George Potter looks vacant again. Resigned. "Don't matter much either way," he says, then smiles as a thought occurs to him. "If old Chummy's still alive, and you run across him, you might ask him if his ass still hurts from that diddling I gave him back in '69. And tell him old Chicago Potsie says hello."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Brown asks, glowering. He has his cuffs out, and is clearly itching to snap them on George Potter's wrists.
"Old times," Jack says. He stuffs his fragrant hands in his pockets and leaves the cell. He smiles at Brown and Black. "Nothing to concern you boys."
Trooper Black turns to Dale. "You're out of this case," he says. "Those are words of one syllable. I can't make it any simpler. So tell me once and mean it forever, Chief: Do you understand?"
"Of course I do," Dale said. "Take the case and welcome. But get off the tall white horse, willya? If you expected me to simply stand by and let a crowd of drunks from the Sand Bar take this man out of Lucky's and lynch him — "
"Don't make yourself look any stupider than you already are," Brown snaps. "They picked his name up off your police calls."
"I doubt that," Dale says quietly, thinking of the doper's cell phone borrowed out of evidence storage.
Black grabs Potter's narrow shoulder, gives it a vicious twist, then thrusts him so hard toward the door at the end of the corridor that the man almost falls down. Potter recovers, his haggard face full of pain and dignity.
"Troopers," Jack says.
He doesn't speak loudly or angrily, but they both turn.
"Abuse that prisoner one more time in my sight, and I'll be on the phone to the Madison shoofly-pies the minute you leave, and believe me, Troopers, they will listen to me. Your attitude is arrogant, coercive, and counterproductive to the resolution of this case. Your interdepartmental cooperation skills are nonexistent. Your demeanor is unprofessional and reflects badly upon the state of Wisconsin. You will either behave yourselves or I guarantee you that by next Friday you will be looking for security jobs."
Although his voice remains even throughout, Black and Brown seem to shrink as he speaks. By the time he finishes, they look like a pair of chastened children. Dale is gazing at Jack with awe. Only Potter seems unaffected; he's gazing down at his cuffed hands with eyes that could be a thousand miles away.
"Go on, now," Jack says. "Take your prisoner, take your case records, and get lost."
Black opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it again. They leave. When the door closes behind them, Dale looks at Jack and says, very softly: "Wow."
"What?"
"If you don't know," Dale says, "I'm not going to tell you."
Jack shrugs. "Potter will keep them occupied, which frees us up to do a little actual work. If there's a bright side to tonight, that's it."
"What did you get from him? Anything?"
"A name. Might mean nothing. Charles Burnside. Nicknamed Chummy. Ever heard of him?"
Dale sticks out his lower lip and pulls it thoughtfully. Then he lets go and shakes his head. "The name itself seems to ring a faint bell, but that might only be because it's so common. The nickname, no."
"He was a builder, a contractor, a wheeler-dealer in Chicago over thirty years ago. According to Potsie, at least."
"Potsie," Dale says. The tape is peeling off a corner of the ONE CALL MEANS ONE CALL sign, and Dale smoothes it back down with the air of a man who doesn't really know what he's doing. "You and he got pretty chummy, didn't you?"
"No," Jack says. "Burnside's Chummy. And Trooper Black doesn't own the Black House."
"You've gone dotty. What black house?"
"First, it's a proper name. Black, capital B, house, capital H. Black House. You ever heard of a house named that around here?"
Dale laughs. "God, no."
Jack smiles back, but all at once it's his interrogation smile, not his I'm-discussing-things-with-my-friend smile. Because he's a coppice-man now. And he has seen a funny little flicker in Dale Gilbertson's eyes.
"Are you sure? Take a minute. Think about it."
"Told you, no. People don't name their houses in these parts. 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 fence in front, but that's the only one in these parts I ever heard named."
Again, Jack sees that flicker. Potter is the one who will be charged for murder by the Wisconsin State Police, but Jack didn't see that deep flicker in Potter's eyes a single time during their interview. Because Potter was straight with him.
Dale isn't being straight.
But I have to be gentle with him, Jack tells himself. Because he doesn't know he's not being straight. How is that possible?