The cable that ran from the emergency-brake handle to the rear wheels had frayed and burst; one end of it lay curled near Watchman’s nose. That was mechanical; he was looking for the hydraulics and he found them and traced the hoses up along the base of the cab, crawling an inch at a time through a space that barely accommodated his shoulders. He was acutely conscious of the possibility of the wreck slipping off its uncertain moorings and pinning him beneath; he moved with great care.
It was not inspiration; the logic was that if the truck hadn’t been pushed it must have been disabled, either by accident or by design, and when a vehicle was going to have to negotiate mountain roads the best and easiest shot was at the brakes or the steering. He expected to find a cut brake hose.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing under there? This thing’s perched like a golf ball sittin’ on a wobbly tee.”
He pulled himself back with elbows and toes and slid out from under. When he sat up Victorio was making exaggerated brow-mopping and mouth-whooshing gestures of relief. “Man I’ve had enough coronaries for one day. Don’t do that.”
Watchman moved his feet under him, got up and went around to the front of the wreck. Victorio trailed along. “You didn’t find anything, did you?”
“Not what I expected to, no.”
“That mean anything?”
“Find me something to pry this up with.” He was trying to lift the hood but it was wedged fast.
“Uh—shouldn’t we report this to the police?”
“I am the police. See if there’s a jack handle or something back there.”
Victorio went around back. Watchman got down on his knees and bent low with his cheek along the ground, trying to look up past the end of the broken axle under the fender. He couldn’t see much and what he could see was twisted beyond belief.
The brake hoses were pretty mangled under the frame but there were no indications that they had been tampered with. A knife would have left a neat cut and the only breaks he’d seen had been jagged, traceable to the crushing and ripping the truck had suffered during its long end-for-end tumble.
He heard Victorio crunching toward him. “I couldn’t find the handle. This do?”
It was the thin rectangular steel jack post, perforated where the bumper-jack device was supposed to ride up and down on its ratchet. Watchman hefted it. It was about the size of a crowbar and only a little lighter. “If I can squeeze it in. Lend a hand.”
They jammed the bar under the crumpled edge of the hood and heaved down on it. The metal gave but didn’t pop open. Watchman moved the bar farther to the back and they tried again. He heard Victorio grunt with effort. They both had their full weight on the bar when it gave; it sent Victorio asprawl.
“Are you all right?”
“I guess so.” Victorio scrambled to his feet. There was a small rip near the shoulder of his suit jacket. He limbered his joints as if to test them for cracks and contusions. “I’m okay.”
The hood had popped partway open and Watchman pushed it up as far as it would go. He propped the bent jack-bar under it and looked down into the tangle of rusty metal where the engine had once squatted on its mountings.
The battery had squirted acid everywhere. Spark-plug wires dangled from the twisted distributor and the broken blades of the fan had imbedded themselves in the surrealistic mess of radiator grille.
It had to be there and he spotted it, down past where the frontmost engine-mount had been.
“You found something?”
“Have a look.”
Victorio peered in past his shoulder.
“So?”
“Tie rod.”
“I’m no auto mechanic. What’s that mean?”
“The tie rods are the gizmos that keep both your front wheels pointed in the same direction. When you break a tie rod it leaves you with no steering control at all. Both front wheels toe out in opposite directions. Sometimes a front wheel falls off. That’s what happened here.”
“Okay, so he broke a tie rod. What of it?”
“It didn’t break,” Watchman said. “It was cut. You can see the way it sheered off. Somebody took a hacksaw and cut three-quarters of the way through it. The first time he put enough stress on it, it broke.”
The broken end of the twisted steel rod glimmered faintly. The broken surface was smooth except for a thin section shaped like a first-quarter moon; that bit was jagged where it had broken of its own accord. It wasn’t more than an eighth of an inch thick.
“We’ll need experts to confirm it,” Watchman said, “but it was a hacksaw.”
Victorio looked at him with evident awe. “You knew,” he said.
“It had to be something like that.”
“But you knew what to look for.”
“Like I said,” Watchman answered, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
12.
He got the keys out of his pocket. “Take my car and get to a phone. We’ll want the County Sheriff’s people.”
“What about you?”
“I’d just as soon not give anybody a chance to monkey with the evidence. I’ll wait here.”
“It’ll be dark in an hour.”
“Then you’d better quit standing here jawing and get yourself to a phone.”
“Shouldn’t I tell Pete Porvo?”
“Tell him if you want. It’s a murder case, it’s out of his jurisdiction. But we might be able to use an extra hand. You’d better tell the county people to send plenty of flashlights and a long cable with the wrecker.”
“You think they’ll be able to haul it out from way up there?” Victorio looked up at the shelf of the road far above them; it was a good four hundred feet and most of it sheer.
“They’ll want the cable to get the corpse out of here. It’d be pretty hard trying to manhandle him up that cliff.”
“Okay.” Victorio turned away but then he hesitated. “You gonna be all right?”
Watchman could feel the automatic against his spine. He nodded and waved Victorio on his way.
He had another look at the tie rod and it was still hacksaw-shiny, he hadn’t been mistaken about it. He walked a complete circle around the wreck, not sure what he was looking for; in the end it occurred to him and he put the back of his hand against the block of the engine underneath the truck. It wasn’t cold but neither was it tactably hot; the sun had only moved across the hilltop within the past half hour and that might account for the residual warmth in the metal. He turned and made his way up the steep incline, using his hands, until he came to the body. The face had been battered but it was still visibly Jimmy Oto’s face. He lifted Oto’s left arm and it moved without too much stiffness; he heard the ends of broken bones grate together and he dropped the arm back to its original position.
No rigor mortis yet so it hadn’t been more than a few hours. Sometime today, probably sometime since noon.
Time-of-death was no reliable indicator in this case; the tie rod could have been cut any time in the past few days. It was brutal enough to chill Watchman, the idea of it; Oto often carried a whole truckload of friends around with him and whoever had done this must have known that. Known it but not cared.
13.
Ten minutes later a car stopped on the bend above him and a man in a big black hat walked to the rim to look down. The man studied the scene and turned to speak to someone in the car; then he walked back to the car and it started down the steep slant of the road.
The sun no longer reached into the hollow. Shadows blended the boulders and the high air had a little chill. Watchman went through Jimmy Oto’s pockets but there were only the usual licenses and identification cards in the creased old wallet which also contained seven dollars and a pair of condoms that had worn circular welts into the leather.
In the open glove compartment of the wreck he found half a pack of dry forgotten Camels and a flashlight that didn’t work, and the registration for the truck, and an untidily refolded map.