'Mike,' she said.
'Not your boyfriend.'
'What?'
'The other one.'
'I don't know,' she said.
'Did you see his face?'
She frowned. 'His face?'
'Yes.
'Face.' As if the word were meaningless to her.
'Have you been doing anything?' he asked.
'Anything?'
'Drugs?'
'A little grass. Earlier.'
Maybe more than a little, he decided.
He tried again: 'Did you see his face? Did you recognize him?'
'Face? No. Yes. Not really. A little.'
'I thought it might be an old lover, rejected suitor, something like that.'
She said nothing.
Her reluctance to talk about it gave Chase time to consider the situation. As he recalled the killer's approach from the top of the ridge, he began to wonder whether the man had known which car he was after or whether any car would have done, whether this was an act of revenge directed against Mike specifically or only the work of a madman. Even before he had been sent overseas, the papers had been filled with stories of meaningless slaughter. He had not read any papers since his discharge, but he suspected that the same brand of senseless murder still flourished.
The possibility of random, unmotivated homicide unnerved him. The similarity to Nam, to Operation Jules Verne and his part in it, stirred bad memories.
Fifteen minutes after they had left the ridge, Chase parked in front of the divisional police headquarters on Kensington Avenue.
'Are you feeling well enough to talk with them?' Chase asked.
'Cops'
'Yeah.'
She shrugged. 'I guess so.'
She had recovered remarkably fast. She even had the presence of mind to take Chase's pocket comb and run it through her dark hair. 'How do I look?'
'Fine.'
Maybe it was better to be without a woman than to die and leave behind one who grieved so briefly as this.
'Let's go,' she said. She opened her door and stepped out, her lovely, trim legs flashing in a rustle of brief cloth.
The door of the small gray room opened, admitting a small gray man. His face was lined, and his eyes were sunken as if he had not slept in a day or two. His light-brown hair was uncombed and in need of a trim. He crossed to the table behind which Chase and the girl sat, and he took the only chair left. He folded into it as if he would never get up again. 'I'm Detective Wallace.'
'Glad to meet you,' Chase said, though he was not glad at all.
The girl was quiet, examining her nails.
'Now, what's this all about?' Wallace asked, folding his hands on the scarred table and regarding them wearily, as if he'd already heard their story countless times.
'I already told the desk sergeant most of it,' Chase said.
'He isn't in homicide. I am,' Wallace said.
'Someone should be on the way out there. The body-'
'A car's been despatched. Your report's being checked out. That's what we do. Maybe not always well, but we do it. So you say someone was murdered.'
'Her boyfriend, stabbed,' Chase told him.
Wallace studied the girl as she studied her nails. 'Can't she speak?'
'She's in shock maybe.'
'These days?' Wallace joked, exhibiting a disregard for the girl's feelings that Chase found disconcerting.
The girl said, 'Yeah, I can speak.'
'What's your name?' Wallace asked.
'Louise.'
'Louise what?'
'Allenby. Louise Allenby.'
Wallace said, 'You live in the city?'
'In Ashside.'
'How old?'
Anger flared in her, but then she damped it and turned her gaze back to her nails. 'Seventeen.'
'In high school?'
'I graduated in June,' she said. 'I'm going to college in the fall. Penn State.'
Wallace said, 'Who was the boy?'
'Mike.'
'That's it?'
'That's what?'
'Just Mike? Like Liberace. Like Picasso? One name?'
'Michael Karnes,' she said.
'Just a boyfriend, or you engaged?'
'Boyfriend. We'd been going together for about a year, kind of steady.'
'What were you doing on Kanackaway Ridge Road?' Wallace asked.
She looked boldly at him. 'What do you think?'
Though Wallace's bored tone was disconcerting, Chase found the girl's detachment so unnerving that he wanted to be away from her as quickly as possible. 'Look, Detective Wallace,' he interjected, 'is this really necessary? The girl wasn't involved in it. I think the guy might've gone for her next if I hadn't stopped him.'
Wallace said, 'How'd you happen to be there in the first place?'
'Just out driving,' Chase said.
A light of interest switched on in the detective's eyes. 'What's your name?'
'Benjamin Chase.'
'I thought I'd seen you before.' His manner softened and his energy level rose. 'Your picture was in the papers today.'
Chase nodded.
'That was really something you did over there,' Wallace said. 'That really took guts.'
'It wasn't as much as they make out,' Chase said.
'I'll bet it wasn't!' Wallace said, though it was clear that he thought Chase's actions in Vietnam must have been even more heroic than the papers had portrayed them.
The girl had taken a new interest in Chase and was studying him openly.
Wallace's tone toward her changed too. He said, 'You want to tell me about it, just how it happened?'
She told him, losing some of her eerie composure in the process. Twice Chase thought that she was going to cry, and he wished that she would. Her cold manner, so soon after all the blood, gave him the creeps. Maybe she was still in denial. She repressed the tears, and by the time she had finished her story, she was calm again.
'You saw his face?' Wallace asked.
'Just a glimpse,' she said.
