From a Buick 8(13)

Shirley was nodding. She reached over and took Ned's hand, and he let it be taken.

'People ignore it, mostly,' she said, 'the way they always ignore things they don't understand . . . as long as they can, anyway.'

'Sometimes we can't afford to ignore it,' Phil said. 'We knew that as soon as . . . well, let Sandy tell it.' He looked back at me. They all did. Ned's gaze was the brightest.

I lit a cigarette and started talking again.

CHAPTER 2

THEN

Ennis Rafferty found his binoculars in his tackle box, which went with him from car to car during fishing season. Once he had them, he and Curt Wilcox went down to Redfern Stream for the same reason the bear went over the mountain: to see what they could see.

'Whaddya want me to do?' Brad asked as they walked away from him.

'Guard the car and think about your story,' Ennis said.

'Story? Why would I need a story?' Sounding a little nervous about it. Neither Ennis nor Curt answered.

Easing down the weedy slope, each of them ready to grab the other if he slipped, Ennis said: 'That car isn't right. Even Bradley Roach knows that, and he's pretty short in the old IQ department.'

Curt was nodding even before the older man had finished. 'It's like a picture in this activity book I had when I was a kid. FIND TEN THINGS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.'

'By God, it is!' Ennis was struck by this idea. He liked the young man he was partnered with, and thought he was going to make a good Trooper once he got a little salt on his skin.

They had reached the edge of the stream by then. Ennis went for his binocs, which he had hung over his neck by the strap. 'No inspection sticker. No damn license plates. And the wheel! Curtis, did you see how big that thing is?'

Curt nodded.

'No antenna for the radio,' Ennis continued, 'and no mud on the body. How'd it get up Route 32 without getting some mud on it? We were splashing up puddles everywhere. There's even crud on the -windshield.'

'I don't know. Did you see the portholes?'

'Huh? Sure, but all old Buicks have portholes.'

'Yeah, but these are wrong. There's four on the passenger side and only three on the driver's side. Do you think Buick ever rolled a model off the line with a different number of portholes on the sides? Cause I don't.'

Ennis gave his partner a nonplussed look, then raised his binoculars and looked downstream. He quickly found and focused on the black bobbing thing that had sent Brad hurrying to the telephone.

'What is it? Is it a coat?' Curt was shading his eyes, which were considerably better than Bradley Roach's. 'It's not, is it?'

'Nope,' Ennis said, still peering. 'It looks like . . . a garbage can. One of those black plastic garbage cans like they sell down at the Tru-Value in town. Or maybe I'm full of shit. Here. You take a look.'

He handed the binoculars over, and no, he wasn't full of shit. What Curtis saw was indeed a black plastic garbage can, probably washed down from the trailer park on the Bluffs at the height of the previous night's cloudburst. It wasn't a black coat and no black coat was ever found, nor the black hat, nor the man with the white face and the curl of lank black hair beside one strangely made ear. The Troopers might have doubted that there ever was such a man ? Ennis Rafferty had not failed to notice the copy of Inside View on the desk when he took Mr Roach into the office to question him further ? but there was the Buick. That odd Buick was irrefutable. It was part of the goddam scenery, sitting right there at the pumps. Except by the time the county tow showed up to haul it away, neither Ennis Rafferty nor Curtis Wilcox believed it was a Buick at all.

By then, they didn't know what it was.

Older cops are entitled to their hunches, and Ennis had one as he and his young partner walked back to Brad Roach. Brad was standing beside the Roadmaster with the three nicely chromed portholes on one side and the four on the other. Ennis's hunch was that the oddities they had so far noticed were only the whipped cream on the sundae. If so, the less Mr Roach saw now, the less he could talk about later. Which was why, although Ennis was extremely curious about the abandoned car and longed for a big dose of satisfaction, he turned it over to Curt while he himself escorted Bradley into the office. Once they were there, Ennis called for a wrecker to haul the Buick up to Troop D, where they could put it in the parking lot out back, at least for the time being. He also wanted to question Bradley while his recollections were relatively fresh. Ennis expected to get his own chance to look over their odd catch, and at his leisure, later on.

'Someone modified it a little, I expect that's all' was what he said to Curt before taking Bradley into the office. Curt looked skeptical. Modifying was one thing, but this was just nuts. Removing one of the portholes, then refinishing the surface so expertly that the scar didn't even show? Replacing the usual Buick steering wheel with something that looked like it belonged in a cabin cruiser? Those were modifications?

'Aw, just look it over while I do some business,' Ennis said.

'Can I check the mill?'

'Be my guest. Only keep your mitts off the steering wheel, so we can get some prints if we need them. And use good sense. Try not to leave your own dabs anywhere.'

They had reached the pumps again. Brad Roach looked eagerly at the two cops, the one he would kill in the twenty-first century and the one who would be gone without a trace that very evening.