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TWO TELEPHONE CALLS and another, privatehis best to deny, have conspired to pluck Jack Sawyer from his cocoon in Norway Valley and put hi, Sumner Street, and the police station The first call had been fro one of the Sy his mind A child had apparently been abducted from the sidewalk in front of Maxton’s earlier that day Whatever Jack’s reasons for staying out of the case, which by the way he had never explained, they didn’t count anymore, sorry This made four children who had been lost to the Fisheroing to walk in her front door anytime soon, did he? Four children!

¡ª No, Henry had said, I didn’t hear about it on the radio It happened this

¡ª From a janitor at Maxton’s, Henry had said He saorried-looking cop pick up a bicycle and put it in his trunk

¡ª All right, Henry had said, ht, Dale will identify the poor kid, and tomorrow his name will be all over the newspaper And then this whole county is going to flip out Don’t you get it? Just knowing you are involved will do a lot to keep people caler have the luxury of retirement, Jack You have to do your part

Jack had told hi to conclusions, and that they would talk about it later

Forty-five minutes later, Dale Gilbertson had called with the news that a boy named Tyler Marshall had vanished fro, and that Tyler’s father, Fred Marshall, was down there right now, in the station, deuy, a real straight arrow and family man, a solid citizen, a friend of Dale’s, you could say, but at the moment he was at the end of his rope Apparently Judy, his wife, had been having some kind of mental problems even before the trouble started, and Tyler’s disappearance had driven her off the edge She talked in gibberish, injured herself, tore the house apart

¡ª And I kind of know Judy Marshall, Dale had said Beautiful, beautiful woet-out on the inside, both feet on the ground, a great person, a trerip, no ht, knehatever, that Tyler had been snatched even before his bicycle turned up Late this afternoon, she got so bad Fred had to call Dr Skarda and get her over to French County Lutheran in Arden, where they took one look at her and put her in Ward D, the ine what kind of shape Fred’s in He insists on talking to you I have no confidence in you, he said to me

¡ª Well, Dale had said, if you don’t co to show up at your house, that’s what’ll happen I can’t put the guy on a leash, and I’ to lock hi else, we need you here, Jack

¡ª All right, Dale had said I know you’re notany promises But you knohat you should do

Would these conversations have been enough to get him into his pickup and on the road to Suines, which renders the third factor, the secret, barely acknowledged one, inconsequential ItA silly attack of nerves, a buildup of anxiety, co that could happen to anybody He felt like getting out of the house, so what? No one could accuse hi away from, that which he most wanted to escape ¡ª the dark undertow of the Fisher himself to any deeper involvement A friend of Dale’s and the father of a child apparentlyto him; fine, let him talk If half an hour with a retired detective could help Fred Marshall get a handle on his probleive hi dreas messed with your mind, but that was ured out No rational person took that stuff seriously: like a suh the green light at Centralia and noted, with a cop’s reflexive awareness, the row of Harleys lined up in the Sand Bar’s parking lot, he felt hinment with the afternoon’s difficulties It made perfect sense that he should have found hi ¡ª to open the refrigerator door Nasty surprisesrooone to the drawer that contained half a dozen new halogen bulbs, he had been unable to open it In fact, he had not quite been able to open any drawer, cabinet, or closet in his house, which had denied hie his clothes, prepare lunch, or do anything but leaf half heartedly through books and watch television When the flap of the s, he had decided to put off collecting the ot were financial stateazines, and junk mail

Let’s not make it sound worse than it was, Jack says to himself I could have opened every door, drawer, and cabinet in the place, but I didn’t want to I wasn’t afraid that robins’ eggs were going to coerator or the closet ¡ª it’s just that I didn’t want to take the chance of finding one of the blasted things Show me a psychiatrist who says that’s neurotic, and I’ll show you a y All the old-ti homicide messed with your head Hell, that’s why I retired in the first place!

What was I supposed to do, stay on the force until I ate uy, Henry Leyden, and I love you, but there are so to Su, and that’s what he was doing He’d say hello to Dale, greet the boys, sit doith this Fred Marshall, the solid citizen with apossible being done, blah blah, the FBI is working hand in glove with us on this one, and the bureau has the finest investigators in the world That oatmeal As far as Jack was concerned, his primary duty was to stroke Fred Marshall’s fur, as if to soothe the feelings of an injured cat; when Marshall had calation to the coation that existed entirely in thehio back to the privacy he had earned If Dale didn’t like it, he could take a running jump into the Mississippi; if Henry didn’t like it, Jack would refuse to read Bleak House and force hihn Monroe, or soo, soiven Jack a CD called Fats Manassas & His Muskrat All Stars Stompin’ the Raing for h to prove that his hesitation before cupboards and drawers had been ness, not phobic inability Even while his attention was elsewhere, as it chiefly was, the shoved-in ashtray below the dash has mocked and taunted him since he first cliestiveness, an aura of latent malice, surrounds the ashtray’s flat little panel

Does he fear that a s lurks behind the little panel?

Of course not Nothing is in there but air and molded black plastic

In that case, he can pull it out

The buildings on the outskirts of French Landing glide past the pickup’s s Jack has reached al on Dirtysper could be si Easiest thing in the world He extends a hand Before his fingers touch the panel, he snatches the hand back Drops of perspiration glide down his forehead and lodge in his eyebrows

"It isn’t a big deal," he says aloud "You got soain, he extends his hand to the ashtray Abruptly aware that he is paying more attention to the bottolances up and cuts his speed by half He refuses to hit his brakes It’s just an ashtray, for God’s sake His fingers lances at the road oncea strip of tape off a patient’s hairy abdohter attached in his driveway that , to Jack’s appalled eye, a flying black-and-silver egg

He veers off the road, bu telephone pole The lighter drops back into the tray with a loud,in the world could have produced The telephone pole swims closer and nearly fills the windshield Jack sta a flurry of ticks and rattles fro the ashtray, he would have driven straight into the pole, which stands about four feet from the hood of the pickup Jack wipes the sweat off his face and picks up the lighter "Shit on a shingle" He clicks the attachainst the seat "No wonder they say s can kill you," he says The joke is too feeble to a but sluard the sparse traffic on Lyall Road When his heart rate drops back to so like normal, he reminds himself that he did, after all, open the ashtray

Blond, rumpled Tom Lund has evidently been prepped for his arrival, for when Jack walks past three bicycles lined up next to the door and enters the station, the young officer takes off from behind his desk and rushes forward to whisper that Dale and Fred Marshall are waiting for hiht in They’ll be glad to see him, that’s for sure "I aotta say it What you got, I think, we need"

"Call me Jack I’m not a lieutenant anymore I’ the Kinderling investigation, and he had liked the young erness and dedication In love with his job, his unifore, respectful of his chief and awed by Jack, Lund had uncoed hundreds of hours on the telephone, in records offices, and in his car, checking and rechecking the often contradictory details spun off by the collision between a Wisconsin farirls All the while, Toh school quarterback running onto the field for his first game

He does not look that way any beneath his eyes, and the bones in his face are more prominent More than sleeplessness and exhaustion lie behind Lund’s affect: his eyes bear the helplessly startled expression of those who have suffered a great ood part of Tom Lund’s youth

"But I’ll see what I can do," Jack says, offering the proreater than he intends

"We can sure use anything you can give us," Lund says It is too much, too servile, and as Lund turns away and leads him to the office, Jack thinks, I didn’t coht instantly uilty

Lund knocks, opens the door to announce Jack, shows hihost, utterly unnoticed by the two men who rise from their chairs and fasten their eyes upon their visitor’s face, one with visible gratitude, the other with an enorree of the same emotion mixed with naked need, which arbled introduction, Fred Marshall says, "Thank you for agreeing to coht arm sticks out like a pureater quantity of feeling floods into Fred Marshall’s face His hand fastens on Jack’s and seems almost to claim it, as an animal claims its prey He squeezes, hard, a considerable number of times His eyes fill "I can’t" Marshall pulls his hand away and scrubs the tears off his face Now his eyes look raw and intensely vulnerable "Boy oh boy," he says "I’lad you’re here, Mr Sawyer Or should I say Lieutenant?"

"Jack is fine Why don’t the two of you fillchair; the three men take their places; the painful but essentially siins Fred speaks first, at soth In his version of the story, a valiant, lionhearted wo, multifaceted transformations and disorders, and develops norant, stupid, self-centered husband She blurts out nonsense words; she writes crazy stuff on sheets of notepaper, rams the papers into herin advance, and it unhinges her Sounds crazy, but the self-centered husband thinks it’s the truth That is, he thinks he thinks it’s the truth, because he’s been thinking about it since he first talked to Dale, and even though it sounds crazy, it kind of makes sense Because what other explanation could there be? So that’s what he thinks he thinks ¡ª that his wife started to lose her s like that are possible, he guesses For example, the brave afflicted wife knew that her beautiful wonderful son waseven before the stupid selfish husband, ent to work exactly as if it were a normal day, told her about the bicycle That prettyabout The beautiful little boy went out with his three friends, but only the three friends came back, and Officer Danny Tcheda found the little son’s Schwinn bike and one of his poor sneakers on the sidewalk outside Maxton’s

"Danny Cheetah?" asks Jack, who, like Fred Marshall, is beginning to think he thinks a nus

"Tcheda," says Dale, and spells it for him Dale tells his own, far shorter version of the story In Dale Gilbertson’s story, a boy goes out for a ride on his bicycle and vanishes, perhaps as a result of abduction, from the sidewalk in front of Maxton’s That is all of the story Dale knows, and he trusts that Jack Saill be able to fill inblanks

Jack Sawyer, at who, takes tihts he now thinks he thinks The first is not so ht: from the moment Fred Marshall clutched his hand and said "Boy oh boy," Jack found hi’s plot Fred Marshall strikes hi like the poster boy for small-town life If you put his picture on billboards advertising French County real estate, you could sell a lot of second hoo Marshall’s friendly, good-looking face and slender runner’s body are as good as testihborliness, enerous heart The more Fred Marshall accuses himself of selfishness and stupidity, the more Jack likes him And the more he likes hiht, the more he wishes to help thethat he would respond to Dale’s friend like a policeman, but his cop reflexes have rusted fro like a fellow citizen Cops, as Jack well knows, seldoht up in the backwash of a cries of an investigation (The thought hidden at the center of Jack’s response to thewhat he is, cannot harbor suspicions about anyone hoht is that of both a cop and a fellow citizen, and while he continues his adjustment to the third, which is wholly the product of his rusty yet still accurate cop reflexes, heto Tyler’s friends? Is so them now?"

"Bobby Dulac," Dale says "I talked to the to theether on Chase Street, and Tyler rode off by hi Maybe they didn’t"

"But you think there’s more"

"Honest to God, I do But I don’t knohat the dickens it could be, and we have to send theet bent out of shape"

"Who are they, what are their naether as if around the handle of an invisible baseball bat "Ebbie Wexler, T J Renniker, and Ronnie Metzger They’re the kids Ty’s been hanging around with this sument hovers about this last sentence

"It sounds like you don’t consider them the best possible coht between his desire to tell the truth and his innate wish to avoid the appearance of unfairness "Not if you put it like that Ebbie seems like kind of a bully, and the other two are maybe a little on theslow side? I hopeor I was hopingthat Ty would realize he could do better and spend his free time with kids who are ht The trouble is, e, and Ebbie Wexler isue," Jack says "The perfect situation for a bully"

"You’re saying you know Ebbie Wexler?"

"No, but I saw hi He ith the other two boys and your son"

Dale jolts upright in his chair, and Fred Marshall drops his invisible bat "When was that?" Dale asks At the same time, Fred Marshall asks, "Where?"

"Chase Street, about ten past eight I came in to pick up Henry Ley-den and drive him home When ere on our way out of town, the boys drove their bikes into the road right in front of ood look at your son, Mr Marshall He see eyes indicate that so shape before him; Dale relaxes "That pretty ht before Ty took off on his own If he did"

"Or they took off and left him," says Ty’s father "They were faster on their bikes than Ty, and so ahead and leaving hilum nod speaks of boyhood humiliations shared with this sympathetic father Jack reer of Ebbie Wexler and wonders if and how the boyhimself Dale had said that he smelled the presence of falsity in the boys’ story, but ould they lie? Whatever their reasons, the lie alan with Ebbie Wexler The other two followed orders

For the hts, Jack says, "I want to talk to the boys before you send theation roo "Toray lenarrow as a slit in a castle wall, the rooned to elicit confessions through boredoh the door, the four inhabitants of the interrogation room appear to have succumbed to its leaden at a pencil on the tabletop, and says, "Well, hoo-ray for Hollywood Dale said you were colealooate these here hoodlums, Lieutenant?"

"In a minute, maybe" Two of the three hoodluside Bobby Dulac as if fearing he will clap theate" and "Lieutenant" have had the bracing effect of a cold wind froh, and the boy beside hiles in his chair, his eyes like dinner plates The third boy, T J Ren-niker, has dropped his head atop his crossed arms and appears to be asleep

"Wake hi to say, and I want you all to hear it" In fact, he has nothing to say, but he needs these boys to pay attention to hi, they are at least holding so back That’s why his abrupt appearance within their dozy scene frightened thee, he would have separated the boys and questioned them individually, but now he must deal with Bobby Dulac’s in with, and he has to work on their fear He does not want to terrorize the boys,a bit faster; after that, he can separate theuiltiest link has already declared hiet inforer shoves TJ’s shoulder and says, "Wake up, bu boy ins to stretch out his ar he snaps into an upright position

"Welcome back," Jack says "I want to introducehere My name is Jack Sawyer, and I aeles Police Department I have an excellent record and a roouy, I usually wind up arresting hieles Teeks later, awas shipped back to LA in chains Because I know this area and have worked with its law enforcement officers, the LAPD asked ation of the Fisherrinning at this nonsense, but Bobby is staring frozen-faced across the table "Your friend Tyler Marshall ith you before he disappeared thisDid the Fisherman take hiet Tyler back, andto stop the Fisherman, I need you to tell me exactly what happened, down to the last detail You have to be co secret, you will be guilty of obstruction of justice Obstruction of justice is a serious, serious crime Officer Dulac, what is the minimum sentence for that crime in the state of Wisconsin?"

"Five years, I’m pretty sure," Bobby Dulac says

Ebbie Wexler bites the inside of his cheek; Ronnie Metzger looks away and frowns at the table; T J Renniker dully contemplates the narro

Jack sits down beside Bobby Dulac "Incidentally, I was the guy in the pickup one of you gave the finger to this ain"

Two heads swivel toward Ebbie, who squints ferociously, trying to solve this brand-new probleht denial "Maybe it looked like I did, but I didn’t"

"You’re lying, and we haven’t even started to talk about Tyler Marshall yet I’ll give you one more chance Tellthe bird at people I don’t know"

"Stand up," Jack says

Ebbie glances froaze He shoves back his chair and stands up, uncertainly

"Officer Dulac," Jack says, "take this boy outside and hold him there"

Bobby Dulac performs his role perfectly He uncoils frolides toward him He resembles a panther on the way to a sumptuous meal Ebbie Wexler jumps back and tries to stay Bobby with a raised palm "No, don’t ¡ª I take it back ¡ª I did it, okay?"

"Too late," Jack says He watches as Bobby grasps the boy’s elbow and pulls hi, Ebbie plants his feet on the floor, and the forward pressure applied to his arers forward, yelping and scattering tears Bobbie Dulac opens the door and hauls him into the bleak second-floor corridor The door sla boys have turned the color of skim milk and seem incapable of movement "Don’t worry about him," Jack says "He’ll be fine In fifteen, twenty o ho to soo, that’s all Re lied to and I a to do now We’re going to talk about what happened this , the way you separated froht have seen, that kind of thing" He leans back and flattens his hands on the table "Go on, tell me what happened"

Ronnie and TJ look at each other TJ inserts his right index finger into his ins to worry the nail with his front teeth "Ebbie flipped you," Ronnie says

"No kidding After that"

"Uh, Ty said he hadda go soo soht then?"

"Uhoutside the Allsorts Pomorium"

"Emporium," TJ says "It’s not a pomorium, mushhead, it’s a elances at TJ "Ty said he hadda go soo, east or west?"

The boys treat this question as though it were asked in a foreign language, by puzzling over it, mutely

"Toward the river, or away froain The question has been asked in English, but no proper answer exists Finally, Ronnie says, "I don’t know"

"How about you, TJ? Do you know?"

TJ shakes his head

"Good That’s honest You don’t know because you didn’t see hio soles, and Ronnie gazes at Jack ondering awe He has just revealed himself to be Sherlock Holmes

"Remember when I drove past in my truck?" They nod in unison "Tyler ith you" They nod again "You’d already left the sidewalk in front of the Allsorts E east on Chase Street ¡ª away from the river I saw you invery 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 ay behind, and the Misherfun carabbed him" He promptly bursts into tears

Jack leans forward "Did you see it happen? Either one of you?"

"Noooaa," Ronnie sobs TJ slowly shakes his head

"You didn’t see anyone talking with Ty, or a car stopping, or hi like that?"

The boys utter an incoherent, overlapping babble to the effect that they saw nothing

"When did you realize he was gone?"

TJ opens histhe Slurpees" His face pursed with tension, TJ 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 theWhatever 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 TJ’s alone The kid is practically sweating blood, while the ic cards has calree There is only one more question he wishes to ask the two of theet on your bikes and search around, or did Ebbie send just one of you?"

"Huh?" Ronnie says TJ 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 hiic 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 TJ It shouldn’t take o?" At Jack’s nod, Ronnie moves hesitantly out of his chair When he reaches the door, TJ eone, and TJ jerks backward into his chair and tries to beco at Jack with eyes that have become shiny, flat, and perfectly round

"TJ," 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 roouilt He knows TJ’s secret, and the secret is nothing; it is useless "Noto arrest you That’s a promise, too You’re not in any trouble, son In fact, I’lad you and your friends could cooes on in this vein for another three or four minutes, in the course of which T J Renniker, forradually coh 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 forlaze

"Tell me what Ebbie did," Jack says "Just between you andHonest I won’t rat you out"

"He wanted Ty to buy h unknown territory "If Ty was there, he woulda Ebbie can get kind of et 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 coh the air

"And I still didn’t see hiot to Queen Street, where the old folks’ hoe out front And, ue His sneaker was there, too And soe"

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 so 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

TJ describes being afraid ¡ª if the Fishere, 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" TJ snuffles and wipes his nose on his ar his chair

TJ stands up and begins tothe side of the table "Oh! I just remembered!"

"What?"

"I saw feathers on the sidewalk"

The floor beneath Jack’s feet seeht, like the deck of a ship He steadies hi the back of a chair "Really" He takes care to co to the boy "What do youThey 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 TJ’s feathers were real crow feathers on a real sidewalk His were dream feathers, feathers fro else in a dreas like this, and soon he does feel norain, 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 stor with the sizzling crackle of a lightning bolt

"It’s weird," TJ 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 TJ into the hallway, then follows him out

Ebbie Wexler pushes hiside Bobby Dulac Still in character, Bobby er sidles away "We can send these boys home," Jack says "They’ve done their duty"