From a Buick 8 (7 page)

Ennis followed the tow-truck into the driveway that ran around to the back of Troop D. 'What else?

Anything?'

'More like
everything.
It's fucked to the sky.' This impressed Ennis, because Curtis wasn't ordinarily a profane man. 'You know that great big steering wheel? I think that's probably fake, too. I shimmied it just with the sides of my hands, don't have a hemorrhage - and it turns a little bit, left and right, but only a little bit. Maybe it's just locked, like the ignition, but . . .'

'But you don't think so.'

'No. I don't.'

The tow-truck parked in front of Shed B. There was a hydraulic whine and the Buick came out of its snout-up, tail-down posture, settling back on its whitewalls. The towdriver, old Johnny Parker, came around to unhook it, wheez-ing around the Pall Mall stuck in his gob. Ennis and Curt sat in Cruiser D-19

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meanwhile, looking at each other.

'What the hell we got here?' Ennis asked finally. 'A car that can't drive and can't steer cruises into the Jenny station out on Route 32 and right up to the hi-test pump. No tags. No sticker . . .' An idea struck him. 'Registration? You check for that?'

'Not on the steering post,' Curt said, opening his door, impatient to get out. The young are always impatient. 'Not in the glove compartment, either, because there
is
no glove compartment. There's a handle for one, and there's a latch-button, but the button doesn't push, the handle doesn't pull, and the little door doesn't open. It's just stage-dressing, like everything else on the dashboard. The dashboard itself is bullshit. Cars didn't come with wooden dashboards in the fifties. Not American ones, at least.'

They got out and stood looking at the orphan Buick's back deck. 'Trunk?' Ennis asked. 'Does
that
open?'

'Yeah. It's not locked. Push the button and it pops open like the trunk of any other car. But it smells lousy.'

'Lousy how?'

'Swampy.'

'Any dead bodies in there?'

'No bodies, no nothing.'

'No spare tire? Not even a jack?'

Curtis shook his head. Johnny Parker came over, pulling off his work gloves. 'Be anything else, men?'

Ennis and Curt shook their heads.

Johnny started away, then stopped. 'What the hell is that, anyway? Someone's idea of a joke?'

'We don't know yet,' Ennis told him.

Johnny nodded. 'Well, if you find out, let me know. Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back. You know?'

'Whole lot of satisfaction,' Curt said automatically. Thebusiness about curiosity and the cat was a part of Troop D life, not quite an in-joke, just something that had crept into the day-to-day diction of the job. Ennis and Curt watched the old man go. 'Anything else you want to pass on before we talk to Sergeant Schoondist?' Ennis asked.

'Yeah,' Curds said. 'It's earthquake country in there.'

'Earthquake country? Just what in the hell does
that
mean?'

So Curds told Ennis about a show he'd seen on the PBS station out of Pittsburgh just the week before. By then a number of people had drifted over. Among them were Phil Candleton, Arky Arkanian,
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Sandy Dearborn, and Sergeant Schoondist himself.

The program had been about predicting earthquakes. Scientists were a long way from developing a sure-fire way of doing that, Curds said, but most of them believed it
could
be done, in time. Because there were forewarnings. Animals felt them, and quite often people did, too. Dogs got restless and barked to be let outside. Cattle ran around in their stalls or knocked down the fences of their pastures. Caged chickens sometimes flapped so frantically they broke their wings. Some people claimed to hear a high humming sound from the earth fifteen or twenty minutes before a big temblor (and if some
people
could hear that sound, it stood to reason that most animals would hear it even more clearly). Also, it got cold. Not everyone felt these odd pre-earthquake cold pockets, but a great many people did. There was even some meteorological data to support the subjective reports.

'Are you shitting me?' Tony Schoondist asked.

No indeed, Curt replied. Two hours before the big quake of 1906, temperatures in San Francisco had dropped a full seven degrees; that was a recorded fact. This although all other weather conditions had remained constant.

'Fascinating,' Ennis said, 'but what's it got to do with the Buick?'

By then there were enough Troopers present to form a little circle of listeners. Curtis looked around at them, knowing he might spend the next six months or so tagged the Earthquake Kid on radio calls, but too
jazzed
to care. He said that while Ennis was in the gas station office questioning Bradley Roach, he himself had been sitting behind that strange oversized steering wheel, still being careful not to touch anything except with the sides of his hands. And as he sat there, he started to hear a humming sound, very high. He told them he had felt it, as well.

'It came out of nowhere, this high steady hum. I could feel it buzzing in my fillings. I think if it had been much stronger, it would've actually jingled the change in my pocket. There's a word for that, we learned it in physics, I think, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is.'

'A harmonic,' Tony said. 'That's when two things start to vibrate together, like tuning-forks or wine-glasses.'

Curtis was nodding. 'Yeah, that's it. I don't know what could be causing it, but it's very powerful. It seemed to settle right in the middle of my head, the way the sound of the powerlines up on the Bluff does when you're stand-ing right underneath them. This is going to sound crazy, but after a minute or so, that hum almost sounded like
talking.'

'I laid a girl up dere on d'Bluffs once,' Arky said senti-mentally, sounding more like Lawrence Welk than ever. 'And it was pretty harmonic, all right. Buzz, buzz, buzz.'

'Save it for your memoirs, bub,' Tony said. 'Go on, Curtis.'

'I thought at first it was the radio,' Curt said, 'because it sounded a little bit like that, too: an old vacuum-tube radio that's on and tuned to music coming from a long way off. So I took my hanky and reached over to kill the power. That's when I found out the knobs don't move, either of them. It's no more a real radio than . . . well, than Phil Candleton's a real State Trooper.'

'That's funny, kid,' Phil said. 'At least as funny as a rubber chicken, I guess, or - '

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'Shut up, I want to hear this,' Tony said. 'Go on, Curtis. And leave out the comedy.'

'Yes, sir. By the time I tried the radio knobs, I realized it was cold in there. It's a warm day and the car was sitting in the sun, but it was cold inside. Sort of clammy, too. That's when I thought of the show about earthquakes.' Curt shook his head slowly back and forth. 'I got a feeling that I should get out of that car, and fast. By then the hum was quieting down, but it was colder than ever. Like an icebox.'

Tony Schoondist, then Troop D's Sergeant Command-ing, walked over to the Buick. He didn't touch it, just leaned in the window. He stayed like that for the best part of a minute, leaning into the dark blue car, back inclined but perfectly straight, hands clasped behind his back. Ennis stood behind him. The rest of the Troopers clustered around Curtis, waiting for Tony to finish with whatever it was he was doing. For most of them, Tony Schoondist was the best SC they'd ever have while wearing the Pennsylvania gray. He was tough; brave; fairminded; crafty when he had to be. By the time a Trooper reached the rank of Sergeant Commanding, the politics kicked in. The monthly meetings. The calls from Scranton. Sergeant Commanding was a long way from the top of the ladder, but it was high enough for the bureaucratic bullshit to kick in. Schoondist played the game well enough to keep his seat, but he knew and his men knew he'd never rise higher. Or want to. Because with Tony, his men always came first . . . and when Shirley replaced Matt Babicki, it was his men and his woman. His Troop, in other words. Troop D. They knew this not because he said anything, but because he walked the walk. At last he came back to where his men were standing. He took off his hat, ran his hand through the bristles of his crewcut, then put the hat back on. Strap in the back, as per summer regulations. In winter, the strap went under the point of the chin. That was the tradition, and as in any organization that's been around for a long time, there was a lot of tradition in the PSP. Until 1962, for instance, Troopers needed permission from the Sergeant Commanding to get married (and the SCs used that power to weed out any number of rookies and young Troopers they felt were unqualified for the job).

'No hum,' Tony said. 'Also, I'd say the temperature inside is about what it should be. Maybe a little cooler than the outside air, but . . .' He shrugged.

Curtis flushed a deep pink. 'Sarge, I swear - '

'I'm not doubting you,' Tony said. 'If you say the thing was humming like a tuning fork, I believe you. Where would you say this humming sound was coming from? The engine?'

Curtis shook his head.

'The trunk area?'

Another shake.

'Underneath?'

A third shake of the head, and now instead of pink, Curt's cheeks, neck, and forehead were bright red.

'Where, then?'

'Out of the air,' Curt said reluctantly. 'I know it sounds crazy, but . . . yeah. Right out of the air.' He looked around, as if expecting the others to laugh. None of them did.
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Just about then Orville Garrett joined the group. He'd been over by the county line, at a building site where several pieces of heavy equipment had been vandalized the night before. Ambling along behind him came Mister Dillon, the Troop D mascot. He was a German Shepherd with maybe a little taste of Collie thrown in. Orville and Huddie Royer had found him as a pup, paddling around in the shallow well of an abandoned farm out on Sawmill Road. The dog might have fallen in by accident, but probably not. Some people just know how to have fun, don't they?

Mister D was no K-9 specialty dog, but only because no one had trained him that way. He was plenty smart, and protective, as well. If a bad boy raised his voice and startedshaking his finger at a Troop D

guy while Mister Dillon •was around, that fellow ran the risk of picking his nose with the tip of a pencil for the rest of his life.

'What's doin, boys?' Orville asked, but before anyone could answer him, Mister Dillon began to howl. Sandy Dearborn, who happened to be standing right beside the dog, had never heard anything quite like that howl in his entire life. Mister D backed up a pace and then hunkered, facing the Buick. His head was up and his hindquarters were down. He looked like a dog does when he's taking a crap, except for his fur. It was bushed out all over his body, every hair standing on end. Sandy's skin went cold.

'Holy God, what's wrong with him?' Phil asked in a low, awed voice, and then Mister D let loose with another of those long, wavering howls. He took three or four stalk-steps toward the Buick, never coming out of that hunched-over, cramped-up, taking-a-crap stoop, all the time with his muzzle pointing at the sky. It was awful to watch. He made two or three more of those awkward movements, then dropped flat on the macadam, panting and whining.

'What the
hell?'
Orv said.

'Put a leash on him,' Tony said. 'Get him inside.' Orv did as Tony said, actually running to get Mister Dillon's leash. Phil Candleton, who had always been especially partial to the dog, went with Orv once the leash was on him, walking next to Mister D, occasionally bending down to give him a comforting stroke arid a soothing word. Later, he told the others that the dog had been shivering all over. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to. They were all thinking the same thing, that Mister Dillon had pretty well proved Curt's point. The ground wasn't shaking and Tony hadn't heard anything when he stuck his head in through the Buick's window, but something was wrong with it, all right. A lot more wrong than the size of its steering wheel or its strange notchless ignition key. Something worse.

In the seventies and eighties, Pennsylvania State Police foren-sics investigators were rolling stones, travelling around to the various Troops in a given area from District HQ. In the case of Troop D, HQ

was Butler. There were no forensics vans; such big-city luxuries were dreamed of, but wouldn't actually arrive in rural Pennsylvania until almost the end of the century. The forensics guys rode in unmarked police cars, carrying their equipment in trunks and back seats, toting it to various crime scenes in big canvas shoulder-bags with the PSP keystone logo on the sides. There were three guys in most forensics crews: the chief and two technicians. Sometimes there was also a trainee. Most of these looked too young to buy a legal drink.

One such team appeared at Troop D that afternoon. They had ridden over from Shippenville, at Tony Schoondist's personal request. It was a funny informal visit, a vehicle exam not quite in the line of duty. The crew chief was Bibi Roth, one of the oldtimers (men joked that Bibi had learned his trade at the knee of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson). He and Tony Schoondist got along well, and Bibi didn't mind
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doing a solid for the Troop D SC. Not as long as it stayed quiet, that was.

NOW:

Sandy

Ned stopped me at this point to ask why the forensic exami-nation of the Buick was conducted in such an odd (to him, at least) off-the-cuff manner.

'Because,' I told him, 'the only criminal complaint in the matter that any of us could think of was theft of services - eleven dollars' worth of hi-test gasoline. That's a misdemeanor, not worth a forensic crew's time.'

'Dey woulda burned almost dat much gas gettin over here from Shippenville,' Arky pointed out.