From the Corner of His Eye

Florence Ballard, he drove to the granite quarry three miles beyond the town limits.
        A new quarry, operated by the same company, lay a mile farther north. This was the old one, abandoned after decades of cutting.
        Years earlier, a stream had been diverted to fill the vast excavation. Stock fish were added, mostly trout and bass.
        As a recreational site, Quarry Lake could be judged only a partial success. During the mining operation, trees were cleared well back from the edge of the dig, so that much of the shore would be unshaded on a hot summer day. And along half the strand, signs were posted warning Ungraded Shore: Immediate Deep Water. In places, where lake met land, the bottom lay over a hundred feet below.
        The Beatles began singing the number-one song, "I Feel Fine," as Junior turned off the county highway and followed the lake road northeast around the oil-black water. They had two titles in the American top five. In disgust, he switched off the radio.
        The previous April, the lads from Liverpool had claimed all five of the top five. Real Americans, like the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons, were forced to settle for lower numbers. It made you wonder who had really won the Revolutionary War.
        No one in Junior's circles seemed to care about the crisis in American music. He supposed he had a greater awareness of injustice than did most people.
        On this chilly January night, no campers or fishermen had staked claims along the lake. Because the trees were far enough back to be lost in the night, the immediate shore and the pooled blackness that it encircled appeared as desolate as any landscape on a world without an atmosphere.
        Too far from Spruce Hills to be a popular make-out spot for teenagers, Quarry Lake was a turnoff for young lovers also because it had a reputation as haunted territory. Over five decades, four quarry workers had died in mining accidents. County lore included stories of ghosts roaming the depths of the excavation before it was flooded-and subsequently the shoreline, after the lake was filled.
        Junior intended to add one stocky ghost to the party. Perhaps on a summer night in years to come, at the edge of the light fall from his Coleman lantern, a fisherman would see a semitransparent Vanadium providing entertainment with an ethereal quarter.
        At a point where deep water met the shoreline, Junior drove off the road and onto the strand. He parked twenty feet from the water, facing the lake, and switched off the headlights and the engine.
        Leaning across the front seat, he lowered the passenger's window six inches. Then he lowered the driver's-side window an equal distance.
        He wiped the steering wheel and every surface that he might have touched during the drive from Victoria's to the detective's place, where he'd acquired the gardening gloves that he still wore. He got out of the car and, with the door open, wiped the exterior handle.
        He doubted the Studebaker would ever be found, but successful men were, without exception, those who paid attention to detail.
        For a while he stood beside the sedan, letting his eyes adapt to the gloom.
        The night was holding its breath again, the previous breeze now pent up in the breast of darkness.
        Having risen higher in the sky during the past couple hours, the gold-coin moon reminted itself as silver, and in the black lake, its reflection rolled across the knuckles of the quiet wavelets.
        Convinced he was alone and unobserved, Junior leaned into the car and shifted it out of park. He released the hand brake.
        The strand was inclined toward the lake. He closed the door and got out of the way as the Studebaker rolled forward, gathering speed.
        With remarkably little splash, the sedan eased into the water. Briefly it floated, bobbling near shore, tipped forward by the weight of the engine. As the lake flooded in through the floor vents, the vehicle settled steadily-then sank rapidly when water reached the two partially open windows.
        This Detroit-built gondola would swiftly navigate the Styx without a black-robed gondolier to pole it onward.
        The moment that the roof of the car vanished beneath the water, Junior hurried away, retracing on foot the route he had driven. He didn't have to go all the way back to Vanadium's place, only to the dark house where he'd left Victoria Bressler. He had