Herb came out fast, as if he had been standing right inside the back door and watching through the screen all along, and sprinted across the nearly empty parking lot in the red light.
His face was both scared arid avid. Just as he arrived, George steamed back around the corner, waving a fresh battery for the video camera. He looked like a game-show contestant who has just won the grand prize.
‘Oh mother, what’s that smell?’ Herb asked, clapping his hand over his mouth and nose so that everything after mother came out muffled.
‘The smell isn’t the worst,’ Sandy said. ‘You better get a look while you still can.’
They both looked, and uttered almost identical cries of revulsion. The fish was blown out
all down its length by then, and deflating — sinking into the black liquor of its own strange blood. White billows rose from its body and the innards which had already spilled from that gaping flayment. The vapor was as thick as smoke rising from a pile of smoldering damp mulch. It obscured the Buick from its open trunk forward until Old ’54 was nothing but a ghost-car.
If there had been more to see, Sandy might actually have fumbled longer with the camera, perhaps getting the battery in wrongways on the first try or even knocking the whole works over and breaking it in his fumble-fingered haste. The fact that there was going to be damned little to tape no matter how fast he worked had a calming effect, and he snapped the battery home on the first try. When he looked into the viewfinder again, he had a clear, bright view of not much: a disappearing amphibious thing that might have been a fabulous landlocked sea monster or just a fishy version of the Cardiff Giant sitting on a concealed block of diy ice. On the tape one can see the pink tangle that served as the amphibian’s head quite clearly for perhaps ten seconds, and a number of rapidly liquefying red lumps strewn along its length; one can see what appears to be filthy seafoam sweating out of the thing’s tail and running across the concrete in a sluggish rill. Then the creature that convulsed its bulk out of the Roadmaster’s trunk is mostly gone, no more than a shadow in the mist. The car itself is hardly there. Even in the mist, however, the open trunk is visible, and it looks like a gaping mouth.
Come closer, children, see the living crocodile.
George stepped away, gagging and shaking his head. ‘Man, that smell!’
Sandy thought again of Curtis, who for a change had left as soon as his shift was over. He and Michelle had big plans — dinner at The Cracked Platter in Harrison, followed by a movie. The meal would be over by now and they’d be at the show. Which one? There were three within striking distance. If there had been kids instead of just a maybe baby, Sandy could have called the house and asked the sitter. But would he have made that call? Maybe not. Probably not, in fact. Curt had begun to settle a bit over the last eighteen months or so, and Sandy hoped that settling would continue. He had heard Tony say on more than one occasion that when it came to the PSP (or any law enforcement agency worth its salt), one could best assess a man’s worth by the truthful answer to a single question: How are things at home? It wasn’t just that the job was dangerous; it was also a crazy job, full of opportunities to see people at their absolute worst. To do it well over a long period of time, to do it fairly, a cop needed an anchor. Curt had Michelle, and now he had the baby (maybe). It would be better if he didn’t go bolting off to the barracks unless he absolutely had to, especially when he had to lie about the reason. A wife could swallow only so many rabid fox-tales and unexpected changes in the duty roster. He’d be angry that he hadn’t been called, angrier still when he saw the bitched-up videotape, but Sandy would deal with that. He’d have to. And Tony would be back. Tony would help him deal with it.
The following day was cool, with a fresh breeze. They rolled up Shed B’s big doors and let the place air out for six hours or so. Then four Troopers, led by Sandy and a stony-faced Trooper Wilcox, went in with hoses. They cleaned off the concrete and washed the final decaying lumps of the fish out into the tall grass behind the shed. It was really the story of the bat all over again, only with more mess and less to show at the end of the day. In the end it was more about Curtis Wilcox and Sandy Dearborn than it was about the ruins of that great unknown fish.
Curt was indeed furious at not having been called, and the two law enforcement officers had an extremely lively discussion on that subject — and others — when they had gotten to a place where no one else on the roster could possibly overhear. This turned out to be the parking lot behind The Tap, where they had gone for a beer after the clean-up operation was finished. In the bar it was just talking, but once outside, their voices started to climb. Pretty soon they were both trying to talk at the same time, and of course that led to shouting. It almost always does.
Man, I can’t believe, you didn’t call me.
You were off-duty, you were out with your wife, and besides, there was nothing to see.
I wish you’d let me decide—
There wasn’t—
— decide that, Sandy—
— any time! It all happened—
Least you could have done was get some half-decent video for the file—
Whose file are we talking about, Curtis? Huh? Whose goddam file?
By then the two of them were standing nose to nose, fists clenched, almost down to it. Yes, really on the verge of getting down to it. There are moments in a life that don’t matter and moments that do and some — maybe a dozen — “when everything is on a hinge. Standing there in the parking lot, wanting to sock the kid who was no longer a kid, the rookie who was no longer a rookie, Sandy realized he had come to one of those moments. He liked Curt, and Curt liked him. They had worked together well over the last years. But if this went any farther, all that would change. It depended on what he said next.
‘It smelled like a basket of minks.’ That was what he said. It was a remark that came from nowhere at all, at least nowhere he could pinpoint. ‘Even from the outside.’
‘How would you know what a basket of minks smelled like?’ Curt starting to smile. Just a little.
‘Call it poetic license.’ Sandy also starting to smile, but also only a little. They had turned in the right direction, but they weren’t out of the woods.
Then Curtis asked: ‘Did it smell worse than that whore’s shoes? The one from Rocksburg?’
Sandy started laughing. Curt joined him. And they were off the hinge, just like that.
‘Come on in,’ Curt said. ‘I’ll buy you another beer.’
Sandy didn’t want another beer, but he said okay. Because now it wasn’t about beer; it was about damage control. About putting the crap behind them.
Back inside, sitting in a corner booth, Curt said: ‘I’ve had my hands in that trunk, Sandy.
I’ve knocked on the bottom of it.’
‘Me too.’
‘And I’ve been under it on a crawler. It’s not a magician’s trick, like a box with a false bottom.’
‘Even if it was, that was no white rabbit that came out of there yesterday.’
Curtis said, ‘For things to disappear, they only have to be in the vicinity. But when things show up, they always come out of the trunk. Do you agree?’
Sandy thought it over. None of them had actually seen the bat-thing emerge from the Buick’s trunk, but the trunk had been open, all right. As for the leaves, yes — Phil Candleton had seen them swirling out.
‘Do you agree?’ Impatient now, his voice saying Sandy had to agree, it was so goddarn obvious.
‘It seems likely, but I don’t think we have enough evidence to be a hundred per cent sure yet,’ Sandy replied at last. He knew saying that made him hopelessly stodgy in Curtis’s eyes, but it was what he believed. ‘”One swallow doesn’t make a summer.” Ever heard that one?’
Curt stuck out his lower lip and blew an exasperated breath up his face. ‘”Plain as the nose on your face”, ever heard that one?’
‘Curt — ‘
Curt raised his hands as if to say no, no, they didn’t have to go back out into the parking lot and pick up where they had left off. ‘I see your point. Okay? I don’t agree, but I see it.’