The staked Goat

Pontiac around behind some compressed wrecks and in front of some likely candidates. As I got out, I patted the steering wheel twice. I’m not sure I believe in animism, but the car had come through like an old, loyal farm dog. Fearing powder burns from the Walther and blood stains from Crowley, I stripped off Amie’s old jacket and tossed it into the trunk. As I trudged back toward Eddie’s gate, I looked behind me. No way anybody would spot the car from the street. I stopped at Eddie’s shack and slipped the keys to the car and the gate through the slit in the lockbox on the shack wall. I edged through the gate, squeezing home the clasp of the lock from the outside.
    I looked around as casually as I could manage. I saw no one. I started hiking the half mile or so back to the auto shop and the rental. I stumbled two or three times, but I made it.
    I unlocked and turned the key in the rental. It coughed and grumbled twice, but it started on the third try. I mouthed a silent thank you and drove off slowly, stopping at four different mailboxes over a seven-mile, patternless stretch, dropping one book mailer in each. Then I drove back to the auto body street.
    I got out of the car, carrying the shotgun. I walked behind the auto shop, ejected the first, spent shell, and fired twice more, one into the snow near Crowley’s body, a second up at the concrete and wood wall. Then I braced myself, tore up the area of my wound a bit and dropped down, rolling around in the snow.
    I staggered, part for show and part for real, back to the rental. I drove, as erratically as possible, into the center of the town where I carefully selected a parked municipal vehicle, plowing into same at about twenty miles per hour. At impact, I struck my forehead on the steering wheel a bit more forcefully than the laws of physics required and slumped sideways into the suicide seat. I heard some yelling and footsteps. I tried to nap while I awaited the arrival of the police and ambulance.
     
    I gave the impression of fading in and out for as many hours as I thought I could get away with it. It was probably 4 A.M. when I finally decided to awaken and a bleary-eyed cop named Wasser was called by the nurse to my side.
    While I had no mirror, I was willing to bet I looked better than Wasser. He wore a patched and taped Baxter State parka whose red-plaid lining clashed with the purple dot matrix plaid of his double knit sports jacket. He had battled a shaver at some point in the last thirty-six hours, but the skirmish hadn’t reached the right side of his chin. He carried the remains of a vile-smelling sub sandwich in off-white butcher paper in his left hand and a pad and pencil in his right. He was overweight, probably thirty-two though he looked nearer fifty. I was willing to bet this was his first shooting. He pulled out a filthy card that looked as though it had figured prominently in the making of his sandwich. He began to read from the card.
    ”You have the right to remain silent. Anything—”
    ”Cut the rights recital, will you. Is he dead?”
    Wasser blinked at me. This was not a member of the Boston Police Homicide Squad. This was a member of a small-town, selectman’s nephew, incompetent detective squad. I had picked the site carefully.
    ”Is who...” he started to say, then shook himself and ran through the rights as though there were no spaces between the words.
    I acknowledged I understood them and asked if there was anything he’d like me to sign.
    He turned the card over and back a few times.
    ”Not on the card,” I said, ”there’s a separate form.”
    He blinked some more.
    ”If I were you,” I said, ”I’d call for reinforcements.”
    He stopped blinking and took a bite of his sandwich. Then he hurried out of the room, and I dozed off for real.
     
    ”Are you awake?” said a voice with some juice behind it.
    I looked up into the eyes of a hard-chiseled face. Short black hair, not much gray. Wasser stood behind him, chewing.
    ”My name is Lieutenant Parras.” He spelled it for me. ”I understand Detective Wasser read you your rights and while you understand them, you want to speak to us anyway. Is that correct?”
    ”Yes.”
    Parras said, ”We didn’t find any identification on you. What’s your name?”
    ”John Francis Cuddy.”
    ”Address?”
    ”It’s not there anymore.”
    His eyebrows knitted. ”What?” he said.
    ”It’s gone, my apartment house. Somebody blew it up.”
    Parras smiled