From a Buick 8 (10 page)

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 under-neath, 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.'

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

'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 Trooperswho 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 the 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
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

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 theonly 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.

'Aw, never mind! Just get him out!' Curt shouted. Until then he had kept hold of himself very well, but it had been a long and stressful day for him and he was finally nearing the breaking point.

'It's not his fault,' Huddie said, and before he could say more, Mister Dillon raised his snout and howled again . . . only to Sandy it sounded more like a scream than a howl. The dog took another crippled lurch forward, pulling Huddie's arm out straight like a flag in a high wind. He was inside now, howling and whining, lurching to get forward and pissing everywhere like a pup. Pissing in terror.

'I know it's not!' Curt said. 'You were right to begin with, I'll give you a written apology if you want, just get him the fuck out!'

Huddie tried to reel Mister D back in, but he was a big dog, about ninety pounds, and he didn't want to come. Curt had to lay on with him in order to get D going in the right direction. In the end they dragged him out on his side, D fighting and howling and gnashing the air with his teeth the whole way. It was like pulling a sack of polecats, Sandy would say later.

When the dog was at last clear of the door, Curtis slammed it shut. The second he did, Mister Dillon relaxed and stopped fighting. It was as if a switch in his head had been flipped. He continued to lie on his side for a minute or two, getting his breath, then popped to his feet. He gave the Troopers a bewildered look that seemed to say, 'What happened, boys? I was going along good, and then I kind of blanked out.'

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

'Holy . . . fucking . . .
shit,'
Huddie said in a low voice.

'Take him back to the barracks,' Curt said. 'I was wrong to ask you to let him inside there, but I'm awful worried about Ennis.'

Huddie took the dog back to the barracks, Mister D once again as cool as a strawberry milkshake, just pausing to sniff at the shoes of the Troopers who had helped search the perimeter. These had been joined by others who had heard Mister D freaking out and had come to see what all the fuss was.

'Go on in, guys,' Sandy said, then added what they always said to the lookie-loos who gathered at accident sites: 'Show's over.'

They went in. Curt and Sandy watched them, standing there by the closed shed door. After awhile Huddie came back without Mister D. Sandy watched Curt reach for the doorknobof the shed door and felt a sense of dread and tension rise in his head like a wave. It was the first time he felt that way about Shed B, but not the last. In the twenty-odd years that followed that day, he would go inside Shed B

dozens of times, but never without the rise of that dark mental wave, never without the intuition of almost-glimpsed horrors, of abominations in the corner of the eye. Not that all of the horrors went unglimpsed. In the end they glimpsed plenty.

The three of them walked in, their shoes gritting on the dirty cement. Sandy flipped on the light-switches by the door and in the glare of the naked bulbs the Buick stood like one prop left on a bare stage, or the single piece of art in a gallery that had been dressed like a garage for the showing. What would you call such a thing? Sandy wondered.
From a Buick 8
was what occurred to him, probably because there was a Bob Dylan song with a similar title. The chorus was in his head as they stood there, seeming to illuminate that feeling of dread:
And if I fall down dyin, y'know/She's bound to put a blanket on my
bed.

It sat there with its Buick headlights staring and its Buick grille sneering. It sat there on its fat and luxy whitewalls, and inside was a dashboard full of frozen fake controls and a wheel almost big enough to steer a privateer. Inside was something that made the barracks dog simultaneously howl in terror and yank forward as if in the grip of some ecstatic magnetism. If it had been cold in there before, it no longer was; Sandy could see sweat shining on the faces of the other two men and feel it on his own. It was Huddie who finally said it out loud, and Sandy was glad. He felt it, but never could have put that feeling into words; it was too outrageous.

'Fucking thing ate im,' Huddie said with flat certainty. T don't know how that could be, but I think he came in here by himself to take another look and it just . . . somehow . . . ate im.'

Curt said, 'It's watching us. Do you feel it?'

Sandy looked at the glassy headlight eyes. At the down-turned, sneering mouth full of chrome teeth. The decorative swoops up the sides, which could almost have been sleek locks of slick hair. He felt
something,
all right. Perhaps it was nothing but childish awe of the unknown, the terror kids feel when standing in front of houses their hearts tell them are haunted. Or perhaps it was really what Curt said. Perhaps it was watching them. Gauging the distance.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

They looked at it, hardly breathing. It sat there, as it would sit for all the years to come, while Presidents came and went, while records were replaced by CDs, while the stock market went up and a space shuttle exploded, while movie-stars lived and died and Troopers came and went in the Troop D

barracks. It sat there real as rocks and roses. And to some degree they all felt what Mister Dillon had felt: the
draw
of it. In the months that followed, the sight of cops standing there side by side in front of Shed B became common. They would stand with their hands cupped to the sides of their faces to block the light, peering in through the windows running across the front of the big garage door. They looked like sidewalk superintendents at a building site. Sometimes they went inside, too (never alone, though; when it came to Shed B, the buddy system ruled), and they always looked younger when they did, like kids creeping into the local graveyard on a dare.

Curt cleared his throat. The sound made the other two jump, then laugh nervously. 'Let's go inside and call the Sarge,' he said, and this time

NOW:

Sandy

'. . .and that time I didn't say anything. Just went along like a good boy.'

My throat was as dry as an old chip. I looked at my watch and wasn't exactly surprised to see that over an hour had gone by. Well, that was all right; I was off duty. The day was murkier than ever, but the faint mutters of thunder had slid away south of us.

'Those old days,' someone said, sounding both sad and amused at the same time - it's a trick only the Jews and the Irish seem to manage with any grace. 'We thought we'd strut forever, didn't we?'

I glanced around and saw Huddie Rover, now dressed in civilian clothes, sitting on Ned's left. I don't know when he joined us. He had the same honest Farmer John face he'd worn through the world back in

'79, but now there were lines bracketing the corners of his mouth, his hair was mostly gray, and it had gone out like the tide, revealing a long, bright expanse of brow. He was, I judged, about the same age Ennis Rafferty had been when Ennis did his Judge Crater act. Huddie's retirement plans involved a
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html