From a Buick 8(85)

'I'd like to go home,' she said in a faint child's voice. 'I had a nosebleed and I need to clean up.'

'Yeah, I know you do. Why? You run into a door? I bet that was it, wasn't it?'

'That's right. A door.' There wasn't even defiance in her face. No trace of her boyfriend's I EAT AMISH 'tude. She was just waiting for it to be over. This roadside chatter wasn't real life. Getting hit, that was real life. Hawking back the snot and the blood and the tears all together and swallowing it like cough syrup. 'I was comin down the hall to use the bat'room, and Bri, I dittun know he was in there and he come out all at once, fast, and the door ? '

'How long, Sandra?'

'How long what?'

'How long you going to go on eating his shit?'

Her eyes widened a little. That was all.

'Until he knocks all your teeth out?'

'I'd like to go home.'

'If I check at Statler Memorial, how many times am I going to find your name? Cause you run into a lot of doors, don't you?'

'Why don't you leave me alone? I ain't bothering you.'

'Until he fractures your skull? Until he kills your ass?'

'I want to go home, officer.'

I want to say That was when I knew I'd lost her but it would be a lie because you can't lose what you never had. She'd sit there until hell froze over or until I got pissed enough to do something that would get me in trouble later. Like hit her. Because I wanted to hit her. If I hit her, at least she'd know I was there.

I keep a card case in my back pocket. I took it out, riffled through the cards, and found the one I wanted. 'This woman's in Statler Village. She's talked to hundreds of young women like you, and helped a lot of them. If you need pro bono, which means free counseling, that'll happen. She'll work it out with you. Okay?'

I held the card in front of her face, between the first two fingers of my right hand. When she didn't take it, I dropped it on to the seat. Then I went back to the cruiser to get the registration. Brian Lippy was sitting in the middle of the back seat with his chin lowered to the neck of his T-shirt, staring up at me from under his brows. He looked like some f**ked-up hotrod Napoleon.

'Any luck?' George asked.

'Nah,' I said. 'She hasn't had enough fun yet.'

I took the registration back to the truck. She'd moved over behind the wheel. The truck's big V-8 was rumbling. She had pushed the clutch in, and her right hand was on the shifter-knob. Bitten pink nails against chrome. If places like rural Pennsylvania had flags, you could put that on it. Or maybe a sixpack of Iron City Beer and a pack of Winstons.

'Drive safely, Ms McCracken,' I said, handing her the yellow.

'Yeah,' she said, and pulled out. Wanting to give me some lip and not daring because she was well-trained. The truck did some jerking at first ? she wasn't as good with his manual transmission as she maybe thought she was ? and she jerked with it. Back and forth, hair flying. All at once I could see it again, him all over the road, driving his one piece of property with his one hand and punching the piss out of his other piece of property with other one, and I felt sick to my stomach. Just before she finally achieved second gear, something white fluttered out of the driver's-side window. It was the card I'd given her.

I went back to the cruiser. Brian was still sitting with his chin down on his chest, giving me his f**ked-up Napoleon look from beneath his brows. Or maybe it was Rasputin. I got in on the passenger side, feeling very hot and tired. Just to make things complete, Brian started chanting from behind me. 'Fat ED-die JACK-you-BOYS. How many boys ? '

'Oh shut up,' I said.

'Come on back here and shut me up, Fat Eddie. Why don't you come on back here and try it?'

Just another wonderful day in the PSP, in other words. This guy was going to be back in whatever shithole he called home by seven o'clock, drinking a beer while Vanna spun the Wheel of Fortune. I glanced at my watch ? 1.44 p.m. ? and then picked up the microphone. 'Base, this is 6.'

'Copy, 6.' Shirley right back at me, calm as a cool breeze. Shirley just about to get her flowers from Islington and Avery. Out on CR 46 in Poteenville, about twenty miles from our 20, a Norco West tanker had just collided with a schoolbus, killing the schoolbus's driver, Mrs Esther Mayhew. George Stankowski had been close enough to hear the bang of the collision, so who says there's never a cop around when you need one?

'We are Code 15 and 17-base, copy?' Asshole in custody and headed home, in other words.

'Roger, 6, you have one subject in custody or what, over?'

'One subject, roger.'

'This is Fat Fuck One, over and out,' Brian said from the back seat. He began to laugh ? the high, chortling laugh of the veteran stoner. He also began to stomp his cowboy boots up and down. We'd be half an hour getting back to the barracks. I had an idea it was going to be a long ride.

THEN:

Huddie

I dropped the SC's phone into the cradle and almost trotted across to dispatch, where Shirley was still working hard, bending active Troopers west. 'Norco says it's chlorine liquid,' I told her. 'That's a break. Chlorine's nasty, but it's not usually fatal.'

'Are they sure that's what it is?' Shirley asked.

'Ninety per cent. It's what they have out that way. You see those trucks headed up to the water-treatment plant all the time. Pass it on, starting with George S. And what in the name of God's wrong with the dog?'