Summary: Chapter 12
Jack and Howard Dunlop have a German lesson. Jack describes how
Dunlop sounds as if he were violating the laws of nature when he
speaks German. Jack tries to tease some personal information out
of the reticent Dunlop, who volunteers the information that he also
teaches Greek, Latin, sailing, and meteorology. Dunlop turned to
meteorology after his mother’s death and found the study of weather
patterns deeply comforting.
Jack finds Bob Pardee, Denise’s father and Babette’s ex-husband, at
his house when he returns from his lesson. Bob takes the three older
children out to dinner while Jack drives Babette to her tabloid-reading
appointment at Old Man Treadwell’s. A few minutes after dropping
her off, Babette comes back to the car and says Mr. Treadwell and
his elder sister are missing. They report the disappearance to the
police, then go to meet Bob and the kids at a donut shop. Jack sees
Babette look carefully and sympathetically at Bob, as if she were
trying to comprehend the four dramatic years they spent together.
The next day, the police begin to drag the river in search
of the Treadwells.
Summary: Chapter 13
While Heinrich watches the proceedings at the river, word
comes that the Treadwells have been discovered at the local shopping
mall, where they’d been for four days. Two of those days were spent
huddled in a kiosk, while the sister foraged for scraps of food
from garbage cans. No one knows how the two of them got there or
why they didn’t call for help. Jack surmises that the Treadwells
were most likely overwhelmed by the vast strangeness of the mall
and overcome by their own helplessness.
Before the Treadwells were found in the mall, the police
called in a psychic named Adele T. to help locate them. She didn’t
help the police at all in that search, but she did lead them to
two kilos of heroin, stashed away in an airline bag with a handgun.
Though Adele has helped the police find evidence of many criminal
activities, she has always done so when she was looking for something
else.
Summary: Chapter 14
Denise comes into Jack’s bedroom and asks him what they
are going to do about Babette’s memory lapses. She tells Jack that
she found a bottle of medication buried in the trash. The drug is
called Dylar, but Denise can’t find references to the drug anywhere.
Jack tries to reassure Denise, telling her that everyone takes something.
Denise doesn’t seem comforted, but she drops the subject.
