Characters in Black House

… other than gloomy Thorvald Thorvaldson, Ada Meyerhoff and “Tom Tom” Boettcher twirling around each other in their wheelchairs, the sweeping pulse of the music driving everything beneath the molten radiance of Artie Shaw’s clarinet, all of these things abruptly, magically coalesce into a vision of earthly beauty that brings tears …

… arms of none other than gloomy Thorvald Thorvaldson, Ada Meyerhoff and “Tom Tom” Boettcher twirling around each other in their wheelchairs, the sweeping pulse of the music driving everything beneath the molten radiance of Artie Shaw’s clarinet, all of these things abruptly, magically coalesce into a vision of earthly beauty …

Here in D10, a single room two doors past the dozing aide, old Alice Weathers lies (snoring gently, dreaming of dancing in perfect partnership with Fred Astaire across a white marble floor) surrounded by so much of her former life that she must navigate past the chairs and end tables …

Now a third child has disappeared. Eight-year-old Amy St. Pierre and seven-year-old Johnny Irkenham fell victim to the passions of a monster in human form. Neither will know the happiness of adolescence or the satisfactions of adulthood. Their grieving parents will never know the grandchildren they would have cherished.

… will be), we’ll be in the presence of Andrew Railsback, seventy, balding, scrawny, good-humored. He once sold vacuum cleaners for Electrolux and appliances for Sylvania, but those days are behind him now. These are his golden years. A candidate for Maxton’s, we might think, but Andy Railsback knows that place, …

… combining disbelief and fury was a detective named Angelo Leone, before his expedient transfer to Santa Monica a colleague of Jack’s distinguished by his gross appetites, his capacity for violence and corruption, his contempt for all civilians regardless of color, race, creed, or social status, and, to be fair, his …

Jack finally repeats. “Why not one of the Thunder Five, or the Hindu at the 7-Eleven, or Ardis Walker down at the bait shop? Why not Reverend Hovdahl? What motive usually surfaces when you uncover a frame job?” Dale thinks it over. “Payback,” he says at last. “Revenge.”

A moment later he’s talking to Doc Amberson. “You want to help bust the fucker who killed Armand St. Pierre’s little girl?” “Hell, yes.” No hesitation. “All right: don’t ask questions and don’t make me repeat myself.” “I’m listening,” Doc says crisply.

Arnold Hrabowski, at five foot six and one hundred and fifty pounds, is the smallest man on Dale Gilbertson’s current roster.

He also has two kids, Trey, nine, and Ashley, seven and recently diagnosed with ADD, a matter Chipper figures is going to cost him maybe two thousand a year in pills alone.

“You don’t want to be in on this, Bea,” Woody says—in this film Lily plays a Boston heiress named Beatrice Lodge, who comes west and turns outlaw, mostly to spite her straitlaced father. “This is looking like the gang’s last ride.” “Good,” Lily says.

On the other is Lucky’s Tavern, where an old woman with bowlegs (her name is Bertha Van Dusen, if you care) is currently bent over with her hands planted on her large knees, yarking a bellyful of Kingsland Old-Time Lager into the gutter.

“This summer has been a nightmare for the people of French Landing,” says town treasurer Beth Warren. “Chief Gilbertson wants to assure the people that the nightmare is over. If he can give us some answers about the children in the process of doing that, so much the better.”

… in which the then-famous and still fondly remembered Bill Towns, a sort of poor man’s Bob Hope, played a cowardly gambler and cardsharp who arrives in the little Potemkin community of Deadwood Gulch, Arizona, and is soon mistaken for a notorious gunfighter. As the beautiful, quick-witted owner of a saloon …

I see you came back for more, hotshot, Lily says. You must like the place. Baby, this is the sweetest joint west of the wide Missouri. Reminds me of the place where I beat Black Jack McGurk to the draw. Poor Black Jack.

He knew about monorails, had even ridden one at Disney World in Orlando, but monorails named Blaine and Patricia? That was stupid. Station House Road fell behind them. Ahead, the rusty red and iron gray of the Big Combination drew closer.

When the car reaches Danny the two part-timers, Bob Holtz and Paul Nestler, jump out, gape at the Kaiser, and ask if he and Pam need help. “Go up and talk to the chief,” Danny says, though he should not have to.

The wide belt and the gold badge on Bobby Dulac’s chest gleam in the fresh sunlight, and everything he is wearing, including the 9mm pistol strapped to his hip, seems as newly made as Bobby Dulac himself.

… at least moderately nice, resident of Malibu, Ms. Brooke Greer, a screenwriter greatly esteemed within her genre, the action adventure–romantic comedy, also a person of remarkable wit, insight, and bodily charm, and as he sped homeward down the handsome stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway below the Malibu Canyon exit …

It’s where Buck Evitz, the postman, leaves packages when he has packages to leave, but it’s not gone six-thirty yet, and Buck won’t be along in his little blue truck for another three hours. Jack bends down and cautiously picks the package up.

Who gave the guy his name? Not those blow-dried airheads Bucky and Stacey, those wanna-be news reporters and local anchors who smile into the camera to show off their capped teeth, that’s for sure.

Bunny Boettcher, son of Tom Tom, came and did the second cutting only a week ago, and now a fine mist hangs above the ankle-high stubble. Above it, the sky has just begun to brighten. Not a single cloud as yet marks its calm no-color. Somewhere a bird calls out.

Burny peeks out through a crack in the bathroom door and sees that Butch Yerxa has succumbed to weariness and the cafeteria’s meat loaf.

Burny’s real name is Carl Bierstone, and under this name he conducted, in Chicago, from his mid-twenties until the age of forty-six, a secret rampage, an unofficial war, during which he committed wretched deeds for the sake of the pleasures they afforded him.

Legs like that, you ought to be famous.” “I thought you’d never notice,” Rebecca says. Chipper Maxton is forty-two years old. He has good teeth, all his hair, a wide, sincere face, and narrow brown eyes that always look a little damp.

… of color samples undertaken in the company of Claire Evinrude, M.D., an oncologist of lovely and brisk dispatch, during the period when they were planning to repaint their then-shared bungalow in the Hollywood Hills. Claire, Dr. Evinrude, had marked this color for the master bedroom; he, recently returned from a …

… is that the memory of a child named Daisy Temperly has moved into his mind, and the memory of Daisy Temperly paralyzes his will. As a resident in surgery at the university hospital in Urbana, Doc had performed, under supervision, nearly a hundred operations of every sort and assisted at …

… dark pebble-glass window on which has been painted DALE GILBERTSON, CHIEF OF POLICE. Dale will not be in for another half hour or so. Two metal desks sit at right angles to each other in the corner to our left, and from the one that faces us, Tom Lund, a …

“Hey, Bobby. It’s Danny Tcheda.” Bobby feels a prink of unease. Danny Tcheda—last name pronounced Cheetah—is one of French Landing’s fourteen full-time RMP cops. He’s currently on duty, and ordinary procedure dictates that duty cops radio in—that’s what the R in RMP stands for, after all.

At six, young David Gilbertson is enjoying a violent love affair with Crayolas, has gone through two boxes since school let out. Dale and Sarah’s strong hope, expressed even to each other only at night, lying side by side before sleep, is that they may be raising a real artist.

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).

Down Robin Hood Lane to Maid Marian Way, where he gives Deke Purvis a wave. Deke, in his robe and slippers, is just picking Wendell Green’s daily dose of doom up off his own stoop.

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.

Everyone had assumed that Don Wanderly’s kid brother had simply left town. Well, Dale thinks, he left, all right. Halfway down a stone-throated corridor lined with cells, the bee darts into a squalid little chamber and circles above a ragged futon. At first none of them speak.

… resembles that of the bawdy party girl named Doodles Sanger who served up drinks at the Nelson Hotel a decade ago. Wendell thinks she got fired more for drinking too much on the job than for stealing, but God knows she did both. Back then, Wendell threw a lot of …

“—know I said I’d pick you up at nine but Dr. Spiegleman that’s her doctor up there Spiegleman his name is he said she had a very bad night with a lot of yelling and screaming …

And the corn would be tall, and Duane Updahl would have recently painted his house, information delivered to Henry by his mysterious sensory systems. Jack decides that if he makes it out of Black House alive, he will give Henry the opportunity to take the Ram out for a spin.

… son Ebbie, Tyler Marshall’s sometime friend (it was Ebbie Wexler, in fact, who just gave Jack and Henry the finger). Pete is wondering whether he should go out and tell Butch he’s got a little cleanup job in D18—plus D18’s occupant, of course—or if he should just let Butch discover …

From behind an eternally messy counter, a chortling 350-pound mass of blubber named Ed Gilbertson once served up greasy, overdone hamburgers, baloney-and-mayonnaise sandwiches ornamented with black thumbprints, and oozing ice-cream cones to a small, undiscriminating clientele, mostly local children who arrived on bicycles.

He won’t have any idea of where the boys are today and won’t care. Mrs. Metzger and Ellen Renniker might, but having once been a boy on summer vacation himself—the whole world laid at your feet and at least two thousand places to go—Fred doubts it like hell.

… past with one hand on the elbow of Elmer Jesperson, deposits him eight feet inside the room, and whirls around to locate Thorvald Thorvaldson, Elmer’s dearest enemy and fellow inhabitant of D12. Alice Weathers wafts in under her own guidance and folds her hands beneath her chin, waiting for the …

The huge face vaguely resembles a human monster named Elroy who once tried to rape Jack in a wretched bar called the Oatley Tap, then it suggests Morgan of Orris, then Sunlight …

… has found, and means nothing in itself) is Elvena Morton, Henry Leyden’s housekeeper. “What in the tarnal are you doin’ way down here, Jack Sawyer?” she asks. He gives her a smile. “Didn’t sleep very well, Mrs. Morton. Thought I’d take a little walk to clear my head.” “And do …

It’s a woman named Enid Purvis. A neighbor of yours?” For a moment Fred blanks, and then his salesman’s mind, which stores up names compulsively, comes to his rescue. Enid Purvis. Wife of Deke. Corner of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. He saw Deke just this morning.

“They was five or six bodies up at Ed’s, is what I heard. My brother Erland called up and told me. He heard it from his girlfriend.”

He’s now as pale as Andy himself. Maybe paler. Outside the police station, Ernie Therriault and Reginald “Doc” Amberson meet in the parking lot. Doc has just arrived on his old (but perfectly maintained) Harley Fat Boy. They exchange amiable greetings in the fog.

Jack smiles at her. “Let me ask you a question first. Is your name Estelle Packard?” Eyes shining, the old woman nods. “Then yes, I am your father.” Estelle Packard clasps her hands in front of her mouth, dips her head in a bow, and shuffles backward, glowing with pleasure.

“Handsome and intelligent. What a stunning combination. Tell me your name.” “Ethan Evans.” “Ethan, we do not have much time here, so let’s make this snappy. Do you think responsible members of the press should have access to information the public needs?” “You bet.”

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 them to leap to their deaths, thereby …

He watches the director leave the room. Chicago. Where Poochie Flagler and Sammy Hooten and Ferd Brogan and all the others had lived and died, God bless ’em. Stalks of grain, blades of grass, so foul so beautiful so enticing. With their smiles and their screams.

The next pair of eyes to meet hers belong to Chipper, who pushes Flora Flostad’s wheelchair as if it held a crate of oranges and gives her an impatient glare completely at odds with the easy smile on his face.

The biker nearest Danny sends Floyd and Frank Neary away just by raising his fist at them.

The biker nearest Danny sends Floyd and Frank Neary away just by raising his fist at them. As they melt back to their car, the biker winks at Danny and introduces himself as Kaiser Bill.

“Pull up a bollard and rest your bones.” This expression comes from Franky Shellbarger, the First Farmer’s loan officer, who uses it all the time at the local Rotary meetings, and although Chipper Maxton has no idea what a bollard may be, he thinks it sounds cute as hell.

… man lying covered by a sheet before us in his metal bed, is not in full possession of his wits, nor is he dreaming of Fred Astaire. The veiny expanse of his bald, narrow head curves down to eyebrows like tangles of gray wire, beneath which, on either …

… where a decent, troubled husband and father named Fred Marshall, whom we shall be meeting before long, will soon report for work. Beyond the showy glass bubble and the asphalt sea of Goltz’s parking lot, a half mile of stony, long-neglected field eventually degenerates into bare earth and spindly weeds.

Two worlds down, a nice-looking young welder named Freddy Garver from the Isle of Irse, another, less seasoned member of Topham’s clan, turns his torch upon his own left hand and incinerates every particle of flesh off his bones.

Getting rid of Teddy Runkleman and Freddy Saknessum had been easy enough, but not five minutes later the eastbound lanes of Highway 35 filled up with people who thought they had a perfect right to gawk at all the little corpses that were supposed to be stacked up in the …

… this role.] “Johnny wanted to be an astronaut,” George Irkenham said, a smile briefly lighting his exhausted face. “When he wasn’t putting out fires for the French Landing F.D. or fighting crime with the Justice League of America, that is.” These innocent dreams ended in a nightmare we cannot imagine.

… all Andy knows about him is his name: George Potter. Andy has asked both Irv and Hoover Dalrymple about Potter, but Hoover doesn’t know jack-shit and Irv has learned only a little more. “You must,” Andy objected—this conversation took place in late May or early June, around the time the …

… cord duly approved either by Morty Fine or George Smith, the day manager). The smell is coming from 307. If we slip through the keyhole (there have never been keycards at the Nelson and never will be), we’ll be in the presence of Andrew Railsback, seventy, balding, scrawny, good-humored. He …

The flabby cheeks, gold-rimmed glasses, and lavender hair of a useless old bag named Georgette Porter are visible to Burnside above the counter of the nurses’ station. Things could be worse, he thinks.

Horst P. Lepplemier and his wife, Gertrude, both eighty-two . . .” “Horst P. Lepplemier,” says the slim man, drawing on his cigarette with what appears to be …

… in spite of his having been married to her second-best friend, Glad, who dropped down dead in her kitchen at the amazing age of thirty-one. For his part, Richie Bumstead has had enough macaroni-tuna casseroles and whisper-voiced phone calls from Myrtle to last him through two more lifetimes, but this …

… of the satanic, fiery structure a crow named Gorg showed Tansy Freneau. Whatever happens on Ward D today, it is going to be world-altering. Heart thrumming in anticipation, Jack passes from intense sunlight into the vast ocher space of the lobby. The same bathrobed patients seem to occupy the many …

His face streaked with blood and tears, Sal Turso was sitting on the floor. Harry Reilly’s severed head rested in his lap, and an ocean of blood soaked the floor and daubed the walls. Harry’s body lay loose and disjointed on top of his blood-soaked sleeping bag.

… 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 …

Go on, now.” Morris gives him a final grateful look and goes 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.

… all, he gets his hair cut by old Herb Roeper down on Chase Street next to the Amvets), his gait as loose and lanky as a boy’s. Mrs. Morton leans out her window and calls after him. “Change out of those jeans, Jack! The minute you get back! Don’t let …

… which was owned and managed by its founder, Herbert Maxton, Chipper’s father. Herbert was a decent if wishy-washy man who, it is safe to say, would be appalled by some of the things the sole fruit of his loins gets up to. Chipper never wanted to take over “the family …

… the image of a long-dead ten-year-old boy named Herman Flagler, otherwise known as “Poochie,” one of his first conquests. Poochie! Tender Poochie! Those tears, those sobs of mingled pain and joy, that yielding to utter helplessness: the faint crust of dirt over Poochie’s scabby knees and slender forearms. Hot tears; …

… expertly grasped by Tom Tom’s twin brother, eighty-six-year-old Hermie Boettcher, the retired geography teacher in A17 formerly considered something of a stick, who without a word fox-trots her right out to the middle of the floor. “Shame to see a pretty girl dancing all on her lonesome,” Hermie says. “Hermie, …

A barrel-chested, seventy-one-year-old man with a white goatee, Hoover Dalrymple, plants himself in front of Pam and starts demanding his inalienable rights.

“Meanwhile, in Arden, a house fire has taken the lives of an elderly farmer and his wife. Horst P. Lepplemier and his wife, Gertrude, both eighty-two . . .” “Horst P. Lepplemier,” says the slim man, drawing on his cigarette with what appears to be great enjoyment.

Later on, Howie Soule, the U-Crew engineer, will clean this off (probably during the Rush Limbaugh show, which is satellite fed and totally automated), but for now it stays, telling us all we need to know about small-town luv in middle America. Looks like we found something nice after all.

… triumph of their friends, are William Strassner and Hubert Cantinaro, better known to us as Kaiser Bill and Sonny. Look there! Herb Roeper, who cuts Jack’s hair, standing beside Buck Evitz, who delivers his mail. So many others we know, and to whom we must say good-bye under less than …

… Jack and a UCLA art-history graduate student named Iliana Tedesco captive for two and a half hours, in the course of which Ms. Tedesco announced that their relationship had reached its final destination, thank you, despite her gratitude for what had been at least until that moment a rewarding journey …

It’s Ina Gaitskill, Ted Goltz’s secretary and the dealership receptionist. “What?” “You’ve got a call on line one.” She points across the floor—alive with clanging machinery and the noisy whir of pneumatic screwdrivers loosening bolts on an old Case tractor—to the phone on the wall, where several lights are blinking.

What about the third one, huh, what about Irma Freneau? Had they found her yet? Did these clowns have anything, or were they still just blowing smoke? You need help? Beezer roared, Then deputize us, we’ll give you all the goddamn help you need and then some.

… for some abuse, as does Andy Railsback’s pal Irv Throneberry), Jack steps in. “The point is, Mr. Potter, that Railsback followed someone to your room. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. Railsback was led to your room.” Potter doesn’t reply, just sits looking at his hands. But he …

(Three years ago a moldy oldie named Irving Christie had a minor heart attack after doing a particularly strenuous lindyhop to “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me.”) Oh yes, the Strawberry Fest Hop is always exciting.

She introduces herself as Jane Bond, the head nurse of Ward D, a combination of words and circumstances that irresistibly suggest at least a couple of nicknames. The nurse subjects Fred and Jack, then only Jack, to a barrage of questions before she vanishes back behind the great door.

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 …

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.

On the walls are pictures of Shaquille O’Neal, Jeromy Burnitz, last year’s Milwaukee Bucks team . . . and Tyler Marshall’s idol, Mark McGwire. McGwire plays for the Cards, and the Cards are the enemy, but hell, it’s not as if the Milwaukee Brewers are actually competition for anything.

Hovdahl, a First Farmer State Bank loan officer, was inspecting an abandoned French Landing farm owned by John Ellison, who lives in a neighboring county, with an eye to initiating repossession proceedings. “I didn’t want to be there in the first place,” Hovdahl told this reporter.

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.

I hope I’ll never be curious again.” What he found in the henhouse was the body of seven-year-old John Wesley Irkenham. The corpse had been dismembered, the pieces hung from the henhouse’s decaying rafters by chains.

Another, Josella Rakine, is from Bating, a small village in the south of England. A third is from Baghdad. All told, 17 of the so-called Miracle Children have been identified in the week since they were discovered walking along a rural highway (Rte 35) in western Wisconsin.

She is Judy DeLois Marshall, wife of Fred, mother of Ty. This is Libertyville, this is French Landing, this is French County, this is Wisconsin, this is America, this is the Northern Hemisphere, this is the world, and there is no other world than this. Let it be so.

Jack looks at his watch and, thinking that it cannot be correct, glances up at the clock in his kitchen. His watch was right after all. It is 5:42 A.M., and the rooster is still crowing behind Randy and Kent Gilbertson’s barn. Tiredness suddenly washes through him, heavier than gravity.

Once, in 1997, he and his partner Kirby Tessier found a single testicle sitting on top of a toilet tank in the Culver City public library like an ancient soft-boiled egg. So he tells himself he is calm. He gets up and walks down the porch steps.

Anyhow, right before the shit hit the fan, all of a sudden I was thinking about Kiz Martin. I can remember that, all right. It was like I could practically see her, right in front of me—the way she looked when they loaded her in the ambulance.”

Let us rise up again—on wings as eagles, as the Reverend Lance Hovdahl, French Landing’s Lutheran pastor, might say—and fly down the black ribbon of Highway 93, back toward town. We reach Route 35 and turn right.

… and she has a part-time “thing” going with Lester Moon, one of the bartenders. The Thunder Five has dubbed Lester Moon “Stinky Cheese” for some reason, but Tansy unfailingly calls him Lester, which he appreciates almost as much as the occasional boozy grapple in Tansy’s bedroom or out back of …

Once he’s sure he is, Lord Malshun—this is as close to his real name as we can come—steps forward. His grotesque face is like the bowl of a huge serving spoon upholstered in skin. The one eye bulges freakishly. The red lips grin.

Madge and I feel we have the right to a keepsake.” A keepsake?

And of course he has a wife, his life’s partner, Marion, thirty-nine years of age, five foot five, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 190 pounds.

On the day her son Martin had driven her over to inspect the place, she had realized that she knew at least half the people there.

As this correspondent has already reported, Merlin Graasheimer, fifty-two, an unemployed farm laborer of no fixed abode, was set upon and beaten by an unidentified group of men in a Grainger side street late Tuesday evening.

… BEGAN with Myrtle Harrington, the loving wife of Michael Harrington, whispering down the telephone line to Richie Bumstead, on whom she has an industrial-strength crush in spite of his having been married to her second-best friend, Glad, who dropped down dead in her kitchen at the amazing age of thirty-one.

He sits down and opens the Herald to page 5, where he reads about Milly Kuby’s nearly winning third place at the big statewide spelling bee, but for the substitution of an i for an a in opopanax, the kind of thing that is supposed to be in a local …

Dale thinks he recognizes at least one of the faces: Milton Wanderly, a schoolteacher who dropped out of sight three or four years back. Everyone had assumed that Don Wanderly’s kid brother had simply left town. Well, Dale thinks, he left, all right.

Oh, I guess old Miss Graham and Miss Pentle call their place on the other side of the town library Honeysuckle, because of the honeysuckle bushes …

Oh, I guess old Miss Graham and Miss Pentle call their place on the other side of the town library Honeysuckle, because of the honeysuckle bushes all over the …

Morris Rosen is the U-Crew’s summer intern from the Oshkosh branch of UW. “Man, I love that unpaid grunt labor!” station manager Tom Wiggins has been heard to say, usually while rubbing his hands together fiendishly.

… hot plate (the cord duly approved either by Morty Fine or George Smith, the day manager). The smell is coming from 307. If we slip through the keyhole (there have never been keycards at the Nelson and never will be), we’ll be in the presence of Andrew Railsback, seventy, balding, …

A giant named Mouse had strolled smirking up to Bobby Dulac and kept on strolling, jumbo belly to six-pack belly, until Bobby was backed up against a filing cabinet, whereupon the giant Mouse had mysteriously inquired, in a cloud of beer and marijuana, whether Bobby had ever dipped into the …

He doesn’t like snakes, didn’t even want to touch the harmless little corn snake Mrs. Locher brought to school, and this thing is the size of a python, with ruby eyes and fangs that prop its mouth open in a …

Mrs. Metzger and Ellen Renniker might, but having once been a boy on summer vacation himself—the whole world laid at your feet and …

… Mrs. Normandie doesn’t allow it. You can kiss me, though. Do you want to kiss me?” “Of course I do,” he says. “But Mrs. Normandie doesn’t allow kissing, either.” “Oh, well.” Tansy laps again at her drink. “We can do it later, when she leaves the …

Chipper says things like, “Now don’t you know how much we all want to see you trip the light fantastic, Mrs. Syverson?”

Hot gossip tickles our birdy feet: Paula Hrabowski’s friend Myrtle Harrington passing on the news of the dead body (or bodies) at Ed’s to Richie Bumstead, who will in turn pass it on to Beezer St. Pierre, grieving father and spiritual leader of the Thunder Five.

That was the summer I was tight with Little Nancy Hale, remember?” “Sure,” Beezer says. “That was a damn shame.” He glances at Jack. “Little Nancy died right after that summer.” “Tore me apart,” Mouse says. “It was like she turned allergic to air and sunlight, all of a sudden.

Lily, in her role as sweet Nancy O’Neal, tosses a bucket of water in his face, and when he sits up, they— “This is funny,” Jack says. “It’s a good bit.

“Actually, I can,” Henry says pleasantly. Nick Avery, the bartender, is having a kick-ass afternoon: the fat guy slipped him five to change the TV channel, and the blind guy slipped him five to call Skeeter’s Taxi while the fat guy was in the bathroom, making a little room. “Huh?”

The doctor (Pat Skarda’s associate, Norma Whitestone) gave her five milligrams of lorazepam four or five hours ago, but that’s only the start.

Nurse Rack, who is on duty, assumed that the address referred to a childhood nickname and thought that one of Mrs. Marshall’s old …

… years ago Ted Goltz gave the award to Otto Eisman, just to break the monotony), and when he is on the job no one radiates more charm, personality, or all around niceness. You wanted nice? Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Fred Marshall! Only now his confident smile is not in evidence, …

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).

… nap-taking, hand-wringing Judy—that Fred has actually spoken to Pat Skarda about it. Yesterday, this was, when the doc was in Goltz’s, looking at riding lawn mowers. Fred had shown him a couple, a Deere and a Honda, inquired after his family, and then asked (casually, he hoped), Hey, Doc, tell …

When the car reaches Danny the two part-timers, Bob Holtz and Paul Nestler, jump out, gape at the Kaiser, and ask if he and Pam need help. “Go up and talk to the chief,” Danny says, though he should not have to.

Paula Hrabowski is discretion itself, the very soul of discretion. She tells only her two best friends about the call Arnie got from the Fisherman and the body at Ed’s Eats, and swears them both to secrecy.

… puts a hand on Penniman’s forearm. He smiles into Penniman’s unseen face, and feels the muscles beneath his palm relax. Penniman has decided he’s going to get his way. Again. “You take my drink,” Henry says pleasantly, “add it to your drink, and …

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.

No? Don’t apologize. It’s easy enough to overlook Pete Wexler, a onetime nondescript youth (final grade average at French Landing High School: 79) who passed through a nondescript young manhood and has now reached the edge of what he expects to be a nondescript middle age.

Then Petra English, an orderly from Asphodel, wandered over and they started talking motorcycles, and before you know it twenty minutes have passed.

He comes up with the man’s name at once: Rajan Patel. It’s that old salesman’s trick of keeping as many names as possible in the active file. It sure helps here. When Fred calls the man Mr. Patel, the day clerk immediately becomes friendly, perfectly willing to help.

Beyond the meadow, striped fields sloped upward to the wooded hillside. “You’ll see my dad’s old place in a second. The meadow goes with the house, and my cousins Randy and Kent own the field.”

Ray Charles can, anyhow.” “Come on, Henry. Why would you think Ray Charles can drive a car?” “Why, you ask? Because one night in Seattle, this was, oh, forty years ago, back when I had a gig at KIRO, Ray took me out for a spin.

Our young woman, whose name is Rebecca Vilas, sits perched on the edge of this desk, her legs crossed in a particularly architectural fashion.

Also expected to be present are two deputies, Armand St. Pierre and Reginald Amberson, who participated in last week’s rescue mission. The press conference will take place over the strong—almost strident—objections of an FBI/WSP task force headed by FBI agent John P. Redding and Wisconsin State Police Detective Jeffrey Black.

… his enormous walk-in closet long ago established by Rhoda Gilbertson Leyden, Henry’s deceased wife: Rhoda had arranged every article of her husband’s clothing by season, style, and color. Item by item, Henry memorized the entire system. Although blind since birth, therefore incapable of distinguishing between matching and mismatching shades, Henry …

Until today, there has been some reason to believe—at least to hope—that Richard “Cubby” Freneau snatched his daughter. An e-mail from the Green Bay Police Department has put paid to that little idea.

… the dead body (or bodies) at Ed’s to Richie Bumstead, who will in turn pass it on to Beezer St. Pierre, grieving father and spiritual leader of the Thunder Five. This passage of voices through the wire probably shouldn’t please us, but it does. Gossip is no doubt nasty stuff, …

“Whose bat?” Jack lifts it carefully from the box. Written up the barrel in black Magic Marker is this message: To Tyler Marshall Keep Slugging! Your pal, Richie Sexson “Richie Sexson,” Jack says. “Who’s Richie Sexson?” “Big slugger for the Brewers,” Dale says. “Is he as good as Roy Hobbs?”

… office, rolled up his sleeves, and is helping Rod Tisbury unpack a new Hiler rototiller. It’s the first of the new Hiler line, and it’s a beaut. “I’ve been waiting for a gadget like this twenty years or more,” Rod says. He expertly inserts the wide end of his crowbar …

“Yeah!” Ronnie Metzger yells. “Catch us, po-sloke!” Ronnie, a kid with a lot of hours in the speech-therapy room ahead of him, looks back over his own shoulder, almost crashes his bike into a parking meter, and just manages to swerve around it.

The scoop had come to Wendell Green by way of his barber, Roy Royal, who heard it from his wife, Tillie Royal, who had been clued in by Myrtle Harrington herself, and Wendell Green has done his duty to his readers: he grabbed his tape recorder and his camera and …

Easy to take charge when you got your ass cozied down on one of Roy Soderholm’s stools, cuppa coffee in one hand and a sinker in the other. So thinks I. Course, half of ’em’s also got the unemployment check in their back pockets, but they won’t talk about that.

His face streaked with blood and tears, Sal Turso was sitting on the floor. Harry Reilly’s severed head rested in his lap, and an ocean of blood soaked the floor and daubed the walls. Harry’s body lay loose and disjointed on top of his blood-soaked sleeping bag.

Want your shirts done right, go to a Chink every time. Sam Lee, try him out, Lieutenant. —I’m not a lieutenant anymore, Wendell. Call me Jack or Mr. Sawyer. Call me Hollywood, I don’t care. And now— He walked toward his car, and Wendell Green walked beside him.

He watches the director leave the room. Chicago. Where Poochie Flagler and Sammy Hooten and Ferd Brogan and all the others had lived and died, God bless ’em. Stalks of grain, blades of grass, so foul so beautiful so enticing. With their smiles and their screams.

“I never liked them.” Dale smiles. He knows that the former Sarah Asbury has never cared much for the way he earns his living, and this makes her furious loyalty all the more touching. And tonight it feels vital, as well.

… He punches a button on the remote, and from over his left shoulder Jack hears his mother’s voice say, Looks like Smoky’s coming in late today. I wish that little rascal would learn how to handle his liquor. Before he can turn sideways to …

… worn by such creatures as Chipper Maxton and Sonny Heartfield, down at the funeral home). This silver-haired fellow is also wearing a very sharp straw fedora, antique but beautifully kept. The maroon hatband matches his braces. Aviator-style sunglasses cover his eyes. He takes a position on the grass to the …

Beside him is Sophie of Canna, now known in the Territories as both the Young Queen and Sophie the Good. There are no nurses in the sleeping chamber today; Jack lies silent beneath a slowly turning fan. Where he is not wrapped in bandages, his skin is pale.

… this week, his dismembered body was discovered by Spencer Hovdahl of Centralia. Hovdahl, a First Farmer State Bank loan officer, was inspecting an abandoned French Landing farm owned by John Ellison, who lives in a neighboring county, with an eye to initiating repossession proceedings. “I didn’t want to be there …

Who gave the guy his name? Not those blow-dried airheads Bucky and Stacey, those wanna-be news reporters and local anchors who smile into the camera to show off their capped teeth, that’s for sure.

He’s the one who raped Stella!” Then they stream out the door and are gone. The Kingsland Ale clock stands at 11:57.

… old lady, Amy’s mother, whose real name is Susan Osgood, and who is staring up at him from beneath her thick blond bangs, one finger holding her place in a book. “It’s the Freneau girl,” he says. “I gotta go.” “Go,” Bear Girl tells him. “Take the cell phone and …

“Wait up, you guys!” Ty Marshall calls. “Ebbie! Ronnie! T.J.! Wait up!” Over his shoulder, Ebbie Wexler (who really does look like Nancy’s not-too-bright boyfriend, Sluggo) calls back: “Catch us, slowpoke!” “Yeah!” Ronnie Metzger yells. “Catch us, po-sloke!”

His interview with Tansy Freneau had been short and nothing short of purgatorial. Tansy is a juicer, a regular patron of the Sand Bar, and during their interview the smell of coffee brandy was so strong it almost seemed to be coming out of her pores (another excuse for the …

… out of the last four (two years ago Ted Goltz gave the award to Otto Eisman, just to break the monotony), and when he is on the job no one radiates more charm, personality, or all around niceness. You wanted nice? Ladies and gentlemen, presenting Fred Marshall! Only now his …

Teddy Runkleman shouts, almost jubilantly, and Danny realizes the situation is on the verge of spinning out of control. If these fools get the rest of the way up the access road, Dale will first tear him a new asshole and then salt it down.

Dale hired me four years ago, and when him and Hollywood put the cuffs on Mr. Thornberg Kinderling, which was the biggest case in this county for maybe thirty years, I can’t claim any credit, but at least I pulled my weight. I helped put some of the pieces together.”

… inside the room, and whirls around to locate Thorvald Thorvaldson, Elmer’s dearest enemy and fellow inhabitant of D12. Alice Weathers wafts in under her own guidance and folds her hands beneath her chin, waiting for the music to begin. Tall, scrawny, hollow-cheeked, at the center of an empty space that …

… Roy Royal, who heard it from his wife, Tillie Royal, who had been clued in by Myrtle Harrington herself, and Wendell Green has done his duty to his readers: he grabbed his tape recorder and his camera and ran out to his nasty little vehicle without pausing to telephone his …

… left, and from the one that faces us, Tom Lund, a fair-haired officer of roughly his partner’s age but without his appearance of having been struck gleaming from the mint five minutes before, regards the bag tweezed between two fingers of Bobby Dulac’s right hand. “All right,” Lund says. “Okay.

“Man, I love that unpaid grunt labor!” station manager Tom Wiggins has been heard to say, usually while rubbing his hands together fiendishly. Never has a checkbook been guarded so righteously as the Wigger guards the KDCU checkbook.

Trevor Gordon was by and he said—” “Never mind.” Andy sits in the chair on the other side of the desk and stares at Morty with wet, terrified eyes. “Call the police. Do it right now.

He also has two kids, Trey, nine, and Ashley, seven and recently diagnosed with ADD, a matter Chipper figures is going to cost him maybe two thousand a year in pills alone.

Three worlds over from ours and in the great city there known as Londinorium, Turner Topham, for two decades a respected member of Parliament and for three a sadistic pedophile, bursts abruptly into flame as he strides along the crowded avenue known as Pick-a-Derry.

Also, a sweet little morsel named Tyler Marshall sits locked in a chamber located in another layer of Black House—and another world—and Burny cannot wait to torment little Tyler, to run his wrinkled hands over the boy’s beautiful skin. Tyler Marshall thrills Burny.

… something about Dean Kissinger and Henry Acheson, and Ucky Ducky—he’s the guitarist—went off to form Dirtysperm.” “ ‘Where Did Our Love Go’?” Henry muses, then hands the CD back. And, as if he sees the way Morris’s face falls: “I can’t be seen with something like that—use your head. Stick …

A broad-shouldered, peroxide blonde named Vera Hutchinson is now on the desk. In front of her is a book entitled E-Z Minute Crosswords. She is currently puzzling over 6 Across: Garfield, for example. Six letters, first is F, third is L, sixth is E. She hates these tricky ones.

… specify heart failure, for instance—but it would be Wanda Kinderling’s bullet that killed him, all the same. Wanda Kinderling’s heart shot.” Parkus bares his teeth. “Hateful woman! I believe the abbalah was aware of her no more than I was, but look at the damage she’s caused!” Sophie ignores this.

Panic infects some of the ladies and gentlemen of the press, as well. Not Wendell Green; he holds his ground like a hero, snapping pictures until his Nikon is as empty as Wanda Kinderling’s gun.

… away from the triumph of their friends, are William Strassner and Hubert Cantinaro, better known to us as Kaiser Bill and Sonny. Look there! Herb Roeper, who cuts Jack’s hair, standing beside Buck Evitz, who delivers his mail. So many others we know, and to whom we must say good-bye …

Dale asks him. “The whole world’s gone crazy, so what’s to smile about?” On TV, Woody Strode says: “What do you mean, good? The whole damn world’s gone crazy.” Jack Sawyer says, very softly: “We’re going to gun down as many as we can. Let them know we were here.”