“It’s what friends are for,” said Hinzelmann. “One day, you can save my life. For now, forget about it.”
Shadow sipped the coffee. “I thought I was dead.”
“You were lucky. I was up on the bridge—I’d pretty much figured that today was going to be the big day, you get a feel for it, when you get to my age—so I was up there with my old pocket watch, and I saw you heading out onto the lake. I shouted, but I sure as heck don’t think you coulda heard me. I saw the car go down, and I saw you go down with it, and I thought I’d lost you, so I went out onto the ice. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. You must have been under the water for the best part of two minutes. Then I saw your hand come up through the place where the car went down—it was like seeing a ghost, seeing you there…” He trailed off. “We were both damn lucky that the ice took our weight as I dragged you back to the shore.”
Shadow nodded.
“You did a good thing,” he told Hinzelmann, and the old man beamed all over his goblin face.
Somewhere in the house, Shadow heard a door close. He sipped at his coffee.
Now that he was able to think clearly, he was starting to ask himself questions.
He wondered how an old man, a man half his height and perhaps a third his weight, had been able to drag him, unconscious, across the ice, or get him up the bank to a car. He wondered how Hinzelmann had gotten Shadow into the house and the bath.
Hinzelmann walked over to the fire, picked up the tongs and placed a thin log, carefully, onto the blazing fire.
“Do you want to know what I was doing out on the ice?”
Hinzelmann shrugged. “None of my business.”
“You know what I don’t understand…,” said Shadow. He hesitated, putting his thoughts in order. “I don’t understand why you saved my life.”
“Well,” said Hinzelmann, “the way I was brought up, if you see another fellow in trouble—”
“No,” said Shadow. “That’s not what I mean. I mean, you killed all those kids. Every winter. I was the only one to have figured it out. You must have seen me open the trunk. Why didn’t you just let me drown?”
Hinzelmann tipped his head on one side. He scratched his nose, thoughtfully, rocked back and forth as if he were thinking. “Well,” he said. “That’s a good question. I guess it’s because I owed a certain party a debt. And I’m good for my debts.”
“Wednesday?”
“That’s the fellow.”
“There was a reason he hid me in Lakeside, wasn’t there? There was a reason nobody should have been able to find me here.”
Hinzelmann said nothing. He unhooked a heavy black poker from its place on the wall, and he prodded at the fire with it, sending up a cloud of orange sparks and smoke. “This is my home,” he said, petulantly. “It’s a good town.”
Shadow finished his coffee. He put the cup down on the floor. The effort was exhausting. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough.”
“And you made the lake?”
Hinzelmann peered at him, surprised. “Yes,” he said. “I made the lake. They were calling it a lake when I got here, but it weren’t nothing more than a spring and a mill-pond and a creek.” He paused. “I figured that this country is hell on my kind of folk. It eats us. I didn’t want to be eaten. So I made a deal. I gave them a lake, and I gave them prosperity…”
“And all it cost them was one child every winter.”
“Good kids,” said Hinzelmann, shaking his old head, slowly. “They were all good kids. I’d only pick ones I liked. Except for Charlie Nelligan. He was a bad seed, that one. He was, what, 1924? 1925? Yeah. That was the deal.”
“The people of the town,” said Shadow. “Mabel. Marguerite. Chad Mulligan. Do they know?”
Hinzelmann said nothing. He pulled the poker from the fire: the first six inches at the tip glowed a dull orange. Shadow knew that the handle of the poker must be too hot to hold, but it did not seem to bother Hinzelmann, and he prodded the fire again. He put the poker back into the fire, tip first, and left it there. Then he said, “They know that they live in a good place. While every other town and city in this county, heck, in this part of the state, is crumbling into nothing. They know that.”
“And that’s your doing?”
“This town,” said Hinzelmann. “I care for it. Nothing happens here that I don’t want to happen. You understand that? Nobody comes here that I don’t want to come here. That was why your father sent you here. He didn’t want you out there in the world, attracting attention. That’s all.”
“And you betrayed him.”
“I did no such thing. He was a crook. But I always pay my debts.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Shadow.
Hinzelmann looked offended. One hand tugged at the clump of white hair at his temple. “I keep my word.”
“No. You don’t. Laura came here. She said something was calling her here. And what about the coincidence that brought Sam Black Crow and Audrey Burton here, on the same night? I don’t believe in coincidence any more.
“Sam Black Crow and Audrey Burton. Two people who both knew who I really was, and that there were people out there looking for me. I guess if one of them failed, there was always the other. And if all of them had failed, who else was on their way to Lakeside, Hinzelmann? My old prison warden, up here for a weekend’s ice-fishing? Laura’s mother?” Shadow realized that he was angry. “You wanted me out of your town. You just didn’t want to have to tell Wednesday that was what you were doing.”
In the firelight, Hinzelmann seemed more like a gargoyle than an imp. “This is a good town,” he said. Without his smile he looked waxen and corpse-like. “You could have attracted too much attention. Not good for the town.”
“You should have left me back there on the ice,” said Shadow. “You should have left me in the lake. I opened the trunk of the klunker. Right now Alison is still iced into the trunk. But the ice will melt, and her body’ll float out and up to the surface. And then they’ll go down and look and see what else they can find down there. Find your whole stash of kids. I guess some of those bodies are pretty well preserved.”
Hinzelmann reached down and picked up the poker. He made no pretense of stirring the fire with it any longer; he held it like a sword, or a baton, the glowing orange-white tip of it waving in the air. It smoked. Shadow was very aware that he was next-to-naked, and he was still tired, and clumsy, and far from able to defend himself.
“You want to kill me?” said Shadow. “Go ahead. Do it. I’m a dead man anyway. I know you own this town—it’s your little world. But if you think no one’s going to come looking for me, you’re living in a dream world. It’s over, Hinzelmann. One way or another, it’s done.”
Hinzelmann pushed himself to his feet, using the poker as a walking stick. The carpet charred and smoked where he rested the red-hot tip as he got up. He looked at Shadow and there were tears in his pale blue eyes. “I love this town,” he said. “I really like being a cranky old man, and telling my stories and driving Tessie and ice-fishing. Remember what I told you, it’s not the fish you bring home from a day’s fishing. It’s the peace of mind.”