“Del?” the dispatcher said. “Got a call-in from Bob. He’s found him. Hit and run, it looks like. Dead. Three miles your side of Verrick.” Carney held the receiver tight against his ear so that the hard, casual voice wouldn’t be audible to the woman. “Got the coroner on the job. Wife there?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a job I’m glad you’ve got this time, Carney.”
“Get the lab lined up on it.”
“I read the manuals too.”
The dispatcher hung up. Carney replaced the phone in the cradle very gently and stood up. He saw the woman’s hand come up to her mouth, very slowly; saw the fingers go tight across the lips.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fairliss.”
She turned blindly back toward the chair by the stove and sat down, clumsily. “What happened?” she asked. “He’s dead, isn’t he? I’ve known that for an hour, I think.”
“They think it’s hit and run.”
She spoke as though to herself. “So alive. Laughing. Calling himself a dope for running out of gas.”
Carney removed his glasses, polished them slowly on his handkerchief. Usually it happened over the phone; that was easier because you couldn’t see their faces. The expression on this woman’s face startled him. He was not easily moved by looks of anger; he had seen the lusterless animal eyes of the psychotic-killer type. This was a cold, intellectual ferocity, glistening.
“Hit and run, Sergeant? I want him caught. I want to look at him.”
“Now, Mrs. Fairliss.”
“I mean that. Oh, I’m not going to break down. Not yet. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Every effort will be made to locate the—”
“Find him for me, Sergeant.”
“I will, Mrs. Fairliss,” he heard himself say, and he realized the stupidity of the promise. A through highway, a snowy night. No witnesses. Go ahead and be a big shot, Carney. Find the bad man for the lady.
He sighed and went to the phone and called Doris Bell down the road, who agreed readily, as he knew she would, to take Mrs. Fairliss in. He called the dispatcher and made arrangements to pick up the Buick. He got the addresses of Peter Fairliss’ children and laboriously composed wires. Mrs. Fairliss approved them without interest, merely asking that they be signed Linda. When the Buick tame in, he got her suitcase out of the trunk and detailed a trooper to escort her to Mrs. Bell’s for the night. She turned back at the door and took his hand for a moment, unable to speak, but showing by the gesture the sort of breeding that is more than the result of training.
At breakfast Bob Tillotson gave his reconstruction of the accident, drawing on the tablecloth with a horny thumbnail. “Now here’s the shoulder, Del. There were sort of big dimples in the snow about here; that must have been where he stepped off the road to let the car go by. We found them just in time or the county snowplow would have covered them up. He must have seen the car go out of control, because there was a dimple about six feet away, about here, and another one here, like he takes two big running strides, angling for the ditch. Then here there was this big half-circle skidmark, pretty well snowed over. Joe figured it for the rear end of the car swinging; the body was over here, which would fit in if the car skidded and sort of caught him on the rise after those two running steps. If the guy had stayed put back there where he was standing, it would have missed him clean — scared the dickens out of him, but missed him. The coroner said it really bashed him; he couldn’t have lived more than thirty seconds. You know, Del, I get sore at these hit and runs. Now take this guy. How did he know the fella he hit was dead? He could have been hurt just enough to bleed to death over there in the brush.”
“He had to know he hit somebody.”
“I don’t see how he could help it.” Bob sighed. “Tough on that lady, I guess.”
The phone rang. It was the dispatcher with the gist of the lab report.
“They got something this time, Carney. On the sleeve and shoulder of Fairliss’ coat there was some green paint ground in; the spectroanalysis matches it with the factory coat on a ’36 Ford. And on one side of his pants and on the side of one shoe they found some dirt — clay from this area. They figure the dirt came off the right rear wheel. So we look for a green ’36 Ford with the right rear fender bashed and probably a whopping big dent in the panel above the fender.”
“Has Dorrity assigned anybody to the case?”
“Not yet.”
“I’d like to spend a little time on it.”
“What?” The dispatcher was surprised. “I thought you were welded to your swivel chair.” But he put the call through to Captain Dorrity, who reluctantly released Carney to work on the case for four days — no more.
When Mrs. Fairliss came in, deep shadows under her eyes, Carney prepared a statement for her signature. No, she hadn’t particularly noticed the cars that went by as she sat waiting for her husband. There hadn’t been too many. Twenty perhaps? Or thirty? Somewhere in there. She seemed slightly ill at ease. Finally she said to him, “You remember what I said about — whoever did it?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want you to think that was hysteria. I meant it. It seems primitive and all that, but I want to see the person who did it. I want to try to understand the... the mind of a person who could do that. Accidents, yes. They happen. But to run away— Are you going to work on the case?”
Carney did not understand why he should flush at that question. “I’ve made arrangements to work on it.”
She took a slip of paper from her purse. “Here is my home address and phone number. As soon as you find him, please call me collect. I’ll come at once, Sergeant.”
He watched her walk out to her car. The morning had turned warm; the freak snow was completely gone from the wet asphalt and the trees dripped. The Fairliss incident was over. He felt a mild irritation that he had condemned himself to pounding around the countryside. Quixotic, he thought, that’s me. You figure you’re old enough and practiced enough and bored enough to be at last forever beyond the reach of any puerile self-identification with the maimed and lost, the casualties of four-lane civilization. And then one sneaks up on you. Linda Fairliss, widow. Thirty-six. Not young, not old.
His replacement arrived and took over. Carney got into his car and headed for the main barracks. He took the long way so he would go by the scene of the accident. It was difficult to spot. He was not entirely certain until he saw, against the green spring grass where the snow had melted, two used flash bulbs.
He stood by the car, thumbs tucked in his belt, hat raked back, a heavy, solid man with a deceptively mild, almost scholarly look. Assumption one: The suspect was headed home, through Verrick. Place his home, then, south or west or north of Verrick. Not east. Assumption two: Suspect’s home was on a back road, a farm road; there would be clay on the wheels of his car. Not necessarily on the tire surfaces; the heavy snow of a back road might remove that. But on the wheels, clay nearly to the hubs. An old car, driven too fast on a snow-slick highway. Assumption three: Suspect is a young man. A foolish young man.
Carney slid behind the wheel and drove to the main barracks, where he reported to Dorrity and got hold of the pictures and the complete lab report. He borrowed one of Dorrity’s clerks and set her to work calling up all the garages in the area, asking each one whether a green ’36 Ford had been brought in for bodywork.
He himself got into his car with the list of seventy-seven ’36 Fords Motor Vehicles had reported registered in the county and went to work.
On the fourth day, at a quarter to five, he reported to Dorrity. “There were only four green ones on the list — that is, green ones that hadn’t been repainted. No sign of recent damage to any of them, and the owners were able to satisfy me that they couldn’t have been in the accident area at the critical time. Then I checked all the used-car lots, thinking maybe some kid salesman had borrowed a car. They do that sometimes, using the dealer plates for a little joy-riding. But no lot had a green Ford for sale, or had had one for a long time.”