Chapter 23 -- Four Views

As the sun was going down: From the restaurant, the officer
exits, walks north up the block, passing the dress shop with
the ever unlatched door and ramble of cloth bolts on the floor
still as unviolated as the manikin was naked.
Further up the paved hill to the turn, between the corner of the
bridge and the old merchants' office building, where he'd tucked
his three wheeled 'panda' out of the usual eye range.


A view from within the restaurant's double layer of doors,
through the entry foyer, of the back of the bald and bulky,
badly clothed detective getting into the passenger side of a
green, squared off vehicle, (a cheap import), driven by a
middle aged woman with red hair.


Neither?/both? with a glimpse of the white ambulance van,
(repainted and used to carry evidence), parked in front of
the theatre where the 'body wagon' had been earlier that day;
or of the man in the red shirt standing below the billboard
across the street.


But, all three--officer walking north, turning, sound of small
unseen vehicle leaving; the bald, now yellow orange detective,
(the sunset), being picked up again by the same green car that
had deposited him that afternoon; the second, (evidence) van
awaiting its single occupant's return from the theatre---
all three in the view of the man in the red shirt, standing hip deep
in the overgrowth below the automated, 'beer & pretzel' sign.
Coolly curious, he shlakes through the weeds to look up at the
back of the huge board and the meagre motor generating the
'action', kachucking along quietly in the greying twilight.
What more had he expected??