Shallow Graves

feeling, sir, after your little accident?”
    “Stiff is all.”
    “Wanted to let you know, we probably wouldn’t be inclined to cite Mrs. Torrens for anything. Unless you were thinking of filing a complaint . . .”
    Pellam was shaking his head. “No. She’s taken care of the medical bills. I’m not looking to make a profit.”
    “Well, I think that’s fair, sir. You don’t see much of that. I was reading in TIME about people suing people over all sorts of things. This woman—I saw this on TV— Sixty Minutes maybe, I don’t recall. This woman, what she did was she opened this package of cereal and there was a dead mouse inside and she sued the company and got, I don’t know, a half million dollars. She didn’t eat it or anything. She just looked at it. She said she had dreams about mice for a year. That a crock, or what?”
    “Uh-huh. Say, Sheriff, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I saw the car my friend was in.”
    “Your friend? Oh, right—the car got itself blowed up.”
    “There were two bullet holes in it.”
    “Bullet holes?” Not one strand of lean muscle in his cheek changed position. “I doubt that, sir.”
    “I’ve hunted since I was twelve,” Pellam said.
    “We went over it real careful and we didn’t find any sign of nothing a’tall.”
    “Two,” Pellam said, “by the gas tank.”
    His face still didn’t budge. “Oh, you mean, in the back. Those the holes in the back about three, four feet apart?”
    Pellam said, “Believe they were.”
    The sheriff nodded. “Firemen.”
    “What?”
    “When they got there, the car was still on fire and the trunk was closed. They used this pike, I don’t exactly know what it is, a big rod kind of thing with a hook on it to pop the trunk. They do that with a burning car. Open it up as much as they can. They got a lot of good equipment. Always using the Jaws of Life to cut people out of wrecks.”
    “Oh.”
    “Where’d you happen to run across this car, sir?”
    “Saw it out by the highway. At the junkyard a mile outside of town.”
    The sheriff looked down at his feet, shoes expertly polished with more Vaseline. “Uh, one of the things I was looking for you for—I wanted to mention: it might not be such a good idea, you doing what you’re doing here.”
    Pellam said, “What would that be?”
    “You know, I get the feeling that you don’t like the fact your friend got himself killed doing drugs and you’re trying to show something else happened.”
    “Investigation was pretty fast.”
    “Pardon?”
    “The coroner’s inquest, your investigation. All happened pretty fast.”
    The impassive, sunglass-less face nodding slowly. “Maybe you’d be used to city police work. We don’thave a thousand homicides a year in Cleary, sir. We get a crime, or an accident, and we take care of it quick.”
    “I appreciate that. But I doubt my friend was doing drugs. . . .”
    “Mr. Pellam, we don’t have an evidence room, like you see on TV, you know. But we have this file cabinet and sitting inside it right now is a foil package with what must be a couple ounces of hashish. Now, I—”
    “But—”
    “Let me finish, sir. I was in Nam. I’ve done some smoking in my day. And I should add I’ve got no axe to grind with movie people or with you or your friend. We found the dope, we found a lighter, we found a brush fire. You yourself can see where the evidence points.”
    “I’ve never heard of a car getting blown up because somebody was smoking nearby.”
    “Well, you think about that Negro comedian a few years ago, set himself on fire.”
    “Marty wouldn’t be freebasing in a state park at noon.”
    A faint smile. “Oh? Then when would he be?”
    Pellam leaned forward. He spotted a cautious flicker in the sheriff’s eyes. “Listen, Sheriff, let me line it up for you. And you tell me what you think, okay? My camper’s vandalized with threatening messages. Then my friend dies in a pretty curious way. And in forty-eight hours the place where it happened is dug over, the car gets sold to a junkyard and the man who rented the car to him goes off to Miami.”
    “Clearwater. Fred Sillman goes to Clearwater every year.”
    “I don’t honestly give a shit what his leisure schedule is. My friend didn’t die the way everybody keeps saying he did. And if you aren’t going to find out what happened I am. Simple as that.”
    “We did our job, sir. We found some facts about your