Dale glances at the clock: 8:26 A.M. "Come on, Tom," he says. "Let's get moving. Tempus fugit."
The Mad Hungarian has never been more efficient, and things fall into place like a dream. Even Debbi Anderson is a good sport about the desk. And yet through it all, the voice on the phone stays with him. Hoarse, raspy, with just a tinge of accent — the kind anyone living in this part of the world might pick up. Nothing unusual about that. Yet it haunts him. Not that the guy called him an asswipe — he's been called much worse by your ordinary Saturday night drunks — but some of the other stuff. There are whips in hell and chains in shayol. My name is legion. Stuff like that. And abbalah. What was an abbalah? Arnold Hrabowski doesn't know. He only knows that the very sound of it in his head makes him feel bad and scared. It's like a word in a secret book, the kind you might use to conjure up a demon.
When he gets the willies, there's only one person who can take them away, and that's his wife. He knows Dale told him not to tell anybody about what was going down, and he understands the reasons, but surely the chief didn't mean Paula. They have been married twenty years, and Paula isn't like another person at all. She's like the rest of him.
So (more in order to dispel his bad case of the willies than to gossip; let's at least give Arnold that much) the Mad Hungarian makes the terrible mistake of trusting his wife's discretion. He calls Paula and tells her that he spoke to the Fisherman not half an hour ago. Yes, really, the Fisherman! He tells her about the body that is supposedly waiting for Dale and Tom Lund out at Ed's Eats. She asks him if he's all right. Her voice is trembling with awe and excitement, and the Mad Hungarian finds this quite satisfying, since he's feeling awed and excited himself. They talk a little more, and when Arnold hangs up, he feels better. The terror of that rough, strangely knowing voice on the phone has receded a little.
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. Both say they will never tell a soul, and this is why, one hour later, even before the State Police and the county medical and forensics guys have been called, everyone knows that the police have found a slaughterhouse out at Ed's Eats. Half a dozen murdered kids.
Maybe more.
10
AS THE CRUISER with Tom Lund behind the wheel noses down Third Street to Chase — roof-rack lights decorously dark, siren off — Dale takes out his wallet and begins digging through the mess in the back: business cards people have given him, a few dog-eared photographs, little licks of folded-over notebook paper. On one of the latter he finds what he wants.
"Whatcha doin', boss?" Tom asks.
"None of your beeswax. Just drive the car."
Dale grabs the phone from its spot on the console, grimaces and wipes off the residue of someone's powdered doughnut, then, without much hope, dials the number of Jack Sawyer's cell phone. He starts to smile when the phone is answered on the fourth ring, but the smile metamorphoses into a frown of puzzlement. He knows that voice and should recognize it, but —
"Hello?" says the person who has apparently answered Jack's cell phone. "Speak now, whoever you are, or forever hold your peace."
Then Dale knows. Would have known immediately if he had been at home or in his office, but in this context —
"Henry?" he says, knowing he sounds stupid but not able to help it. "Uncle Henry, is that you?"
Jack is piloting his truck across the Tamarack Bridge when the cell phone in his pants pocket starts its annoying little tweet. He takes it out and taps the back of Henry's hand with it. "Deal with this," he says. "Cell phones give you brain cancer."
"Which is okay for me but not for you."
"More or less, yeah."
"That's what I love about you, Jack," Henry says, and opens the phone with a nonchalant flick of the wrist. "Hello?" And, after a pause: "Speak now, whoever you are, or forever hold your peace." Jack glances at him, then back at the road. They're coming up on Roy's Store, where the early shopper gets the best greens. "Yes, Dale. It is indeed your esteemed — " Henry listens, frowning a little bit and smiling a little bit. "I'm in Jack's truck, with Jack," he says. "George Rathbun isn't working this morning because KDCU is covering the Summer Marathon over in La Riv — "
He listens some more, then says: "If it's a Nokia — which is what it feels like and sounds like — then it's digital rather than analog. Wait." He looks at Jack. "Your cell," he says. "It's a Nokia?"
"Yes, but why — "