From a Buick 8 Page 7

  Bibi followed his wonderful idiots toward his own car (Bibi liked to ride to crime scenes in solitary splendor, whenever possible), then stopped. "I said the wood is wood, the vinyl is vinyl, and the glass is glass. You heard me say that?"

  Tony and Ennis nodded.

  "It appears to me that this purported car's exhaust system is also made of glass. Of course, I was only peering under from one side, but I had a flashlight. Quite a powerful one." For a few moments he just stood there, staring at the Buick parked in front of Shed B, hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "I have never heard of a car with a glass exhaust system," he said finally, and then walked toward his car. A moment later, he and his children were gone.

  Tony was uncomfortable with the car out where it was, not just because of possible storms but because anyone who happened to walk out back could see it. Visitors were what he was thinking of, Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public. The State Police served John Q. and his family as well as they could, in some cases at the cost of their lives. They did not, however, completely trust them. John Q.'s family was not Troop D's family. The prospect of word getting around--worse, of rumor getting around--made Sergeant Schoondist squirm.

  He strolled to Johnny Parker's little office (the County Motor Pool was still next door in those days) around quarter to three and sweet-talked Johnny into moving one of the plows out of Shed B and putting the Buick inside. A pint of whiskey sealed the deal, and the Buick was towed into the oil-smelling darkness that became its home. Shed B had garage doors at either end, and Johnny brought the Buick in through the back one. As a result, it faced the Troop D barracks from out there for all the years of its stay. It's something most of the Troopers became aware of as time passed. Not a forebrain thing, nothing like an organized thought, but something that floated at the back of the mind, never quite formed and never quite gone: the pressure of its chrome grin.

  There were eighteen Troopers assigned to Troop D in 1979, rotating through the usual shifts: seven to three, three to eleven, and the graveyard shift, when they rode two to a cruiser. On Fridays and Saturdays, the eleven-to-seven shift was commonly called Puke Patrol.

  By four o'clock on the afternoon the Buick arrived, most of the off-duty Troopers had heard about it and dropped by for a look. Sandy Dearborn, back from the accident on Highway 6 and typing up the paperwork, saw them going out there in murmuring threes and fours, almost like tour groups. Curt Wilcox was off-duty by then and he conducted a good many of the tours himself, pointing out the mismatched portholes and big steering wheel, lifting the hood so they could marvel over the whacked-out mill with BUICK 8 printed on both sides of the engine block.

  Orv Garrett conducted other tours, telling the story of Mister D's reaction over and over again. Sergeant Schoondist, already fascinated by the thing (a fascination that would never completely leave him until Alzheimer's disease erased his mind), came out as often as he could. Sandy remembered him standing just outside the open Shed B door at one point, foot up on the boards behind him, arms crossed. Ennis was beside him, smoking one of those little Tiparillos he liked and talking while Tony nodded. It was after three, and Ennis had changed into jeans and a plain white shirt. After three, and that was the best Sandy could say later on. He wished he could do better, but he couldn't.

  The cops came, they looked at the engine (the hood permanently up by that point, gaping like a mouth), they squatted down to look at the exotic glass exhaust system. They looked at everything, they touched nothing. John Q. and his family wouldn't have known to keep their mitts off, but these were cops. They understood that, while the Buick might not be an evidential res as of right then, later on that might change. Especially if the man who had left it at the Jenny station should happen to turn up dead.

  "Unless that happens or something else pops, I intend to keep the car here," Tony told Matt Babicki and Phil Candleton at one point. It was five o'clock or so by then, all three of them had been officially off-duty for a couple of hours, and Tony was finally thinking about going home. Sandy himself had left around four, wanting to mow the grass before sitting down to dinner.

  "Why here?" Matt asked. "What's the big deal, Sarge?"

  Tony asked Matt and Phil if they knew about the Cardiff Giant. They said they didn't, and so Tony told them the story. The Giant had been "discovered" in upstate New York's Onondaga Valley. It was supposed to be the fossilized corpse of a gigantic humanoid, maybe something from another world or the missing link between men and apes. It turned out to be nothing but a hoax perpetrated by a Binghamton cigar-maker named George Hull.

  "But before Hull fessed-up," Tony said, just about everyone in the whole round world--including P. T. Barnum--dropped by for a look. The crops on the surrounding farms were trampled to mush. Houses were broken into. There was a forest fire started by asshole John Q's camping in the woods. Even after Hull confessed to having the "petrified man" carved in Chicago and shipped Railway Express to upstate New York, people kept coming. They refused to believe the thing wasn't real. You've heard the saying "There's a sucker born every minute?" That was coined in 1869, in reference to the Cardiff Giant."

  "What's your point?" Phil asked.

  Tony gave him an impatient look. "The point? The point is that I'm not having any Cardiff fucking Giant on my watch. Not if I can help it. Or the goddam Buick of Turin, for that matter."

  As they moved back toward the barracks, Huddie Royer joined them (with Mister Dillon at his side, now heeling as neatly as a pooch in a dog-show). Huddie caught the Buick of Turin line and snickered. Tony gave him a dour look.

  "No Cardiff Giant in western PA; you boys mark what I say and pass the word. Because word of mouth's how it's gonna be done--I'm not tacking any memo up on the bulletin board. I know there'll be some gossip, but it'll die down. I will not have a dozen Amish farms overrun by lookie-loos in the middle of the growing season, is that understood?"

  It was understood.

  By seven o'clock that evening, things had returned to something like normal. Sandy Dearborn knew that for himself, because he'd come back after dinner for his own encore look at the car. He found only three Troopers--two off-duty and one in uniform--strolling around the Buick. Buck Flanders, one of the off-duties, was snapping pictures with his Kodak. That made Sandy a bit uneasy, but what would they show? A Buick, that was all, one not yet old enough to be an official antique.

  Sandy got down on his hands and knees and peered under the car, using a flashlight that had been left nearby (and probably for just that purpose). He took a good gander at the exhaust system. To him it looked like Pyrex glass. He leaned in the driver's window for awhile (no hum, no chill), then went back to the barracks to shoot the shit with Brian Cole, who was in the SC chair that shift. The two of them started on the Buick, moved on to their families, and had just gotten to baseball when Orville Garrett stuck his head in the door.

  "Either you guys seen Ennis? The Dragon's on the phone, and she's not a happy lady."

  The Dragon was Edith Hyams, Ennis's sister. She was eight or nine years older than Ennis, a longtime widow-lady. There were those in Troop D who opined that she had murdered her husband, simply nagged him into his grave. "That's not a tongue in her mouth, that's a Ginsu knife," Dicky-Duck Eliot observed once. Curt, who saw the lady more than the rest of the Troop (Ennis was usually his partner; they got on well despite the difference in their ages), was of the opinion that Edith was the reason Trooper Rafferty had never married. "I think that deep down he's afraid they're all like her," he once told Sandy.

  Coming back to work after your shift is through is never a good idea, Sandy thought after spending a long ten minutes on the phone with The Dragon. Where is he, he promised he'd be home by six-thirty at the latest, I got the roast he wanted down at Pepper's, eighty-nine cents a pound, now it's cooked like an old boot, gray as wash-water (only of course what the lady said was warsh-warter), if he's down at The Country Way or The Tap you tell me right now, Sandy, so I can call and te
ll him what's what. She also informed Sandy that she was out of her water-pills, and Ennis was supposed to have brought her a fresh batch. So where the hell was he? Pulling overtime? That would be all right, she reckoned, God knew they could use the money, only he should have called. Or was he drinking? Although she never came right out and said so, Sandy could tell that the Dragon voted for drinking.

  Sandy was sitting at the dispatch desk, one hand cupped over his eyes, trying to get a word in edgeways, when Curtis Wilcox bopped in, dressed in his civvies and looking every inch the sport. Like Sandy, he'd come back for another peek at the Roadmaster.

  "Hold on, Edith, hold on a second," Sandy said, and put the telephone against his chest. "Help me out here, rookie. Do you know where Ennis went after he left?"

  "He left?"

  "Yeah, but he apparently didn't go home." Sandy pointed to the phone, which was still held against his chest. "His sister's on the line."

  "If he left, how come his car's still here?" Curt asked.

  Sandy looked at him. Curtis looked back. And then, without a word spoken, the two of them jumped like Jack and Jill to the same conclusion.

  Sandy got rid of Edith--told her he'd call her back, or have Ennis call her, if he was around. That taken care of, Sandy went out back with Curt.

  There was no mistaking Ennis's car, the American Motors Gremlin they all made fun of. It stood not far from the plow Johnny Parker had moved out of Shed B to make room for the Buick. The shadows of both the car and the plow straggled long in the declining sun of a summer evening, printed on the earth like tattoos.

  Sandy arid Curt looked inside the Gremlin and saw nothing but the usual road-litter: hamburger wrappers, soda cans, Tiparillo boxes, a couple of maps, an extra uniform shirt hung from the hook in back, an extra citation book on the dusty dashboard, some bits of fishing gear. All that rickrack looked sort of comforting to them after the sterile emptiness of the Buick. The sight of Ennis sitting behind the wheel and snoozing with his old Pirates cap tilted over his eyes would have been even more comforting, but there was no sign of him.

  Curt turned and started back toward the barracks. Sandy had to break into a trot in order to catch up and grab his arm. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked.

  "To call Tony."

  "Not yet," Sandy said. "Let him have his dinner. We'll call him later if we have to. I hope to God we don't."

  Before checking anything else, even the upstairs common room, Curt and Sandy checked Shed B. They walked all around the car, looked inside the car, looked under the car. There was no sign of Ennis Rafferty in any of those places--at least, not that they could see. Of course, looking for sign in and around the Buick that evening was like looking for the track of one particular horse after a stampede has gone by. There was no sign of Ennis specifically, but . . .

  "Is it cold in here, or is it just me?" Curt asked. They were about ready to return to the barracks. Curt had been down on his knees with his head cocked, taking a final look underneath the car. Now he stood up, brushing his knees. "I mean, I know it's not freezing or anything, but it's colder than it should be, wouldn't you say?"

  Sandy actually felt too hot--sweat was running down his face--but that might have been nerves rather than room-temperature. He thought Curt's sense of cold was likely just a holdover from what he'd felt, or thought he'd felt, out at the Jenny station.

  Curt read that on his face easily enough. "Maybe it is. Maybe it is just me. Fuck, I don't know. Let's check the barracks. Maybe he's downstairs in supply, coopin. Wouldn't be the first time."

  The two men hadn't entered Shed B by either of the big roll-up doors but rather through the doorknob-operated, people-sized door that was set into the east side. Curt paused in it instead of going out, looking back over his shoulder at the Buick.

  His gaze as he stood beside the wall of pegged hammers, clippers, rakes, shovels, and one posthole digger (the red AA on the handle stood not for Alcoholics Anonymous but for Arky Arkanian) was angry. Almost baleful. "It wasn't in my mind," he said, more to himself than to Sandy. "It was cold. It's not now, but it was."

  Sandy said nothing.

  "Tell you one thing," Curt said. "If that goddam car's going to be around long, I'm getting a thermometer for this place. I'll pay for it out of my own pocket, if I have to. And say! Someone left the damn trunk unlocked. I wonder who--"

  He stopped. Their eyes met, and a single thought flashed between them: Fine pair of cops we are.

  They had looked inside the Buick's cabin, and underneath, but had ignored the place that was--according to the movies, at least--the temporary body-disposal site of choice for murderers both amateur and professional.

  The two of them walked over to the Buick and stood by the back deck, peering at the line of darkness where the trunk was unlatched.

  "You do it, Sandy," Curt said. His voice was low, barely above a whisper.

  Sandy didn't want to, but decided he had to--Curt was, after all, still a rookie. He took a deep breath and raised the trunk's lid. It went up much faster than he had expected. There was a clunk when it reached the top of its arc, loud enough to make both men jump. Curt grabbed Sandy with one hand, his fingers so cold that Sandy almost cried out.

  The mind is a powerful and often unreliable machine. Sandy was so sure they were going to find Ennis Rafferty in the trunk of the Buick that for a moment he saw the body: a curled fetal shape in chino pants and a plaid shirt, looking like something a Mafia hitman might leave in the trunk of a stolen Lincoln.

  But it was only overlapped shadows that the two Troopers saw. The Buick's trunk was empty. There was nothing there but plain brown carpeting without a single tool or grease-stain on it. They stood in silence for a moment or two, and then Curt made a sound under his breath, either a snicker or an exasperated snort. "Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here. And shut the damn trunk tight this time. "Bout scared the life out of me."

  "Me too," Sandy said, and gave the trunk a good hard slam. He followed Curt to the door beside the wall with the pegged tools on it. Curtis was looking back again.

  "Isn't that one hell of a thing," he said softly.

  "Yes," Sandy agreed.

  "It's fucked up, wouldn't you say?"

  "I would, rook, I would indeed, but your partner isn't in it. Or anywhere in here. That much is for sure."

  Curt didn't bridle at the word rook. Those days were almost over for him, and they both knew it. He was still looking at the car, so smooth and cool and there. His eyes were narrow, showing just two thin lines of blue. "It's almost like it's talking. I mean, I'm sure that's just my imagination--"

  "Damn tooting it is."

  "--but I can almost hear it. Mutter-mutter-mutter."

  "Quit it before you give me the willies."

  "You mean you don't already have them?"

  Sandy chose not to reply to that. "Come on, all right?"

  They went out, Curt taking one last look before closing the door.

  The two of them checked upstairs in the barracks, where there was a living room and a dorm-style bedroom behind a plain blue curtain that contained four cots. Andy Colucci was watching a sitcom on television and a couple of Troopers who had the graveyard shift were snoozing; Sandy could hear the snores. He pulled back the curtain to check. Two guys, all right, one of them going wheek-wheek through his nose -polite--and the other going ronk-ronk-ronk through his open mouth--big and rude. Neither of them was Ennis. Sandy hadn't really expected to find him there; when Ennis cooped, he most commonly did it in the basement supply room, rocked back in the old swivel chair that went perfectly with the World War II-era metal desk down there, the old cracked radio on the shelf playing danceband music soft. He wasn't in the supply room that night, though. The radio was off and the swivel chair with the pillow on the seat was unoccupied. Nor was he in either of the storage cubicles, which were poorly lit and almost as spooky as cells in a dungeon.

  There were a total of four toilets in the building, if you included t
he stainless steel lidless model in the bad-boy corner. Ennis wasn't hiding out in any of the three with doors. Not in the kitchenette, not in dispatch, not in the SC's office, which stood temporarily empty with the doors open and the lights off.

  By then, Huddie Royer had joined Sandy and Curt. Orville Garrett had gone home for the day (probably afraid that Ennis's sister would turn up in person), and had left Mister Dillon in Huddie's care, so the dog was there, too. Curt explained what they were doing and why. Huddie grasped the implications at once. He had a big, open Farmer John face, but Huddie was a long way from stupid. He led Mister D to Ennis's locker and let him smell inside, which the dog did with great interest. Andy Coined joined them at this point, and a couple of other off-duty guys who had dropped by to sneak a peek at the Buick also joined the party. They went outside, split up into two groups, and walked around the building in opposing circles, calling Ennis's name. There was still plenty of good light, but the day had begun to redden.

  Curt, Huddie, Mister D, and Sandy were in one group. Mister Dillon walked slowly, smelling at everything, but the only time he really perked and turned, the scent he'd caught took him on a beeline to Ennis's Gremlin. No help there.

  At first yelling Ennis's name felt foolish, but by the time they gave up and went back inside the barracks, it no longer felt that way at all. That was the scary part, how fast yelling for him stopped feeling silly and started feeling serious.

  "Let's take Mister D into the shed and see what he smells there," Curt proposed.

  "No way," Huddie said. "He doesn't like the car."

  "Come on, man, Ennie's my partner. Besides, maybe ole D will feel different about that car now."

  But ole D felt just the same. He was okay outside the shed, in fact started to pull on his leash as the Troopers approached the side door. His head was down, his nose all but scraping the macadam. He was even more interested when they got to the door itself. The men had no doubt at all that he had caught Ennis's scent, good and strong.

  Then Curtis opened the door, and Mister Dillon forgot all about whatever he had been smelling. He started to howl at once, and again hunched over as if struck by bad cramps. His fur bushed out like a peacock's finery, and he squirted urine over the doorstep and on to the shed's concrete floor. A moment later he was yanking at the leash Huddie was holding, still howling, still trying in a crazy, reluctant way to get inside. He hated it and feared it, that was in every line of his body--and in his wild eyes--but he was trying to get at it, just the same.