From a Buick 8(18)

'We're a family,' I said. 'I know that sounds corny, but it's true. Even Mister Dillon knew that much, and you do, too. Don't you?'

The kid nodded his head. Of course he did. In the year after his father died, we were the family that mattered to him most, the one he sought out and the one that gave him what he needed to get on with his life. His mother and sisters loved him, and he loved them, but they were going on with their lives in a way that Ned could not . . . at least not yet. Some of it was being male instead of female. Some of it was being eighteen. Some of it was all those questions of why that wouldn't go away.

I said, 'What families say and how families act when they're in their houses with the doors shut and how they talk and behave when they're out on their lawns and the doors are open . . . those can be very different things. Ennis knew the Buick was wrong, your dad did, Tony did, I did. Mister D most certainly did. The way that dog howled . . .'

I fell silent for a moment. I've heard that howl in my dreams. Then I pushed on.

'But legally, it was just an object ? a res, as the lawyers say ? with no blame held against it. We couldn't very well hold the Buick for theft of services, could we? And the man who ordered the gas that went into its tank was long gone and hard to find. The best we could do was to think of it as an impoundment.'

Ned wore the frown of someone who doesn't understand what he's hearing. I could understand that. I hadn't been as clear as I wanted to be. Or maybe I was just playing that famous old game, the one called It Wasn't Our Fault.

'Listen,' Shirley said. 'Suppose a woman stopped to use the restroom at that station and left her diamond engagement ring on the washstand and Bradley Roach found it there. Okay?'

'Okay . . .' Ned said. Still frowning.

'And let's say Roach brought it to us instead of just putting it in his pocket and then taking it to a pawnshop in Butler. We'd make a report, maybe put out the make and model of the woman's car to the Troopers in the field, if Roach could give them to us . . . but we wouldn't take the ring. Would we, Sandy?'

'No,' I said. 'We'd advise Roach to put an ad in the paper ? Found, a woman's ring, if you think it may be yours, call this number and describe. At which point Roach would get pissing and moaning about the cost of putting an ad in the paper ? a whole three bucks.'

'And then we'd remind him that folks who find valuable property often get rewards,' Phil said, 'and he'd decide maybe he could find three bucks, after all.'

'But if the woman never called or came back,' I said, 'that ring would become Roach's property. It's the oldest law in history: finders-keepers.'

'So Ennis and my dad took the Buick.'

'No,' I said. 'The Troop took it.'

'What about theft of services? Did that ever get filed?'

'Oh, well,' I said with an uncomfortable little grin. 'Eleven bucks was hardly worth the paperwork. Was it, Phil?'

'Nah,' Phil said. 'Specially not in those days, when an IBM typewriter with CorrecTape was state-of-the-art. But we squared it up with Hugh Bossey.'

A light was dawning on Ned's face. 'You paid for the gas out of petty cash.'

Phil looked both shocked and amused. 'Never in your life, boy! Petty cash is the taxpayers' money, too.'

'We passed the hat,' I said. 'Everybody that was there gave a little. It was easy.'

'If Roach found a ring and nobody claimed it, it would be his,' Ned said. 'So wouldn't the Buick be his?'

'Maybe if he'd kept it,' I said. 'But he turned it over to us, didn't he? And as far as he was concerned, that was the end of it.'

Arky tapped his forehead and gave Ned a wise look. 'Nuttin upstairs, dat one,' he said.

For a moment I thought Ned would turn to brooding on the young man who had grown up to kill his father, but he shook that off. 1 could almost see him do it.

'Go on,' he said to me. 'What happened next?'

Oh boy. Who can resist that?

THEN

It took Bibi Roth and his children (that's what he called them) only forty-five minutes to go over the Buick from stem to stern, the young people dusting and brushing and snapping pictures, Bibi with a clipboard, walking around and sometimes pointing wordlessly at something with his ballpoint pen.

About twenty minutes into it, Orv Garrett came out with Mister Dillon. The dog was on his leash, which was a rarity around the barracks. Sandy walked over to them. The dog wasn't howling, had quit trembling, and was sitting with his brush of tail curled neatly over his paws, but his dark brown eyes were fixed on the Buick and never moved. From deep in his chest, almost too low to hear, came a steady growl like the rumble of a powerful motor.

'For Chrissake, Orvie, take him back inside,' Sandy Dearborn said.

'Okay. I just thought he might be over it by now.' He paused, then said: 'I've heard bloodhounds act that way sometimes, when they've found a body. I know there's no body, but do you think someone might have died in there?'

'Not that we know of.' Sandy was watching Tony Schoondist come out of the barracks' side door and amble over to Bibi Roth. Ennis was with him. Curt Wilcox was out on patrol again, much against his wishes. Sandy doubted that even pretty girls would be able to talk him into giving them warnings instead of tickets that afternoon. Curt wanted to be at the barracks, watching Bibi and his crew at work, not out on the road; if he couldn't be, lawbreakers in western Pennsylvania would pay.