The line at the DMV on Fell Street was a snake of discontented people by the time Colleen got there later that morning.
Two clerks were on duty, one the guy she wanted to talk to—Ed, of the pear-shaped build and plastic pocket protector. His graying crew cut had recently been buzzed. He looked like one of the Friday haircut brigade. She had to let the pimply teenager behind her, clutching his driving exam, go first so that she could be next in line to see Ed.
Finally, her turn came.
“Hi, Ed,” she said, stepping up to the counter. She gave him a little wave. “How’s it going today?”
“Well, hello there,” he said, blushing. He reached into an in-and-out tray and came back with a thin greenbar computer printout. “I put this aside for you. I thought you were going to come in yesterday.”
“I wanted to, Ed,” she said, “but something came up.” She had intended to stop by yesterday, but the trip up to Mendocino to talk to Millard Drake had taken priority.
“Well, here ya go.” He handed the report to her, hand shaking slightly. “Your search on Ford Falcons.”
She surveyed the green and white computer printout quickly before she left the counter. She didn’t want to have to get back into another twenty-minute line.
“Excuse me, Ed,” she said, “but I notice there are no addresses listed for the vehicles in this report.”
“That information is only provided to law enforcement agencies. Are you with a law enforcement agency?”
“I am not.”
“The names of the vehicle owners are there, though.” He raised his eyebrows so that she got the hint. She could always look them up.
“So they are,” she said.
There were nine Ford Falcons registered in San Francisco in 1967.
She had some legwork to do.
“Thank you so much, Ed.” She gave him a sideways smile before leaving the counter, generating some serious blush on his part.
“Anytime,” he croaked.
“Do you really think you’d ever stand a chance with a woman like that?” Colleen heard the woman working the counter next to Ed say.
Colleen spun around and went back up to the counter. A woman in a pixie haircut looked at her in surprise.
“I think Ed’s a catch,” she said to her. “I just love crew cuts.” She patted the countertop, gave Ed a wink, making him turn crimson, turned, left the DMV.
The DMV on Fell was located on the end of the Panhandle, the strip of Golden Gate Park that extended from the main park itself—like a panhandle. The drive along JFK into the park, past the Conservatory of Flowers, with its delicate construction of thousands of panes of glass, and the de Young Museum, provided a pleasant break, but by the time she got to Stow Lake, it was raining again. She parked, got out, and opened up a two-dollar umbrella.
The snack shop wasn’t open yet, but the door to the maintenance room behind was. Light spilled out onto the wet grass. Colleen knocked on the doorframe but found no one. She went back around front to the snack bar where she scanned the man-made lake with the man-made island in the middle. Deserted. It was the middle of the week, too early for customers, and raining.
At the shore a little dock moored half a dozen two-person peddle boats, about as many rowboats and, at the very end of the dock, a single red boat where a large sheet of opaque plastic shifted around over the outboard motor at the rear, accompanied by vibrant cussing.
“Knock, knock,” she said walking toward the red boat.
The plastic sheet lifted up. Larry, the elderly maintenance man in his blue jump suit, stared at her from behind his wire-frame glasses.
“Hey, Larry,” Colleen said. “Working on an engine?”
“No—my performance art.”
“It does mean you have to keep all the customers waiting.”
“My art comes first.”
“Well, I have a question—if you can drag yourself away from whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Shoot.” The plastic sheet went back over his head and he turned around and resumed clanking around on the motor as rain pelted on him.
“I’m talking to a giant sheet of moving plastic.”
“I can do two things at once, you know.” Larry banged away on the engine.
“Okay,” she said. “Twenty-first of November, 1967.”
“Yep.” More banging.
“You came into work early that day to fix a pump. It was still dark. You saw a car parked. Not far from where Margaret Copeland’s body was found.”
“Yeppers.” Clanking around under the plastic sheet.
“Green Ford Falcon, no license plates.”
“I’m getting this distinct feeling of déjà vu,” Larry said, knocking something. “We’ve had this conversation.”
“You don’t remember what exact model the Falcon was by any chance?”
“Are you serious?”
“I thought you had a superior intellect.”
“I do. But I don’t remember model numbers or eleven-year-old license plates. I just happened to notice there was no license plate.”
“Good enough,” she said, huddling under the umbrella as the rain came down. “Let’s play a game. This one is worth twenty bucks if Larry gets it right.”
He stopped tinkering but was still bent over the engine. “You have my attention.”
“Cast your mind back to that morning. You just came in to work. You’re a little ticked off because you had to come in early. You notice a car parked on the loop around the lake. That’s odd. Too late—or too early—for kids making out. Far too early for customers. And normally there’s nobody parked here at night. But there’s a green Ford Falcon.”
“I’m visualizing.” Rain pelted his plastic sheet.
“Was the front of the car facing you? Or the rear?”
There was a pause. “Rear.”
“Did you see it from the side at all? Could you tell if it was a two-door? Four-door?”
“Not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
“I just said so, didn’t I? It was sporty looking. I remember thinking, who would leave something like that out here in the middle of the night? But I don’t remember how it was sporty. It just was.”
“Maybe it had more than one exhaust pipe? One on either side? Take a minute and think.”
He stopped moving for a moment. “You know what? It might’ve done, at that. But I can’t be one hundred percent sure. But I think it might’ve well have had two chrome exhaust pipes.”
“You’ve got a pretty good memory,” she said. “I suspect it might have, too. Remember if it had a vinyl top? They were just coming into fashion then. Or did it have a hardtop? A green hardtop?”
The opaque plastic bundle stood up straight, turned around. The plastic moved, shifted away so that she could see his face again.
“Vinyl,” he said. “Black. You didn’t see them much then. I remember now.”
“You sure?”
“About as sure as I can be. And that’s pretty sure.”
“One more question.”
“This is kind of fun.”
“No license plate—was it because someone removed it? Maybe there was a plastic plate from a local car dealer where the license plate normally is?”
“Like a brand-new car?”
“Exactly. One that didn’t have plates yet.”
He stood there, blinking, holding the plastic sheet over his head while the rain fell. “I think I would’ve remembered that. But I don’t.” He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Larry. You’ve told me most of what I needed to know.”
“You’re good.”
“No,” she said, “I think you are.”
“It’s just too bad the police never wanted to know.”
“Isn’t it just?” she said.
The cheap collapsible umbrella was better than nothing, but it didn’t prevent her jeans from getting soaked. She fired up the Torino, cranked up the heater, sat behind the wheel shivering until hot air turned the car into a sauna, steam misting the windshield.
Colleen got her ballpoint out, went down the list of the nine Ford Falcons on her DMV report.
Three 1967 Ford Falcon Sport Coupes had been registered in San Francisco in 1967. The Sport Coupes featured twin exhausts and vinyl roofs. She didn’t have an address but she had names. That was almost the same thing.
She redirected the heater vent to the inside of the windshield and waited for it to clear.