People were downright nasty when they were away from home. Not all, of course, but a surprising number.
Right now, that cardboard wedge was poking out of the crack between the door and the jamb, just above the latch exactly where it worked the best. All the same, Brad opened the door to check, catching the little cardboard wedge neatly as it fell — as neatly as he would learn to open a bottle of beer on the driver’s-side handle of his own Buick in later years. The little cubicle was empty, just as he’d known in his heart it would be. No sign that the toilet had been used, and there had been no sound of a flush as Brad sat in the office reading his paper. No beads of water on the rust-stained sides of the basin, either.
It occurred to Brad then that the guy hadn’t come around the side of the station to use the can but to take a look at Redfern Stream, which was pretty enough to warrant a peek (or even a snap of the old Kodak) from a passerby, running as it did with the Statler Bluffs on its north side and all those willows up on top, spreading out green like a mermaid’s hair (there was a poet in the boy, all right, a regular Dylan Thomas). But around back there was no sign of the Buick’s driver, either, only discarded auto parts and a couple of ancient tractor-axles lying in
the weeds like rusty bones.
The stream was babbling at the top of its lungs, running broad and foamy. Its swelling would be a temporary condition, of course — floods in western PA are spring events, as a rule — but that day the normally sleepy Redfern was quite the torrent.
Seeing how high the water was gave rise to a horrifying possibility in Bradley Roach’s mind. He measured the steep slope down to the water. The grass was still wet with rain and probably goddanged slippery, especially if an unsuspecting SKA came thee-ing and thou-ing along in shoes with slippery leather soles. As he considered this, the possibility hardened to a near certainty in his mind. Nothing else explained the unused shithouse and the car still waiting at the hi-test pump, all loaded and ready to go, key still in the ignition. Old Mr Buick Roadmaster had gone around back for a peek at the Redfern, had foolishly dared the embankment slope to get an even better look . . . and then whoops, there goes your ballgame.
Bradley worked his own way down to the water’s edge, slipping a couple of times in spite of his Georgia Giants but not falling, always keeping near some hunk of junk he could grab if he did lose his footing. There was no sign of the man at the water’s edge, but when Brad looked downstream, he saw something caught in the lee of a fallen birch about two hundred yards from where he stood. Bobbing up and down. Black. It could have been Mr Buick Roadmaster’s coat.
‘Aw, shit,’ he said, and hurried back to the office to call Troop D, which was at least two miles closer to his location than the local cop-shop. And that was how
NOW:
Sandy
we got into it,’ I said. ‘Shirley’s predecessor was a guy named Matt Babicki. He gave the call to Ennis Rafferty — ‘
‘Why Ennis, Ned?’ Shirley asked. ‘Quick as you can.’
‘CAU,’ he said at once. ‘Closest available unit.’ But his mind wasn’t on that, and he never looked at her. His eyes were fixed on me.
‘Ennis was fifty-five and looking forward to a retirement he never got to enjoy,’ I said.
‘And my father was with him, wasn’t he? They were partners.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
There was plenty more to tell, but first he needed to get past this. 1 was quiet, letting him get used to the idea that his father and Roach, the man who had killed him, had once stood face to face and conversed like normal human beings. There Curtis had been, listening to Bradley Roach talk, flipping open his notebook, starting to jot down a time-sequence. By then Ned knew the drill, how we work fresh cases.
I had an idea this was what would stick with the kid no matter what else I had to tell him, no matter how wild and woolly the narrative might get. The image of the manslaughterer and his victim standing together not four minutes’ brisk walk from where their lives would again collide, this time with a mortal thud, twenty-two years later.
‘How old was he?’ Ned almost whispered. ‘My dad, how old was he on the day you’re telling me about?’
He could have figured it out for himself, 1 suppose, but he was just too stunned. ‘Twenty-four,’ I said. It was easy. Short lives make for simple mathematics. ‘He’d been in the Troop about a year. Same deal then as now, two Troopers per cruiser only on the eleven-to-seven, rookies the single exception to the rule. And your dad was still a rookie. So he was paired with Enriis on days.’
‘Ned, are you all right?’ Shirley asked. It was a fair question. All of the color had gradually drained out of the kid’s face.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. He looked at her, then at Arky, then at Phil Candleton. The same look directed to all three, half-bewildered and half-accusing. ‘How much of this did you
know?’
‘All of it,’ Arky said. He had a little Nordic lilt in his voice that always made me think of Lawrence Welk going ah-one and ah-two, now here’s da lovely Lennon Sisters, don’t dey look swede. ‘It was no secret. Your dad and Bradley Roach got on all right back den. Even later. Curtis arrested him tree-four times in the eighties — ‘
‘Hell, five or six,’ Phil rumbled. ‘That was almost always his beat, you know. Five or six at least. One time he drove that dimwit direct to an AA meeting and made him stay, but it didn’t do any good.’
‘Your dad’s job was bein a Statie,’ Arky said, ‘and by d’middle of d’eighties, Brad’s job —
his full-time job — was drinkin. Usually while he drove around d’back roads. He loved doin dat. So many of em do.’ Arky sighed. ‘Anyway, given dem two jobs, boy, dey was almos certain to bump heads from time to time.’
‘From time to time,’ Ned repeated, fascinated. It was as if the concept of time had gained a new dimension for him. I supposed it had.
‘But all dat was stric’ly business. Cep maybe for dat Buick. Dey had dat between em all d’years after.’ He nodded in the direction of Shed B. ‘Ned, dat Buick hung between em like warsh on a close’line. No one’s ever kep d’Buick a secret, eider — not exacly, not on purpose
— but I spec it’s kinda one, anyway.’
Shirley was nodding. She reached over and took Ned’s hand, and he let it be taken.
‘People ignore it, mostly,’ she said, ‘the way they always ignore things they don’t understand . . . as long as they can, anyway.’
‘Sometimes we can’t afford to ignore it,’ Phil said. ‘We knew that as soon as . . . well, let Sandy tell it.’ He looked back at me. They all did. Ned’s gaze was the brightest.
I lit a cigarette and started talking again.
THEN
Ennis Rafferty found his binoculars in his tackle box, which went with him from car to car during fishing season. Once he had them, he and Curt Wilcox went down to Redfern Stream for the same reason the bear went over the mountain: to see what they could see.
‘Whaddya want me to do?’ Brad asked as they walked away from him.
‘Guard the car and think about your story,’ Ennis said.
‘Story? Why would I need a story?’ Sounding a little nervous about it. Neither Ennis nor Curt answered.
Easing down the weedy slope, each of them ready to grab the other if he slipped, Ennis said: ‘That car isn’t right. Even Bradley Roach knows that, and he’s pretty short in the old IQ
department.’
Curt was nodding even before the older man had finished. ‘It’s like a picture in this activity book I had when I was a kid. FIND TEN THINGS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.’
‘By God, it is!’ Ennis was struck by this idea. He liked the young man he was partnered with, and thought he was going to make a good Trooper once he got a little salt on his skin.
They had reached the edge of the stream by then. Ennis went for his binocs, which he had hung over his neck by the strap. ‘No inspection sticker. No damn license plates. And the wheel! Curtis, did you see how big that thing is?’
Curt nodded.
‘No antenna for the radio,’ Ennis continued, ‘and no mud on the body. How’d it get up Route 32 without getting some mud on it? We were splashing up puddles everywhere. There’s even crud on the -windshield.’