Strangers by Bill Pronzini Page B

crappy job.”
    â€œCan I talk to you again if necessary?”
    â€œIf necessary,” she said, and she was gone.
    *   *   *
    High Desert Auto Repair and Towing, where Rick Firestone worked as a mechanic and tow-truck driver, was on the western outskirts of town. He was away on a call when I got there, but one of the other employees said he’d be back soon, so I waited. Short wait: a big yellow wrecker wheeled into the station ten minutes later and disgorged a rangy, overall-clad kid with long black hair and dim little eyes.
    Firestone was wary of me at first, closed off the way a lot of young people are when confronted by an older authority figure. I had the feeling that letting him know I was detective would close him off completely, so I said only that I was working with Cody Hatcher’s lawyer. That was the right way to handle it. Firestone relaxed, admitted readily enough to being in Cody’s corner, and agreed to talk to me.
    â€œBut I got to get back on the job,” he said after a glance at an Omega chronograph on his wrist. “Talk while I’m working, okay?”
    I said okay and followed him into the body shop, where he did some hammering on the undercarriage of an old, hoist-raised pickup, his mouth open an inch or two the entire time even when words weren’t coming out of it. Like a Venus flytrap waiting to be fed, I thought. And with not many more brain cells.
    â€œYeah, Cody give me a ride the night that old woman in the Oasis got poked,” he said. “I had a damn flat tire and my spare’d gone flat, too. Good thing Cody and Alana were around or I’d of had to walk all the way home.”
    â€œWhere did that happen, the flat tire?”
    â€œHuh? Oh, out by Eldorado Park, edge of town.”
    â€œAnd that’s where they picked you up?”
    â€œYeah. They just come back from Chimney Rock.” Firestone grinned, a simpleton’s grin with his mouth open the way it was. “Man, you could smell what they been doin’ out there.”
    â€œSmoking dope?”
    â€œHuh? Nah, not that.” He made a back-and-forth pumping gesture with his arm. “You know, whap, whap, whap.”
    I let that pass. “Did you see Cody again that night?”
    â€œNo. I went straight to my place. I wish I’d of gone with him after he took Alana home. Then they couldn’t say he done it.”
    â€œGone with him where? Did he say?”
    â€œChew up some dirt on Salt Basin Road.”
    â€œChew up some dirt. Meaning?”
    â€œRacing, man. On- and off-road, you know?”
    â€œHe do that sort of thing often?”
    â€œSure. Wild dude behind the wheel sometimes. Took some chances I never would and I ain’t no chicken.”
    â€œHow did he seem to you that night? Nervous, excited?”
    â€œNah.” The idiot’s grin again. “After bein’ with Alana? Wasn’t no excitement left in him.”
    â€œJust his usual self, then.”
    â€œYeah. Sure. His usual self.”
    â€œYou see him the nights of the other two rapes?”
    â€œHuh? I dunno. When were they?”
    I told him the dates and approximate times. Firestone stopped working, stood with his mouth open even wider while he struggled with his memory. At length he said, “Three weeks, four weeks … nah. I can’t remember that far back. Cody and me, we don’t hang together that much anyhow.”
    â€œNot close friends, then.”
    â€œNah. He does his thing, I do mine.”
    â€œWho would you say his best friend is, other than Alana?”
    â€œHis best bud? Prolly Jimmy.”
    â€œJimmy Oliver, the sheriff’s nephew.”
    â€œYeah. The sheriff don’t like it, them two hanging together so much, but wasn’t nothing he could do about it until he picked on Cody for banging them women.”
    â€œWhat’s your opinion of Sheriff Felix?”
    â€œOpinion? You don’t want