Double Take

Savich introduced himself and Sherlock, pulled out their shields. The old man stuck out his hand. Savich automatically started to shake it, then realized both he and Sherlock were black and filthy. He smiled at the old man. “I don’t want to dirty you up.”

“I appreciate that. So you both were in that fire in the big Ransom place,” Mr. Wilson said and motioned toward the door. “It’s all over the news. You want to come in and clean up?”

Sherlock smiled. “No thank you, Mr. Wilson. We need to ask you some more questions about the man on the motorcycle.”

“Call me Tuck, everybody does except for my little great-granddaughter. She calls me Friar, smart-mouthed little punk.”

Tuck Wilson waved them toward £ wooden swing, but they shook their heads.

“—after the man drove his motorcycle right into the bushes, what exactly did he do?”

“Like I told the other officer, the guy jumped right off—he seemed real familiar with a motorcycle, smooth—okay, he turned and looked up the street. Not more than a minute passed before this blue car drove up, he jumped in the passenger seat, and they took off.”

A whole minute, Savich thought, and smiled. “Please tell us what the motorcycle guy looked like, Mr. Wilson.”

Tuck waved his cane toward the bushes. “He was more tall than not, a black guy, and he moved real fast and he was strong and graceful-like. He had on an old banged-up black leather jacket, I could see the nicks in the leather even with my old eyes. He had on some boots, not cowboy boots, but black boots like a biker would wear. He was wearing a helmet. When he first jumped off the motorcycle, he pulled it off. He was wearing glasses, isn’t that a kick? He saw me, I know he must have, saw Alice too, but he didn’t make any sort of move on us. No, he just concentrated on the street, and watched for the car.”

“Excellent, Tuck,” Savich said. “Okay, think back now. You see the blue car drive up. You see the driver. Tell us about him.”

“Hmmm, now that’s a bit more difficult, it all happened real fast. It was a man, young like the first—” Tuck broke off, laughed. “You gotta understand, anyone who isn’t on the shady side of sixty-five looks young to me. Alice said they were both old, but she’s seven years old.”

“Middle-aged, maybe?”

“He just wasn’t getting on like me.”

“The driver, was he bald? Glasses? What was he wearing?”

“No, he wasn’t bald, I’m sure about that. I couldn’t tell you exactly how much hair he had on his head, only that I could see some. The color? I couldn’t tell, really couldn’t, sorry. I remember thinking it was weird how his fingers kept tapping on the steering wheel while the motorcycle guy climbed into the car. Then he started yelling.”

“Could you hear what he was yelling about?” Savich asked.

“‘Hurry’ that’s what he yelled, yelled it twice, and then he cussed and stomped on the gas. Now that I think about it, that car really took off fast. So it probably wasn’t an everyday sort of car, probably a fancy one, German, maybe, sounded real sweet and smooth.”

“Friar, you didn’t tell them the guy driving the car was mad, real mad.”

Savich and Sherlock looked down at a little girl who’d slipped out the front door and was peering around at them from behind her great-grandfather’s waist. “You’re Alice, right?”

Alice stared up at Sherlock. “I bet your hair’s real beautiful, ma’am, but not right now. It looks like you need to wash it. Oh, I’m Alice Douggan and this is one of my ancestors, Friar. That’s what he calls himself.”

Sherlock smiled between the two of them. “Is it all right, Tuck, if we speak to Alice?”

“Sure, no problem. Alice, stop hiding behind me. Come out here. You stand straight and tall, get those shoulders back and you tell them what you saw. Don’t add in all sorts of little details from that imagination of yours or else they might arrest you. They’re federal agents.”

Alice walked around Tuck, stood front and center. She cocked her head to one side, studied them straight on. Not at all shy, this cute little fairy “You sure are dirty. My mama would skin me alive if I ever got as dirty as you are. You were in that big fire, right?”

“That’s right,” Savich said, and went down on his knees so he was eye level with the little girl. “I sure like your freckles. I wish my wife had some to go with her red hair, but I guess when she came down the line, the good Lord shook his head at her. When our little boy asked for some, he shook his head at him too.”