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Morris gives hioes back inside Henry Leyden, alias George Rathbun, alias the Wisconsin Rat, also alias Henry Shake (we’ll get to that one, but not now; the hour draweth late), lights another cigarette and drags deep He won’t have tiht (hog bellies up, wheat futures down, and the corn as high as an elephant’s eye), but he needs a couple of drags just now to steady hi with the Strawberry Fest Hop at Maxton Elder Care, that house of antiquarian horrors God save him froht Given a choice between ending his days at MEC and burning his face off with a blowtorch, he would reach for the blowtorch every time Later, if he’s not totally exhausted, perhaps his friend fro-pro of Bleak House That would be a treat

How long, he wonders, can Morris Rosen hold on to his momentous secret? Well, Henry supposes he will find that out He likes the Rat too ive him up unless he absolutely has to; that er," he murmurs "Henry Acheson Ucky Ducky God save us"

He takes another drag on his cigarette, then drops it into the bucket of sand It is tiht’s Mark Loretta ho more calls from the Coulee Country’s dedicated sports fans

And ti fros are getting into high gear No one lies abed long in this part of the world, and weto start happening soon, and they may happen fast Still, we have done well, and we have only oneat our final destination

We rise on the warm summer updrafts and hover for a h to hear the tik-tik-tik of the beacon and the low, rather sinister huht miles upriver is the town of Great Bluff, na that rises there The outcropping is reputed to be haunted, because in 1888 a chief of the Fox Indian tribe (Far Eyes was his name) assembled all his warriors, shamans, squaws, and children and told the solimpsed in his dreams Far Eyes’s followers, like Jio that far upriver, however; we have enough ghosts to deal with right here in French Landing Let us instead fly over Nailhouse Row once one; Beezer St Pierre has led the Thunder Five off to their day’s work at the brewery), over Queen Street and Maxton Elder Care (Burny’s down there, still looking out his¡ª ugh), to Bluff Street This is alain Even now, in the twenty-first century, the towns in Coulee Country give up quickly to the woods and the fields

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 kitchenfor a moment It’s open, after all, and there is rooht here on the counter, between the Silex and the toaster Sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and shoveling Special K into his ar and the sliced banana in his distress at seeing yet another Wendell Green byline on the front page of the Herald), is Chief Gilbertson hi he is without doubt the unhappiestWe 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 To a littlefuck? Soood

Ah, but Dale knohy The similarities between Albert Fish, who did his work in New York, and their boy here in French Landing are just too good ¡ª too tasty ¡ª to be ignored Fish strangled his victims, as both Aled; Fish dined on his victiirl and the boy were apparently dined upon; both Fish and the current felloed an especial liking for thewell, for the posterior regions of the anatomy

Dale looks at his cereal, then drops his spoon into the mush and pushes the boith 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 hiue Maybe he can keep his hands off it, at least while he’s here at home, where he plays toss with his son andhis , 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 Irkenharief-stricken, in Dale’s estiood if Dale could believe these letters ritten by some troublemaker not otherwise connected to the murders, but both contain information that has been withheld from the press, information that presuives in to temptation (hoell 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 sap-toothed children, past state medical examiner reports too horrible to read and crime-scene photos too horrible to look at (ah, but he ain he must look at them ¡ª the blood-slicked chains, the flies, the open eyes) There are also various transcripts, the longest being the intervieith Spencer Hovdahl, who found the Irkenham boy and as, very briefly, considered a suspect

Next coe 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 thetheof 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

Aed me I made up my mind to eat her So had Beezer St Pierre’s correspondent written, and was it any wonder thepolice station to the ground? Dale doesn’t like the son of a bitch, but has to adht feel the same way in Beezer’s shoes

I went upstairs and stripped all et her blood on them Fish, to Mrs Budd

I went around back of the hen-house and stripped all et 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 hilassy, poleaxed look in her eye that suggested she was running entirely on instruments

Three letters, t, 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 so 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 ¡ª 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 con his letters with the old cannibal’s name, clearly wanted the connection to bebut leave a few dead trout at the du bitterly, Dale puts the letters back into the file, the file back into the briefcase

"Dale? Honey?" Sarah’s sleepy voice, frouilty ju 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 oes in late, then ht or even nine in the evening Wendell Green hasn’t ive 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 soarden hose in his hand

A pause from upstairsbut he hasn’t heard her slippers shuffling back toward the bedroom He waits And at last: "You okay, hon?"

"Fine," he calls back, puree of heartiness into his voice

"Because you were still tossing around when I dropped off"

"No, I’ht while I ashing his hair?"

Dale rolls his eyes He hates these long-distance conversations Sarah seeets 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 noinjected him with one ile psyche, as well as what a certain party ht do to the boy, should David be so unlucky as to run afoul of him ¡ª Sarah shuffles back to their roooes back to the table, sips his coffee, then puts his hand to his forehead and closes his eyes In this htened and miserable he is Dale is just forty-two and a ht coh the hich we entered, he looks, for the moment, anyway, a sickly sixty

He is concerned about his job, knows that if the felloho killed Amy and Johnny keeps it up, he will al year He is also concerned about Daveyalthough 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 sih 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 itsort of There are two State Police detectives assigned to the case, and the FBI guy froh; 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 na The state detectives are Perry Brown and Jeffrey Black So he has Brown, Black, and Redding on his tea it clear that they are strictly working support, at least for the ti it clear that Dale Gilbertson is the round 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 coo, Dale hadn’t knohat to make of the man his officers immediately dubbed Hollywood By the ti ¡ª yes, inoffensive little Thornberg Kinderling, hard to believe but absolutely true ¡ª he knew exactly what to uy was the finest natural detective Dale had ever met in his life

The only natural detective, that’s what you h they had shared the collar (at the LA newcomer’s absolute insistence), it had been Jack’s detective work that had turned the trick He was almost like one of those story-book detectivesHercule Poirot, Ellery Queen, one of those Except that Jack didn’t exactly deduct, nor did he go around tapping his teray cells" He

"He listens," Dale ets 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 Taproo so much time with the little chippy; it had even crossed histo hustle her into bed so he could go back hootten 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 hiet 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 fingersonly with her hand turned around so the pal a club soda: Alith the pal, half in love: That’s it, doll ¡ª you’re a quick study

Jack: Souess What’s this fella’s na She giggled Only, after a drink or two ¡ª once he’s started up with that pinchy thing ¡ª he wants everyone to call him Thorny

Jack, still with his own sin, darlin’? One ice cube, little trace of bitters?

Janna’s sht be some kind of wizard: How’d you know that?

But how he knew it didn’t e, 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 ¡ª Thornberg Kinderling, just an inoffensive, bespectacled farm-insurance salesoose, 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 ith a Buck knife, which Dale hi Goods, the nasty little trading post a door down fro establish’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 tiation 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 ¡ª who had privately hoped he hted 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, ato a lady bartender as used to having her breasts stared at while her wordsand out the other And who had Hollywood Jack listened to before he had listened to Janna Massengale? Some Sunset Strip hooker, it seemedor 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 the out of a lineup, because the Thornberg who visited LA surely hadn’t lookedwho traveled around to the farm-supply companies in the Coulee and over in Minnesota LA Thorny had worn a wig, contacts instead of specs, and a little falsewas the skin darkener," Jack had said "Just a little, just enough to make him look like a native"

"Drah 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 s an insanity plea, it seenature, that trick of pinching his nostrils together with the palm of his hand turned outward Soh, and when she , Dale has no doubt, just as Janna Massengale did ¡ª Jack heard it

Because he listened

Called to thank ain to tell me how the jury ca, too And I knehat it was Even before he opened his enius detective like his friend froer 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 fro to Cen-tralia, 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 hoet over this," he’d said once to Dale The two of the in Dale’s old Caprice cruiser, the one that just wouldn’t stay aligned (and so) "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 re, not quite serious, either) for Dale to let him know if a nice little place ever ca out of town And Dale had known at once from Jack’s tone ¡ª the al was over

"So you owethe hose "You owe me, you bastard" Of course he has asked Jack to lend an unofficial hand with the Fisheration, but Jack has refusedalmost with a kind of fear

I’m retired, he’d said brusquely If you don’t knohat that word ether

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 owethe side of the house toward the bib faucet The sky above is cloudless; the atered 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 huh the steel struts of the KDCU tower

But we have stayed here too long We ain and proceed to our final destination of this earlyyet, but we know three i is a town in terrible distress; second, that a few people ( Judy Marshall, for one; Charles Burnside, for another) understand on soo far beyond the depredations of a single sick pedophile-murderer; third, that we havethe force ¡ª the slippage ¡ª that has now come to bear on this quiet town hard by Tom and Huck’s river Each person we’ve met is, in his oay, as blind as Henry Leyden This is as true of the folks we haven’t so far encountered ¡ª Beezer St Pierre, Wendell Green, the Color Posse ¡ª as it is of those we have

Our hearts groan for a hero And while we may not find one (this is the twenty-first century, after all, the days not of d’Artagnan and Jack Aubrey but of George W Bush and Dirtysperm), we can perhaps find a man as a hero once upon a tilimpsed a thousand and more miles east of here, on the shore of the steady Atlantic Years have passed and they have in soottenthat state of a’s only hope, so let us take wing and fly alentle hills

Mostly, we see imental cornfields, luxuriant hay fields, fat yelloaths of alfalfa Dusty, narrow drives lead to white farranaries, cylindrical cethe orn paths between the houses and the barns We can already sht Its odor, richly corowth, and decay, will intensify as the sun ascends and the light grows stronger

Below us, Highway 93 intersects Highway 35 at the center of tiny Centralia The e lot behind the Sand Bar awaits the noisy arrival of the Thunder Five, who custohts in the enjoyers, and pitchers of that ambrosia to the creation of which they have devoted their eccentric lives, Kingsland Brewing Company’s finest product and a beer that can hold up its crea sland Ale If Beezer St Pierre, Mouse, and coreatest beer in the world, why should we doubt them? Not only do they know much more about beer than we do, they called upon every bit of the knowledge, skill, expertise, and seat-of-the-pants inspiration at their disposal to sland Ale a benchmark of the brewer’s art In fact, theybecause the brewery, which they had selected after careful deliberation, illing to ith theood-sized mouthful of the stuff, but we put te anything but fruit juice, coffee, and , and Wanda thinks of beer, even Kingsland Ale, as a dietary supplement to Aristocrat vodka); and we are in search of our old friend and the closest we can come to a hero, e last saw as a boy on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean We are not about to waste tiht here and now The hway 93 the fields narrow as the hills rise up on both sides

For all our haste, we must take this in, we must see where we are