"I don't want to hear nothing about Jack the Ripper," Bobby says. "You mind me, Debster." And resumes writing.
In the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, Mr. Rajan Patel stands beside his telephone (still crisscrossed by yellow police tape, and when it will be all right again for using, this Mr. Patel could not be telling us). He looks toward downtown, which now seems to rise from a vast bowl of cream. The buildings on Chase Street descend into this bowl. Those at Chase's lowest point are visible only from the second story up.
"If he is down there," Mr. Patel says softly, and to no one but himself, "tonight he will be doing whatever he wants."
He crosses his arms over his chest and shivers.
Dale Gilbertson is at home, for a wonder. He plans to have a sit-down dinner with his wife and child even if the world ends because of it. He comes out of his den (where he has spent twenty minutes talking with WSP officer Jeff Black, a conversation in which he has had to exercise all his discipline to keep from shouting), and sees his wife standing at the window and looking out. Her posture is almost exactly the same as Debbi Anderson's, only she's got a glass of wine in her hand instead of a cup of coffee. The puckery little frown is identical.
"River fog," Sarah says dismally. "Isn't that ducky. If he's out there — "
Dale points at her. "Don't say it. Don't even think it."
But he knows that neither of them can help thinking about it. The streets of French Landing — the foggy streets of French Landing — will be deserted right now: no one shopping in the stores, no one idling along the sidewalks, no one in the parks. Especially no children. The parents will be keeping them in. Even on Nailhouse Row, where good parenting is the exception rather than the rule, the parents will be keeping their kids inside.
"I won't say it," she allows. "That much I can do."
"What's for dinner?"
"How does chicken pot pie sound?"
Ordinarily such a hot dish on a July evening would strike him as an awful choice, but tonight, with the fog coming in, it sounds like just the thing. He steps up behind her, gives her a brief squeeze, and says, "Great. And earlier would be better."
She turns, disappointed. "Going back in?"
"I shouldn't have to, not with Brown and Black rolling the ball — "
"Those pricks," she says. "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. It's been the most painful day of his career in law enforcement, ending with the suspension of Arnold Hrabowski. Arnie, Dale knows, believes he will be back on duty before long. And the shitty truth is that Arnie may be right. Based on the way things are going, Dale may need even such an exquisite example of ineptitude as the Mad Hungarian.
"Anyway, I shouldn't have to go back in, but . . ."
"You have a feeling."
"I do."
"Good or bad?" She has come to respect her husband's intuitions, not in the least because of Dale's intense desire to see Jack Sawyer settled close enough to reach with seven keystrokes instead of eleven. Tonight that looks to her like — pardon the pun — a pretty good call.
"Both," Dale says, and then, without explaining or giving Sarah a chance to question further: "Where's Dave?"
"At the kitchen table with his crayons."
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. The next Norman Rockwell, Sarah said once. Dale — who helped Jack Sawyer hang his strange and wonderful pictures — has higher hopes for the boy. Too high to express, really, even in the marriage bed after the lights are out.
With his own glass of wine in hand, Dale ambles out to the kitchen. "What you drawing, Dave? What — "
He stops. The crayons have been abandoned. The picture — a half-finished drawing of what might be either a flying saucer or perhaps just a round coffee table — has also been abandoned.
The back door is open.
Looking out at the whiteness that hides David's swing and jungle gym, Dale feels a terrible fear leap up his throat, choking him. All at once he can smell Irma Freneau again, that terrible smell of raw spoiled meat. Any sense that his family lives in a protected, magic circle — it may happen to others, but it can never, never happen to us — is gone now. What has replaced it is stark certainty: David is gone. The Fisherman has enticed him out of the house and spirited him away into the fog. Dale can see the grin on the Fisherman's face. He can see the gloved hand — it's yellow — covering his son's mouth but not the bulging, terrified child's eyes.
Into the fog and out of the known world.