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.
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 started shaking 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 forensics 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 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 examination 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.
‘Not to mention the man-hours,’ Phil added.
I said, ‘Tony didn’t want to start a paper trail. Remember that there wasn’t one at that point.
All he had was a car. A very weird car, granted, one with no license plates, no registration, and — Bibi Roth confirmed this — no VIN number, either.’
‘But Roach had reason to believe the owner drowned in the stream behind the gas station!’
‘Pooh,’ Shirley said. ‘The driver’s overcoat turned out to be a plastic garbage can. So much for Bradley Roach’s ideas.’
‘Plus,’ Phil put in, ‘Ennis arid your dad observed no tracks going down the slope behind the station, and the grass was still wet. If the guy had gone down there, he would have left sign.’
‘Mostly, Tony wanted to keep it in-house,’ Shirley said. ‘Would you say that’s a fair way to put it, Sandy?’
‘Yes. The Buick itself was strange, but our way of dealing with it wasn’t much different from the way we’d deal with anything out of the ordinary: a Trooper down — like your father, last year — or one who’s used his weapon, or an accident, like when George Morgan was in hot pursuit of that crazy asshole who snatched his kids.’
We were all silent for a moment. Cops have nightmares, any Trooper’s wife will tell you that, and in the bad dream department, George Morgan was one of the worst. He’d been doing ninety, closing in on the crazy asshole, who had a habit of beating the kids he had snatched and claimed to love, when it happened.