From a Buick 8(100)

'No,' Huddie said, 'as a matter of fact I don't. But what I think doesn't matter. The point's the same as the one Sarge has been trying to drum into your thick head all night long: we don't know.'

It was as if the kid didn't hear him. He turned back to me. 'What about my dad, Sandy? When it came to Brian Lippy, what did he believe?'

'He and Tony believed that Brian wound up in the same place as Ennis Rafferty and Jimmy the Gerbil. As for the corpse of the thing they killed that day ? '

'Son of a bitch rotted quick,' Shirley said in a brisk that-ends-it voice. 'There are pictures and you can look at them all you want, but for the most part they're photos of something that could be anything, including a complete hoax. They don't show you how it looked when it was trying to get away from Mister D ? how fast it moved or how loud it shrieked. They don't show you anything, really. Nor can we tell you so you'll understand. That's all over your face. Do you know why the past is the past, darling?'

Ned shook his head.

'Because it doesn't work.' She looked into her pack of cigarettes, and whatever she saw there must have satisfied her because she nodded, put them into her purse, and stood up.

'I'm going home. I have two cats that should have been fed three hours ago.'

That was Shirley, all right ? Shirley the All-American Girlie, Curt used to call her when he felt like getting under her skin a bit. No husband (there'd been one once, when she was barely out of high school), no kids, two cats, roughly 10,000 Beanie Babies. Like me, she was married to Troop D. A walking cliche, in other words, and if you didn't like it, you could stick it.

'Shirl?'

She turned to the plaintive sound in Ned's voice. 'What, hon?'

'Did you like my father?'

She put her hands on his shoulders, bent down, and planted a kiss on Ned's forehead. 'Loved him, kid. And I love you. We've told you all we can, and it wasn't easy. I hope it helps.' She paused. 'I hope it's enough.'

'I hope so, too,' he said.

Shirley tightened her grip on his shoulders for a moment, giving him a squeeze. Then she let go and stood up. 'Hudson Royer ? would you see a lady to her car?'

'My pleasure,' he said, and took her arm. 'See you tomorrow, Sandy? You still on days?'

'Bright and early,' I said. 'We'll do it all again.'

'You better go home and get some sleep, then.'

'I will.'

He and Shirley left. Ned and I sat on the bench and watched them go. We raised our hands as they drove past in their cars ? Huddie's big old New Yorker, Shirley in her little Subaru with the bumper sticker reading MY KARMA RAN OVER MY DOGMA. When their taillights had disappeared around the corner of the barracks, I took out my cigarettes and had my own peek into the pack. One left. I'd smoke it and then quit. I'd been telling myself this charming fable for at least ten years.

'There's really no more you can tell me?' Ned asked in a small, disillusioned voice.

'No. It'd never make a play, would it? There's no third act. Tony and your dad ran a few more experiments over the next five years, and finally brought Bibi Roth in on it. That would've been your father persuading Tony and me getting caught in the middle, as usual. And I have to tell you the truth: after Brian Lippy disappeared and Mister Dillon died, I was against doing anything with the Buick beyond keeping an eye on it and offering up the occasional prayer that it would either fall apart or disappear back to where it came from. Oh, and killing anything that came out of the trunk still lively enough to stand up and maybe run around the shed looking for a way out.'

'Did that ever happen?'

'You mean another pink-headed E.T.? No.'

'And Bibi? What did he say?'

'He listened to Tony and your dad, he took another look, and then he walked away. He said he was too old to deal with anything so far outside his understanding of the world and its works. He told them he intended to erase the Buick from his memory and urged Tony and Curt to do the same.'

'Oh, for God's sake! This guy was a scientist? Jesus, he should have been fascinated!'

'Your father was the scientist,' I said. 'An amateur one, yeah, but a good one. The things that came out of the Buick and his curiosity about the Buick itself, those were the things that made him a scientist. His dissection of the bat-thing, for instance. Crazy as that was, there was something noble about it, too, like the Wright Brothers going up in their little glue-and-paste airplane. Bibi Roth, on the other hand . . . Bibi was a microscope mechanic. He sometimes called himself that, and with absolute pride. He was a person who had carefully and consciously narrowed his vision to a single strip of knowledge, casting a blaze of light over a small area. Mechanics hate mysteries. Scientists ? especially amateur scientists ? embrace them. Your father was two people at the same time. As a cop, he was a mystery-hater. As a Roadmaster Scholar . . . well, let's just say that when your father was that person, he was very different.'

'Which version did you like better?'

I thought it over. 'That's like a kid asking his parents who they love best, him or his sister. Not a fair question. But the amateur Curt used to scare me. Used to scare Tony a little, too.'

The kid sat pondering this.

'A few more things appeared,' I said. 'In 1991, there was a bird with four wings.'