Chapter 6 Chapter 5 Blood Car

"Grab it, grab it," whispered Connecticut State Trooper Warren Hamilton, even though he was alone in the patrol car.It was the night of June, thirty-five hours after Homer Gamache's body had been found, and Sergeant Hamilton had never heard of that Maine town. He's in the parking lot outside a McDonald's restaurant.When he's on patrol, he likes to stop in the parking lot of a restaurant or a gas station.If you drive quietly to the last row of the parking lot at night with the lights off, you can sometimes make great discoveries, not only good ones, but even surprising ones.When he found himself confronted with such an opportunity, he would often talk to himself.This monologue often begins with grab it, grab it.Then it's time for us to look it up or ask mom if she believes it.

"What did we find here?" he whispered this time, backing up the car.Pass a Camaro, pass a Toyota, in the bright lights it looks like a weathering pile of horse manure.And... I found it!An old GMC pick-up truck that looks orange in the lights, meaning it's white or light gray. He turned on his headlights and shone on the license plate.Police officer Hamilton believes that the license plates are getting better and better.Each state has a pattern printed on the license plate, which makes them easy to read at night, because the changing lights can greatly change the actual color.The worst lights are those damn orange lights.The lights were designed to deter rape and theft, and he didn't know if they served that purpose, but he was sure they caused trouble for a hard-working police officer like himself and made his job that much harder.

Small patterns help his work.The Statue of Liberty is the Statue of Liberty no matter in daylight or in the strong orange light. No matter what color, the Statue of Liberty means New York. The damn crawfish pattern he's now photographing means Maine.You no longer have to look for the words "tourist place" or guess that pink or brownish red or dark blue is actually white, you just have to look for the damn crawfish.It was actually a lobster, Hamilton knew, but a damn crayfish was a damn crayfish, whatever it was called.He'd never eat that bloody crawfish, any more than he'd eat pig shit.However, he is glad they are printed on the sign.

This evening, he was looking for license plates with crayfish on them and was delighted to see them. "Ask Mom if she believes this," he whispered, pulling the patrol car into the parking lot.He picked up the clipboard, turned to the wanted list page, and moved his thumb down the list. Here, 96529Q, Maine, home of the damn crawfish. When Hamilton passed the car just now, he found no one in the cab.There is a gun rack, but it is empty.Maybe someone was in the car, maybe even that person had a gun in his hand.More likely, the driver left early, or was eating a burger inside.But it makes no difference...

"Old cops, bold cops, but not old rough cops," Sergeant Hamilton whispered.He turned off the lights and drove slowly down the line of cars.Twice he stopped and turned on his lights twice, though he never looked at the car he was shining on.There is always the possibility that Mr. 96529Q saw Hamilton looking at the stolen car when he came back from the restaurant, and if he saw the patrol car continue to drive down to check other cars, he would not have been alarmed and fled. "Safety is safety, regret is regret, that's all I know," Hamilton called.It was a mantra he liked next to asking Mom if she believed it.

He pulled the car into an open spot where he could spy on the van.He spoke to headquarters less than four miles away, told them he'd spotted the car sought in the Maine murders, and demanded immediate reinforcements.The headquarters told him that reinforcements would be here soon. Hamilton, noticing that no one had gotten into the car, decided it was not reckless to approach it cautiously.In fact, he would look like a coward if he sat motionless in the dark and waited for reinforcements to arrive. He jumped out of the patrol car and unbuttoned the holster but kept the gun out.He drew his pistol only twice while on duty, but never fired it.Now he doesn't want to either.He approached the van at an angle that allowed him to see both the van—especially the van—and the people coming in the direction of McDonald's.He stopped, saw a man and a woman come out of the restaurant, walked towards a Ford sedan, got into the car, and drove to the exit, and then he walked on again.

His right hand rests on the pistol grip, his left on his arm.He feels that the belt is getting better and better now.He grew up a Batman fan - in fact, he suspected Batman was one of the reasons he became a cop.His favorite is Batman's multipurpose belt, which has all kinds of useful things on it that can be used in different situations: rope, mirror, Ecstasy.His belt certainly couldn't compare to that, but on the left, there were three rings hanging from three very useful things.One is an electric baton that, when you press the red button on top, emits an ultrasonic howl capable of turning the most rampaging bull into a limp macaroni.Next to it is a pressure tank, and next to it is a four-battery flashlight.

Hamilton removed the flashlight from its ring, turned it on, and slipped his left hand up to block part of the light.As he did so, he never left his right hand from the butt of his pistol.Old cops, bold cops, but not old-fashioned reckless cops. The beam of the flashlight swept across the truck bed.There was a tarp inside, but nothing else, and the cabin was as empty as a cab. Hamilton carefully kept a distance from the car with the crayfish license plate—it was a habit he didn't even realize.Now he bent down and shone his flashlight on the underside of the car, the last place anyone who wanted to hurt him could hide.It's unlikely there was anyone there, but if he had died carelessly, he wouldn't want the priest to praise him this way: "Dear friends, we are here today to mourn the memory of Policeman Warren Hamilton, who died of an unlikely death. cause." That would be stupid.

He scanned the underside of the car quickly and saw nothing but a muffler that was about to come off - judging by the hole in it, the driver wouldn't have noticed if it had come off. "I don't think there's anyone else, my dear," said Hamilton.He checks the area around the car one last time, especially the people coming from the restaurant.Finding that no one was paying attention to him, he went to the window on the passenger side of the cab and looked in. "My God," whispered Hamilton, "ask mother if she believes in this disgusting thing." He suddenly liked the orange lamps, for their intense light turned the color of tea to almost black and made blood look like ink. . "That's the way he drives it? Jesus, he drives it all the way from Maine? Ask Mom—"

He shone the flashlight down.The seats and floors of the car were filthy, and he saw beer cans, soda cans, empty or half-empty crisp bags, many empty cigarette packs.A piece of bubblegum stuck to the metal dashboard, with a hole underneath where the radio used to be.There are many unfiltered cigarette butts in the ashtray. The seats were splattered with blood, almost obscuring the Chevrolet badge there.There was blood on the inside handle of the driver's side door, and blood on the mirror - in the shape of an oval, Hamilton believes, when Mr 96529Q adjusted his mirror, he left an almost perfect spot there with his victim's blood thumbprint.There was also a large bruise on a cigarette box, and it appeared that there was hair in that box.

"How did he explain it to the girl he met on the road?" whispered Hamilton, "that he cut himself while shaving?" There was a slight sound behind him.Hamilton turned sharply. He felt that the movement was too slow, that he was too reckless. This was an extraordinary thing, and he should have been more cautious.Now that guy is standing behind him, there's going to be more blood in the cab of the old Chevrolet van soon, his blood, because the guy can drive this slaughterhouse here from Maine , he must be a psychopath who would kill a state trooper as thoughtlessly as he would buy a quart of milk, Hamilton drew his pistol, and for the third time on his duty, he pushed the safety catch and nearly Shooting into the night, he was extremely nervous.But no one was there. He slowly lowered the gun in his hand, blood throbbing in his temple. There was a gust of wind, and there was another slight noise, and on the sidewalk he saw a fish sandwich box, which undoubtedly caused the noise.You are so clever, Holmes, it is not worth mentioning, Watson, this is the most basic thing--jump five or six feet away at the sound of the wind, and then stop. Hamilton let out a long breath, and carefully closed the safety catch of the pistol. "Almost disgraceful, Holmes," he said, with a trembling voice, "almost cost myself the instruction sheet." He wanted to put the pistol back in its holster, for it was now clear that nothing but a blank There wasn't much to shoot outside the Fish Khan Box, but he decided to hold it until reinforcements arrived.The gun was comfortable in the hand, and not just because of the blood, or because the Maine State Police wanted the murderer to drive four hundred miles in that horrible car.There was a stench coming from that car.He didn't know if the reinforcements could smell it too, or if he was the only one who could smell it, and he didn't care.He figured it wasn't the smell of blood or rotten food, but a bad smell, the smell of something very, very bad, so bad that he wouldn't put the gun back in the holster, even though he was sure whoever was emitting it had Gone, probably hours ago - he couldn't hear any ticking of the hot engine.That was okay, it didn't change what he knew: that the truck had been the lair of a horrible beast that could come back and catch him off guard, a risk he didn't want to take.Mom can't bet on this. He stood there, gun in hand, terrified, and after what seemed an eternity, reinforcements arrived at last.