Джон Макдональд - Hit and Run

Dorrity pulled at his lip. He said, waspishly, “So you had a four-day romp. We can assume it was a stranger coming in from outside and going back where he came from.”

“I’m not so sure. Strangers aren’t likely to churn around in that back-country clay. And that list isn’t exhaustive. You can get a license anywhere in the state. I could talk Motor Vehicles into giving me a list of all the ’36 Fords licensed throughout the state; it’s possible our man is registered in another county.”

“You could but you won’t, Sergeant. These things get cold fast. From now on we’ll take care of it from here and parcel out the legwork to whoever happens to be available.”

Carney stood up. “You wouldn’t have any objection to me just poking around on my time off?”

Dorrity gave him a sharp look. “What’s your stake in this?”

“This one got me a little.”

“It’s your time off, I suppose. Don’t let it get to be an obsession. Hit and run is always a nasty bit of work.”

Back at his desk Carney was restless and irritable. On his first day off he spent the whole day driving along the back roads, asking whether there were any green ’36 Fords in the vicinity.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Fairliss called from Syracuse. “Sergeant Carney? This is Mrs. Fairliss. It’s been over two weeks and—” Her voice trailed off.

“Nothing yet, Mrs. Fairliss. Not a thing.”

“You’re still trying?”

“The case is still open. We’re still looking. I want to be frank with you. I’m beginning to think it may have been an out-of-state car. Uh... how are you?”

“I’m well, thank you. But I have that feeling of something left unfinished.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You will call me?”

“Yes. I promised that.”

That night, after he turned off his light, he lay awake a long time, watching reflected headlights sweep across the ceiling. A sixteen-year-old green Ford. With a driver perhaps no older. A car that was close to being a junker. How would you go about hiding a car like that?

An idea nibbled at the edge of his mind. He turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed — a precaution against falling asleep before the idea was fully developed. It was a trick he hadn’t used for a long time. Not since he had been a young instructor at the State university. Before Chris and the stillborn child had shared a common grave. Before he had so arbitrarily selected a calling as remote as possible from the world that reminded him of Chris.

When you want to hide something, you either hide it where it will not be seen at all or you hide it where it will be seen but not noticed. An old car could be safely disposed of in a junk yard, run in there in darkness, left in the battered, disabled ranks to dream of the potholed grades of long-abandoned roads.

The search took six days. The place was fourteen miles southwest of Verrick, where an eccentric and irritable old man ran a crossroads store. Behind the store ragged ranks of old cars stretched across overgrown pastureland. An old Pierce-Arrow retained a certain amount of disdain, but all the rest looked defeated. Between two and three hundred of them, Carney estimated.

“Look ’em over if you want. No, I don’t sell ’em, and I don’t buy ’em up any more either.” The old man cackled softly. “They was after me in the war to sell ’em off. I told ’em it was a hobby, sort of. Green Ford? How the Lord do I know? Haven’t been up in that pasture since a year ago, I do believe.”

Carney took the back row first, the row that could not be seen from the road. And there, near the end, was a ’36 Ford. Green. Carney looked at the back right corner. The fender was completely gone, and there was no rear bumper. In the panel above where the fender had been was a deep dent. But it was the weeds that made him sure he had the right car; they hadn’t grown around it as they had the others. They weren’t entwined in the front bumper, in the fender wells. This car had been put here recently.

He opened the hood, wiped the engine number clean with a pinch of grass, and wrote it down. One day sixteen years ago this car had been driven, proud-shining, new-smelling, from the showroom. New, more powerful, V-8 engine. And, mister, this paint job will really last!

He told the old man to make sure that nobody went into the lot until the other police had come. Back at headquarters, he checked Motor Vehicles and found that the car had not been registered in the state in 1952.

It took Dorrity himself to get the 1951 files checked. But when Motor Vehicles phoned back an hour later they again reported failure. Dorrity persisted. By this time Motor Vehicles was a little annoyed.

“Well... yes, there are files for 1950. Dead files. Basement storage, and hard to get at. Well, in that case, Captain, but you— Oh, no! Tomorrow morning at the earliest.”

The lab men Carney had dispatched to the junk yard returned. They had found three fair prints, not too badly smudged, on the steering wheel. A wrecker had brought the car in and left it behind the main barracks.

“Now,” said Dorrity, “we wait until tomorrow. And if the answer is still no?”

“I’ll try to think of something else.”

“You baffle me, Carney.”

“It isn’t intentional, Captain.”

“This was an imaginative piece of work. I’ve been going over your record. You made your present grade nine years ago, and you haven’t put in for promotion since. You have the educational requirements, certainly. And you handle your men well.”

“I’m satisfied where I am.”

“You do a good job. You’re useful there. But it makes me uneasy. I don’t like waste. I don’t like to see a man in... in a storm cellar.”

Carney removed his glasses, polished them slowly with his handkerchief. “Isn’t it a case of equating effort and need, Captain? An increment of ability over what is necessary to fulfill your needs is, perhaps, surplus baggage.”

“Contented old civil servant, doddering toward retirement?”

“Why not, Captain?”

Dorrity flushed. “Get out of here! What I’ve been saying has been to my own interest. I resent not having anyone here I can talk to as an equal.”

Carney replaced his glasses and stood up. “I’m on duty tomorrow. You’ll let me know?”

“I’ll let you know, and if we’re lucky, I’ll let you make the pickup.”

At eleven the next morning Dorrity’s voice came crisply over the phone. “Take this down, Sergeant. Adolph Clement. R.F.D. three — Box twelve, Cade Center. I’ll send Masterson over to relieve you. Pick whoever you want to go along with you.”

“Yes sir.”

“We found threads caught in one of the tire treads. They match the sample the lab saved from the coat. If you’re successful, bring the man here.”

Carney took Bob Tillotson with him; they parked in front of the general store. Cade Center was in a hilly area of the county, where the farms were submarginal, the people weakened by inbreeding. Homemade liquor, barn-dance knifings, and a cold eye for all strangers.

“Ade Clement?” the clerk said. “Sure. Straight up the road two miles; take the north fork and keep going to the top of the ridge. Place sits in a hollow just this side of the ridge. Painted a sort of yellow. But Ade’s dead. Borrowed the Tell-sons’ tractor couple of years back and it rolled on him. Lived two weeks, though.”

“Who’s up there now?”

“Well, Ade’s old lady married this Brubaker fellow used to work for George Tellson. They’re up there with a whole smear of kids. The older ones are scattered, though. Couple of the boys in the service, and some of the big girls gone. God knows where.”

“Did Ade Clement drive a green Ford?”