Christine

Arnie clapped his hands to his head in an exaggerated gesture of exasperation. “Autumn Red, great. Christine’s a custom job but there were Fords from 1959 to 1963 painted Autumn Red, and Thunderbirds, and Chevrolet offered that shade from 1962 to 1964, and for a while in the mid-fifties you could get a Rambler painted Autumn Red. I’ve been working on my ’58 for half a year now, I get the car books; you can’t do work on an old car without the books, or you’re screwed before you start. Autumn Red was a popular choice. I know it'—he looked at Junkins fixedly—'and you know it, too. Don’t you?”

Junkins said nothing; he only went on looking at Arnie in that fixed, stony, unsettling way. Arnie had never seen looked at in that way by anyone in his life, but he recognized the gaze, He supposed anyone would. It was a took of strong, frank suspicion. It scared him. A few months ago—even a few weeks ago—that was probably all it would have done. But now it made him furious as well.

“You re really reaching. Just what the hell have you got against me anyway, Mr Junkins? Why are you on my ass?” Junkins laughed and walked around in a large half-circle. The place was entirely empty except for the two of them out here and Will in his office, finishing his hoagie and licking olive oil off his hands and still watching them closely.

“What have I got against you?” He said. “How does first-degree murder sound to you, Arnie? Does that grab you with any force?”

Arnie grew very still.

“Don’t worry,” Junkins said, still walking. “No big tough cop scene. No menacing threats about going downtown—except in this case downtown would be Harrisburg. No Miranda card. Everything is still fine for our hero, Arnold Cunningham.”

“I don’t understand any of what you’re—”

“You… understand. PLENTY!” Junkins roared at him. He had stopped next to a giant yellow hulk of a truck—another of Johnny Pomberton’s dumpsters-in-the-making. He stared at Arnie. “Three of the kids who beat on your car are dead. Autumn Red paint samples were taken at both crime scenes, leading us to believe that the vehicle the perpetrator used in both cases was at least in part Autumn Red. And gee whiz! It just turns out that the car those kids trashed is mostly Autumn Red. And you stand there and push your glasses up on your nose and tell me you don’t understand what I’m talking about.”

“I was in Philadelphia when it happened,” Arnie said quietly. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you get that at all?”

“Kiddo,” Junkins said flipping his cigarette away, “that’s the worst part of it. That’s the part that really stinks.”

“I wish you’d get out of here or put me under arrest or something. Because I’m supposed to punch in and do some work.”

“For now,” Junkins said, “talk is all I’ve got. The first time—when Welch got killed—you were supposed to be home in bed.”

“Pretty thin, I know,” Arnie said. “Believe me, if I’d known this shit was going to come down on my head, I would have hired a sick friend to sit up with me.”

“Oh, no—that was good,” Junkins said. “Your mother and father had no cause to doubt your tale. I could tell that from speaking to them. And alibis—the true ones—usually have more holes than a Salvation Army suit. It’s when they start to look like suits of armour that I get nervous.”

“Holy Jumping Jesus!” Arnie almost screamed. “It was a fucking chess meet! I’ve been in the chess club for four years now!”

Until today,” Junkins said, and Arnie grew still again. Junkins nodded. “Oh yeah, I talked to the club advisor. Herbert Slawson. He says that the first three years you never missed a meeting, even came to a couple with a low-grade case of the flu. You were his star player. Then, this year, you were spotty right from the start—”

“I had my car to work on… and I got a girl—”

“He said you missed the first three tourneys, and he was pretty surprised when your name turned up on the trip sheet for the Northern States meet. He thought you’d lost all your interest in the club.”

“I told you—”

“Yes, you did. Too busy. Cars and girls, just what makes most kids too busy. But you regained your interest long enough to go to Philly—and then you dropped out. That strikes me as very odd.”

“I can’t see anything funny about it,” Arnie said, but his voice seemed distant, almost lost in the surf-roar of blood in his ears.

“Bullshit. It looks as if you knew it was coming down and set yourself up with an airtight alibi.”

The roar in his head had even assumed the steady, wavelike beats of surf, each beat accompanied by a dull thrust of pain. He was getting a headache—why wouldn’t this monstrous man with his prying brown eyes just go away? None of it was true, none of it, He hadn’t set anything up, not an alibi, not anything. He had been as surprised as anyone else when he read in the paper what had happened. Of course he had been. There was nothing strange going on, unless it was this lunatic’s paranoia, and