Christine

Was it so unlikely that Will would know… well, would know something about Christine? No. He saw a great deal from behind that window, but he knew how to keep his mouth shut—at least until the time was right to open it. He might know what Junkins did not, that Christine’s regeneration in November was not just strange but totally impossible. He would know that a lot of the repairs had never been made, at least not by Arnie.

What else would he know?

With a creeping coldness that moved up his legs to the root of his guts, Arnie realized at last that. Will could have been at the garage the night Repperton and the others had died. In fact, it was more than possible. It was probable. Jimmy Sykes was simple, and Will didn’t like to trust him alone.

You don’t want to open your mouth. You don’t want to frig with me because I can do this…

But even supposing Will knew, who would believe him? It was too late for self-delusion now, and Arnie could no longer put the unthinkable thought away from himself… he no longer even wanted to. Who would believe Will if Will decided to tell someone that Christine sometimes ran by herself? That she had been out on her own the night Moochie Welch was killed, and the night those other hoods were killed? Would the police believe that? They would laugh themselves into a haemorrhage. Junkins? Getting warmer, but Arnie didn’t believe Junkins would be able to accept such a thing, even if he wanted to. Arnie had seen his eyes. So even if Will did know, what good would his knowledge do?

Then, with mounting horror, Arnie realized that it didn’t matter. Will would be out on bail tomorrow or the next day, and then Christine would be his “hostage. He could torch it—he had torched plenty of cars in his time, as Arnie knew from sitting in the office and listening to him yarn—and after she was torched, a burned hulk, helpless, there was the crusher out back. In goes the- cindered hulk of Christine on the conveyor belt, out comes a smashed cube of metal.

The cops have sealed the place.

But that didn’t cut any ice, either. Will Darnell was a very old fox, and he stayed prepared for any contingency. If Will wanted to get in and torch Christine, he would do it… although it was much more likely, Arnie thought, that he would hire an insurance specialist to do the job—a guy who would throw double handfuls of charcoal-lighter cubes into the car and then toss a match.

In his mind’s eye Arnie could see the blossoming flames. He could smell charring upholstery.

He lay on the cell bunk, his mouth dry, his heart beating rapidly in his chest.

You don’t want to open your mouth. You don’t want to frig with me…

Of course, if Will tried something and got careless—if his concentration lapsed for even a moment—Christine would get him. But somehow Arnie didn’t think Will would get careless.

The next day he had been taken back to Pennsylvania, charged, then bailed for a nominal sum. There would be a preliminary hearing in January, and there was already talk of a grand jury. The bust was front-page material across the state, although Arnie was only identified as “a youth” whose name was “being withheld by state and Federal authorities due to his minor status.”

Arnie’s name was common enough knowledge in Libertyville, however. In spite of its new exurban sprawl of drive-ins, fast-food emporiums, and Bowl-a-Ramas, it was still a faculty town where a lot of people were living in other people’s back pockets. These people, mostly associated with Horlicks University, knew who had been driving for Will Darnell and who had been arrested over the New York State line with a bootful of contraband cigarettes. It was Regina’s nightmare.

Arnie went home in the custody of his parents—bailed for a thousand dollars—after a brief detour to jail. It was all nothing but a big shitting game of Monopoly, really. His parents had come up with the Get Out of Jail Free card. As expected.

“What are you smiling” about, Arnie?” Regina asked him. Michael was driving the wagon along at fast walking speed, looking through the swirls of snow for Steve and Vicky’s ranchhouse.

“Was I smiling?”

“Yes,” she said, and touched her hair.

“I don’t really remember,” he said remotely, and she took her hand away.

They had come home on Sunday and his parents had left him pretty much alone, either because they didn’t know how to talk to him or because they were utterly disgusted with him… or perhaps it was a combination of the two. He didn’t give a crap which, and that was the truth. He felt washed out, exhausted, a ghost of himself. His mother had gone to bed and slept all that afternoon, after taking the telephone off the hook. His father puttered aimlessly in his workroom, running his electric planer periodically and then shutting it off.