You have to understand that much at least, I know you do, because you saw the registration. It’s my sister-in-law’s. She’s a pothead. Half her brain-cells—”
“Mare—” Peter laid a hand on her arm. She shook it off.
“No! I’m not going to spend the rest of the day answer-ing questions in some dipshit police station, maybe in a jail cell, because your sister’s selfish and forgetful and and… all fucked up!”
Peter sat back—his knees were still being pinched pretty severely but he thought he could live with it—and looked out the dust-coated side window. They were a mile or two east of the Acura now, and he could see something up ahead, pulled over on the shoulder of the westbound lane. Some sort of vehicle. Big. A truck, maybe.
Mary had switched her gaze from the back of the cop’s head to the rearview minor, trying to make eye contact with him. “Half of Deirdre’s brain-cells are fried and the other half are on permanent vacation in the Emerald City. The technical term is ‘burnout,’ and I’m sure you ye seen people like her, Officer, even out here. What you found under the spare tire probably is dope, you’re probably right about that, but not our dope! Can’t you see that.”
The thing up ahead, off the road with its tinted wind-shield pointed in the direction of Fallon and Carson City and Lake Tahoe, wasn’t a truck after all; it was an RV. Not one of the real dinosaurs, but still pretty big. Cream—colored, with a dark green stripe running along the side. The words FOUR HAPPY WANDERERS were printed in the same dark green on the RV’s blunt nose. The vehicle was road-dusty and canted over in an awkward, unnatu-ral way.
As they neared it, Peter saw an odd thing: all the tires in his view appeared to be flat. He thought maybe the double set of back tires on the passenger side was flat, — too, although he only caught the briefest glimpse of them. That many flat shoes would account for the land-cruisers funny, canted look, but how did you get that many fla—shoes all at once.
Nails in the road. A strew of glass.
He looked at Mary. but Mary was still looking passion ately up into the rearview minor.
“If we’d put that bag o dope under the tire,” she was saying, “if it was ours, then why in God’s name would Peter have taken the spare out so you could see it. I mean, he could have reached around the spare and gotten the toolkit, it would have been a little awkward but there was room.”
They went past the RV. The side door was closed but unlatched. The steps were down.
There was a doll lying in the dirt at the foot of them. The dress it was wearing flut tered in the wind.
Peter’s eyes closed. He didn’t know for sure if he had closed them or if they had closed on their own. Didn t much care. All he knew was that Officer Friendly had blown by the disabled RV as if he hadn’t even seen it.
Or as if he already knew all about it.
Words from an old song, floating in his head: Somethin happenin here… what it is ain’t exactly clear…
“Do we impress you as stupid people.” Mary was ask ing as the disabled RV began to dwindle behind them—to dwindle as Deirdre’s Acura had done. “Or stoned. Do you think we’re—”
“Shut up,” the cop said. He spoke softly, but there was no way to miss the venom in his voice.
Mary had been sitting forward with her fingers curled into the mesh between the front and back seats. Now her hands dropped away from it, and she turned her shocked face toward Peter. She was a faculty wife, she was a poet who had published in over twenty magazines since her first tentative submissions eight years ago, she went to a women’s discussion group twice a week, she had been seriously considering piercing her nose.
Peter wondered when the last time was she had been told to shut up. He wondered if anyone had ever told her to shut up.
“What.” she asked, perhaps trying to sound aggressive, even threatening, and only sounding bewildered. “What did you tell me.”
“I’m arresting you and your husband on a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to sell,” the cop said His voice was uninflected, robotic. Now staring forward Peter saw there was a little plastic bear stuck to the dash board, beside the compass and next to what was probably an LED readout for the radar speed-gun. The bear was small, the size of a gumball machine prize. His neck was on a spring, and his empty painted eyes stared back at Peter.
This is a nightmare, he thought, knowing it wasn’t. It’s got to be a nightmare. I know it feels real, but it’s got to be.
“You can’t be serious,” Mary said, but her voice was tiny and shocked. The voice of someone who knew better. Her eyes were filling up with tears again. “Surely you can’t be.”
“You have the right to remain silent,” the big cop said in his robot’s voice. “If you do not choose to remain silent, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. I’m going to kill you. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand your rights as I have explained them to you.”
She was looking at Peter, her eyes huge and horrified, asking him without speaking if he had heard what the cop had mixed in with the rest of it, that robotic voice never varying.
Peter nodded. He had heard, all right. He put a hand into his crotch, sure he would feel dampness there, but he hadn’t wet himself. Not yet, anyway. He put an arm around Mary and could feel her trembling. He kept thinking of the RV back there. Door ajar, dollbaby lying face-down in the dirt, too many flat tires. And then there was the dead cat Mary had seen nailed to the speed—limit sign.
“Do you understand your rights.”
Act normally. I don’t think he has the slightest idea what he said, so act normally.
But what was normal when you were in the back seat of a police-cruiser driven by a man who was clearly as mad as a hatter, a man who had just said he was going to kill you.
“Do you understand your rights.” the robot voice asked him.
Peter opened his mouth. Nothing came out but a croak. The cop turned his head then. His face, pinkish with sun when he had stopped them, had gone pale. His eyes were very large, seeming to bulge out of his face like marbles. He had bitten his lip, like a man trying to sup-press some monstrous rage, and blood ran down his chin in a thin stream.
“Do you understand your rights.” the cop screamed at them, head turned, bulleting blind down the deserted two—lane at better than seventy miles an hour. “Do you under—stand your fucking rights or not.