the counter, between the Silex and the toaster. Sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and shoveling Special K into his mouth without tasting it (he has forgotten both the sugar and the sliced banana in his distress at seeing yet another Wendell Green byline on the front page of the Herald), is Chief Gilbertson himself. This morning he is without doubt the unhappiest man in French Landing. We will meet his only competition for that booby prize soon, but for the moment, let us stick with Dale.

  The Fisherman, he thinks mournfully, his reflections on this subject very similar to those of Bobby Dulac and Tom Lund. Why didn’t you name him something a little more turn-of-the-century, you troublesome scribbling fuck? Something a little bit local? Dahmerboy, maybe, that’d be good.

  Ah, but Dale knows why. The similarities between Albert Fish, who did his work in New York, and their boy here in French Landing are just too good—too tasty—to be ignored. Fish strangled his victims, as both Amy St. Pierre and Johnny Irkenham were apparently strangled; Fish dined on his victims, as both the girl and the boy were apparently dined upon; both Fish and the current fellow showed an especial liking for the . . . well, for the posterior regions of the anatomy.

  Dale looks at his cereal, then drops his spoon into the mush and pushes the bowl away with the side of his hand.

  And the letters. Can’t forget the letters.

  Dale glances down at his briefcase, crouched at the side of his chair like a faithful dog. The file is in there, and it draws him like a rotted, achy tooth draws the tongue. Maybe he can keep his hands off it, at least while he’s here at home, where he plays toss with his son and makes love to his wife, but keeping his mind off it . . . that’s a whole ’nother thing, as they also say in these parts.

  Albert Fish wrote a long and horribly explicit letter to the mother of Grace Budd, the victim who finally earned the old cannibal a trip to the electric chair. (“What a thrill electrocution will be!” Fish reputedly told his jailers. “The only one I haven’t tried!”) The current doer has written similar letters, one addressed to Helen Irkenham, the other to Amy’s father, the awful (but genuinely grief-stricken, in Dale’s estimation) Armand “Beezer” St. Pierre. It would be good if Dale could believe these letters were written by some troublemaker not otherwise connected to the murders, but both contain information that has been withheld from the press, information that presumably only the killer could know.

  Dale at last gives in to temptation (how well Henry Leyden would understand) and hauls up his briefcase. He opens it and puts a thick file where his cereal bowl lately rested. He returns the briefcase to its place by his chair, then opens the file (it is marked ST. PIERRE/IRKENHAM rather than FISHERMAN). He leafs past heartbreaking school photos of two smiling, gap-toothed children, past state medical examiner reports too horrible to read and crime-scene photos too horrible to look at (ah, but he must look at them, again and again he must look at them—the blood-slicked chains, the flies, the open eyes). There are also various transcripts, the longest being the interview with Spencer Hovdahl, who found the Irkenham boy and who was, very briefly, considered a suspect.

  Next come Xerox copies of three letters. One had been sent to George and Helen Irkenham (addressed to Helen alone, if it made any difference). One went to Armand “Beezer” St. Pierre (addressed just that way, too, nickname and all). The third had been sent to the mother of Grace Budd, of New York City, following the murder of her daughter in the late spring of 1928.

  Dale lays the three of them out, side by side.

  Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. So Fish had written to Mrs. Budd.

  Amy sat in my lap and hugged me. I made up my mind to eat her. So had Beezer St. Pierre’s correspondent written, and was it any wonder the man had threatened to burn the French Landing police station to the ground? Dale doesn’t like the son of a bitch, but has to admit he might feel the same way in Beezer’s shoes.

  I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. Fish, to Mrs. Budd.

  I went around back of the hen-house and stripped all my cloes off. New if I did not I would get his blood on them. Anonymous, to Helen Irkenham. And here was a question: How could a mother receive a letter like that and retain her sanity? Was that possible? Dale thought not. Helen answered questions coherently, had even offered him tea the last time he was out there, but she had a glassy, poleaxed look in her eye that suggested she was running entirely on instruments.

  Three letters, two new, one almost seventy-five years old. And yet all three are so similar. The St. Pierre letter and the Irkenham letter had been hand-printed by someone who was left-handed, according to the state experts. The paper was plain white Hammermill mimeo, available in every Office Depot and Staples in America. The pen used had probably been a Bic—now, there was a lead.

  Fish to Mrs. Budd, back in ’28: I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

  Anonymous to Beezer St. Pierre: I did NOT fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a VIRGIN.

  Anonymous to Helen Irkenham: This may comfort you I did NOT fuck him tho I could of had I wished. He died a VIRGIN.

  Dale’s out of his depth here and knows it, but he hopes he isn’t a complete fool. This doer, although he did not sign his letters with the old cannibal’s name, clearly wanted the connection to be made. He had done everything but leave a few dead trout at the dumping sites.

  Sighing bitterly, Dale puts the letters back into the file, the file back into the briefcase.

  “Dale? Honey?” Sarah’s sleepy voice, from the head of the stairs.

  Dale gives the guilty jump of a man who has almost been caught doing something nasty and latches his briefcase. “I’m in the kitchen,” he calls back. No need to worry about waking Davey; he sleeps like the dead until at least seven-thirty every morning.

  “Going in late?”

  “Uh-huh.” He often goes in late, then makes up for it by working until seven or eight or even nine in the evening. Wendell Green hasn’t made a big deal of that . . . at least not so far, but give him time. Talk about your cannibals!

  “Give the flowers a drink before you go, would you? It’s been so dry.”

  “You bet.” Watering Sarah’s flowers is a chore Dale likes. He gets some of his best thinking done with the garden hose in his hand.

  A pause from upstairs . . . but he hasn’t heard her slippers shuffling back toward the bedroom. He waits. And at last: “You okay, hon?”

  “Fine,” he calls back, pumping what he hopes will be the right degree of heartiness into his voice.

  “Because you were still tossing around when I dropped off.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Do you know what Davey asked me last night while I was washing his hair?”

  Dale rolls his eyes. He hates these long-distance conversations. Sarah seems to love them. He gets up and pours himself another cup of coffee. “No, what?”

  “He asked, ‘Is Daddy going to lose his job?’ ”

  Dale pauses with the cup halfway to his lips. “What did you say?”

  “I said no. Of course.”

  “Then you said the right thing.”

  He waits, but there is no more. Having injected him with one more dram of poisonous worry—David’s fragile psyche, as well as what a certain party might do to the boy, should David be so unlucky as to run afoul of him—Sarah shuffles back to their room and, presumably, to the shower beyond.

  Dale go
es back to the table, sips his coffee, then puts his hand to his forehead and closes his eyes. In this moment we can see precisely how frightened and miserable he is. Dale is just forty-two and a man of abstemious habits, but in the cruel morning light coming through the window by which we entered, he looks, for the moment, anyway, a sickly sixty.

  He is concerned about his job, knows that if the fellow who killed Amy and Johnny keeps it up, he will almost certainly be turned out of office the following year. He is also concerned about Davey . . . although Davey isn’t his chief concern, for, like Fred Marshall, he cannot actually conceive that the Fisherman could take his and Sarah’s own child. No, it is the other children of French Landing he is more worried about, possibly the children of Centralia and Arden as well.

  His worst fear is that he is simply not good enough to catch the son of a bitch. That he will kill a third, a fourth, perhaps an eleventh and twelfth.

  God knows he has requested help. And gotten it . . . sort of. There are two State Police detectives assigned to the case, and the FBI guy from Madison keeps checking in (on an informal basis, though; the FBI is not officially part of the investigation). Even his outside help has a surreal quality for Dale, one that has been partially caused by an odd coincidence of their names. The FBI guy is Agent John P. Redding. The state detectives are Perry Brown and Jeffrey Black. So he has Brown, Black, and Redding on his team. The Color Posse, Sarah calls them. All three making it clear that they are strictly working support, at least for the time being. Making it clear that Dale Gilbertson is the man standing on ground zero.

  Christ, but I wish Jack would sign on to help me with this, Dale thinks. I’d deputize him in a second, just like in one of those corny old Western movies.

  Yes indeed. In a second.

  When Jack had first come to French Landing, almost four years ago, Dale hadn’t known what to make of the man his officers immediately dubbed Hollywood. By the time the two of them had nailed Thornberg Kinderling—yes, inoffensive little Thornberg Kinderling, hard to believe but absolutely true—he knew exactly what to make of him. The guy was the finest natural detective Dale had ever met in his life.

  The only natural detective, that’s what you mean.

  Yes, all right. The only one. And although they had shared the collar (at the L.A. newcomer’s absolute insistence), it had been Jack’s detective work that had turned the trick. He was almost like one of those storybook detectives . . . Hercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, one of those. Except that Jack didn’t exactly deduct, nor did he go around tapping his temple and talking about his “little gray cells.” He . . .

  “He listens,” Dale mutters, and gets up. He heads for the back door, then returns for his briefcase. He’ll put it in the back seat of his cruiser before he waters the flower beds. He doesn’t want those awful pictures in his house any longer than strictly necessary.

  He listens.

  Like the way he’d listened to Janna Massengale, the bartender at the Taproom. Dale had had no idea why Jack was spending so much time with the little chippy; it had even crossed his mind that Mr. Los Angeles Linen Slacks was trying to hustle her into bed so he could go back home and tell all his friends on Rodeo Drive that he’d gotten himself a little piece of the cheese up there in Wisconsin, where the air was rare and the legs were long and strong. But that hadn’t been it at all. He had been listening, and finally she had told him what he needed to hear.

  Yeah, shurr, people get funny ticks when they’re drinking, Janna had said. There’s this one guy who starts doing this after a couple of belts. She had pinched her nostrils together with the tips of her fingers . . . only with her hand turned around so the palm pointed out.

  Jack, still smiling easily, still sipping a club soda: Always with the palm out? Like this? And mimicked the gesture.

  Janna, smiling, half in love: That’s it, doll—you’re a quick study.

  Jack: Sometimes, I guess. What’s this fella’s name, darlin’?

  Janna: Kinderling. Thornberg Kinderling. She giggled. Only, after a drink or two—once he’s started up with that pinchy thing—he wants everyone to call him Thorny.

  Jack, still with his own smile: And does he drink Bombay gin, darlin’? One ice cube, little trace of bitters?

  Janna’s smile starting to fade, now looking at him as if he might be some kind of wizard: How’d you know that?

  But how he knew it didn’t matter, because that was really the whole package, done up in a neat bow. Case closed, game over, zip up your fly.

  Eventually, Jack had flown back to Los Angeles with Thornberg Kinderling in custody—Thornberg Kinderling, just an inoffensive, bespectacled farm-insurance salesman from Centralia, wouldn’t say boo to a goose, wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful, wouldn’t dare ask your mamma for a drink of water on a hot day, but he had killed two prostitutes in the City of Angels. No strangulation for Thorny; he had done his work with a Buck knife, which Dale himself had eventually traced to Lapham Sporting Goods, the nasty little trading post a door down from the Sand Bar, Centralia’s grungiest drinking establishment.

  By then DNA testing had nailed Kinderling’s ass to the barn door, but Jack had been glad to have the provenance of the murder weapon anyway. He had called Dale personally to thank him, and Dale, who’d never been west of Denver in his life, had been almost absurdly touched by the courtesy. Jack had said several times during the course of the investigation that you could never have enough evidence when the doer was a genuine bad guy, and Thorny Kinderling had turned out to be about as bad as you could want. He’d gone the insanity route, of course, and Dale—who had privately hoped he might be called upon to testify—was delighted when the jury rejected the plea and sentenced him to consecutive life terms.

  And what made all that happen? What had been the first cause? Why, a man listening. That was all. Listening to a lady bartender who was used to having her breasts stared at while her words most commonly went in one ear of the man doing the staring and out the other. And who had Hollywood Jack listened to before he had listened to Janna Massengale? Some Sunset Strip hooker, it seemed . . . or more likely a whole bunch of them. (What would you call that, anyway? Dale wonders absently as he goes out to the garage to get his trusty hose. A shimmy of streetwalkers? A strut of hookers?) None of them could have picked Thornberg Kinderling out of a lineup, because the Thornberg who visited L.A. surely hadn’t looked much like the Thornberg who traveled around to the farm-supply companies in the Coulee and over in Minnesota. L.A. Thorny had worn a wig, contacts instead of specs, and a little false mustache.

  “The most brilliant thing was the skin darkener,” Jack had said. “Just a little, just enough to make him look like a native.”

  “Dramatics all four years at French Landing High School,” Dale had replied grimly. “I looked it up. The little bastard played Don Juan his junior year, do you believe it?”

  A lot of sly little changes (too many for a jury to swallow an insanity plea, it seemed), but Thorny had forgotten that one revelatory little signature, that trick of pinching his nostrils together with the palm of his hand turned outward. Some prostitute had remembered it, though, and when she mentioned it—only in passing, Dale has no doubt, just as Janna Massengale did—Jack heard it.

  Because he listened.

  Called to thank me for tracing the knife, and again to tell me how the jury came back, Dale thinks, but that second time he wanted something, too. And I knew what it was. Even before he opened his mouth I knew.

  Because, while he is no genius detective like his friend from the Golden State, Dale had not missed the younger man’s unexpected, immediate response to the landscape of western Wisconsin. Jack had fallen in love with the Coulee Country, and Dale would have wagered a good sum that it had been love at first look. It had been impossible to mistake the expression on his face as they drove from French Landing to Centralia, from Centralia to Arden, from Arden to Miller: wonder, pleasure, almost a kind of rapture. To Dale, Jack had looked like a man who has come
to a place he has never been before only to discover he is back home.

  “Man, I can’t get over this,” he’d said once to Dale. The two of them had been riding in Dale’s old Caprice cruiser, the one that just wouldn’t stay aligned (and sometimes the horn stuck, which could be embarrassing). “Do you realize how lucky you are to live here, Dale? It must be one of the most beautiful places in the world.”

  Dale, who had lived in the Coulee his entire life, had not disagreed.

  Toward the end of their final conversation concerning Thornberg Kinderling, Jack had reminded Dale of how he’d once asked (not quite kidding, not quite serious, either) for Dale to let him know if a nice little place ever came on the market in Dale’s part of the world, something out of town. And Dale had known at once from Jack’s tone—the almost anxious drop in his voice—that the kidding was over.

  “So you owe me,” Dale murmurs, shouldering the hose. “You owe me, you bastard.”

  Of course he has asked Jack to lend an unofficial hand with the Fisherman investigation, but Jack has refused . . . almost with a kind of fear. I’m retired, he’d said brusquely. If you don’t know what that word means, Dale, we can look it up in the dictionary together.

  But it’s ridiculous, isn’t it? Of course it is. How can a man not yet thirty-five be retired? Especially one who is so infernally good at the job?

  “You owe me, baby,” he says again, now walking along the side of the house toward the bib faucet. The sky above is cloudless; the well-watered lawn is green; there is nary a sign of slippage, not out here on Herman Street. Yet perhaps there is, and perhaps we feel it. A kind of discordant hum, like the sound of all those lethal volts coursing through the steel struts of the KDCU tower.