From a Buick 8

  By then, they didn't know what it was.

  Older cops are entitled to their hunches, and Ennis had one as he and his young partner walked back to Brad Roach. Brad was standing beside the Roadmaster with the three nicely chromed portholes on one side and the four on the other. Ennis's hunch was that the oddities they had so far noticed were only the whipped cream on the sundae. If so, the less Mr. Roach saw now, the less he could talk about later. Which was why, although Ennis was extremely curious about the abandoned car and longed for a big dose of satisfaction, he turned it over to Curt while he himself escorted Bradley into the office. Once they were there, Ennis called for a wrecker to haul the Buick up to Troop D, where they could put it in the parking lot out back, at least for the time being. He also wanted to question Bradley while his recollections were relatively fresh. Ennis expected to get his own chance to look over their odd catch, and at his leisure, later on.

  "Someone modified it a little, I expect that's all" was what he said to Curt before taking Bradley into the office. Curt looked skeptical. Modifying was one thing, but this was just nuts. Removing one of the portholes, then refinishing the surface so expertly that the scar didn't even show? Replacing the usual Buick steering wheel with something that looked like it belonged in a cabin cruiser? Those were modifications?

  "Aw, just look it over while I do some business," Ennis said.

  "Can I check the mill?"

  "Be my guest. Only keep your mitts off the steering wheel, so we can get some prints if we need them. And use good sense. Try not to leave your own dabs anywhere."

  They had reached the pumps again. Brad Roach looked eagerly at the two cops, the one he would kill in the twenty-first century and the one who would be gone without a trace that very evening.

  "What do you think?" Brad asked. "Is he dead down there in the stream? Drownded? He is, isn't he?"

  "Not unless he crawled into the garbage can floating around in the crotch of that fallen tree and drowned there," Ennis said.

  Brad's face fell. "Aw, shit. Is that all it is?"

  "Fraid so. And it would be a tight fit for a grown man. Trooper Wilcox? Any questions for this young man?"

  Because he was still learning and Ennis was still teaching, Curtis did ask a few, mostly to make sure Bradley wasn't drunk and that he was in his right mind. Then he nodded to Ennis, who clapped Bradley on the shoulder as if they were old buddies.

  "Step inside with me, what do you say?" Ennis suggested. "Pour me a slug of mud and we'll see if we can figure this thing out." And he led Brad away. The friendly arm slung around Bradley Roach's shoulder was very strong, and it just kept hustling Brad along toward the office, Trooper Rafferty talking a mile a minute the whole time.

  As for Trooper Wilcox, he got about three-quarters of an hour with that Buick before the county tow showed up with its orange light flashing. Forty-five minutes isn't much time, but it was enough to turn Curtis into a lifetime Roadmaster Scholar. True love always happens in a flash, they say.

  Ennis drove as they headed back to Troop D behind the tow-truck and the Buick, which rode on the clamp with its nose up and its rear bumper almost dragging on the road. Curt rode shotgun, in his excitement squirming like a little kid who needs to make water. Between them, the Motorola police radio, scuffed and beat-up, the victim of God knew how many coffee and cola-dousings but still as tough as nails, blatted away on channel 23, Matt Babicki and the Troopers in the field going through the call-and-response that was the constant background soundtrack of their lives. It was there, but neither Ennis nor Curt heard it anymore unless their own number came up.

  "The first thing's the engine," Curt said. "No, I suppose the first thing's the hood-latch. It's way over on the driver's side, and you push it in rather than pulling it out--"

  "Never heard of that before," Ennis grunted.

  "You wait, you wait," his young partner said. "I found it, anyway, and lifted the hood. The engine . . . man, that engine . . ."

  Ennis glanced at him with the expression of a man who's just had an idea that's too horribly plausible to deny. The yellow glow from the revolving light on the tow-truck's cab pulsed on his face like jaundice. "Don't you dare tell me it doesn't have one," he said. "Don't dare tell me it doesn't have anything but a glow-crystal or some damn thing like in Dumbwit's flying saucers."

  Curtis laughed. The sound was both cheerful and wild. "No, no, there's an engine, but it's all wrong. It says BUICK 8 on both sides of the engine block in big chrome letters, as if whoever made it was afraid of forgetting what the damn thing was. There are eight plugs, four on each side, and that's right--eight cylinders, eight sparkplugs--but there's no distributor cap and no distributor, not that I can see. No generator or alternator, either."

  "Get out!"

  "Ennis, if I'm lyin I'm dyin."

  "Where do the sparkplug wires go?"

  "Each one makes a big loop and goes right back into the engine block, so far as I can tell."

  "Get . . . out!"

  "Yes! But listen, Ennis, just listen!" Stop interrupting and let me talk, in other words. Curtis Wilcox squirming in his seat but never taking his eyes off the Buick being towed along in front of him.

  "All right, Curt. I'm listening."

  "It's got a radiator, but so far as I can tell, there's nothing inside it. No water and no antifreeze. There's no fanbelt, which sort of makes sense, because there's no fan."

  "Oil?"

  "There's a crankcase and the dipstick is normal, except there's no markings on it. There's a battery, a Delco, but Ennis, dig this, it's not hooked up to anything. There are no battery cables."

  "You're describing a car that couldn't possibly run," Ennis said flatly.

  "Tell me about it. I took the key out of the ignition. It's on an ordinary chain, but the chain's all there is. No fob with initials or anything."

  "Other keys?"

  "No. And the ignition key's not really a key. It's just a slot of metal, about so long." Curt held his thumb and forefinger a key's length apart.

  "A blank, is that what you're talking about? Like a keymaker's blank?"

  " No . It's nothing like a key at all. It's just a little steel stick."

  "Did you try it?"

  Curt, who had been talking almost compulsively, didn't answer that at once.

  "Go on," Ennis said. "I'm your partner, for Christ's sake. I'm not going to bite you."

  "All right, yeah, I tried it. I wanted to see if that crazy engine worked."

  "Of course it works. Someone drove it in, right?"

  "Roach says so, but when I got a good look under that hood, I had to wonder it he was lying or maybe hypnotized. Anyway, it's still an open question. The key-thing won't turn. It's like the ignition's locked."

  "Where's the key now?"

  "I put it back in the ignition."

  Ennis nodded. "Good. When you opened the door, did the dome light come on? Or isn't there one?"

  Curtis paused, thinking back. "Yeah. There was a dome light, and it came on. I should have noticed that. How could it come on, though? How could it, when the battery's not hooked up?"

  "There could be a couple of C-cells powering the dome light, for all we know." But his lack of belief was clear in his voice.

  "What about the circuit from the door to the light? Are C-cells running that, too?"

  But Ennis was tired of discussing the dome light. "What else?"

  "I saved the best for last," Curtis told him. "I had to do some touching inside, but I used a hanky, and I know where I touched, so don't bust my balls."

  Ennis said nothing out loud, but gave the kid a look that said he'd bust Curt's balls if they needed busting.

  "The dashboard controls are all fake, just stuck on there for show. The radio knobs don't turn and neither does the heater control knob. The lever you slide to switch on the defroster doesn't move. Feels like a post set in concrete."

  Ennis followed the tow-truck into the driveway that ran around to the back of Troop D. "W
hat else? Anything?"

  "More like everything. It's fucked to the sky." This impressed Ennis, because Curtis wasn't ordinarily a profane man. "You know that great big steering wheel? I think that's probably fake, too. I shimmied it--just with the sides of my hands, don't have a hemorrhage--and it turns a little bit, left and right, but only a little bit. Maybe it's just locked, like the ignition, but . . ."

  "But you don't think so."

  "No. I don't."

  The tow-truck parked in front of Shed B. There was a hydraulic whine and the Buick came out of its snout-up, tail-down posture, settling back on its whitewalls. The tow driver, old Johnny Parker, came around to unhook it, wheezing around the Pall Mall stuck in his gob. Ennis and Curt sat in Cruiser D-19 meanwhile, looking at each other.

  "What the hell we got here?" Ennis asked finally. "A car that can't drive and can't steer cruises into the Jenny station out on Route 32 and right up to the hi-test pump. No tags. No sticker . . ." An idea struck him. "Registration? You check for that?"

  "Not on the steering post," Curt said, opening his door, impatient to get out. The young are always impatient. "Not in the glove compartment, either, because there is no glove compartment. There's a handle for one, and there's a latch-button, but the button doesn't push, the handle doesn't pull, and the little door doesn't open. It's just stage-dressing, like everything else on the dashboard. The dashboard itself is bullshit. Cars didn't come with wooden dashboards in the fifties. Not American ones, at least."

  They got out and stood looking at the orphan Buick's back deck. "Trunk?" Ennis asked. "Does that open?"

  "Yeah. It's not locked. Push the button and it pops open like the trunk of any other car. But it smells lousy."

  "Lousy how?"

  "Swampy."

  "Any dead bodies in there?"

  "No bodies, no nothing."

  "No spare tire? Not even a jack?"

  Curtis shook his head. Johnny Parker came over, pulling off his work gloves. "Be anything else, men?"

  Ennis and Curt shook their heads.

  Johnny started away, then stopped. "What the hell is that, anyway? Someone's idea of a joke?"

  "We don't know yet," Ennis told him.

  Johnny nodded. "Well, if you find out, let me know. Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back. You know?"

  "Whole lot of satisfaction," Curt said automatically. The business about curiosity and the cat was a part of Troop D life, not quite an in-joke, just something that had crept into the day-to-day diction of the job.

  Ennis and Curt watched the old man go. "Anything else you want to pass on before we talk to Sergeant Schoondist?" Ennis asked.

  "Yeah," Curtis said. "It's earthquake country in there."

  "Earthquake country? Just what in the hell does that mean?"

  So Curtis told Ennis about a show he'd seen on the PBS station out of Pittsburgh just the week before. By then a number of people had drifted over. Among them were Phil Candleton, Arky Arkanian, Sandy Dearborn, and Sergeant Schoondist himself.

  The program had been about predicting earthquakes. Scientists were a long way from developing a sure-fire way of doing that, Curtis said, but most of them believed it could be done, in time. Because there were forewarnings. Animals felt them, and quite often people did, too. Dogs got restless and barked to be let outside. Cattle ran around in their stalls or knocked down the fences of their pastures. Caged chickens sometimes flapped so frantically they broke their wings. Some people claimed to hear a high humming sound from the earth fifteen or twenty minutes before a big temblor (and if some people could hear that sound, it stood to reason that most animals would hear it even more clearly). Also, it got cold. Not everyone felt these odd pre-earthquake cold pockets, but a great many people did. There was even some meteorological data to support the subjective reports.

  "Are you shitting me?" Tony Schoondist asked.

  No indeed, Curt replied. Two hours before the big quake of 1906, temperatures in San Francisco had dropped a full seven degrees; that was a recorded fact. This although all other weather conditions had remained constant.

  "Fascinating," Ennis said, "but what's it got to do with the Buick?"

  By then there were enough Troopers present to form a little circle of listeners. Curtis looked around at them, knowing he might spend the next six months or so tagged the Earthquake Kid on radio calls, but too jazzed to care. He said that while Ennis was in the gas station office questioning Bradley Roach, he himself had been sitting behind that strange oversized steering wheel, still being careful not to touch anything except with the sides of his hands. And as he sat there, he started to hear a humming sound, very high. He told them he had felt it, as well.

  "It came out of nowhere, this high steady hum. I could feel it buzzing in my fillings. I think if it had been much stronger, it would've actually jingled the change in my pocket. There's a word for that, we learned it in physics, I think, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is."

  "A harmonic," Tony said. "That's when two things start to vibrate together, like tuning-forks or wine-glasses."

  Curtis was nodding. "Yeah, that's it. I don't know what could be causing it, but it's very powerful. It seemed to settle right in the middle of my head, the way the sound of the powerlines up on the Bluff does when you're standing right underneath them. This is going to sound crazy, but after a minute or so, that hum almost sounded like talking."

  "I laid a girl up dere on d'Bluffs once," Arky said sentimentally, sounding more like Lawrence Welk than ever. "And it was pretty harmonic, all right. Buzz, buzz, buzz."

  "Save it for your memoirs, bub," Tony said. "Go on, Curtis."

  "I thought at first it was the radio," Curt said, "because it sounded a little bit like that, too: an old vacuum-tube radio that's on and tuned to music coming from a long way off. So I took my hanky and reached over to kill the power. That's when I found out the knobs don't move, either of them. It's no more a real radio than . . . well, than Phil Candleton's a real State Trooper."

  "That's funny, kid," Phil said. "At least as funny as a rubber chicken, I guess, or--"

  "Shut up, I want to hear this," Tony said. "Go on, Curtis. And leave out the comedy."

  "Yes, sir. By the time I tried the radio knobs, I realized it was cold in there. It's a warm day and the car was sitting in the sun, but it was cold inside. Sort of clammy, too. That's when I thought of the show about earthquakes." Curt shook his head slowly back and forth. "I got a feeling that I should get out of that car, and fast. By then the hum was quieting down, but it was colder than ever. Like an icebox."

  Tony Schoondist, then Troop D's Sergeant Commanding, walked over to the Buick. He 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 wa
s 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.