He slammed the door shut, leaned his back against the car and took a moment to catch his breath.
He knew he should have called an ambulance, but he was worried that it could take a long time to get to this location. And if they missed the driveway, it could take even longer. Albert was confident he could get Frommer to the hospital more quickly.
He eased himself off the car, turned, and was horrified to see bloody smears on the door. He rubbed at them with the sleeve of his jacket, but it only made things worse.
There was nothing he could do about it.
He got behind the wheel, switched on the engine, and turned the car around. He raced to the end of the driveway, glanced hurriedly in both directions to make sure no one was coming, then hit the pavement with a squeal.
“Not much longer,” he said, turning his head to speak to Frommer. “Ten minutes tops! Just hang in there.”
Soon he was back in town. Far off in the distance, he could make out the blue H atop Promise Falls General.
And then the car turned.
Turned off the route that would have taken them to the hospital.
It was as though the vehicle had a mind of its own.
It didn’t, of course.
It was Albert who had decided, at the last minute, that he was not going to take Ron Frommer to the hospital.
He was going to take him to his place.
FORTY
CAL
JEREMY and I made some more sandwiches, this time with the stuff we’d bought in town. He was actually getting into it, laying out the bread, slapping a slice of cheese on each one, putting on mounds of deli meat, squirting a dollop of mustard on each.
“Maybe I should get a job in a restaurant,” he said.
“When I was a little younger than you, I had a job doing dishes in a diner.”
“Just dishes? You didn’t cook or anything?”
“Just dishes. My fingers would be all wrinkly at the end of my shift.”
We took our food up to the deck. Far out in the bay, Jeremy spotted a massive ship.
“I saw some binoculars on the shelf,” I told him.
He went back into the house and found them, then came out and stood at the deck railing, the binoculars up to his eyes. “It’s one of those ones that carries cargo containers,” he said. “They’re all different colors. They look kinda like kids’ building blocks.”
I reached out a hand from where I was sitting and he handed the binoculars to me. I took a look, scanned the horizon where water met sky. If it weren’t for the fact that we were here hiding from Internet nutbars who wanted to hurt Jeremy, this would be a pretty nice place to chill out.
When Jeremy had finished his second sandwich, I said, “Let’s take a walk.”
“Where?”
“The beach.”
“Okay.”
Once we’d descended the set of wooden steps that led us down to the beach, we took off our shoes and left them there where we could find them later. Jeremy ran toward the water, stood in the sand where the waves were coming in, let them wash around his ankles as they receded.
“It’s freezing,” he said, glancing back at me.
“Let’s walk this way,” I said, pointing east. We strolled just along the edge of the surf, our feet getting wet every few seconds.
“I like it here,” Jeremy said. “We’ve almost got the beach to ourselves.”
He was right, although we weren’t the only ones out here. Looking both ways, I saw maybe ten or twenty people wandering more than a mile of shore. Almost no one was in a bathing suit. Most, like us, were in long pants rolled up to the knees. Some were smart enough to wear light jackets, as the breeze coming in off the bay was cool. I wished I’d brought one. But if the cold bothered Jeremy—aside from the waves that touched his feet—he gave no indication.
“I want to talk to you about something,” I said.
“Yeah? What? Is this about how I should have told Charlene’s mom I was sorry?”
“No, but we can come back to that later.”
“I am sorry,” he said.
I nodded, placed a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Okay. But first, I want to ask you about earlier. When you were driving my car.”
He looked at me worriedly. “Shit, did I break it? I broke it, didn’t I? I’m sorry. It was your idea.”
I shook my head, “No, the car’s okay.” It occurred to me that he might actually have done some damage to the clutch, but if he had, I hadn’t noticed anything on our drive back from town. “What I’m asking is, was that for show?”
“Was what for show?”
“Your ineptitude.”
“My what?”
“You were totally shitty at it,” I said. “Was that an act?”
“An act? What are you talking about?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have come at this so directly, but there was a theory floating around in my brain. “What I’m wondering is, could you be taking the blame, willingly, for something you never did? To protect someone you care about, maybe? But now, you’re wondering if that was a mistake. You want me to think it couldn’t have been you so I’ll point everyone in the direction of who really did it.”
“I have no idea what the fuck you are talking about,” he said.
If Jeremy’s current confusion and his performance in the car yesterday were all part of an act, he deserved an Oscar. The theory floating around in my brain was now taking on water and sinking to the bottom.
“Really, what are you talking about?” he persisted.
I held up both hands, palms forward. “Okay, let’s rewind. Forget I brought any of that up. Let me start again. But I do want to talk about the night it happened. I know that may be hard for you, having to answer questions from me when you’ve already had to tell a hundred people the story. But bear with me, okay?”
He eyed me apprehensively. “Okay.”
“Tell me everything.”
“Everything?” he said.
“Just tell me about that night. No, hang on.”
An elderly couple was approaching. They each nodded and smiled. I said, “Beautiful day.”
The woman said, “If it would just warm up some!”
“Soon enough,” I said. “Come summer, we’ll be complaining about how hot it is.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” the man agreed. They continued walking, and seconds later had disappeared behind us.
“Okay, tell me,” I said to Jeremy.
“Like, everybody was screaming and shouting and someone hauled me out of the car and Mr. Broadhurst was there and Bob was there and lots of other people and then Mr. McFadden, he started pounding on me and they had to pull him off. It was really awful.”
“Go on.”
“And I saw Sian lying there, and I couldn’t believe I’d done that. You keep thinking, if only I could go back in time one hour and change things, you know?”
“Tell me about when you got into the car.”
“I just got in it, I guess.”
“Was Sian with you when you got in?”
“She couldn’t have been in the car with me, because how would I have run into her?”
“Sure. But I was thinking, maybe she got in, and you drove around some, and then she got out and you were still in the car. Maybe something like that.”
“I think what happened,” Jeremy said, “is she went running up the driveway and then I got in the car to catch up with her.”
“Why do you say you think that’s what happened?”
Jeremy shot me a look. “What does that mean?”
“It means just what I said. You say you think that’s what happened.”
“Yeah.”
“But you don’t know.”
“I was kind of pissed out of my mind. You remember that part, right?”
“Okay, let’s go back to earlier in the evening,” I said. “When Broadhurst found you in his car, and Sian was with you. Do you remember that?”
He nodded. “Yeah.
Mostly.”
“So—Hang on again.”
A short, stocky woman was walking purposefully our way. This wasn’t a stroll. This was exercise. I was about to say hello when I noticed she had wires leading down from her ears. I gave her a friendly wave, which she ignored as she passed us.
“You’re really worried about people hearing us,” Jeremy said.
“Just being careful. So Broadhurst finds you in the car.”
“Yeah, and he’s really pissed, especially since I’ve got the key in my hand and I’m trying to figure out how to start it. But the place where you put the key in wasn’t in the usual spot, in the steering column thingy. I’d just figured out where it was, over to the left of the wheel, when Broadhurst opens the door and tells me to get the fuck out.”
“So you never got the car started.”
“No.”
“And you found the key in the car?”
“Yeah. It was sitting in the tray between the seats.”
“That seems kind of dumb.”
“Yeah, well, he did that a lot because it was his own property, and the house is a long way from the road, and he said, like, when he testified, that he was always losing keys, so if he just left it in the car, he’d find it.”
“A car that nice.”
Jeremy shrugged. “They asked him about that, and he said if he was going someplace, he didn’t leave it. But out front of his house, yeah, sometimes.”
“So he finds you in the car, with the key in your hand—is that right?”
A nod.
“So what happens to the key?”
“He takes it from me.”
“And what does he do with it?”
Water rolled in, froze our ankles briefly, and slid back out.
“What’s he do with it?” Jeremy repeated.
“Yeah.”
“I guess he put it in his pocket.”
“So he didn’t put it back in that tray where you found it.”
“Well, not right then. Probably later.”
“Okay,” I said. “But you seem to remember that incident, that confrontation, quite clearly.”
“Pretty much,” he said. “I wasn’t so hammered then.”
“So now tell me about the second time you got in the car.”
“That’s a lot fuzzier,” he said quietly.
“Because?”
“Sian and I went back into the house and snuck out some more to drink. So we . . . well, I was pretty shitfaced the second time I got in the car. But that time, I would have known where to put the key.”
“If the key was there.”
“Well, I guess it fuckin’ had to be,” Jeremy said. He stopped. “Is there a reason why you’re goin’ on about this? And I still don’t get that other stuff you were asking me, about protecting someone?”
“I asked you to bear with me.”
“Fine,” he said, in a voice that suggested it was not fine at all.
“Do you remember Broadhurst reaching over you, before you got out of the car, to put the keys back where you found them?”
“No. But he must have done it after.”
“So between the time that you and Sian got kicked out of the car, and the time you got in it again, what did you do?”
“Like I said, we went in, scored two nearly full bottles of wine that had been opened, and went back outside.”
“Outside where?”
“Uh, like, outside.”
“Front of the house? Back of the house?”
“We wandered up the driveway, toward the main road. There’s kind of a hill there, you know?”
“I don’t. I’ve never been there.”
“Oh, right. So we were drinking straight out of the bottles. One was red, one was white, and we were sharing back and forth. We sat on the bench.”
“What bench?”
“There’s this fancy bench along the side of the driveway, just over the hill. We sat there and drank and looked at stars and shit.”
“When did you come back and get in the car?”
He had to think about that. “Around then, I guess. Sian must have stayed by the bench while I walked back to get the car.”
“You know that?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, that’s when it starts getting awful fuzzy. Somewhere along the line I think I blacked out or something.”
About a hundred yards ahead, a young man was standing with his feet firmly planted in the wet sand, facing out into the bay, looking contemplative. From where we were, his eyes appeared to be closed. Water rushed in around his legs and out again, but he never moved.
“So let’s say,” I said, “you go back to the car, start it up, then drive over the hill, and that’s when Sian must have gotten off the bench and stumbled into your path, or maybe you veered toward her. Something like that.”
“And hit the tree.”
“How did you do it?” I asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You mean, like, how could I do something so stupid? That’s kind of what everyone’s asked. And it’s because I didn’t understand the consequences of my actions.”
He said that last sentence like he was reading it off a teleprompter.
“That was the defense strategy,” I said. “But do you really believe that?”
A hesitation. “I guess.”
“It’s a load of shit and you know it, but it worked,” I said.
“Whatever.”
“But that’s not what I’m asking you. How did you do it?”
“Do what?” he asked impatiently.
“Drive the car.”
“Lots of people are able to drive cars when they’re drunk. They just do a shitty job of it.”
I put out a hand to stop him. I turned and looked at him. “The car’s a stick.”
“What?”
“Galen Broadhurst’s car is a stick shift.”
“No, it couldn’t be,” Jeremy said. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not. I made some calls to confirm it.”
“But . . . that doesn’t make any sense. Maybe the shift in your car is harder to use or something.”
“I don’t think so. I can’t see you managing a manual transmission in any make of car. No offense, but you were pretty terrible at it. A few more lessons and I think you’ll be fine, but today? Not so great.”
“But how . . . Maybe it’s one of those shifters that can go back and forth. Like, you can shift it if you want, but you don’t have to.”
I put a hand on his shoulder to steer him forward, and resumed walking. “No, it’s not like that. I don’t get how someone who’d never driven a stick before could not only hop into that Porsche and drive it, but could do it drunk.”
Jeremy didn’t say anything. He kept looking down at the millions of grains of sand, as if one of them contained the answer and all we had to do was find it.
“But . . .”
“But what?” I asked.
“But that seems like a kind of obvious thing. I mean, I guess somehow I must have driven it, although I don’t see how. But if the whole stick thing could raise, whaddya call it, some sort of reasonable doubt, I think Mr. Finch would have brought that up.”
“You’d think so. It was never part of the defense strategy discussions?”
“I wasn’t really part of those,” he said.
“I talked to Grant Finch. He said if it had been an issue, you should have raised it.”
“How could I raise it? I didn’t know.”
“How familiar were you with the car?”
Jeremy thought. “The first time I saw that car was when I got in it. When I was shitfaced. The second time I saw it was yesterday, parked out front of Madeline’s house.”
I’d been there. Jeremy didn’t go anywhere near it, so he couldn’t have looked inside it, wouldn’t have noticed what was between the front seats.
“Look, Mr. Weaver, Mom and Bob and Mr. Finch and Madeline and even Mr. Broadhurst all talked about the best way to get me off,
and they came up with, you know, the whole Big Baby thing. And even though I hated it, at least I’m not in jail now.”
“True enough,” I said. “But is it possible, Jeremy, that you didn’t want the stick-shift thing to come up?” I was diving down for that theory, seeing if it could be brought back to the surface, given mouth-to-mouth.
“Huh?”
“Is it possible it did come up, and you shot it down?”
I might as well have told him the sky was green, the way he looked at me. I couldn’t help but wonder if he was putting on a show. Overreacting on purpose.
“That’s nuts,” he said.
“Tell me about Charlene.”
“What about Charlene?”
“Were things a little more serious with her that night than you’ve let on? Was she your girlfriend? Were you seeing her and Sian at the same time?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
“Help me out here, Jeremy. Something about this is not right. Let me ask you again. All this time, have you been taking the blame for someone else? Willingly?”
“What?”
“I noticed Charlene knows her way around a stick shift. And she made a point yesterday of saying that Sian ran in front of the car, that anyone would have hit her, drunk or not. Why would she say that?”
“That’s just her opinion.” He shook his head angrily. “This is all bullshit.”
I had another question, but we had almost reached our contemplative guy. He must have heard us coming, because he opened his eyes and turned to look in our direction.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I whispered to Jeremy.
“I don’t think so,” he whispered back.
The man on the beach gave us a broad smile. “Hey.”
“You had a real Zen thing going on there,” I said.
The man nodded. “I guess so. It’s just so . . . wonderful.”
“Yup,” I said. I’ve always been a master of small talk. I glanced at Jeremy, who was looked slightly shell-shocked. His eyes weren’t focused on this new guy, or anything else for that matter. He was just staring.
“Haven’t seen you on the beach before,” the man said.
Parting Shot Page 27