Ollie Peterson

Ollie Peterson is the son of Fred and Arlene Peterson and the brother of Frank Peterson. Introduced in the aftermath of the family’s losses, he is first shown keeping watch beside his mother’s hospital elevator while his father sleeps. Later, when Fred cannot face taking care of the arrangements, Ollie assumes the responsibility. At Terry Maitland’s arraignment, however, grief becomes an act of violence: Ollie shoots Terry, whom he believes responsible for the destruction of his family, and Ralph Anderson kills him. Ollie’s brief arc binds private bereavement to the public machinery of accusation and retaliation.

Identity and Family

Ollie belongs to the Peterson family devastated by Frank’s murder and Arlene’s subsequent death. The novel presents him alongside his father, Fred, in the hospital waiting room, where their exhaustion and fear unfold in sharply different ways. Fred has closed his eyes and drifted off; Ollie remains awake, staring toward the elevator into which his mother has been taken and fearing that she will die if he dozes. His vigil makes him the family member most immediately alert to the crisis, even as he is still a son confronting events beyond his control.

The narrative gives Ollie’s attentiveness a familial dimension rather than treating it as a detached observation. When the doctor emerges, Ollie reads the doctor’s hesitation before the news is spoken. He then wakes Fred, reasoning that his father had known and loved Arlene longer than Ollie had been alive and should hear the news. The decision places Ollie between the doctor and his sleeping father: he cannot prevent the loss, but he can make sure Fred is not left to face it alone or learn of it without him.

Taking Responsibility

After Arlene’s death, Fred says he cannot take care of the arrangements so soon after losing Frankie. Ollie turns off the television and offers to handle the whole matter, telling his father to go upstairs and lie down. The exchange marks a change in his role within the family. The son who had kept watch in the hospital now takes on a practical burden his father cannot manage, attempting to preserve some order while grief threatens to overwhelm them both.

This act of care is important in its contrast with what follows. Ollie’s willingness to help Fred is deliberate and protective; the later shooting is an impulsive, lethal response to his family’s suffering. The novel does not present those actions as equivalent. Instead, the shift exposes how the same bereaved son who steps forward to care for his father can become consumed by a demand for retribution when Terry Maitland appears before him in public.

The Courthouse Shooting

At Terry’s arraignment, Ollie appears in the crowd with a newspaper sack. The scene is already shaped by public spectacle: cameras record the proceedings, spectators gather, and Terry is brought through a hostile crowd. Ollie’s presence turns that spectacle into a direct confrontation. He accuses Terry of having killed his mother as well as his brother, then fires at him. Terry is struck; Ollie’s next shot hits a car across the street, and a third shot again wounds Terry.

Ralph Anderson fires at Ollie and kills him. The shooting ends Ollie’s life at the courthouse and leaves the scene marked by the consequences of grief converted into violence. Terry, already facing public accusation for Frank’s murder, is shot in front of his wife, Marcy Maitland, the crowd, and the news cameras. The event therefore joins two forms of devastation: Ollie’s family losses, which have driven him to attack, and the public killing that compounds the Maitlands’ suffering.

Grief, Guilt, and the Case

Ralph later interprets the Peterson family’s collapse through the image of a drop of ink spreading through water. He recalls that the family had been fine less than two weeks earlier, then identifies Terry—or whoever had been wearing Terry’s face—as the force that first polluted and ultimately destroyed it. In that reflection, Ollie’s death belongs to the widening consequences of the original crime: the family’s grief has not ended with Frank and Arlene, but has helped produce another death and further uncertainty about who is responsible.

The distinction between Terry and whoever may have worn Terry’s face is central to understanding Ollie’s action. He shoots the man he sees as the cause of his family’s ruin, while Ralph’s later thoughts register the possibility that appearance and identity do not align. The novel offers no basis for treating Ollie’s belief as a resolved explanation of the case; instead, his certainty becomes part of the tragedy. He acts decisively before the underlying mystery has been settled, and the resulting deaths deepen rather than resolve the story’s questions about guilt, evidence, and what a person can know.