"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.

The more tranquil moments that I spend with Greg, though, the more I'm able to view the crime scene from afar. It still doesn't sit well with me. Something about that windshield shade sticks in my craw.

My stomach gurgles. I'd had an egg-salad sandwich for lunch. I always do on Mondays—it reminds me of home, when I was a boy, and my mother would package such a treat for me, on the first day of the school week, before my dad would then drive me to grade school.

My mother's egg sandwiches were always fresh; could those eggs, that I'd had earlier today, been bad? Could it be the mayo that had been mixed in with those eggs, which doesn't sit well with me anymore, at the age of forty?

Turning my attention back to Greg, I don't think so. The sandwich that I'd had earlier today had been first-rate—after all, my mother had made it for me, when I had stopped by to see both her and my father, as I always do on Mondays. That fact only leaves me with one other reason, for why I feel upset in my labonza.

"He had a thick gold chain around his neck, too, Lieutenant. And dirty finger nails—did I mention that?"

I see that Greg hasn't noticed what "I" have here—that I had started to make a conclusion, even more, about this scene. I know that by the way he's added to his recollection here. His mind seems too focused on trying to convince me of something, rather than figuring on what I notice regarding his explanation.

Playing it cool, I ask, "Then you saw the tire iron in his hand, Greg?"

Greg's look turns quizzical.

"I mean, since you noticed that he had dirty fingernails."

"Yes," Greg speaks up, to my surprise, with a face that looks like the cat that has swallowed the canary. "I did see his fingernails."

What am I dealing with here?

"The guy was coming at us from the opposite direction on Ocean, steered his tow truck across the road to directly in front of us, got out, ran toward my wife, and..."

What is it about Greg? This is the second time now, when his words just fell away. He's taking me on quite a ride of suspicion here. His incomplete sentences are raising my common-sense radar. I can't believe what I'm thinking, though.

Greg bursts into tears.

His sudden waterworks catch me off guard. I feel the need to comfort him, though. Still, that thinking strikes me odd—never before have I "ever" comforted a "suspect," whom I was questioning at a crime scene. But this is Greg Fanson—my idol!

I reach out my right hand and place it onto his left shoulder.

Greg pushes my hand away, leans forward, drops his face into his hands, and continues to sob.

It's uncomfortable for me to watch a man cry—especially my hero. "I'll give you some time alone." I turn off the car, before exiting. I can't chance Greg slipping into the driver's seat and speeding off.

Standing outside my car, in front of it, looking through the windshield,  I wonder about everything that has brought me here. Silently, tsk tsking, I turn and, squinting through my shades, eye-study the crime scene, again, from here.

A few things still don't ring true for me. If a guy with a tow truck had pulled over to help the Fansons, and Betty had been about to check the engine, why had the tow truck guy approached her caring a tire iron—the one that, I believe, CSI found on the roadside? The SUV, clearly, doesn't have a flat now. Did it have a flat then?

The beeping of my car's horn grabs my attention. I snap my neck back toward it.

"Lieutenant," Greg calls, his voice muffled some, because of the closed windows, but I can still hear him.

Attentive to Greg here, one thing I notice is that I don't have to squint to see him. The sun isn't in my eyes, as I face my GTO. I step back to the muscle car.

"What's up?" I ask, re-entering the Judge on the driver's side, taking a seat behind the steering wheel. 

"I was thinking about that tire iron," Greg answers, as I pull my door closed.

"Don't worry, Greg," I say with confidence. "We'll have it checked for prints." I start the car and turn on the a/c.

"What if he was wearing gloves?"

I smile. "You said you saw his dirty fingernails."

He sniffles. "Oh. Right."

His response was "off," but I give him a quick wink, to help keep him at ease. "Why don't I take you home, Greg? You've been through—"

"But if I could just show you how it happened, Lieutenant. If I don't, I'll—I just have to get it out of my mind!"

He exits the car and hurries toward his SUV.

I turn off the a/c, then the engine, and quickly exit the driver's side after him.

"She was only out here for a few seconds," he says, as I step to catch up to him, along with some following officers, and CSI agents—who are cautiously eyeing him.

"The tow truck came from in front of us," he continues, with a pointing, sweeping hand of instruction. "She was only out here for a few seconds. The tow truck came from in front of us."

Was Greg's repeated "tow-truck" remark deliberate for emphasis? Or, a Freudian slip? I send a guiding leer to my colleagues that says "at ease," and they do. This is my case.

"Then the truck pulled up, before you put the windshield shade into place, Greg?"

"I don't remember, Lieutenant. What difference does it make?" he argues. "The fact is that I saw it approach."

I remain silent, eyeing him, allowing his mixed comment to stew in his mind. "Had the guy said anything?" I ask. "Did you see any writing on his truck? Colors? Lights? Anything that might help?"

"No...no writing, or, any of that stuff," Greg says, unconvincingly. "The guy hadn't said anything, either."

"You'd said there were numbers on his hat."

He waves that off, "I don't remember what they were.""

Hmm. This time it isn't Greg's facial expression that is giving him away. It's what he's said. His words have "stink" all over them. The more that he talks, the more I feel it necessary to question him. It's not that I want to do this—it's that I "have" to do it. I'm a cop first—a damn good detective—and a woman was killed in my town. As long as I'm on the job, that's going to be solved.

"Do you have any idea why...someone would want to kill your wife, Greg? Could it be someone with whom you do business?"

"No," he says, convincingly, "does it have to be someone we knew, Lieutenant?"

My mind flashes back fifteen years. An image of Sabrina and me walking, hand-in-hand, just before the accident, plays out in my thoughts. 

"No," I say, emotionless. "Not in all cases, Greg."

"Well, then don't you have any other things like this happening around here?" he challenges. "Maybe..."

I watch him think, then see the light bulb go on in his eyes.

"Maybe this guy's a highway killer," he continues, matter-of-fact with confidence. "You know, maybe he uses a tow truck, so that disabled motorists don't suspect anything when he drives up."

That makes sense to me.

I glance over to the crime scene, then at Greg, and back at the scene. The sun's rays sting my eyes again. I think about the SUV's windshield shade, and about not getting the sun in my eyes, whenever I look toward my car, which is facing us. The sun's rays are cutting through the GTO's windshield, in full force; the SUV has the sun's rays beaming into it, through its back window.