Page 190 of Two Marlboros

We heard the screech of the pickup’s wheels - or maybe ours? - on the asphalt and the dull thud of the impact even before we realized that the pickup had skidded and rolled over, and that the other steering wheel’s headlights had shattered.

The speedometer dropped precipitously, but despite this we were unable to brake before the crash site. I put my head close to the mirror and peered in; when both our officers got out ofthe car unharmed, I breathed a sigh of relief, and that strange centrifuge that had lodged in my stomach up to that moment became less aggressive.

We stopped the car and got out. I tried to regain strength in my legs, while Ashton barely remembered to close the car door, then hurried back to our colleagues. I caught up with them shortly thereafter and lost a beat as I saw the car overturned between the roadway and the guardrail. I thought of Harvey and immediately thought of Nathan, of what he would say if we found him lifeless.

Davies, two black mustaches and fifteen years of police experience on his shoulders, came around the pickup and began kicking at the bodywork.

“Come on, get out!”

We heard no response. Ashton walked over to the pickup and crouched down as much as he could, to see if there was any reaction. I followed, while Davies kept kicking.

“I told you to get out!”

The lower I got, the more I caught a glimpse of Harvey. The airbag had deployed and was hiding less and less his red striped shirt and his face, which I could barely make out because of the sun reflecting off the windshield glass. The window on his side was still intact, but not for long, judging by the kicks Davies was giving him. He had gotten tired of sending warnings on the bodywork and so had gone straight to the glass, along with a barrage of insults.

I caught a movement. I observed the lines of his shirt shifting and it was not the wind, no: he was alive. I thought again of Nathan and the fact that I should not have given him bad news - or perhaps that he should not have given it to me, despairing over the death of his first love. I got up again.

Eventually the glass cracked. Davies had not paid the slightest attention to the fact that he could have hurt Harvey,because all he cared about was getting him out of there. He ducked and beckoned to his colleague who had been with him in the car.

“Taylor, help me!”

Taylor didn’t make him ask twice and crouched down next to Davies; he slipped his hands into the passenger compartment and grabbed Harvey, who began to moan with what little strength he had left after the impact. Once the seat belt was unbuckled, extracting him from there became a much easier task - Harvey did not have the strength to put up any real resistance, so he let them drag him out, between groans. As soon as his body was completely on the asphalt, Davies cast a glance at Ashton and me.

“Hey, you two! Hold him down!”

We ran toward Davies, hoping not to irritate him in any way, and put Harvey’s hands behind his own back while Taylor locked his wrists with a pair of handcuffs.

The centrifuge in my stomach had stopped.

I took advantage of a moment of distraction to lock myself in the bathroom two minutes. Harvey was being held in the interrogation room guarded on sight by Davies and other colleagues who had taken part in the chase.

I took a series of deep breaths and managed to release some of the adrenaline still in my body, which was agitating me rather than arousing me. I took my last breath as if to blow away into the air all the worries I had been having, opened the bathroom door and went into the hallway.

I sensed immediately that the presence of Matthew Church himself, standing with folded arms going back and forth, suggested nothing good. Just nothing at all.

“Scottfield, I need you. Now.”

I followed him and he took me to his office, where Ashton was already sitting, along with Davies and Taylor. I smiled, thinking I would be less worried about a family reunion.

“What is this all about?” I asked.

Church crossed his hands in front of his mouth, then sighed. “How do I put that... it’s about the man you arrested today.”

He handed me his mug shot. Harvey’s face was worn, partly from the impact and perhaps from the drugs he was using. I sensed an almost ghostly silence around me, so when I had finished scrutinizing that photo in every part, I decided to take a chance and ask the question.

“What’s wrong with it?”

Church sighed again. He opened a drawer and pulled out another photo of Harvey, which he handed to me without saying anything, but only with a barely sketched smile.

I also took the other photo and compared it with the first one. Harvey still looked frumpy, but not as much as in the second photo, besides the fact that he seemed to have a more pronounced, though only sketchy, receding hairline. His eyes were large and barely wide, his lips thin. Somehow, he looked like a different person.

I looked back at the two pictures with my eyes and barely moved away to see them more clearly. I stopped and stared at them for a while, ready to ask the question again, but the fear of seeing myself slaughtered by those two hounds of Davies and Church prompted me to make an effort and connect the neurons.

Finally, I noticed it.

I pointed my finger under Harvey’s right eye in the second picture Church had given me.

“There’s a scar here. Or at least it looks like it.”

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