The paramedics wanted Walter in an ambulance.
Walter wanted nothing to do with the ambulance.
Eventually they compromised.
He allowed them to bandage his head while he sat on the tailgate of the responding fire department’s utility truck.
Casey gave her statement to Officer Elena Ruiz.
She described Brody.
The pipe wrench.
The threats.
The two vehicles.
When Ruiz asked if she knew any of the men, Casey said no.
That was true.
At least she thought it was.
Walter watched from twenty feet away.
He had gone strangely quiet after hearing Casey give her name.
“Casey Marlowe?”
“Yes.”
“Marlowe.”
She nodded.
Something unreadable crossed his face.
“You know somebody with my last name?”
Walter looked toward the Panhead.
“I used to.”
Before Casey could ask anything else, a tow-truck driver examined the bike.
“Rear brake linkage is bent. Shifter’s out too. Better haul it.”
Casey crouched.
“Wait.”
The driver looked at her.
She inspected the linkage.
“Give me a ten-millimeter wrench.”
Walter smiled faintly.
The driver raised an eyebrow.
“You mechanic?”
“Eight years.”
He handed her the wrench.
Casey worked beneath the fading gas station lights, groceries forgotten beside the curb.
Five minutes later, she had loosened the damaged linkage, straightened the worst bend with a pair of locking pliers from the tow truck, reset the adjustment, and improvised a temporary retaining clip from a section of safety wire.
Walter watched her hands.
Not her face.
Her hands.
“You learned that at Garrison Auto?”
“Some of it.”
“The rest?”
“My grandfather.”
Walter’s jaw tightened.
“Frank?”
Casey froze.
The wrench stopped turning.
“How do you know my grandfather’s name?”
Walter stared at her for a long time.
Then he said quietly, “Because Frank Marlowe helped build this motorcycle.”
The world seemed to shrink around them.
Casey stood.
“That’s impossible.”
“No.”
“The book says you built it.”
“The book is wrong.”
“I’ve read everything about this bike.”
“So had the man who wrote the book.”
Walter’s expression hardened.
“People print the version that survives. That doesn’t make it the truth.”
Casey looked at the Panhead.
All those years.
All those lunches.
All those hours staring at a machine she had considered almost mythical.
Walter touched the tank gently.
“Your grandfather shaped the left side of that tank by hand.”
Casey stared at him.
“He never said anything.”
Walter gave a bitter smile.
“Frank stopped saying a lot of things before the end.”
The next morning, Casey arrived at Garrison Auto six minutes late.
Marcus Garrison was waiting beside Bay Three.
He held out coffee.
“You look terrible.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Casey took the cup.
Marcus was fifty-eight, broad through the shoulders, with permanently stained fingernails and the exhausted patience of a man who had repaired other people’s problems for thirty-five years.
