Strange Highways

Chase found disconcerting.
     The girl said, "Yeah, I can speak."
     "What's your name?" Wallace asked.
     "Louise."
     "Louise what?"
     "Allenby. Louise Allenby."
     Wallace said, "You live in the city?"
     "In Ashside."
     "How old?"
     Anger flared in her, but then she damped it and turned her gaze back to her nails. "Seventeen."
     "In high school?"
     "I graduated in June," she said. "I'm going to college in the fall. Penn State."
     Wallace said, "Who was the boy?"
     "Mike."
     "That's it?"
     "That's what?"
     "Just Mike? Like Liberace. Like Picasso? One name?"
     "Michael Karnes," she said.
     "Just a boyfriend, or you engaged?"
     "Boyfriend. We'd been going together for about a year, kind of steady."
     "What were you doing on Kanackaway Ridge Road?" Wallace asked.
     She looked boldly at him. "What do you think?"
     Though Wallace's bored tone was disconcerting, Chase found the girl's detachment so unnerving that he wanted to be away from her as quickly as possible. "Look, Detective Wallace," he interjected, "is this really necessary? The girl wasn't involved in it. I think the guy might've gone for her next if I hadn't stopped him."
     Wallace said, "How'd you happen to be there in the first place?"
     "Just out driving," Chase said.
     A light of interest switched on in the detective's eyes. "What's your name?"
     "Benjamin Chase."
     "I thought I'd seen you before." His manner softened and his energy level rose. "Your picture was in the papers today."
     Chase nodded.
     "That was really something you did over there," Wallace said. "That really took guts."
     "It wasn't as much as they make out," Chase said.
     "I'll bet it wasn't!" Wallace said, though it was clear that he thought Chase's actions in Vietnam must have been even more heroic than the papers had portrayed them.
     The girl had taken a new interest in Chase and was studying him openly.
     Wallace's tone toward her changed too. He said, "You want to tell me about it, just how it happened?"
     She told him, losing some of her eerie composure in the process. Twice Chase thought that she was going to cry, and he wished that she would. Her cold manner, so soon after all the blood, gave him the creeps. Maybe she was still in denial. She repressed the tears, and by the time she had finished her story, she was calm again.
     "You saw his face?" Wallace asked.
     "Just a glimpse," she said.
     "Can you describe him?"
     "Not really."
     "Try. "
     "He had brown eyes, I think."
     "No mustache or beard?"
     "I don't think so."
     "Long sideburns or short?"
     "Short, I think."
     "Any scars?"
     "No."
     "Anything at all memorable about him?"
     "No."
     "The shape of his face-"
     "No."
     "No what?"
     "It was just a face, any shape."
     "His hair receding or full?"
     "I can't remember," she said.
     Chase said, "When I got to her, she was in a state of shock. I doubt she was registering anything."
     Instead of a grateful agreement, Louise scowled at him.
     He realized, too late, that the worst embarrassment for someone Louise's age was to lose her cool, to fail to cope. He had betrayed her momentary lapse to, of all people, a cop. She would have little gratitude for him now, even though he had saved her life.
     Wallace got up. "Come on," he said.
     "Where?" Chase asked.
     "We'll go out there."
     "Is that really necessary? For me, anyway?" Chase asked.
     "Well, I have to take statements from both of you, in more detail than this. It would help, Mr. Chase, to be on the scene when you're describing it again. It'll only take a short while. We'll need the girl longer than we'll need you."

     Chase was sitting in the rear of Wallace's squad car, thirty feet from the scene of the murder, answering questions, when the staff car from the Press-Dispatch arrived. Two photographers and a reporter got out.
     For the first time, Chase realized that there would be local newspaper and television coverage. They would make a reluctant hero of him. Again.
     "Please," he said to Wallace, "can we keep the