Dicky-Duck Eliot, perhaps not the swiftest horse ever to canter around life's great racetrack, wanted to know why they were keeping gerbils in the Buick. Wasn't that sort of dangerous?
'Well, we'll see about that, won't we?' Tony asked in an oddly gentle voice. 'We'll just see if it is or not.'
On a day not long after Troop D acquired Jimmy and Roslyn, Tony Schoondist crossed his own personal Rubicon and lied to the press.
Not that the representative of the Fourth Estate was in this case very impressive, just a weedy redheaded boy of twenty or so, a summer intern at The Statler County American who would be going back to Ohio State in another week or so. He had a way of listening to you with his mouth hung partway open that made him look, in Arky's words, like a stark raving natural-born fool. But he wasn't a fool, and he'd spent most of one golden September afternoon listening to Mr Bradley Roach. Brad gave the young reporter quite an earful about the man with the Russian accent (by this time Brad was positive the guy had been Russian) and the car the man had left behind. The weedy redhead, Homer Oosler by name, wanted to do a feature story on all of this and go back to college with a bang. Sandy thought the young man could imagine a front-page headline with the words MYSTERY CAR in it. Perhaps even RUSSIAN SPY'S MYSTERY CAR.
Tony never hesitated, just went ahead and lied. He undoubtedly would have done the same thing even if the reporter presenting himself that day had been case-hardened old Trevor Ronnick, who owned the American and had forgotten more stories than the redhead would ever write.
'Car's gone,' Tony said, and there it was: lie told, Rubicon crossed.
'Gone?' Homer Oosler asked, clearly disappointed. He had a big old Minolta camera on his lap.
PROPERTY OF COUNTY AMERICAN was Dymotaped across the back of the case. 'Gone where?'
'State Impound Bureau,' Tony said, creating this impressive-sounding organization on the spot.
'In Philly.'
'Why?'
'They auction unclaimed rolling iron. After they search em for drugs, of course.'
'Course. Do you have any paperwork on it?'
'Must have,' Tony said. 'Got it on everything else. I'll look for it, give you a ring.'
'How long do you think that'll take, Sergeant Schoondist?'
'Awhile, son.' Tony waved his hand at his in/out basket, which was stacked high with papers.
Oosler didn't need to know that most of them were the week's junkalogue from Scranton - everything from updates on retirement benefits to the schedule for autumn softball - and would be in the wastebasket before the Sarge went home. That weary wave of the hand suggested that there were similar piles of paper everywhere. 'Hard keeping up with all this stuff, you know. They say things'll change when we start getting computerized, but that won't be this year.'
'I go back to school next week.'
Tony leaned forward in his chair and looked at Oosler keenly. 'And I hope you work hard,' he said. 'It's a tough world out there, son, but if you work hard you can make it.'
A couple of days after Homer Oosler's visit, the Buick fired up another of its lightstorms. This time it happened on a day that was filled with bright sun, but it was still pretty spectacular.
And all Curtis's worries about missing the next manifestation proved groundless.
The shed's temperature made it clear the Buick was building up to something again, dropping from the mid- seventies to the upper fifties over a course of five days. Everyone became anxious to take a turn out in the hutch; everyone wanted to be the one on duty when it happened, whatever
'it' turned out to be this time.
Brian Cole won the lottery, but all the Troopers at the barracks shared the experience at least to some extent. Brian went into Shed B at around two p.m. to check on Jimmy and Roslyn. They were fine as paint, Roslyn in the habitat's dining room and Jimmy busting heavies on the exercise wheel in the gym. But as Brian leaned farther into the Buick to check the water reservoir, he heard a humming noise. It was deep and steady, the kind of sound that vibrates your eyes in their sockets and rattles your fillings. Below it (or entwined with it) was something a lot more disturbing, a kind of scaly, wordless whispering. A purple glow, very dim, was spreading slowly across the dashboard and the steering wheel.
Mindful of Ennis Rafferty, gone with no forwarding address for well over a month by then, Trooper Cole vacated the Buick's vicinity in a hurry. He proceeded without panic, however, taking the video camera from the hutch, screwing it on to its tripod, loading in a fresh tape, checking the time-code (it was correct) and the battery level (all the way in the green). He turned on the overheads before going back out, then placed the tripod in front of one of the windows, hit the RECORD button, and double-checked to make sure the Buick was centered in the viewfinder. It was.
He started toward the barracks, then snapped his fingers and went back to the hutch. There was a little bag filled with camera accessories in there. One of them was a brightness filter. Brian attached this to the video camera's lens without bothering to hit the PAUSE button (for one moment the big dark shapes of his hands blot out the image of the Buick, and when they leave the frame again the Buick reappears as if in a deep twilight). If there had been anyone there watching him go about his business - one of those visiting John Q.'s curious about how his tax dollars were spent, perhaps - he never would have guessed how fast Trooper Cole's heart was beating. He was afraid as well as excited, but he did okay. When it comes to dealing with the unknown, there's a great deal to be said for a good shot of police training. All in all, he forgot only one thing.
He poked his head into Tony's office at about seven minutes past two and said, 'Sarge, I'm pretty sure something's happening with the Buick.'
Tony looked up from his yellow legal pad, where he was scribbling the first draft of a speech he was supposed to give at a law enforcement symposium that fall, and said: 'What's that in your hand, Bri?'
Brian looked down and saw he was holding the gerbils' water reservoir. 'Ah, what the hell,' he said. 'They may not need it anymore, anyway.'
