I remained silent.
“Someone punctured our tires.” Lucy’s face was stone.
“Every goddamn one of them. With some kind of wide blade, it looks to me. Maybe a big knife or machete.”
“The moral of the story is that it sure as hell wasn’t some misguided neighbor or night diver on your property,” he went on. “I think we’re talking about someone who had a mission. And when he got scared off, he came back or somebody else did.”
I got up for coffee. “How long will it take to get our cars fixed?”
“Today?” he said. “I don’t think it’s possible for you or Lucy to get your rides fixed today.”
“It’s got to be possible,” I matter-of-factly stated. “We have to get out of here, Marino.
We need to see Eddings’ house. And right now it doesn’t seem all too safe in this one.”
“I’d say that’s a fair assessment,” Lucy said.
I moved close to the window over the sink and could plainly see our vehicles with tires that looked like black rubber puddles in the snow.
“They’re punctured on the sides versus the tread, and can’t be plugged,” Marino said.
“Then what are we going to do?” I asked.
“Richmond’s got reciprocal agreements with other police departments, and I’ve already talked to Virginia Beach.
They’re on their way.”
His car needed police tires and rims, while Lucy’s and mine needed Goodyears and Michelins because, unlike Marino, we were here in our personal vehicles. I pointed all this out to him.
“We got a flatbed truck on the way for you,” he said as I sat back down. “Sometime during the next few hours they’ll load up your Benz and Lucy’s piece of shit and haul them into Bell Tire Service on Virginia Beach Boulevard.”
“It’s not a piece of shit,” Lucy said.
“Why the hell did you buy anything the color of parrot shit? That your Miami roots coming out, or what?”
“No, it’s my budget coming out. I got it for nine hundred dollars.”
“What about in the meantime?” I asked. “You know they won’t take care of this speedily. It’s New Year’s Day.”
“You got that right,” he said. “And it’s pretty simple, Doc. If you’re going to Richmond, you’re riding with me.”
“Fine.” I wasn’t going to argue. “Then let’s get as much done now as we can so we can leave.”
“Starting with your getting packed,” he said to me. “in my opinion, you should boogie right on out of here for good.”
“I have no choice but to stay here until Dr. Mant returns from London.”
Yet I packed as if I might not be coming back to his cottage during this life. Then we conducted the best forensic investigation we could on our own, for slashing tires was a misdemeanor, and we knew the local police would not be especially enthused about our case. III-equipped to make tread-pattern casts, we simply took photographs to scale of the footprints around our cars, although I suspected the most we would ever be able to tell from them was that the suspect was large and wore a generic-type boot or shoe with a Vibram seal on the arch of the rugged tread.
When a youthful policeman named Sanders and a red tow truck arrived late morning, I took two ruined radials and locked them inside the trunk of Marino’s car. For a while I watched men in jumpsuits and insulated jackets twirl handjacks with amazing speed as a winch held the Ford’s front end rampant in the air, as if Marino’s car were about to fly. Virginia Beach officer Sanders asked if my being the chief medical examiner might possibly be related to what had been done to our vehicles. I told him I did not think so.
“It’s my deputy chief who lives at this address,” I went on to explain. “Dr. Philip Mant.
He’s in London for a month or so. I’m simply covering for him.”
“And no one knows you’re staying here?” asked Sanders, who was no fool.
“Certainly, some people know. I’ve been taking his calls.”
“So you don’t see that this might be related to who you are and what you do, ma’am.”