Then a lightning bolt strikes Wendell Green. His scalp shivers, and his crinkly hair threatens to straighten out. A great story just became unbelievably great. Fiendish Murderer, Mutilated Dead Child, and . . . the Downfall of a Hero! Jack Sawyer walks out of the ruin carrying a plastic bag and a Brewers cap, tries to make sure he is unobserved, and hides the stuff in his truck. He found those things in Ed's Eats, and he squirreled them away right under the nose of his friend and admirer Dale Gilbertson. Golden Boy removed evidence from the scene of a crime! And Wendell has the proof on film, Wendell has the goods on the high-and-mighty Jack Sawyer, Wendell is going to bring him down with one god-almighty huge crash. Man oh man, Wendell feels like dancing, he does, and is unable to restrain himself from executing a clumsy jig with the wonderful camera in his hands and a sloppy grin on his face.
He feels so good, so triumphant, that he almost decides to forget about the four idiots waiting for his signal and just pack it in. But hey, let's not get all warm and fuzzy here. The supermarket tabloids are panting for a nice, gruesome photograph of Irma Freneau's dead body, and Wendell Green is the man to give it to them.
Wendell takes another cautious step toward the front of the ruined building and sees something that stops him cold. Four of the bikers have gone down to the end of the overgrown lane, where they seem to be helping Tcheda and Stevens turn away the people who want to get a good look at all the bodies. Teddy Runkleman heard that the Fisherman stowed at least six, maybe eight half-eaten kids in that shack: the news grew more and more sensational as it filtered through the community. So the cops can use the extra help, but Wendell wishes that Beezer and crew were blowing the lid off things instead of helping to keep it on. He comes to the end of the building and peers around it to see everything that is going on. If he is to get what he wants, he will have to wait for the perfect moment.
A second FLPD car noses in through the vehicles hovering out on 35 and moves up past Tcheda's car to swing onto the weeds and rubble in front of the old store. Two youngish part-time cops named Holtz and Nestler get out and stroll toward Dale Gilbertson, trying hard not to react to the stench that gets more sickening with each step they take. Wendell can see that these lads have even more difficulty concealing their dismay and astonishment at seeing their chief engaged in apparently amiable conversation with Beezer St. Pierre, whom they probably suspect of myriad nameless crimes. They are farm boys, UW–River Falls dropouts, who split a single salary and are trying so hard to make the grade as police officers that they tend to see things in rigid black-and-white. Dale calms them down, and Beezer, who could pick each of them up with one hand and smash their skulls like soft-boiled eggs, smiles benignly. In response to what must have been Dale's orders, the new boys trot back down to the highway, on the way casting worshipful glances at Jack Sawyer, the poor saps.
Jack wanders up to Dale for a little confab. Too bad Dale doesn't know that his buddy is concealing evidence, hah! Or, Wendell considers, does he know — is he in on it, too? One thing's for sure: it will all come out in the wash, once the Herald runs the telltale pictures.
In the meantime, the dude in the straw hat and the sunglasses just stands there with his arms folded across his chest, looking serene and confident, like he has everything so under control that even the smell can't reach him. This guy is obviously a key player, Wendell thinks. He calls the shots. Golden Boy and Dale want to keep him happy; you can see it in their body language. A touch of respect, of deference. If they are covering something up, they're doing it for him. But why? And what the devil is he? The guy is middle-aged, somewhere in his fifties, a generation older than Jack and Dale; he is too stylish to live in the country, so he's from Madison, maybe, or Milwaukee. He is obviously not a cop, and he doesn't look like a businessman, either. This is one self-reliant mother; that comes through loud and clear.
Then another police car breaches the defenses down on 35 and rolls up beside the part-timers'. Golden Boy and Gilbertson walk up to it and greet Bobby Dulac and that other one, the fat boy, Dit Jesperson, but the dude in the hat doesn't even look their way. Now, that's cool. He stands there, all by himself, like a general surveying his troops. Wendell watches the mystery man produce a cigarette, light up, and exhale a plume of white smoke. Jack and Dale walk the new arrivals into the old store, and this bird keeps on smoking his cigarette, sublimely detached from everything around him. Through the rotting wall, Wendell can hear Dulac and Jesperson complaining about the smell; then one of them grunts Uh! when he sees the body. "Hello boys?" Dulac says. "Is this shit for real? Hello boys?" The voices give Wendell a good fix on the location of the corpse, way back against the far wall.