Black House Read Free Page B

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. Another such episode occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning, when Elvar Praetorious, thirty-six, a Swedish tourist traveling alone, was assaulted by three men, again unidentified, while asleep in La Riviere’s Leif Eriksson Park. Graasheimer and Praetorious required only routine medical attention, but future incidents of vigilantism will almost certainly end more seriously.’ ”
    Tom Lund looks down at the next paragraph, which describes the Freneau girl’s abrupt disappearance from a Chase Street sidewalk, and pushes himself away from his desk.
    Bobby Dulac reads silently for a time, then says, “You gotta hear this shit, Tom. This is how he winds up:
    “ ‘When will the Fisherman strike again?
    “ ‘For he will strike again, my friends, make no mistake.
    “ ‘And when will French Landing’s chief of police, Dale Gilbertson, do his duty and rescue the citizens of this county from the obscene savagery of the Fisherman and the understandable violence produced by his own inaction?’ ”
    Bobby Dulac stamps to the middle of the room. His color has heightened. He inhales, then exhales a magnificent quantity of oxygen. “How about the next time the Fisherman
strikes,
” Bobby says, “how about he goes right up Wendell Green’s flabby rear end?”
    “I’m with you,” says Tom Lund. “Can you believe that shinola? ‘Understandable violence’? He’s telling people it’s okay to mess with anyone who looks suspicious!”
    Bobby levels an index finger at Lund. “I personally am going to nail this guy. That
is
a promise. I’ll bring him down, alive or dead.” In case Lund may have missed the point, he repeats, “Personally.”
    Wisely choosing not to speak the words that first come to his mind, Tom Lund nods his head. The finger is still pointing. He says, “If you want some help with that, maybe you should talk to Hollywood. Dale didn’t have no luck, but could be you’d do better.”
    Bobby waves this notion away. “No need. Dale and me . . . and you, too, of course, we got it covered. But I personally am going to get this guy. That is a guarantee.” He pauses for a second. “Besides, Hollywood retired when he moved here, or did you forget?”
    “Hollywood’s too young to retire,” Lund says. “Even in cop years, the guy is practically a baby. So you must be the next thing to a fetus.”
    And on their cackle of shared laughter, we float away and out of the ready room and back into the sky, where we glide one block farther north, to Queen Street.
    Moving a few blocks east we find, beneath us, a low, rambling structure branching out from a central hub that occupies, with its wide, rising breadth of lawn dotted here and there with tall oaks and maples, the whole of a block lined with bushy hedges in need of a good trim. Obviously an institution of some kind, the structure at first resembles a progressive elementary school in which the various wings represent classrooms without walls, the square central hub the dining room and administrative offices. When we drift downward, we hear George Rathbun’s genial bellow rising toward us from several windows. The big glass front door swings open, and a trim woman in cat’s-eye glasses comes out into the bright morning, holding a poster in one hand and a roll of tape in the other. She immediately turns around and, with quick, efficient gestures, fixes the poster to the door. Sunlight reflects from a smoky gemstone the size of a hazelnut on the third finger of her right hand.
    While she takes a moment to admire her work, we can peer over her crisp shoulder and see that the poster announces, in a cheerful burst of hand-drawn balloons, that TODAY IS STRAWBERRY FEST !!! ; when the woman walks back inside, we take in the presence, in the portion of the entry