Chase: Roman

there.’ All around, the shadows under the trees seemed deeper than before.
        He put his arm around her and half carried her back to the Mustang. The door on the passenger's side was locked. By the time he got her around and through the other door and had followed her inside, she seemed to have recovered some of her senses. She slipped one arm in the blouse, then the other, and slowly buttoned it. Apparently she had not been wearing a bra. When he closed and locked his door and started the engine, she said, ‘Who are you?’
        ‘Passer-by,’ he said, ‘I saw the fellow and thought something was wrong.’
        ‘He killed Mike,’ she said.
        ‘Your boyfriend?’
        She did not respond to that but leaned back against the seat, chewing her lip and wiping absent-mindedly at the few spots of blood on her face.
        Chase swung the car around and started down Kanackaway Ridge Road at the same pace he had come up, took the turn at the bottom so fast that she was thrown painfully against the door.
        ‘Buckle your seatbelt,’ he said.
        She did as he directed, but she appeared to be in the same unresponsive mood, staring straight ahead at the streets that unrolled before them.
        ‘Who was he?’ Chase asked as they reached the intersection at Galasio Boulevard and took it with the light this time.
        ‘Mike,’ she said.
        ‘Not your boyfriend. The other one.’
        ‘I don't know,’ she said.
        ‘Did you see his face?’
        She nodded.
        ‘You didn't recognize him?’
        ‘No.’
        ‘I thought it might be an old lover, a rejected suitor, something like that.’
        She said nothing.
        Her reluctance to talk about it gave Chase time to consider the affair. He began to wonder, as he recalled the killer's approach from the top of the ridge, whether the man had known which car he was after or whether any car would have done, whether this had been an act of revenge directed against Mike specifically or if it was only the work of a madman. The papers, even before he had been sent overseas, had been filled with stories of meaningless slaughter. He had not read any papers since his discharge, but he suspected the same brand of senselessness still flourished. That possibility made him uncomfortable. It was so similar to Nam, to Operation Jules Verne and his part in it, that very bad old memories were stirred…
        Fifteen minutes after they left the ridge top, Chase parked in front of police headquarters on Kensington Avenue.
        ‘Are you feeling well enough to talk with them?’ Chase asked.
        ‘The police?’
        ‘Yes.’
        She shrugged. ‘I guess so.’ She had recovered remarkably fast. She even thought, now, to take Chase's pocket comb and run it through her dark hair several times. ‘How do I look?’
        ‘Fine,’ he said, wondering if it were not better to go without a woman than to leave behind one who grieved so brief a time as this.
        ‘Let's go,’ she said. She opened her door and stepped out, her lovely, trim legs flashing in a rustle of brief cloth.
        
        The door of the small grey room opened, admitting an equally small and grey man. His face was lined, his eyes sunken as if he had not had any sleep in a day or two. His light brown hair was uncombed and in need of a trim. He crossed to the table behind which Chase and the girl sat, took the only chair left and folded into it as if he would never get up again. He said, ‘I'm Detective Wallace.’
        ‘Glad to meet you,’ Chase said, though he was not glad at all.
        The girl was quiet, looking at her nails.
        ‘Now, what's this all about?’ Wallace asked, folding his hands on the top of the scarred table and looking at each of them, much like a priest or counsellor.
        ‘I already told the desk sergeant most of it,’ Chase said.
        ‘He isn't in homicide. I am,’ Wallace said. ‘Who was murdered and how?’
        Chase said, ‘Her boyfriend, stabbed.’
        ‘Can't she speak?’
        ‘I can speak,’ the girl said.
        ‘What's your name?’
        ‘Louise.’
        ‘Louise what?’
        ‘Allenby. Louise Allenby,’ she said.
        Wallace said, ‘You live in the city?’
        ‘In Ashside.’
        ‘How old?’
        She looked at him as if she would flare up, then turned her gaze back at her nails again. ‘Seventeen.’
        ‘In high