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of a car parked crossways in the middle of the street.
Who’s the jerk that left his car…
A thin muscular man with what looked like tools dangling from his belt stood stiffly. He’d popped up from behind the parked car and moved cautiously but swiftly toward Clarence’s window.
Clarence jumped out, moving toward the man, his voice agitated. “I need to get to my sister’s.”
“Hold it right there.” The man’s arms were fully extended in front of him. Clarence looked at the gun in his hand.
“Show me both hands. Now! Get ’em up!”
Clarence raised both his hands. He knew the drill.
“Keep ’em up.”
Clarence surveyed the scene, shrouded in semidarkness because of three shot-out streetlights. He now saw a half-dozen people, some of them in robes and nightshirts, gawking at Dani’s house. He looked at the yellow police tape strung across the street behind the police car. He could barely read the bold black letters on the shimmering yellow tape: Crime Scene—Do Not Cross.
“Bend over. Hands on the hood.”
Clarence leaned on his hands, turned his head to the left, and looked toward Dani’s, three houses away. He could see a bustle of activity, at least four people standing on Dani’s front porch, coming in and out the front door.
The uniformed officer patted him down. Though Clarence had never committed a crime other than speeding, this was the sixth time in some twenty-two years living in Portland he’d been patted down by police. He was counting.
The cop turned his neck to the left and mumbled something into a two-way radio microphone on his shoulder, with the curly black chord running down to his belt.
“Can we get this over with, officer? That’s my sister’s house. My name’s Clarence Abernathy.”
“Abernathy? The sportswriter?”
“Yeah.”
And who are you, Elliot Ness?
“All right, take out your wallet,” the officer said. “I need to see some ID.” The cop seemed more relaxed now that the pat down had produced nothing more threatening than breath mints and a credit card receipt.
Clarence remembered his Trib press pass. He turned to lean back through the window and reach into the glove box.
“Freeze!” The officer’s gun followed him like a homing beacon. “Keep your hands out of the car!”
“But my press pass is in—”
“Just show me your driver’s license.”
Clarence fumbled through the wallet and produced his license. The officer shined a flashlight on the picture, and then on Clarence’s face. He made another mental comparison, perhaps to his profile sketch in the Trib.
“Okay, Mr. Abernathy. I’m sorry. But you should drive more carefully. And don’t go jumping out of your car like that. With what happened here tonight I thought… It’s a tense situation.”
“What did happen here?” Tired of not getting answers, Clarence strode toward the yellow tape and stepped right over it.
“Wait. Stop! You can’t go in there.”
“I just did,” he mumbled, not looking back.
Clarence marched toward the house, still sixty feet away, eyeing a second ribbon of yellow tape cordoning off the entire front of the house. If he had just walked into the holy place, he now headed toward the holy of holies. He expected the officer he’d passed to grab him, but instead he heard him talking on his radio in an excited voice.
Out Dani’s front door barged a heavy-jowled, ham-fisted man in plainclothes, maybe six feet tall but an easy 250 pounds. He duck-walked to the top stair, then glided quickly down the steps. He stepped over the yellow tape beneath him and faced off with Clarence.
“Hold it right there, buddy.”
I’m not your buddy.
“This is a crime scene. You can’t come in. You’ve got to leave.”
Clarence stood still, restraining himself and calculating his next move.
“I’m Detective Ollie Chandler.”
Well, I’m the Prince of Wales. Wait a minute. Ollie Chandler?
The uniformed officer appeared from behind, looking back nervously at the assigned post he’d deserted in