Chapter 3

Ironside gritted his teeth and pulled his gun. One chance in a hundred... but at least one more than none at all. He aimed very carefully, then he pulled the trigger.

Instantly the belt stopped. Ironside suppressed a sigh of relief.

A man in an orange overall with a sandwich in his hand stormed out of the next building, followed by a guy who had to be the truck driver. "What the hell..."

Then he noticed the two men on the conveyor belt. "For heaven's sake!"

He ran by, while Ed and Jeremy were already helping each other to their feet. He turned around to get a ladder, and to Ironside's immense relief both men managed to climb out of the pit on their own.

"Thanks Chief," said Ed out of breath, "That was some great shooting. One yard more..."

"Three feet," corrected Jeremy, and nobody knew if he was serious or not.

"I'm very sorry, Jeremy. I'm sure my son didn't want to steal your radio," Ed addressed the Afro-American.

Jeremy had no visible injuries, but he must have a terrible headache. He didn't seem to feel it though. Many autists had a very different perception of pain and other sensations than other people.

"No prob," he beamed and showed the radio which he had somehow managed to grab...

Meanwhile Eve had explained to Danny that he had by mistake taken Jeremy's belongings. The boy understood now why the man had been so upset; his own reaction would have been quite similar under such circumstances.

"Sorry!" he said therefore. "What are you planning to do with that stuff?"

Jeremy frowned and kept quiet. He wasn't ready to trust this little brat just yet.

"He repairs them," said Ironside.

"You really can do that? Even a computer screen?" Danny was totally excited. "Please, show me how you do it!"

Jeremy thawed, as somebody seemed to be interested in his special field. For him it was perfectly normal that a boy forgot everything over a radio.
He nodded. "Help!" he ordered, and Danny set out to help him carry his treasure away and load it into a bicycle trailer.

Eve wanted to keep him back, but Ironside stopped her. "Let them go. Jeremy won't hurt him. He may show Danny more than he would show us, and Danny will be able to report what he has seen."

Ed stretched his back, and Ironside taunted, "You are getting too old for this kind of sports, my friend."

"I'm fine." He shook his head. "I should have known better than to bring Danny here. Two autistic persons don't automatically get along. Autists are as different among themselves as neuro-typical people. I should have anticipated that something like this could happen. Two unpredictable guystogether... It could have cost Jeremy's life."

"You weren't to know. Still trying to be perfect?"

"It's the way you trained us to be, Chief, isn't it?"

"I never expected you to be perfect. All I expected was some decent police work!"

"And you didn't get that?" asked Eve tentatively, remembering well how often he had barked at them – at Ed even more so than at her.

"Of course I did! If not - do you think I would have kept you one single day?! You two were the best I could get at that time."

It made both Browns chuckle. This was so typical for the Chief!

Ironside turned serious again. "You are learning fast, both of you. Remember – a few months ago Danny didn't even talk.* But if you prefer dwelling on self-reproach, go ahead. As far as I'm concerned – I'm glad that he is helping us with this investigation!"

Eve gave the operator Mark Sanger's phone number in case the blue Chrysler wagon would show up again.
Meanwhile Ironside and Ed carefully approached the bicycle trailer, where Jeremy and Danny had loaded up the electric waste.

Ironside encouraged Ed to try his luck with Jeremy.

"You remember me, Jeremy, don't you?"

Jeremy nodded his head.

"May I ask you a question?"

Another nod.

"Have you seen a blue Chrysler wagon around here lately, Jeremy?"

Jeremy's eyes seemed to fix an invisible point on the ground. Ed repeated his question. Now the autistic man shook his head, "No".

Dead end. Bad luck. Maybe Jeremy had been too absorbed in his work. Maybe he hadn't even been here the day of the bombing.

"May we help you with your load?"

Again there was a negative answer.

"May I come to you now to see how you repair things?" asked Danny eagerly.

Graciously Jeremy nodded.

"Great!" shouted Danny and wanted to take off.

"Danny, haven't you forgotten something?" asked his father.

Blankly the boy stared at him, then he understood. "Thank you, Sir!"

To Jeremy it didn't seem to make any difference. What information was there in this kind of small talk, after all?!

Danny was allowed to stay with Jeremy for the rest of the afternoon, and it made his day. Ironside came to the conclusion that he had a few things in common with a 'neuro-typical' boy after all, but then he had to learn his next lesson about autistic people at Mark's.

Danny refused to enter the house. "It stinks!" he shouted and stood stock still in front of the entrance.
Maybe one of Mark's female family members used a perfume he didn't like, or it was a cleaning agent or a paint he smelled. Ed went down on one knee beside him to be at his height.

Ironside watched them with interest from a distance. "Can't he get used to it?" he asked Eve in a low voice.

She shrugged. "Probably not. Sometimes Ed gets him to try out something. But that would take all his energy and stamina, and I don't think that Ed has this kind of energy right now – and I don't know if he thinks that it would be worth the trouble."

Ironside suppressed his spontaneous feeling of "just-give-him-a-clout-round-the-backside". He knew that patience was the only helpful strategy with such a child.

"Any ideas what we could do about it, son?" asked Ed.

It was one of the things he had basically learned from Ironside, and it was what Danny had to learn now: Find ways out of trouble. 'Plan B', as they also liked to call it. Danny wasn't very good at finding alternate ways of solving problems; therefore his parents gently forced him into developing that ability.

"We go home."

"Not an option. Our job here isn't done yet. Mark still needs us."

"Hum. Dunno."

Ed waited expectantly for another suggestion.

"Mom's parents live in San Francisco, don't they?"

Now that was true. But they were going on eighty and it would have been an imposition on them to have to deal with an autistic child in their well-arranged household.

"They are too old to have an entire family as their guests."

"Jeremy?" His voice betrayed that he didn't really believe in this possibility.

Ed didn't have to answer this one.

"Ok, I know that it wouldn't work."
Danny scratched his head as he had seen his dad do when he thought hard about something. It seemed to help him thinking.

"There is a big backyard. Maybe Mark has a tent. You and I could sleep in it."

"Sounds feasible to me. We'll ask him. But what about the ants?"

"I'd rather sleep on an anthill than in this disgusting stench."

Ironside grinned at Eve, "How charming!"

"You can't expect an autistic child to be charming. At least we have a solution for our problem," Eve smiled back.

"Yes, and an aging detective who will be full of black and blue marks tomorrow from sleeping on the ground!"

It turned out that the Sangers possessed a comfortable tent for four persons and more than enough self inflating mats and sleeping bags. Mark's twins decided to join the two guests, but Danny informed them instantly and very decidedly that he would rather tolerate any number of ants, as abominable as they might be, than two giggling girls. Which, by the way, weren't even alternatives. He might have to deal with both giggling girls and ants – what a scary prospect!

At 11pm Ed and Danny went to sleep in their tent in the backyard.

At eleven thirty came the dogs.

* ff story "Patterns"