'Kubrick, copy,' Shirley said. She seemed steadier now that she had orders. 'Do you - '
There was a loud bang. Shirley gave a small scream and all three of us turned toward the shed, reaching for our weapons as we did. Then Huddle laughed. The breeze had blown the shed door closed.
'Go on, Shirley,' George said. 'Get the Sarge. Let's make this happen.'
'And Brian Lippy?' I asked. 'No APB?'
Huddie sighed. Took off his hat. Rubbed the nape of his neck. Looked up at the sky. Put his hat back on. 'I don't know,' he said. 'But if one does go out, it won't be any of us who puts it out. That's the Sarge's call. It's why they pay him the big bucks.'
'Good point,' George said. Now that he saw that the responsibility was going to travel on, he looked a little more relaxed.
Shirley turned to go into the barracks, then looked back over her shoulder. 'Cover him up, would you?' she said. 'Poor old Mister D. Put something over him. Looking at him that way hurts my heart.'
'Good idea,' I said, and started toward the shed.
'Eddie?' Huddie said.
'Yeah?'
'There's a piece of tarp big enough to do the job in the hutch. Use that. Don't go into the shed.'
'Why not?'
'Because something's still going on with that Buick. Hard to tell exactly what, but if you go in there, you might not come back out.'
'All right,' I said. 'You don't have to twist my arm.'
I got the piece of tarp out of the hutch - just a flimsy blue thing, but it would do. On the way back to cover D's body, I stopped at the roll-up door and took a look into the shed, cupping one hand to the side of my face to cut the glare. I wanted a look at the thermometer; I also wanted to make sure my old school chum Brian wasn't skulkassing around in there. He wasn't, and the temperature appeared to have gone up a degree or two. Only one thing in the landscape had changed. The trunk was shut.
The crocodile had closed its mouth.
NOW:
Sandy
Shirley, Huddie, Eddie: the sound of their entwined voices was oddly beautiful to me, like the voices of characters speaking lines in some strange play. Eddie said the crocodile had closed its mouth and then his voice ceased and I waited for one of the other voices to come in and when none did and Eddie himself didn't resume, I knew it was over. I knew but Ned Wilcox didn't. Or maybe he did and just didn't want to admit it
'Well?' he said, and that barely disguised impatience was back in his voice.
What happened when you dissected the bat-thing? Tell me about the fish. Tell me everything.
But - this is important - tell me a story, one that has a beginning and a middle and an end where everything is explained. Because I deserve that. Don't shake the rattle of your ambiguity in my face. I deny its place. I repudiate its claim. I want a story.
He was young and that explained part of it, he was faced with something that was, as they say, not of this Earth, and that explained more of it . . . but there was something else, too, and it wasn't pretty. A kind of selfish, single-minded grubbing. And he thought he had a right. We spoil the grief-stricken, have you ever noticed that? And they become used to the treatment.
'Well what?' I asked. I spoke in my least encouraging voice. Not that it would help.
'What happened when Sergeant Schoondist and my father got back? Did you catch Brian Lippy? Did he see? Did he tell? Jesus, you guys can't stop there!'
He was wrong, we could stop anyplace we chose to, but I kept that fact to myself (at least for the time being) and told him that no, we never did catch Brian Lippy; Brian Lippy remained Code Kubrick to this very day.
'Who wrote the report?' Ned asked. 'Did you, Eddie? Or was it Trooper Morgan?'
'George,' he said with a trace of a grin. 'He was always better at stuff like that. Took Creative Writing in college. He used to say any state cop worth his salt needed to know the basics of creative writing. When we started to fall apart that day, George was the one who pulled us together. Didn't he, Huddie?'
Huddie nodded.
Eddie got up, put his hands in the small of his back, and stretched until we could hear the bones crackle. 'Gotta go home, fellas. Might stop for a beer at The Tap on the way. Maybe even two. After all this talking, I'm pretty dry.'
Ned looked at him with surprise, anger, and reproach. 'You can't leave just like that!' he exclaimed. 'I want to hear the whole story!'
And Eddie, who was slowly losing the struggle not to return to being Fat Eddie, said what I knew, what we all knew. He said it while looking at Ned with eyes which were not exactly friendly.
'You did, kid. You just don't know it.'
Ned watched him walk away, then turned to the rest of us. Only Shirley looked back with real sympathy, and I think that hers was tempered with sadness for the boy.
'What does he mean, I heard it all?'
'There's nothing left but a few anecdotes,' I said, 'and those are only variations on the same theme. About as interesting as the kernels at the bottom of the popcorn bowl.
'As for Brian Lippy, the report George wrote said 'Troopers Morgan and Jacubois spoke to the subject and ascertained he was sober. Subject denied assaulting his girlfriend and Trooper Jacubois ascertained that the girlfriend supported him in this. Subject was then released.''
