“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?”
“Yes, he had a green Ford. Guess they sold it or something after Ade died. We don’t keep good track of them up there.”
The house was liverish yellow; rusting auto springs and old tires littered the yard. A naked boy of about two sat in the dust, banging intently on an empty beer can with a stick. As Carney got out of the car, he saw a face at one of the windows. A young girl came around the corner of the house and stopped in surprise. She wore a faded-green cotton dress too small for her maturing body, and her face was frozen into sullenness. She gave them a long stare and went back around the corner of the house.
“Head out there by the barn so you can see if anybody tries to take off,” Carney said to Tillotson.
“Watch yourself, Del.”
Carney walked steadily toward the sagging steps of the narrow porch. A man came out of the house and stood on the porch. He wore stained work pants, a ragged undershirt. He was a big man, big and sallow and black-haired. Through the rents in the undershirt his chest hair showed silky black.
Carney eyed him levelly and kept still. The man shifted his weight uneasily and said, “Something on your mind?”
“Are you Brubaker?”
“Yes. What’s going on?”
“We’re checking on a Ford car. Adolph Clement used to own it.”
The man’s relief was evident. “Sure. But Ade’s dead. A tractor he—”
“I know about that. Where’s the car?”
“Say, you fellas find it? It was stole. Three weeks ago, about.”
“Was it in running condition?”
“Sure.”
“It wasn’t licensed, was it?”
“I can’t afford no two licenses. I got the pickup licensed, and that’s enough.”
“Our records show it hasn’t been licensed since nineteen fifty. Why was it in running condition?”
“Oh, that’s an account of Teddy. One of Ade’s boys. He was always fooling with it. Used to drive it around the place. Of course I wouldn’t let him take it off the place, him having no license to drive and the car not being legal and all. But somebody came up and stole it right off the place.”
“You know what day that was?”
“I sure couldn’t give you the date. But you know that last snow we had? Well, it got took then. Teddy, he kept her parked right over there. Now, the way I figured it, somebody come up and just got in and took the brake off. She’d roll quiet on the snow, and he wouldn’t have to start her up until he was way dawn the hill.”
“Did you report the theft to the police?”
“I was sure going to do that. Betty and me, we talked about it I guess for a week, and I was going to go down and phone you fellas, but I never did get around to it.”
“How did Teddy act after it was stolen?”
“He was what you call put out about it.”
“Is he around? I’d like to talk to him for a minute.”
“Come on around the house. He’s trying to get a little pump going.”
Carney motioned to Bob Tillotson, who moved toward them as they went around to the back of the house. There a boy in jeans squatted by newspapers on which were spread parts of a dismantled pump. He was stripped to the waist; his back was thin and corded, his hair an unruly thatch. Carney saw that he had the square, strong, capable-looking hands of a mechanic.
“Here’s some men want to talk to you, Teddy,” Brubaker said.
Teddy started. The look of the uniforms seemed to freeze him for a moment; then he came slowly to his feet, wiping his hands on the legs of his jeans. Carney, seeing his reaction, felt a tremendous weariness. The boy wasn’t over sixteen.
Teddy licked his lips and then looked down at the pump parts. “Fixing this old pump,” he said in a faint voice.
“They want to know about the Ford car,” Brubaker said.
“It was stole,” Teddy said. His eyes lifted to meet Carney’s, then slid away.
“That’s what I was telling—”
“We’ve been looking for you, Teddy. We didn’t know your name, but we had a good description,” Carney said.
“Nobody saw—” Teddy stopped and bit his lip.
“What is this!” Brubaker demanded. “What’s the boy done?”
Carney was aware of movement behind him. He turned. A woman stood at the back door of the house, with a boy of about seven beside her. The girl they had seen before was behind her, in the shadows. All three had a look of stillness and wariness.
Carney said patiently, “The car wasn’t stolen. Teddy took it onto the highway. He was headed home, back from Verrick, when the car skidded on the slippery highway and hit a pedestrian and killed him. He was too scared to stop and see whether the man was dead. He didn’t bring the car back here. He took it down and left it in an automobile graveyard near Brellville. How did you get back here, Teddy?”
“I didn’t hit anybody. You can’t say I hit anybody.”
“That won’t work, son. We found green paint from your car ground into the man’s clothing, and threads on the car that came from the man’s coat. And you abandoned a car that could have been sold. Bob, go with him while he puts a shirt on.”
Brubaker grunted and hit the boy solidly with his fist. The boy kicked over a kettle as he fell, spilling kerosene and pump parts in the dirt. Brubaker moved toward him again, swinging back a heavy boot.
Carney took a savage relish in expertly pushing Brubaker off balance, hurting him quickly and severely, though temporarily, with his hands — and in a way that would not mark him.
Brubaker sagged and backed away. “Beating him won’t help anything,” Carney said quietly. He felt ashamed of the pleasure he had taken in this quick and futile release.
“What will happen to Teddy?” the woman asked in a nasal voice.
“Get up, Teddy. How old is he?”
“Sixteen, come October.”
“The case will be handled by the juvenile authorities, Mrs. Brubaker. I can’t say what they’ll do. They judge each case individually.”
“He’s a good boy. He never makes no trouble.”
Tillotson went into the house with the boy; when they came back, the boy wore a white shirt and carried a jacket over his arm. One eye was almost swollen shut. Carney put him in the front seat of the car, between himself and Tillotson. The boy didn’t snuffle. He sat and looked down at his hands.
Had my son lived, Carney thought, he would be a year older than this boy. He said, “You should have reported it, Teddy.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been waiting for us to show up.”
“Yeah.”
“It wasn’t much fun waiting, was it?”
“No sir.”
A few days later Sergeant Carney waited with Mrs. Fairliss in a small anteroom at headquarters.
“He’s just a kid.”
“You’ve already told me that, Sergeant.”
“I was just thinking— You set the scene in your mind, exactly how it will be. But it seldom works the way you think.”
The door opened, and a guard said, not unkindly, “In here, lad.”
The boy came into the room and stopped a few feet inside the door. Carney noted that the swelling was gone, though his eye was still slightly discolored.
“Teddy, this is the wife of the man you killed. She wanted a look at you.” Carney knew that he had spoken too harshly.
The boy looked at Mrs. Fairliss. His eyes widened and his face turned pale. Carney saw his young throat work as he swallowed. “I... I didn’t—” He stopped, unable to go on.
“You didn’t what?” Linda Fairliss asked, with polite interest.