(how did you hurt your back anyway, Arnie? and by the way, do you see anything green? do you see) he closed his eyes and for a moment the world seemed to lurch out of its orbit and he saw that green, grinning, rotting face floating before him, saying: Start her up. Get the heater going and let’s motorvate. And while we’re at it, let’s get the shitters that wrecked our car. Let’s grease the little cockknockers, kid, what do you say? Let’s hit them so fucking hard the corpse-cutter down at city, hospital will have to pull the paint-chips out of their carcasses with pliers. What do you say? Find some doowop music on the radio and let’s cruise. Let’s—

He groped back behind him, touched Christine—her hard, cool, reassuring surface—and things dropped back into place again. He opened his eyes.

“There’s only one other thing, really,” Junkins said, “and it’s very subjective. Nothing you could put on a report. You’re different this time, Arnie. Harder, somehow. It’s almost as if you’ve put on twenty years.”

Arnie laughed, and was relieved to hear it sounded quite natural. “Mr Junkins, you’ve got a screw loose.”

Junkins didn’t join him in his laughter. “Uh-huh. I know it. The whole thing is screwy—screwier than anything I’ve investigated in the ten years I’ve been a detective. Last time, I felt like I could reach you, Arnie. I felt you were… I don’t know. Lost, unhappy, groping around, trying to get out. Now I don’t feel that at all. I almost feel like I’m talking to a different person. Not a very nice one.”

“I’m done-talking to you,” Arnie said abruptly, and began walking toward the office.

“I want to know what happened,” Junkins called after him. “And I’m going to find out. Believe me.”

“Do me a favour and stay away from here,” Arnie said. “You’re crazy.”

He let himself into the office, closed the door behind him, and noticed his hands weren’t shaking at all. The room was stuffy with the smells of cigar and olive oil and garlic. He crossed in front of Will without speaking, took his time-card out of the rack, and punched in: ka-thud. Then he looked through the glass window and saw Junkins standing there, looking at Christine. Will said nothing. Arnie could hear the noisy engine of the big man’s respiration. A couple of minutes later Junkins left.

“Cop,” Will said, and ripped out a long belch. It sounded like a chainsaw.

“Yeah.”

“Repperton?”

“Yeah. He thinks I had something to do with it.”

“Even though you were in Philly?”

Arnie shook his head. “He doesn’t even seem to care about that.”

He’s a smart cop then, Will thought. He knows the facts are wrong, and his intuition tells him there’s something even wronger than that, so he’s gotten further with it than most cops ever would, but he could spend a million years and not get all the way to the truth. He thought of the empty car driving itself into stall twenty like some weird wind-up toy. The empty ignition slot turning over to START, The engine revving once, like a warning snarl, and then failing off.

And thinking of these things, Will did not trust himself to look Arnie in the face, even though his own experience in routine deceit was nearly lifelong.

“I don’t want to send you to Albany if the cops are watching you.”

“I don’t care if you send me to Albany or not, but you don’t have to worry about the heat. He’s the only cop I’ve seen, and he’s crazy. He’s not interested in anything but two cases of hit-and-run.”

Now Will’s eyes did meet Arnie’s: Arnie’s grey and distant, Will’s a faded no-colour, the corneas a dim yellow; they were the eyes of an ancient tomcat who has seen a thousand mice turned inside out.

“He’s interested in you,” he said. “I’d better send Jimmy.”

“You like the way Jimmy drives, do you?”

Will looked at Arnie for a moment and then sighed. Okay,” he said. “But if you see that cop, you back off. And if you get caught holding a bag, Cunningham, it’s your bag. Do you understand that?”

“Yes,” Arnie said. “Do you want me to do some work tonight, or what?”

“There’s a ’77 Buick in forty-nine. Pull the starter motor. Check the solenoid. If it seems okay, pull that too.”

Arnie nodded and left. Will’s thoughtful eyes drifted from his retreating back to Christine. He had no business sending him to Albany this weekend and he knew it. The kid knew it too, but he was going to push ahead anyway. He had said he’d go, and he was now going to by-God do it. And if anything happened, the kid would stand up. Will was sure of it. There was a time when he surely wouldn’t have done, but that time was past now.

He had heard it all on the intercom.

Junkins had been right.

The kid was harder now.

Will began to look at the kid’s ’58 again. Arnie would be taking Will’s Chrysler to New York. While he was gone, Will would watch Christine. He would watch Christine and see what happened.

Rudolph Junkins and Rick Mercer of the Pennsylvania State Police detective division sat drinking coffee the following afternoon in a glum little office with paint peeling from the walls. Outside, a depressing mixture of snow and sleet was falling.

“I’m pretty sure this is going to be the weekend,” Junkins said. “That Chrysler has rolled every four or five weeks for the last eight months.”

“Just understand that busting Darnell and whatever bee you’ve got in your bonnet about that kid are two different things.”

“They’re both the same thing to me,” Junkins replied. “The kid knows something. If I get him rattled, I may find out what it is.”

“You think he had an accomplice? Someone who used his car and killed those kids while he was at the chess tourney?”

Junkins shook his head. “No, goddammit. The kid has got exactly one good friend, and he’s in the hospital. I don’t know what I think, except that the car was involved… and he was involved too.”

Junkins put his Styrofoam coffee cup down and pointed at the man on the other side of the desk.

“Once we get that place closed down, I want a six-pack of lab technicians to go over it from stem to stern, inside and out. I want it up on a lift, I want it checked for dents bumps, repaint… and for blood. That’s what I really want, Rick. Just one drop of blood.”

“You don’t like that kid much, do you?” Rick asked.

Junkins uttered a bewildered little laugh. “You know, the first time I kind of did. I liked him and I felt sorry for him. I felt like maybe he was covering for somebody else who had something on him. But this time I didn’t like him at all.” He considered.

“And I didn’t like that car, either. The way he kept touching it every time I thought I had him on the ropes. It was spooky.”

Rick said, “As long as you remember that Darnell is the guy I’ve got to bust. No one in Harrisburg has the slightest interest in your kid.”

“I’ll remember,” Junkins said. He picked up his coffee again and looked at Rick grimly. “Because he’s a means to the end. I’m going to nail the person who killed those kids if it’s the last thing I ever do.”

“It may not even go down this weekend,” Rick said.

But it did.

Two plainclothes cops from Pennsylvania’s State Felony Squad sat in the cab of a four-year-old Datsun pickup on the morning of Saturday, December 16, watching as Will Darnell’s black Chrysler rolled out of the big door and into the street. A light drizzle was failing; it was not quite cold enough to be sleet. It was one of those misty days when it is impossible to tell where the lowering clouds end and the actual mist begins. The Chrysler was quite properly showing its parking lights. Arnie Cunningham was a safe driver.