I slept long and well that night. A good thing, because it was a long time before I slept that well again. A very long time.
While I slept, someone—something—killed Rudolph Junkins of the Pennsylvania State Police. It was in the paper when I got up next morning. DARNELL INVESTIGATOR MURDERED NEAR BLAIRSVILLE, the headline shouted.
My father was upstairs taking a shower; Ellie and two of her friends out on the porch, giggling and cawing over a game of Monopoly; my mother working on one of her stories in the sewing room. I was at the table by myself, stunned and scared. It occurred to me that Leigh and her family were going to be back from California tomorrow, school would start again the day after, and unless Arnie (or LeBay) changed his mind, she would be actively pursued.
I slowly pushed away the eggs I had scrambled for myself. I no longer wanted them. Last night it had seemed possible to push away the whole ominous and inexplicable business of Christine as easily as I’d just pushed away my breakfast. Now I wondered how I could have been so naive.
Junkins was the man Arnie had mentioned New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t even kid myself that it hadn’t been. The paper said he had been the man in charge of Pennsylvania’s part of the Will Darnell investigation, and it hinted that some shadowy crime organization had been behind the murder. The Southern Mob, Arnie would have said. Or the crazy Colombians.
I thought differently.
Junkins’s car had been driven off a lonely country road and battered to so much senseless wreckage
(That goddam Junkins is still after me full steam ahead; he better watch out or somebody might just junk him… Just stay on my side, Dennis. You know what happens to shitters who don’t…) with Junkins still inside it.
When Repperton and his friends were killed, Arnie had been in Philly with the chess club. When Darnell was killed, be was in Ligonier with his parents, visiting relatives. Cast-iron alibis. I thought he would have another for Junkins. Seven—seven deaths now, and they formed a deadly ring around Arnie Cunningham and Christine. The police could surely see that; not even a blind man could miss such an explicit chain of motivation. But the paper didn’t say that anyone was “aiding the police in their enquiries”, as the British so delicately put it.
Of course, the police are not in the habit of just handing everything they know over to the newspapers. I knew that, but every instinct I had told me that the state cops weren’t seriously investigating Arnie in connection with this latest murder by automobile.
He was in the clear.
What had Junkins seen behind him on that country road outside of Blairsville? A red and white car, I thought. Maybe empty, maybe driven by a corpse.
A goose ran squawking over my grave and my arms broke in cold bumps.
Seven people dead.
It had to end. If for no other reason than because maybe killing gets to be a habit. If Michael and Regina wouldn’t go along with Arnie’s crazy California plans, either of them or both of them might be next. Suppose he walked up to Leigh in study hall period three next Tuesday and asked her to marry him and Leigh simply said no? What might she see idling at the kerb when she got home that afternoon?
Jesus Christ, I was scared.
My mother poked her head in. “Dennis, you’re not eating.”
I looked up. “I got reading the paper. Guess I’m not that hungry, Mom.”
“You have to eat right or you’re not going to get well. Want me to make you oatmeal?”
My stomach churned at the thought, but I smiled as I shook my head. “No—but I’ll eat a big lunch.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Denny, do you feel okay? You’ve looked so tired and peaked lately.”
“I’m fine, Mom.” I widened my smile to show her how fine I was, and then I thought of her getting out of her blue Reliant-K at the Monroeville Mall, and two rows back was a white-over-red car, idling. In my mind’s eye I saw her walk in front of it, purse over her arm, saw Christine’s transmission lever suddenly drop into DRIVE—
“Are you sure? It’s not your leg bothering you, is it?”
“No.”
“Have you taken your vitamins?”
“Yes.”
“And your rosehips?”
I burst out laughing. She looked irritated for a moment, then smiled. “Ye’re a sassbox, Dennis Guilder,” she said in her best Irish accent (which is pretty good, since her mom came from the auld sod), “and there’s no kivver to ye.” She went back to the sewing room, and in a moment the irregular bursts of her typewriter began again.
I picked up the newspaper and looked at the photo of Junkins’s twisted auto. DEATH CAR, the caption beneath read.
Try this, I thought: Junkins is interested in a lot more than finding out who sold illegal fireworks and cigarettes to Will Darnell. Junkins is a state detective, and state detectives work on more than one case at a time. He could have been trying to find out who killed Moochie Welch. Or he could have been—
I crutched over to the sewing room and knocked.
“Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you, Mom
“Don’t be silly, Dennis.”
“Are you going downtown today?”
“I might be. Why?”
“I’d like to go to the library.”
By three O’clock that Saturday afternoon it had begun to snow again. I had a slight headache from staring into the microfilm reader, but I had what I wanted. My hunch had been on the money— not that it had been any great intuitive leap.
Junkins had been in charge of the hit-and-run that had killed Moochie Welch, all right… and he had also been in charge of investigating what had happened to Repperton, Trelawney, and Bobby Stanton. He’d have to be one dumb cop not to read Arnie’s name between the lines of what was happening.
I leaned back in the chair, snapped off the reader, and closed my eyes. I tried to make myself be Junkins for a minute. He suspects Arnie of being involved with the murders. Not doing them, but involved somehow. Does he suspect Christine? Maybe he does. On the TV detective shows, they’re always great at identifying guns, typewriters used to write ransom notes, and cars involved in hit-and-runs. Flakes and scrapes of paint, maybe…
Then the Darnell bust looms up. For Junkins, that’s nothing but great. The garage will be closed and everything in it impounded. Maybe Junkins suspects…
What?
I worked harder at imagining. I’m a cop. I believe in legitimate answers, sane answers, routine answers. So what do I suspect? After a moment, it came.
An accomplice, of course. I suspect an accomplice. It has to be an accomplice. Nobody in his right mind would suspect that the car was doing it herself. So…?
So after the garage is closed, Junkins brings in the best technicians and lab men he can lay his hands on. They go over Christine from stem to stern, looking for evidence of what has happened. Reasoning as Junkins would reason trying to, anyway—I think that there has to be some evidence. Hitting a human body is not like hitting a feather pillow. Hitting the crash barrier out at Squantic Hills is not like hitting a feather pillow, either.
So what do they find, these experts in vehicular homicide?
Nothing.
They find no dents, no touch-up repainting, no blood stains. They find no embedded brown paint-flakes from the Squantic Hills road barrier that was broken off. In short, Junkins finds absolutely no evidence that Christine was used in either crime. Now jump ahead to Darnell’s murder. Does Junkins hustle over to the garage the next day to check on Christine? I would, if it was me. The side of a house isn’t a feather pillow either, and a
