From a Buick 8(114)

And two things more, near the top of my momentary window. The first was a hat, also furry with patches of that blackgray moss; it had grown all around the brim and also in the crease of the crown. It wasn't exactly what we wear now, that hat, the uniform has changed some since the nineteen-seventies, but it was a PSP Stetson, all right. The big hat. It hadn't blown away because someone or something had driven a splintery wooden stake down through it to hold it in place. As if Ennis Rafferty's killer had been afraid of the alien intruder even after the intruder's death, and had staked the most striking item of his clothing to make sure he wouldn't rise and walk the night like a hungry vampire.

Near the hat, rusty and almost hidden by scrub grass, was his sidearm. Not the Beretta auto we carry now but the Ruger. The kind George Morgan had used. Had Ennis also used his to commit suicide? Or had he seen something coming, and died firing his weapon at it? Had it even been fired at all?

There was no way to tell, and before I could look more closely, Arky had screamed at Steff to help him and I'd been yanked backward with Ned hanging in my arms like a big doll. I saw no more, but one question at least was answered. They'd gone there, all right, Ennis Rafferty and Brian Lippy both.

Wherever there was.

I got up from the bench and walked over to the shed a final time. And there it was, midnight blue and not quite right, casting a shadow just as if it were sane. Oil's fine, the man in the black coat had told Bradley Roach, and then he was gone, leaving behind this weird steel callingcard.

At some point, during the last listless lightstorm, the trunk had shut itself again. About a dozen dead bugs lay scattered on the floor. We'd clean them up tomorrow. No sense saving them, or photographing them, or any of that; we no longer bothered. A couple of guys would burn them in the incinerator out back. I would delegate this job. Delegating jobs is also part of what sitting in the big chair is about, and you get to like it. Hand this one the shit and that one the sweets. Can they complain? No. Can they put it on their TS list and hand it to the chaplain? Yes. For all the good it does.

'We'll outwait you,' I said to the thing in the shed. 'We can do that.'

It only sat there on its whitewalls, and far down in my head the pulse whispered: Maybe.

. . . and maybe not.

CHAPTER 10

LATER

Obituaries are modest, aren't they? Yeah. Shirt always tucked in, skirt kept below the knee. Died unexpectedly. Could be anything from a heart attack while sitting on the jakes to being stabbed by a burglar in the bedroom. Cops mostly know the truth, though. You don't always want to know, especially when it's one of your own, but you do. Because most of the time we're the guys who show up first, with our reds lit and the walkie-talkies on our belts crackling out what sounds like so much gibble-gabble to the John Q's. For most folks who die unexpectedly, we're the first faces their staring open eyes can't see.

When Tony Schoondist told us he was going to retire I remember thinking, Good, that's good, he's getting a little long in the tooth. Not to mention a little slow on the uptake. Now, in the year 2006, I'm getting ready to pull the pin myself and probably some of my younger guys are thinking the same thing: long in the tooth and slow on the draw. But mostly you know I feel the same as I ever did, full of piss and vinegar, ready to work a double shift just about any day of the week. Most days when I note the gray hair which now predominates the black or how much more forehead there is below the place where the hair starts, I think it's a mistake, a clerical error which will eventually be rectified when brought to the attention of the proper authorities. It is impossible, I think, that a man who still feels so profoundly twenty-five can look so happast fifty. Then there'll be a stretch of bad days and I'll know it's no error, just time marching on, that shuffling, rueful tread. But was there ever a moment as bad as seeing Ned behind the wheel of the Buick Roadmaster 8?

Yes. There was one.

Shirley was on duty when the call came in: a crackup out on SR 32, near the Humboldt Road intersection. Where the old Jenny station used to be, in other words. Shirley's face was pale as ashes when she came and stood in the open door of my office.

'What is it?' I asked. 'What the hell's wrong with you?'

'Sandy . . . the man who called it in said the vehicle was an old Chevrolet, red and white. He says the driver's dead.' She swallowed. 'In pieces. That's what he said.'

That part I didn't care about, although I would later, when I had to look at it. At him. 'The Chevrolet ? have you got the model?'

'I didn't ask. Sandy, I couldn't.' Her eyes were full of tears. 'I didn't dare. But how many old red and white Chevrolets do you think there are in Statler County?'

I went out to the scene with Phil Candleton, praying the crashed Chevy would turn out to be a Malibu or a Biscayne, anything but a Bel Aire, vanity plate MY 57. But that's what it was.

'Fuck,' Phil said in a low and dismayed voice.

He'd piled it into the side of the cement bridge which spans Redfern Stream less than five minutes' walk from where the Buick 8 first appeared and where Curtis was killed. The Bel Aire had seatbelts, but he hadn't been wearing one. Nor were there any skidmarks.

'Christ almighty,' Phil said. 'This ain't right.'

Not right and not an accident. Although in the obituary, where shirts are kept neatly tucked in and skirts are kept discreetly below the knee, it would only say he died unexpectedly, which was true. Lord yes.