I crossed the parking lot, heading toward them. They didn’t see me
coming because they were deeply engrossed in conversation.
Furthermore, I was mostly screened from them as I passed among the
street-department trucks and squad cars and water-de apartment trucks
and personal vehicles, while also staying as much as possible out of
the direct light from the three tall pole lamps.
just before I would have stepped into the open, Stevenson’s visitor
moved closer to the chief, shedding the shadows, and I halted in
shock.
I saw his shaved head, his hard face. Red-plaid flannel shirt, blue
jeans, work shoes.
At this distance, I wasn’t able to see his pearl earring.
I was flanked by two large vehicles, and I quickly retreated a few
steps to shelter more completely in the oily darkness between them.
One of the engines was still hot; it pinged and ticked as it cooled.
Although I could hear the voices of the two men, I could not make out
their words. An onshore breeze still romanced the trees and quarreled
against all the works of man, and this ceaseless whisper and hiss
screened the conversation from me.
I realized that the vehicle to my right, the one with the hot engine,
was the white Ford van in which the bald man had driven away from Mercy
Hospital earlier in the night. With my father’s mortal remains.
I wondered if the keys might be in the ignition. I pressed my face to
the window in the driver’s door, but I couldn’t see much of the
interior.
If I could steal the van, I would most likely have possession of
crucial proof that my story was true. Even if my father’s body had
been taken elsewhere and was no longer in this van, forensic evidence
might remain-not least, some of the hitchhiker’s blood.
I had no idea how to hot-wire an engine.
Hell, I didn’t know how to drive.
And even if I discovered that I possessed a natural talent for the
operation of motor vehicles that was the equivalent of Mozart’s
brilliance at musical composition, I wouldn’t be able to drive twenty
miles south along the coast or thirty miles north to another police
jurisdiction. Not in the glare of oncoming headlights. Not without my
precious sunglasses, which lay broken far away in the hills to the
east.
Besides, if I opened the van door, the cab lights would wink on.
The two men would notice.
They would come for me.
They would kill me.
The back door of the police station opened. Manuel Ramirez stepped
outside.
Lewis Stevenson and his conspirator broke off their urgent conversation
at once. From this distance, I wasn’t able to discern whether Manuel
knew the bald man, but he appeared to address only the chief.
I couldn’t believe that Manuel-good son of Rosalina, mourning widower
of Carmelita, loving father of Tbbywould be a part of any business that
involved murder and grave-robbing. We can never know many of the
people in our lives, not truly know them, regardless of how deeply we
believe that we see into them. Most of them are murky ponds,
containing infinite layers of suspended particles, stirred by strange
currents in their greatest depths. But I was willing to bet my life
that Manuel’s clear-water heart concealed no capacity for treachery.
I wasn’t willing to bet his life, however, and if I called out to him
to search the back of the white van with me, to impound the vehicle for
an exhaustive forensics workup, I might be signing his death warrant as
well as mine. In fact, I was sure of it.
Abruptly Stevenson and the bald man turned from Manuel to survey the
parking lot. I knew then that he had told them about my telephone
call.
I dropped into a crouch and shrank deeper into the gloom between the
van and the water-department truck.
At the back of the van, I tried to read the license plate. Although
usually I am plagued by too much light, this time I was hampered by too
little.
Frantically, I traced the seven numbers and letters with my
fingertips.
I wasn’t able to memorize them by braille reading, however, at least