"Does it have to do with whoever killed Amy and the other kids?"
"Maybe."
Beezer nods. "Maybe's good enough."
Jack drives back toward Norway Valley slowly, and not just because of the fog. Although it's still early in the evening, he is tired to the bone and has an idea that Henry feels the same way. Not because he's quiet; Jack has become used to Henry's occasional dormant stretches. No, it's the quiet in the truck itself. Under ordinary circumstances, Henry is a restless, compulsive radio tuner, running through the La Riviere stations, checking KDCU here in town, then ranging outward, hunting for Milwaukee, Chicago, maybe even Omaha, Denver, and St. Louis, if conditions are right. An appetizer of bop here, a salad of spiritual music there, perhaps a dash of Perry Como way down at the foot of the dial: hot-diggity, dog-diggity, boom what-ya-do-to-me. Not tonight, though. Tonight Henry just sits quiet on his side of the truck with his hands folded in his lap. At last, when they're no more than two miles from his driveway, Henry says: "No Dickens tonight, Jack. I'm going straight to bed."
The weariness in Henry's voice startles Jack, makes him uneasy. Henry doesn't sound like himself or any of his radio personae; at this moment he just sounds old and tired, on the way to being used up.
"I am, too," Jack agrees, trying not to let his concern show in his voice. Henry picks up on every vocal nuance. He's eerie that way.
"What do you have in mind for the Thunder Five, may I ask?"
"I'm not entirely sure," Jack says, and perhaps because he's tired, he gets this untruth past Henry. He intends to start Beezer and his buddies looking for the place Potsie told him about, the place where shadows had a way of disappearing. At least way back in the seventies they did. He had also intended to ask Henry if he's ever heard of a French Landing domicile called Black House. Not now, though. Not after hearing how beat Henry sounds. Tomorrow, maybe. Almost certainly, in fact, because Henry is too good a resource not to use. Best to let him recycle a little first, though.
"You have the tape, right?"
Henry pulls the cassette with the Fisherman's 911 call on it partway out of his breast pocket, then puts it back. "Yes, Mother. But I don't think I can listen to a killer of small children tonight, Jack. Not even if you come in and listen with me."
"Tomorrow will be fine," Jack says, hoping he isn't condemning another of French Landing's children to death by saying this.
"You're not entirely sure of that."
"No," Jack agrees, "but you listening to that tape with dull ears could do more harm than good. I am sure of that."
"First thing in the morning. I promise."
Henry's house is up ahead now. It looks lonely with only the one light on over the garage, but of course Henry doesn't need lights inside to find his way.
"Henry, are you going to be all right?"
"Yes," Henry says, but to Jack he doesn't seem entirely sure.
"No Rat tonight," Jack tells him firmly.
"No."
"Ditto the Shake, the Shook, the Sheik."
Henry's lips lift in a small smile. "Not even a George Rathbun promo for French Landing Chevrolet, where price is king and you never pay a dime of interest for the first six months with approved credit. Straight to bed."
"Me too," Jack says.
But an hour after lying down and putting out the lamp on his bedside table, Jack is still unable to sleep. Faces and voices revolve in his mind like crazy clock hands. Or a carousel on a deserted midway.
Tansy Freneau: Bring out the monster who killed my pretty baby.
Beezer St. Pierre: We'll have to see how it shakes out, won't we
George Potter: That shit gets in and waits. My theory is that it never goes away, not really.
Speedy, a voice from the distant past on the sort of telephone that was science fiction when Jack first met him: Hidey-ho, Travelin' Jack . . . as one coppiceman to another, son, I think you ought to visit Chief Gilbertson's private bathroom. Right now.
As one coppiceman to another, right.
And most of all, over and over again, Judy Marshall: You don't just say, I'm lost and I don't know how to get back — you keep on going . . .
Yes, but keep on going where? Where?
At last he gets up and goes out onto the porch with his pillow under his arm. The night is warm; in Norway Valley, where the fog was thin to begin with, the last remnants have now disappeared, blown away by a soft east wind. Jack hesitates, then goes on down the steps, naked except for his underwear. The porch is no good to him, though. It's where he found that hellish box with the sugar-packet stamps.
He walks past his truck, past the bird hotel, and into the north field. Above him are a billion stars. Crickets hum softly in the grass. His fleeing path through the hay and timothy has disappeared, or maybe now he's entering the field in a different place.