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a long table covered with small piles of papers. A tall, pretty girl with
her hair styled in a pageboy worked on a computer at the desk.
"Hello, can I help you?" she said, looking up from the computer.
"I'm Detective Nick Vancuso of the Middletown Police. Do you have
a man named Kyle living in building 2950."
"That would be easy enough," she said and her fingers began to move
on the computer keyboard.
"Here he is."
"May I?" Nick asked.
"Sure."
230 Absence of Faith
Nick walked around the desk so he could see the computer screen.
He took out a tiny pad and a thin gold pen.
"Here," the girl said pointing to Kyle's name and address.
Nick copied the information in his pad.
"Thanks. You've been helpful," Nick said.
"Working on a big case?" she asked, her green eyes sparkling.
"No. Just routine stuff," Nick said and left.
Nick parked in the back of the building hoping that if Kyle was going
to make a run for it his car would be back there. Nick walked around to
the front and entered through a double door entrance. Overhead
fluorescent lights illuminated the long carpeted hallway. The tacky rug
was black with large orange octagons that connected each other. It
should have been retired years ago, Nick thought. He found 295C and
rang the doorbell. He waited a few moments listening for sounds inside,
and then knocked on the door. No one answered.
"Kyle Mabus?" Nick said. There was no response. Nick went to the
door across the dark hallway, raised his fist to knock, and then stopped.
He decided to leave. Outside, he felt someone was watching him as he
walked back to his car. He pulled away, turned left out of the parking
lot and parked nearby. Then he ran back to the apartment building, hid
behind a row of bushes, and watched the entrance. After an hour, Nick
was tired and went back to his office. There, he gathered his briefcase
and then informed the dispatcher he was going home.
Nick fired up his Crossfire and pulled out of the parking lot in the
rear. He turned left and headed towards Ocean Village. He decided to
avoid the traffic and turned off onto a small one-lane county road that
went in the same direction. The road was empty as the day succumbed
to darkness. The faint lights of far-away houses occasionally peeked
through the dense trees that lined the road. Nick liked this road because
of its hills and tight curves - he really liked to see how fast he could
negotiate the turns. He was a kid again, who had just received his
driver's license when he drove on this road. He approached a downhill
straightaway that curved sharply at the bottom. He pushed the
accelerator down and the car shot away like a rocket. This was his
favorite stretch of the road. He would brake hard near the bottom to
make the curve because he wanted to beat his last record of 40 miles per
hour. He waited until he was a few hundred feet from the curve before
he lifted his foot off the accelerator and placed it lightly on the brake
pedal. He turned carefully as he approached the curve, glancing at the
Anthony Samuel Policastro 231
speedometer occasionally. Suddenly, the car slipped and moved
sideways instead of following the road. The tires screamed as they tried
to grip the road, but the loose sand was no match for them. Nick
instinctively turned the wheel in the direction of the skid and pressed
lightly on the brake, but he didn't have the room to let the car move any
further off the road because it was so narrow. He had only one choice -
he turned the wheel sharply in the opposite direction and slammed on
the brake, hoping the car would spin completely around and stop facing
the opposite direction. The car spun around, but not all the way. The
driver's side rear slammed into the trunk of a small tree causing the car
to ricochet off the tree and head straight into a large oak. Nick kept his
foot hard on the brake and gripped the steering wheel with all of his
strength.
"Ah, shit! Shit!" he managed to get out as he watched the hood of the
car crumple in slow motion and the large tree trunk loom up and
swallow him.
A few minutes later a white pickup truck that had seen too many
miles and too many seasons pulled over - its lights focused on the back
of the damaged Crossfire. Two men got out and walked over to the
driver's side.
"Well is he alive or dead?" the one with the shaved head said.
"I don't know. You know how to check his breathing or something
like that," the other replied putting his hands in the front pockets of his
worn and faded blue jeans.
"Look dummy, you take two fingers and you put them on the side of
his neck and you feel for a pulse, a heartbeat. Now do it! We got to get
out of here before someone comes," the man with the shaved head said.
"Okay, okay, I'm doing it."
"Well, do you feel anything?"
"Yeah, I guess," the other man said looking stupefied.
"Look out, idiot, I'll do it."
The man with the shaved head placed his two fingers on Nick's neck
and turned to the other man.
"See that's how you do it. Now let's get him into the truck," the man
said.
232 Absence of Faith
The two men struggled to open Nick's door, which was hard to open
because the front fender was pushed against the door. After several tries
the door popped open with a sound of metal scraping on metal.
"He really fucked up this car," the man with the blue jeans said. "Too
bad it was a nice car."
"Yeah, this was a stroke of luck for us. I don't know how we
would've gotten him," the other man replied.
They dragged Nick out of the car and towards the old white pickup
truck struggling with his weight and bulk.
"Sure is a heavy son-of-a-bitch!" the man with the shaved head said
between gasps.
"Yeah."
The men struggled to lift Nick's limp body onto the truck bed. A
gash on Nick s forehead gushed blood down his face. Some of it had
turned dark and dried. They covered him with a canvas tarp and closed
the tailgate. The man with the shaved head took a red gasoline can from
the rear of the truck and poured it under the car near the gas tank. Then
he poured a trail towards the truck about twenty feet long. He also took
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