Driving A Bargain

Now or never, Jerry thought. He jogged over to Ashley, catching up with her as she was walking along Thurlbeck Street. “Hey, Ash,” he said. “Where’re you going?”

Ashley turned around and smiled that radiant smile of hers. “Just down to the store to get some gum.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

“If you like,” she said, her voice perfectly measured, perfectly noncommittal.

Jerry fell in beside her. He chatted with her—trying to hide his nervousness—about what they’d each done over the summer. She’d spent most of it at her uncles farm and—

Jerry stopped dead in his tracks.

A car was coming up Thurlbeck Street, heading toward the school. It came abreast of the crucifix but didn’t slow down, it just sailed on by.

“What’s wrong?” asked Ashley.

“Nothing,” said Jerry. A few moments later, another car came along, and it too passed the crucifix without incident.

Of course, Jerry had had no trouble driving home from school, but he’d assumed that that was because he was in the other lane, going in the opposite direction, and that Tammy, wherever she was, didn’t care about people going that way.

But …

But now it looked like it wasn’t every car that she was slowing down when it passed the spot where she’d—there was no gentle way to phrase it—where she’d been killed.

No, not every car.

Jerry’s heart fluttered.

Just my car.

* * *

The next day, the same thing: Jerry’s car slowed down almost to a stop directly opposite where Tammy Jameson had been hit. He tried to ignore it, but then Dickens, one of the kids in his geography class, made a crack about it. “Hey, Sloane,” he said, “What are you, chicken? I see you crawling along every morning when you pass the spot where Tammy was killed.”

Where Tammy was killed. He said it offhandedly, as if death was a commonplace occurrence for him, as if he was talking about the place where something utterly normal had happened.

But Jerry couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been called on it, on what Dickens assumed was his behavior, and he had to either give a good reason for it or stop doing it. That’s the way it worked.

But he had no good reason for it, except …

Except the one he’d been suppressing, the one that kept gnawing at the back of his mind, but that he’d shooed away whenever it had threatened to come to the fore.

Only his car was slowing down.

But it hadn’t always been his car.

A bargain. Just two grand!

Jerry had assumed that there had to be something wrong with it for him to get it so cheap, but that wasn’t it. Not exactly.

Rather, something wrong had been done with it.

His car was the one the police were looking for, the one that had been used to strike a young woman dead and then flee the scene.

* * *

Jerry drove to the house where the man with the basset-hound face lived. He left the car in the driveway, with the driver’s door open and the engine still running. He got out, walked up to the door, rang the bell, and waited for the man to appear, which, after a long, long time, he finally did.

“Oh, it’s you, son,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

Jerry had thought it took all his courage just to speak to Ashley Brown. But he’d been wrong. This took more courage. Way more.

“I know what you did in that car you sold me,” he said.

The man’s face didn’t show any shock, but Jerry realized that wasn’t because he wasn’t surprised. No, thought Jerry, it was something else—a deadness, an inability to feel shock anymore.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, son,” said the man.

“That car—my car—you hit a girl with it. On Thurlbeck Street.”

“I swear to you,” said the man, still standing in his doorway, “I never did anything like that.”

“She went to my school,” said Jerry. “Her name was Tammy. Tammy Jameson.”

The man closed his eyes, as if he was trying to shut out the world.

“And,” said Jerry, his voice quavering, “you killed her.”

“No,” said the man. “No, I didn’t.” He paused. “Look, do you want to come in?”

Jerry shook his head. He could outrun the old guy—he was sure of that—and he could make it back to his car in a matter of seconds. But if he went inside … well, he’d seen that in horror movies, too.

The man with the sad lace put his hands in his pockets. “What are you going to do?” he said.

“Go to the cops,” said Jerry. “Tell them.”

The man didn’t laugh, although Jerry had expected him to—a derisive, mocking laugh. Instead, he just shook his head.

“You’ve got no evidence.”

“The car slows down on its own every time I pass the spot where the”— he’d been about to say “accident,” but that was the wrong word—“where the crime occurred.”

This time, the man’s face did show a reaction, a lifting of his shaggy, graying eyebrows. “Really?” But he composed himself quickly. “The police won’t give you the time of day if you come in with a crazy story like that.”

“Maybe,” said Jerry, trying to sound more confident than he felt. “Maybe not.”

“Look, I’ve been nice to you,” said the man. “I gave you a great deal on that car.”

“Of course you did!” snapped Jerry. “You wanted to get rid of it! After what you did—”