“The area’s restricted,” Coop said. “I suggest you leave it.”
The reporter put his hands on his hips and glared at Coop as he went down the embankment again. The winch had lifted the Volkswagen, and it was resting on all four wheels now. O’Neil had walked over to the motorized patrolmen who’d discovered the burning bus. Both of them were drinking coffee from cardboard containers. He was talking to the driver of the car when I approached.
“... got on the scene,” he said, “what’d the fire look like?”
“What do you mean?”
“Which part of the bus was burning?”
“The front end. You know where the driver’s seat is? That’s what was burning.”
“And you ran down there with an extinguisher, huh?”
“My partner did. Freddie?” he said, and turned to him.
“Yeah,” Freddie said, “I tried to squirt it through the windshield. The windshield was busted, and flames were leaping out of it, and all I could think of was the poor bastard behind the wheel. I guess I was trying to save him, you know what I mean? Though, prolly, he was already dead. Anyway, the extinguisher wasn’t worth a shit against that kind of fire.”
“Then what happened?” O’Neil asked.
“The extinguisher ran out, and I was afraid the tank might blow. So I took a quick look at the license plate and ran back up the hill.”
“When did the tank explode?”
“Right after I got back to the car here. Ain’t that right?” he asked his partner.
“Couldn’t’ve been more than two or three minutes.”
“Thanks,” O’Neil said. As we started down the embankment again, he turned to me and said, “This stinks.” He was right. It stank to high heaven. Coop was already down at the bus, going through the interior. He’d found the car’s registration in the glove compartment, and he handed it to O’Neil now. The registration was made out to Arthur J. Wylie at 574 Waverly Street. The key was still in the ignition. There were several other keys on the chain. Two of them looked like house keys.
“I’ll bet these fit the Waverly Street apartment,” O’Neil said. He put the keys in an envelope, and then went into the rear section of the bus, where he found several charred remnants of what had once been a blue rug. The scraps were almost threadbare. One of them had a dark-brown stain on it.
“Blood?” Coop said. !
“Maybe,” O’Neil said. “The lab’ll tell us.” He tagged the scraps and put them in a large manila envelope. Then he turned to me and again said, “What do you think?”
“I think you’re right about the absence of skid marks or broken glass,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, and nodded. “There’re a few other things that bother me, too.”
“Like what?” Coop said.
“The burns. The M.E. said they were fourth-degree burns. On the face, the hands, and the front of the torso. Typical in an explosion. But the gas tank’s in the rear of a Volkswagen bus. If the tank exploded behind Wylie, how’d he get the worst burns on the front of his body? Patrolman up there says only the front of the bus was on fire when he came down here with the extinguisher. The tank blew after he went back up the bill.”
Coop was silent, thinking. I let them work it out together. I had no desire to step on O’Neil’s toes. He was young, and not too experienced, but he was smart as hell, and he was covering all the bases.
“What’s your guess?” Coop asked him.
“I think somebody doused the driver’s seat and the driver with gasoline,” O’Neil said. “Or some other volatile liquid, it doesn’t matter. That bus was pushed over the embankment. When it hit the rocks down there, it exploded. Then the tank went up later.”
“Benny?” Coop said.
“I think he’s right.”
“But you know what else bothers me?” O’Neil said. “If the guy wanted an explosion, how could he be sure he was going to get one? Even if he closed all the windows, how could he have known all that enclosed vapor would blow?”
“Maybe he just tossed a match in before he shoved the bus over,” Coop said.
“Yeah, but that would’ve given him a fire, not an explosion. I’ve seen cars roll over a dozen times and not explode.” He shook his head. “Well, however he did it, he damn well did it. This was no accident. Somebody killed Wylie.” He was pleased with his deduction. So far, he had answers to the When, Where, Who, and What of NEOTWY. He was only partially sure of the How, but he was wondering about the same thing that bothered me: How could the man have been certain he’d get an explosion? And, of course, he still didn’t know Why. I decided to risk helping him.
“I don’t think it was Wylie behind that wheel,” I said.
Neither he nor Coop looked terribly surprised. The idea I’d expressed had not occurred to them before this moment, but they didn’t grimace in derision, or exchange smiles or glances or winks. Even though the bus had been loaded with all sorts of identification, they knew the body had been incinerated beyond recognition, and so they waited for me to elaborate.
“Can you get Hiller’s dental chart?” I said.
“Hiller?” Coop said.
“The corpse Wylie swiped last night,” O’Neil explained. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Yeah, his dental chart. Yeah.” He shook his head. “I’ve been going nuts trying to figure out why anyone would want to steal a dead body.”
Coop was a little slower to follow the line of reasoning. When he caught on, he said, “Oh, I get it.” His voice sounded almost childlike. “I’ll be damned,” he said, and he, too, shook his head.
O’Neil suddenly thought of something. “Jesus,” he said, “the fire didn’t ruin his teeth, did it?”
“No,” I said. “The M.E. told me they’re okay.”
“Good,” O’Neil said. He sounded enormously relieved. Teeth are as good as fingerprints when it comes to positive identification. All he had to do now was compare Hiller’s dental chart with the teeth in the head of the incinerated corpse. That wouldn’t tell him where the real Arthur Wylie was, but at least he’d then be certain his killer was still on the loose. “I want to get moving on this,” he said. “Smoke,” he said, and hesitated, and then awkwardly stuck out his hand. “Thanks.”
He seemed very happy as we started the climb to the road. I did not tell him how depressed I was. There are some things employees of the Police Department simply do not understand.
Twenty-Seven
If I had figured this correctly (and I was modestly certain I had), there was one thing Natalie and Arthur still had to do before leaving town forever. I knew what they had to do, and I knew where they planned to do it—but I didn’t know exactly where. That’s why I went back to the apartment.
I had put Henry on Natalie’s tail at one-thirty this afternoon, and it was now close to ten-thirty and I’d heard nothing from him. The possibility existed, of course, that he had phoned the apartment sometime after Lisette left. The possibility also existed that he’d picked up Natalie’s trail after her two o’clock appointment with Susanna Martin, and hadn’t called for fear of losing her. There were other possibilities as well, and I considered these for a moment, never allowing hope to infringe upon reality— I knew the case was closed, I knew Arthur and Natalie were as good as in the bag. But suppose, ah, suppose?