Tonight's "Pilot" Episode: Roadkill

Act VII: Uncertainties

"Greg...Greg...."

He offers me no verbal response—only a slight grumble. I see that he's still fully conscious, though. I hold him more securely, and manage him to his feet.

Offcer Markin tosses a bottled water our way. I catch it, without a hitch.

"Let's sit in my car with the a/c, Greg," I say. "It's just up ahead."

We start walking toward it.

"This hot sun's brutal," Greg comments.

 "Yeah," I reply, "it's a killer."

"Your car, Lieutenant?" Greg asks, surprised, as we come to stand beside my GTO.

"'The car,'" I state.

"Parked illegally, are you, Lieutenant? Law breaker, I see," teases Greg, referring to my car facing the wrong way on Ocean Avenue.

I grin. "I'll remember to ticket myself, Greg."

An image of the windshield shade in the Fanson's SUV fills my thoughts, as I help my idol into the front passenger seat of my GTO. After handing him the bottle of water, I close the door. 

I get in on the driver's side of the car, remove my sunglasses, slip them into my shirt's ReadeREST shirt clip, start the engine, and turn on the air conditioner. Glancing at Greg, I notice the focus of his eyes is on "The Judge" decal. It's adhered to the glove compartment's door, and he  seems to be wondering what such words might mean with regard to me.

Wordless, he gapes my way, gulps, and takes a swig of the bottled water. It forces me to think of my case of warm, ten-ounce bottles of Manhattan Special in the back seat. Damn, I have to find a way to situate a fridge in here.  

"He was about five, five, Lieutenant. One hundred eighty pounds," Greg blurts out.

The way that he says that causes me to wonder is he lying? Just seconds ago, Greg had been screaming at me, then collapsed. Now he's collected enough to give me crime details?...

I remove a small, spiral notepad from my breast pocket. If Greg is going to describe the killer, I'm going to get it all down. I flip to a clean page.

"The cool air is nice. Thanks."

"A/c wasn't standard with the '70 Judge," I inform. "It was an option, though."

Greg's uneasy face shows that he's completely lost on my words.

"I was too scared to move, Lieutenant," he says, without missing a beat, though. "But I know that he had a heavy beard. He was dirty around the face, too, with grease—like from working on cars."

I jot down Greg's description.

He glances at my notes, then stares out the windshield, down Ocean Avenue, toward his SUV that's facing us. 

"And he was wearing a dark baseball cap," he adds, gesturing to the top of his head, then wiggles his fingers before his hair, "with numbers on it." 

He drops his hands to his waistband and tugs it. "He had on torn blue jeans, too, a light-blue, pullover tee shirt"—he pats his own white, button-down dress shirt—"and sneakers." He points to his winged-tipped shoes, as though to make clear to me, what he had on his feet.

With these new facts on the page of my pad, I curse myself for having thought what I had about Greg and this murder. There's a killer out there, and not one sitting next to me in the Judge, I think.