About twenty minutes into it, Orv Garrett came out with Mister Dillon. The dog was on his leash, which was a rarity around the barracks. Sandy walked over to them. The dog wasn't howling, had quit trembling, and was sitting with his brush of tail curled neatly over his paws, but his dark brown eyes were fixed on the Buick and never moved. From deep in his chest, almost too low to hear, came a steady growl like the rumble of a powerful motor.
'For Chrissake, Orvie, take him back inside,' Sandy Dearborn said.
'Okay. I just thought he might be over it by now.' He paused, then said: 'I've heard bloodhounds act that way sometimes, when they've found a body. I know there's no body, but do you think someone might have died in there?'
'Not that we know of.' Sandy was watching Tony Schoondist come out of the barracks' side door and amble over to Bibi Roth. Ennis was with him. Curt Wilcox was out on patrol again, much against his wishes. Sandy doubted that even pretty girls would be able to talk him into giving them warnings instead of tickets that afternoon. Curt wanted to be at the barracks, watching Bibi and his crew at work, not out on the road; if he couldn't be, lawbreakers in western Pennsylvania would pay.
Mister Dillon opened his mouth and let loose a long, low whine, as if something in him hurt.
Sandy supposed something did. Orville took him inside. Five minutes later Sandy himself was rolling again, along with Steve Devoe, to the scene of a two-car collision out on Highway 6.
Bibi Roth made his report to Tony and Ennis as the members of his crew (there were three of them today) sat at a picnic table in the shade of Shed B, eating sandwiches and drinking the iced tea Matt Babicki had run out to them.
'I appreciate you taking the time to do this,' Tony said.
'Your appreciation is appreciated,' Bibi said, 'and I hope it ends there. I don't want to submit any paperwork on this one, Tony. No one would ever trust me again.' He looked at his crew and clapped his hands like Miss Frances on Ding-Dong School. 'Do we want paperwork on this job, children?' One of the children who helped that day was appointed Pennsylvania's Chief Medical Examiner in 1993.
They looked at him, two young men and a young woman of extraordinary beauty. Their sandwiches were raised, their brows creased. None of them was sure what response was required.
'No, Bibi!' he prompted them.
'No, Bibi,' they chorused dutifully.
'No what?' Bibi asked.
'No paperwork,' said young man number one.
'No file copies,' said young man number two.
'No duplicate or triplicate,' said the young woman of extraordinary beauty. 'Not even any singlicate.'
'Good!' he said. 'And with whom are we going to discuss this, kinder?'
This time they needed no prompting. 'No one, Bibi!'
'Exactly,' Bibi agreed. 'I'm proud of you.'
'Got to be a joke, anyway,' said one of the young men. 'Someone's trickin on you, Sarge.'
'I'm keeping that possibility in mind,' Tony said, -wondering what any of them would have thought if they had seen Mister Dillon howling and hunching forward like a crippled thing. Mister D hadn't been trickin on anybody.
The children went back to munching and slurping and talking among themselves. Bibi, meanwhile, was looking at Tony and Ennis Rafferty with a slanted little smile.
'They see what they look at with youth's wonderful twenty-twenty vision and don't see it at the same time,' he said. 'Young people are such wonderful idiots. What is that thing, Tony? Do you have any idea? From witnesses, perhaps?'
'No.'
Bibi turned his attention to Ennis, who perhaps thought briefly about telling the man what he knew of the Buick's story and then decided not to. Bibi was a good man . . . but he didn't wear the gray.
'It's not an automobile, that's for sure,' Bibi said. 'But a joke? No, I don't think it's that, either.'
'Is there blood?' Tony asked, not knowing if he wanted there to be or not.
'Only more microscopic examination of the samples we took can determine that for sure, but I think not. Certainly no more than trace amounts, if there is.'
'What did you see?'
'In a word, nothing. We took no samples from the tire treads because there's no dirt or mud or pebbles or glass or grass or anything else in them. I would have said that was impossible. Henry there - ' He pointed to young man number one. ' - kept trying to wedge a pebble between two of them and it kept falling out. Now what is that? And could you patent such a thing? If you could, Tony, you could take early retirement.'
Tony was rubbing his cheek with the tips of his fingers, the gesture of a perplexed man.
'Listen to this,' Bibi said. 'We're talking floormats here. Great little dirtcatchers, as a rule. Every one a geological survey. Usually. Not here, though. A few smudges of dirt, a dandelion stalk. That's all.' He looked at Ennis. 'From your partner's shoes, I expect. You say he got behind the wheel?'
'Yes.'
'Driver's-side footwell. And that's where these few artifacts were found.' Bibi patted his palms together, as if to say QED.
'Are there prints?' Tony asked.
