Indian Killer

The killer sings a song of invisibility while they sneak past the police car outside the Jones’s home. Mr. Jones is asleep downstairs, but the killer passes him and places Mark in the arms of his mother, who is sleeping in the master bedroom, feeling an urge to lie down with them, even to “press against the mother’s breast and suckle” (300). Instead, the killer kisses her gently on the cheek before leaving, placing two owl feathers beneath the wipers of the police car. Watching from a tree, the killer hears Mrs. Jones’s scream of recognition that her son has been returned and knows that they have “won a battle without drawing blood” but that there is much more still to do (300).

The police interview Truck Schultz, insisting that they found no evidence that any one was with him in the fog. The officers make no effort to hide their dislike for him, slyly suggesting that he is a coward and blaming his dishonest broadcasts for the increased tensions in the city. They tell him to stop broadcasting and to stay out of parking lots until the killer is caught. Truck insists that he did not imagine it and declares, “If that Indian Killer comes near me again, I’ll kill him” (302).