From a Buick 8(14)

'What do you think?' Brad asked. 'Is he dead down there in the stream? Drownded? He is, isn't he?'

'Not unless he crawled into the garbage can floating around in the crotch of that fallen tree and drowned there,' Ennis said.

Brad's face fell. 'Aw, shit. Is that all it is?'

"Fraid so. And it would be a tight fit for a grown man. Trooper Wilcox? Any questions for this young man?'

Because he was still learning and Ennis was still teaching, Curtis did ask a few, mostly to make sure Bradley wasn't drunk and that he was in his right mind. Then he nodded to Ennis, who clapped Bradley on the shoulder as if they were old buddies.

'Step inside with me, what do you say?' Ennis suggested. 'Pour me a slug of mud and we'll see if we can figure this thing out.' And he led Brad away. The friendly arm slung around Bradley Roach's shoulder was very strong, and it just kept hustling Brad along toward the office, Trooper Rafferty talking a mile a minute the whole time.

As for Trooper Wilcox, he got about three-quarters of an hour with that Buick before the county tow showed up with its orange light flashing. Forty-five minutes isn't much time, but it was enough to turn Curtis into a lifetime Roadmaster Scholar. True love always happens in a flash, they say.

Ennis drove as they headed back to Troop D behind the tow-truck and the Buick, which rode on the clamp with its nose up and its rear bumper almost dragging on the road. Curt rode shotgun, in his excitement squirming like a little kid who needs to make water. Between them, the Motorola police radio, scuffed and beat-up, the victim of God knew how many coffee and cola-dousings but still as tough as nails, blatted away on channel 23, Matt Babicki and the Troopers in the field going through the call-and-response that was the constant background soundtrack of their lives. It was there, but neither Ennis nor Curt heard it anymore unless their own number came up.

'The first thing's the engine,' Curt said. 'No, I suppose the first thing's the hood-latch. It's way over on the driver's side, and you push it in rather than pulling it out ? '

'Never heard of that before,' Ennis grunted.

'You wait, you wait,' his young partner said. 'I found it, anyway, and lifted the hood. The engine . . . man, that engine . . .'

Ennis glanced at him with the expression of a man who's just had an idea that's too horribly plausible to deny. The yellow glow from the revolving light on the tow-truck's cab pulsed on his face like jaundice. 'Don't you dare tell me it doesn't have one,' he said. 'Don't dare tell me it doesn't have anything but a glow-crystal or some damn thing like in Dumbwit's flying saucers.'

Curtis laughed. The sound was both cheerful and wild. 'No, no, there's an engine, but it's all wrong. It says BUICK 8 on both sides of the engine block in big chrome letters, as if whoever made it was afraid of forgetting what the damn thing was. There are eight plugs, four on each side, and that's right ? eight cylinders, eight sparkplugs ? but there's no distributor cap and no distributor, not that I can see. No generator or alternator, either.'

'Get out!'

'Ennis, if I'm lyin I'm dyin.'

'Where do the sparkplug wires go?'

'Each one makes a big loop and goes right back into the engine block, so far as I can tell.'

'Get . . . out!'

'Yes! But listen, Ennis, just listen!' Stop interrupting and let me talk, in other words. Curtis Wilcox squirming in his seat but never taking his eyes off the Buick being towed along in front of him.

'All right, Curt. I'm listening.'

'It's got a radiator, but so far as I can tell, there's nothing inside it. No water and no antifreeze. There's no fanbelt, which sort of makes sense, because there's no fan.'

'Oil?'

'There's a crankcase and the dipstick is normal, except there's no markings on it. There's a battery, a Delco, but Ennis, dig this, it's not hooked up to anything. There are no battery cables.'

'You're describing a car that couldn't possibly run,' Ennis said flatly.

'Tell me about it. I took the key out of the ignition. It's on an ordinary chain, but the chain's all there is. No fob with initials or anything.'

'Other keys?'

'No. And the ignition key's not really a key. It's just a slot of metal, about so long.' Curt held his thumb and forefinger a key's length apart.

'A blank, is that what you're talking about? Like a keymaker's blank?'

'No. It's nothing like a key at all. It's just a little steel stick.'

'Did you try it?'

Curt, who had been talking almost compulsively, didn't answer that at once.

'Go on,' Ennis said. 'I'm your partner, for Christ's sake. I'm not going to bite you.'

'All right, yeah, I tried it. I wanted to see if that crazy engine worked.'

'Of course it works. Someone drove it in, right?'

'Roach says so, but when I got a good look under that hood, I had to wonder if he was lying or maybe hypnotized. Anyway, it's still an open question. The key-thing won't turn. It's like the ignition's locked.'

'Where's the key now?'

'I put it back in the ignition.'

Ennis nodded. 'Good. When you opened the door, did the dome light come on? Or isn't there one?'