Karen Shipley watched him drive away and then she got back into her LeBaron and started the engine and put her face into her hands and cried. She slapped the LeBaron’s steering wheel and screamed so loudly that I could hear her even with the windows up and the engine running.

She cried for another five minutes and then she dried her eyes and checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, and when it was perfect she drove away.

I ran back through the woods and pushed the Taurus over a hundred on the roads back to Chelam and picked up Karen Shipley again just as she turned into the bank’s parking lot. I pulled up beside the grocery and watched. It was six-fifty-two. Still plenty of time before Joyce Steuben or the teller would arrive.

Karen got out of the LeBaron and carried the duffel bag into the bank. Ten minutes later she came out with the duffel now deflated and folded into a tight roll. She walked across the street to a public waste can in front of the hardware store and threw the duffel away.

Someone in a green and white Chevy Blazer drove by, beeped his horn, and waved. Neighborly. Karen Shipley did not wave back. She walked with her eyes forward and her face set all the way back into the bank. She looked tired and old. Older than the lemon-pie girl in the 8 × 10.

I sat in the Taurus in the empty grocery store lot and watched the town come to life. A rural town with small-town ways. The air was cool and smelled of maple and the coming of Halloween. I turned on the radio. A man and a woman were discussing all the fine recipes you could make with pumpkins and the other autumn squash. A little bit of butter. A little cinnamon. A little sugar. After a while I turned off the radio.

Fall used to be my favorite time of the year.

Chapter Twelve

Twelve

I called the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles from a pay phone at a Shell station just off the interstate and said, “This is foot patrol Officer Willis Sweetwell, badge number five-oh-seven-two-four. I need wants and warrants on New York plate sierra-romeo-golf-six-six-one. And gimme the registration on that, too.” They either go for it or they don’t.

There was a little pause, then a guy with a deep voice said, “Wait one.” Score for the Jack Webb.

The deep voice came back on and told me there were neither wants nor warrants on six-six-one, and that it was registered to the Lucerno Meat Company at 7511 Grand Avenue in lower Manhattan.

I said, “You don’t have an individual on that?”

“Nope. Looks like a company car.”

I said, “Thanks for the help, buddy. Have a good day.” Cops like to say “buddy.”