Case File - a Collection of Nameless Detective Stories by Bill Pronzini

monosyllables, and the girl, snuffling, did not say anything at all.
    When I had worked the handle to lower the truck onto all four tires again and pulled the jack out from underneath, I said, "Well, there you go. You'd better get that flat repaired at the first station you come to. You don't want to be driving around without a spare."
    "We'll do that," the dark guy said.
    I gave them a let's-bridge-the-generation-gap smile. "You wouldn't happen to have a beer or a soft drink or something inside, would you? Manual labor always makes me thirsty."
    The redhead looked at the girl, then at the dark-haired one, and began to fidget "Sorry—nothing at all."
    "We'd better get moving," the dark guy said, and he picked up the flat and slid it into the metal holder attached to the undercarriage, locked it down. Then the three of them went immediately to the driver's door.
    I did not want to let them go, but there was no way I could think of to keep them there. Following, I watched the redhead open the door and climb in. That gave me a good look inside the cab, but there wasn't much to see; nothing there that shouldn't be there, nothing at all on the seat or on the little shelf behind the seat, or on the dashboard or on the passenger-side floorboards. The girl got in second, and that made the dark one the driver. He swung the door shut, started the engine.
    "Take it easy," I said, and lifted my hand. None of them looked at me. The pickup jerked forward, a little too fast, tires spraying gravel, and pulled out onto Highway One. It went away to the south, gathering speed.
    I stood watching until they were out of sight. Then I went back to my car and got inside and started her up and put the heater on high. So now what? Drive back to San Francisco, forget about this little incident? That was the simplest thing to do. But I could not get it out of my head. One of those kids, or maybe even more than one, did not belong. The more I thought about it, the more I felt I ought to know which of them it was. More importantly, there was that aura of tension and anxiety all three had projected.
    I had no real cause to play detective, but I did have a duty to my conscience and to the vested interests of others, and I did have a strong disinclination to return to my empty, quiet flat. So all right. So I would do some of what I had been doing in one form or another, for bread and butter, the past thirty-one years.
    I put the car in gear and drove out and south on the highway. It took me four miles to catch sight of them. They were moving along at a good clip, maybe ten over the speed limit but within the boundaries of safety. I adjusted my speed to match theirs, with several hundred yards between us. It was not the best time of day for a shagging operation—coming on toward dusk —and the thick, drifting fog cut visibility to a minimum; but the pickup's lights were on and I could track it well enough by the diffused red flickers of the tail lamps.
    We went straight down the coast, through Stewart's Point and past Fort Ross. There was still not much traffic, but enough so that we weren't the only two vehicles on the road. The fog got progressively heavier, took on the consistency of a misty drizzle and forced me to switch on the windshields wipers. Daylight faded into the long, cold shadows of night. When we reached Jenner, at the mouth of the Russian River, it was full dark.
    A few miles farther on, the pickup came into Bodega Bay and went right on through without slowing. So that made the dark-haired one a liar about their destination. I wondered just where it was they were really headed, and asked myself how far I was prepared to follow them. I decided all the way, until they stopped somewhere, until I satisfied myself one way or another about the nature of their relationship with each other. If that meant following them into tomorrow, even into another state—okay. I had no cases pending, nothing on my hands and too much on my mind; and