“Driving will consume his time soon enough,” I said. “Mindy, we’ll get out of your hair. Thanks for talking with us.” I fished out one of my cards and handed it to her. “If you see Mo before we do, have him give me a call.”
“The garage is open, sheriff. If you need to satisfy your curiosity about the car, it’s parked right there. You’re welcome to look.”
“Thanks, Mindy. We may do that.” Once outside, I took a deep breath to rinse out the stale, perfumed air of the rectory. “You know,” I said to Estelle as we settled into the car, “I have four kids. They’ve been out of the nest for years and years. And I can’t remember when I stopped checking on their whereabouts every minute of the day.” I looked at her, but knew I was talking a foreign concept. She was four years out of school herself, and I’m sure there were a myriad of times when her mother had to trust in her abiding faith that this daughter was safe and well in the United States. Great-uncle Reuben, on the other hand? The concept of reins would never enter his old head.
“I mean, when they’re little, you keep your eyes and ears sharp, even the eye in the back of your head. Then they hit middle school, and it seems easier just to shout, ‘be home by eight!’ without a clue about where they really are or what they’re really doing. And high school? Forget it. We just start trusting ’em and hope that they survive the experience.”
“Most do, fortunately,” she said.
“Yep, they usually do.” I turned back toward Fourth Street and nosed the county car into the Arnett driveway. Sure enough, the handle of the garage was turned sideways to the unlocked position. And sure enough, after I got out of the car and rolled the heavy door up, all that remained of the Pontiac were vague scuffs on the garage’s concrete floor. I stood there, both hands on the door over my head, trying to believe that there was a simple explanation for all this. Estelle had gotten out of the car as well, but stayed a step or two behind me.
“And so much for that,” I said. “Mom is right…the little bastard never drives to school.” I glanced back at Estelle as I eased the door downward. “But where else remains the question.” She was leafing through note book pages, but I could have told her that her memory was correct-Hugh Decker, with his 20/200 vision, claimed to have noticed a small, dark, innocuous sedan at the intersection of Highland and Hutton with a single occupant.
For a long moment, I stood in the sun in front of the door, looking down at the concrete at my feet. “What makes me sick with all this is that it fits,” I said. “A kid sneaks away for a little hooky-a little R amp; R before school settles in for the duration. He takes mom’s car-hell, she won’t know. She’s at work, and dad’s out of town. Sis is at school, where she’s supposed to be. Mo takes the car, maybe takes one of dad’s rifles, and on impulse takes a wild shot at a parked piece of county machinery.”
I checked that the garage door was secure and made my way back to the car. I didn’t pull it into gear, but just sat there like a lump, musing. “Fits, doesn’t it?” I said finally.
“Almost,” Estelle Reyes said. Her voice was so soft I cocked my head.
“Almost?”
“I don’t understand it as a wild impulse, sir. Not a wild shot like one of the highway shooters taking a pot shot at a road sign. It appears that the killer got out of the car and walked some distance toward the road grader, sir. That’s if Mr. Decker’s testimony is believable. And then he saw a figure walking…not running…walking back to the car.” She fell silent, and I prompted her with a beckoning motion of the hand. “I agree that with the afternoon sun on a dirty windshield that it would have been nearly impossible to tell if the grader was occupied.”
“The killer would have heard the grader idling, though,” I said.
“He possibly could have, if he walked close enough. If the wind was right.”
“So what are you saying, then?” Estelle hesitated, and I added, “I’m serious. I want to know what scenario makes sense to you. You’re saying that you see a definite intent in all this? Not just senseless vandalism?” Anyone who had been thinking as hard as she had been should have had some notions, and at this point, I was open to suggestions, even from a sub-rookie. Something in that quiet, analytical manner of hers impressed the hell out of me.
“I find it hard to believe that it was an accident, sir.”
“That’s what’s been giving me nightmares for the past couple of days.” I spun my index finger beside my skull, mimicking an old film projector. “I keep playing out the scene, and that creates more questions than answers. If some guy had a serious grudge against Larry Zipoli-I mean something that would drive him to murder-then I wonder why he took the shot from fifty or sixty yards away…when he would have had difficulty making out the target through a grubby windshield? Why not stalk right up to the grader, maybe have time for a word or two, a curse or two, and then bang. Right through the open door.”
“Fear of confrontation, maybe?” Estelle said. “And maybe we’re supposed to think it was an accident-what’s been mentioned since day one. A moment of vandalism gone wrong.”
“Fear of confrontation.” I echoed, and gazed at Estelle thoughtfully. “You’re goddamned right about that. It takes a special kind of cold son of a bitch to look the victim right in the eye before the shot. So he takes it from a safe distance. If the shot misses, and Zipoli comes charging out of that machine to pound his lights out, then maybe he can sprint back to the car in time.”
“Why not just take another shot?” Estelle asked.
“Why not indeed. A miss gives him time to reconsider, maybe. Shoot and run is one thing. Trying again is another kettle of fish. Shoots and run. That’s what makes sense to me.” I pulled the car into gear and backed out into Fourth Street. “Shit,” I muttered. “And that’s what fits. So where did the little bastard go?” I reached for the mike, and in a moment dispatch was handling a BOLO call-be on the lookout for a little gold Pontiac, license CLT 499. I was loath to add the armed and dangerous advisory, but wishful thinking wasn’t going to make anyone safe.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Jason Packard had found better things to do than attend school, and it didn’t take a BOLO to find him. The door of his grandparents’ garage was open wide, and Jason was working at the bench in the back, under the light of a fluorescent fixture. He wasn’t alone. Tom Pasquale had had enough lung busting. He had circled back to town, and now he and Jason were deep in conference over a bicycle wheel that was suspended in some form of vise. A tiny dial indicator mounted on the side of the vise measured the wheel rim’s wobble in thousandths.
Years ago, one of my sons had tried to true the front wheel of his bike, spinning it in his hands, squinting with one eye closed, then wrenching on the heads of the spokes. He didn’t know what he was doing, and when he gave up, his wheel wobbled just as much or more than when he started. Packard’s approach, with Pasquale kibitzing, appeared far more scientific.
While Tom Pasquale was ruggedly built, broad through the shoulders and already starting to put on the padding that promised him as a real bruiser as an adult, Jason Packard was a typically thin and wiry ranch kid. He could probably throw bales of hay off a tractor-trailer for hours without breaking stride. That his mom and stepfather couldn’t find some common ground with this hardheaded boy was one of those senseless tragedies that always left me shaking my head in puzzlement.
The two kids didn’t stop work when the county car slid up to the curb, although they certainly saw us. As Estelle and I walked up the driveway, Jason stepped back from the wheel and let fly with a string of profanity as he tossed a wrench onto the bench. I suppose the obscenities were for Estelle’s benefit.