by Greg Dinallo
Laura—gregarious, giving, sandy-haired; musically and artistically gifted, so much like her mother. She’s driven half the night from Berkeley.
They’re devastated.
We do what we can for each other, but no words will heal their wounds or mine. It’s midmorning before I achieve some degree of emotional control and mental discipline, and make a list of things that have to be done.
County Morgue is at the top.
We head into the garage. It’s empty. I’d forgotten. The Mercedes is wrecked. Nancy’s Range Rover is being serviced. We take Laura’s Jetta. I drive. The girls find a map in the glove box and navigate. We take the freeway downtown to the County-USC Medical Center, a huge complex on State Street just off the Golden State Freeway, and follow the signs to the morgue entrance at the rear of the main building.
I insist the girls stay behind in the reception area as I follow the attendant into a small, unadorned room. It smells like chemicals. The finishes are hard and reflective-—chrome, stainless, granite, glass—permanent. I know what goes on here. What they do to determine how someone died. How they clinically dismantle deceased humans and analyze the parts. I’d never let them touch Nancy, but an autopsy isn’t a matter of consent. Oh, God, how I wish it was.
A gurney is centered beneath a harsh light.
The attendant lifts one corner of the sheet.
I close my eyes, hoping that they’ve made a mistake, hoping that when I open them I’ll see someone other than Nancy. God knows I’ve had my share of emotional torture. I’ve seen my best friend blown to pieces, I’ve killed men and women with my bare hands, I’ve held wounded teenagers in my arms and promised I wouldn’t let them die though I knew they would. But this—this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
“Mr. Morgan?” the attendant prompts.
My eyes snap open. I stare uncomprehendingly at a woman’s ashen face, swollen and bruised, but not beyond recognition. We’ve been together since we were sixteen; almost thirty years. I’ve never felt so grief-stricken or incomplete. I gently touch her cheek. It’s rigid and cold. I vow this will not be the way I remember her.
“Is this your wife?”
I don’t want to nod, but I do.
15
Several days have passed.
A Los Angeles County coroner determines by simple observation that Nancy died of injuries sustained in the accident, which means there’s no need for an autopsy. I’m relieved, but still unable to accept her death. She was driving a new Mercedes, equipped with the most advanced safety systems: an air bag, anti-lock brakes, energy-absorbing body, deforming steering column, seat belts. “How?” I protest. “How could she be dead?”
The coroner gently reminds me that these features don’t really come into play until impact. In Nancy’s case, spinning out of control on the wet road snapped her head sideways into the window and door post with such force that fatal injuries resulted prior to any impact. Results of tests for alcohol and drugs will be forthcoming. Her body is released to a local mortuary, which arranges to have it shipped to Boston.
The funeral is tomorrow.
It’s late afternoon when the girls and I arrive at Logan International. I stare at the travelers hurrying about the terminal, wondering how many are on a similar journey. I’m snapped out of it by Nancy’s brother, who still lives in the South Bay area where we all grew up. It’s a terribly emotional moment, and I’m glad neither her parents nor mine accompanied him. It would have been too much to handle in a crowded boarding lounge.
We take the Callahan Tunnel into Route 93 south, skirting the downtown area. Forty minutes later we arrive at my parents’ house, a red brick rowhouse with a concrete stoop on Chadwick Street just across from Orchard Place.
Relatives from both families are waiting for us. It’s worse than I imagined. They’ve aged twenty years since we were here for Thanks-giving not five months ago. I’m sure they’re saying the same of me. There may be strength in numbers but these kinds of reunions go a long way to disproving it. Their well-intentioned reminiscing is anything but theraputic, and I finally put an end to it by insisting we all go out for dinner.
The girls and I return with my parents. We watch the news, a late movie, and finally try to get some sleep. Hours later, I’m still staring at the ceiling in the guest room, my old room, the one where Nancy and I listened to records, necked, did homework. I can’t remember the last time I was here without her. I’m frightened and guilt-ridden. I keep thinking of that night, imagining her suddenly losing control of the car, fighting the darkness and rain, fighting to keep on the road, to stay alive, and then the awful moment when she knew she wouldn’t.
I head downstairs, roaming the house. Pictures of Nancy and me and the girls are everywhere. There’s no escape. I wander into the family room hoping to find an old movie on television. The next thing I know, I’m setting up my laptop on Dad’s desk, a scarred wooden relic where he spent evenings figuring out how to make ends meet and underbilling clients for auto repairs. I run a line from the modem port to a phone jack in the wall, and then—doing what I always do when I want to shut everything out—I plunge headlong into a maze of statistics, into what I imagine a psychiatrist would label obsessive/compulsive denial.
I access the mainframe at my office back in Los Angeles. It takes several hours to retrieve data on all the accidents on Malibu Canyon Road for the last ten years, but once I have them it takes no more than a few milliseconds to calculate that the odds for the average driver dying in an accident on that road are 1 in 10 million.
Next, I input all of Nancy’s data. Though I don’t have the results of the toxicology tests, I’ve never seen her drunk and I know she wasn’t, nor was she young and reckless, or driving a poorly maintained or rundown vehicle. The Mercedes was brand-new. And she was driving a road she knew well, one she’d driven at least twice a day, probably a thousand times a year for five years.
When all the information is assembled, I run a comparative analysis program, working in a frenzy to evaluate the data by time, date, and weather, by the driver’s age, sex, eye color, ethnic group, income level, and years of driving experience, by vehicle, number of passengers, road surface, and specific location on the road, and by the number of vehicles that traveled the road during that period.
As the glow of another empty sunrise warms the room, I finally determine that the probability of Nancy dying in such an accident is incredibly low: not 1 in 10 million, but 1 in 250 million. It should never have happened, but it did. She’s gone, and, as I stare bleary-eyed at the computer screen and sink into the chair with exhaustion, I slowly realize that, no matter how many calculations, simulations, or permutations I run, nothing is going to bring Nancy back. Despite all my computing power, experience, and access to the most current data, hers was the one death I couldn’t predict. The thought does little to ease the pain.
I’m just dozing off when I hear sounds in the house. My parents in the kitchen. The girls coming down the staircase in their college sweats. It’s obvious they haven’t slept either.
“Better start getting ready, Dad,” Janie whispers as they cross to the desk and embrace me.
We wander outside for a few minutes. It’s a beautiful spring morning. The air is still cool and refreshing. It smells different here. I’ve always attributed it to the change of seasons, the violent storms that cleanse and rejuvenate it. Now every familiar scent is laden with painful nostalgia.
The stained glass windows at St. Patrick’s R.C. Church on La-grange Avenue seem to sparkle with unusual brilliance. My mind drifts to my days as an altar boy. I’m lost in the past, numbly going through the motions of the funeral service. We’re at the cemetery when I come out of it, when I’m shattered by the terrifying realization that this woman who got me through Vietnam, who put me back in touch with life, who shared my innermost secrets and fears, is gone forever. I will never see her again, never hear her voice, never hold her body against mine. Never.
When it�
��s over, the girls and I are torn between fleeing and spending some time nestled in the family bosom. In their infinite wisdom, both Nancy’s parents and mine selflessly urge us to leave, insisting that she would want us to get busy and back to our lives.
The three of us fly to Los Angeles.
Janie catches a connecting flight to Arizona.
Laura returns home with me to pick up her car. We enter the house timidly, knowing we are about to be ambushed by memories. She gravitates toward the piano, stands there trembling, then closes the lid over the keyboard. I know one day I will have to face Nancy’s things, but I can’t bring myself to deal with them now. I lose myself in the mail. A letter from the Army Casualty Office catches my eye.
It informs me that the Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial forwarded my query to their offices. They turned it over to the CIL for processing. A search by a casualty data analyst has determined there are no personnel in their files who match the loss scenario I provided.
I feel a sardonic smile tugging at the corners of my mouth as I cross to the answering machine. Bad news doesn’t always travel fast. Several of the messages are for Nancy. More than one from the local Jaguar dealer where we bought the Range Rover. It’s been serviced and is ready to be picked up.
Early the next morning, Laura drops me there, then heads north to Berkeley. It’s hard watching her drive off. Every good-bye has unsettling overtones now.
A half hour later, I’m heading home in the Range Rover. This is a big mistake. I’m surrounded by Nancy’s things: sunglasses, notepad, felt tip pens, change for parking meters—everything neatly arranged in a console organizer. Her school parking pass is clipped to the visor next to the remote keypad for the alarm system in the house. There is also a coffee cup with a lipstick imprint, and most moving of all, the lingering scent of her perfume. I could lower the windows, but I don’t. My mind drifts to that awful moment when I opened the door to greet her and found police officers instead. I try not to relive it, but I keep coming back to something they mentioned, something that when coupled with recent incidents and the analysis I ran in Boston, keeps gnawing at me.
I change direction, drive to the sheriff’s substation in the Malibu Civic Center, and identify myself to the young desk officer. Short, sun-bleached hair suggests she spends her off-duty time surfing.
Her eyes flicker sadly with recognition. “Sorry about your wife, Mr. Morgan.”
“Thanks. I was just wondering, the officers said they didn’t think another car was involved in the accident. Any way I can find out for sure?”
“Of course. Let me pull the report.” She swivels in her chair to a bank of file cabinets and retrieves a folder. “Let’s see . . .” She pauses, thumbing through the contents. “No, there was nothing to indicate the presence of another vehicle.”
“What would indicate it?”
“Well, for example, sometimes we’ll find two sets of skid marks, but there weren’t any.”
“You mean none at all?”
“That’s right. There’s a notation here about heavy rain. She probably hydroplaned.”
“But that doesn’t rule out another car, does it?”
“Well,” she muses, “not really, no.”
“Anything else that might indicate it?”
“Yes, a P-T would. I’m sorry, that stands for paint transfer. In collisions, paint from one vehicle often ends up on the other.”
“But there wasn’t any.”
She glances at the accident report again. “Doesn’t say. The officers on the scene didn’t request a follow-up.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a hit-and-run or foul play is suspected, it’s turned over to a team of detectives who conduct an investigation.”
“But not in this case.”
“No. The circumstances didn’t warrant it. See, your car’s been cleared for release.” She turns the folder in my direction and shows me where the word RELEASE has been stamped on the report.
“I’d like to see the car.”
“You sure?” she asks, her eyes softening with compassion. “I mean, it’s your right. I’m just trying to spare you some pain.”
“Thanks, I’m beyond it.”
She nods solemnly. “Maybe I can have a follow-up team meet you there.” She makes a quick call, then instructs me to be at Coastline Towing, the independent contractor for the area, at 3:30 this afternoon.
I have several hours to kill. I go home, force myself to eat some lunch, sort through the mail, and call the office, then, feeling caged-in and anxious, I drive to the auto wrecking yard, arriving about twenty minutes early. As I get out of the Range Rover, I’m greeted by the sound of crunching sheet metal and shattering glass. The deafening racket comes from one of those massive compactors. In a matter of seconds, the frightening piece of machinery turns an old Detroit gas-guzzler into a steel pancake.
“What do you need, mister?” the operator, a young Hispanic with a brightly colored headband, shouts from his perch as I approach.
“I want to see my car,” I shout back.
He responds with a thumbs-up, takes a moment to finish the job, then climbs down and leads the way between junked vehicles and piles of salvaged parts to a separate, fenced-in area where a sign proclaims Official Police Garage.
“The black Mercedes,” I say, spotting it through the heavy chain link. The damage isn’t as extensive as I imagined. The front end is totaled, windshield and driver’s window smashed, but from the front doors back, it’s pretty much intact.
“Landed that one myself,” he says unlocking the gate. “Got real lucky too. I mean, when I heard it was the canyon, I figured I was spinning my wheels. I mean, they usually end up in the bottom, you know? Takes a chopper to get ‘em out.”
I grunt, ignoring him.
“But not this baby,” he charges on, animatedly. “Screech! Bam! Right through the guardrail, a little swan dive, no more than twenty, thirty feet, and smack into these boulders head-on. Let me tell you. Made my life a hell of a lot easier. I just dropped my hook, and reeled her in. Like boating a tuna. You ever go for tuna?”
I continue to ignore him and am slowly circling the car, wondering how anyone could be so insensitive and cruel, when I realize he probably didn’t hear me over the noise of the compactor and thinks I’m a claims adjuster. As I come around to the driver’s side, my eyes dart to several long streaks on the black finish. Are they scratches or paint? My pulse rate soars as I move in for a closer look. They’re definitely paint. But the color puts a quick end to my euphoria. “Looks sort of like an off-white, huh?”
“Yeah. White’s for wimps, man. You know what I mean? Like my cousin’s got this screaming yellow Trans Am. Hottest set of wheels.”
“I was really pulling for blue,” I mutter forlornly. My eyes drift up to something spattered on the air bag, which hangs limply over the steering wheel. It takes a moment to register. It’s dried blood. Nancy’s blood. The officer at the substation was right. I’m starting to feel queasy and seriously considering getting out of there when a gray Plymouth sedan, unmarked except for the antenna on the trunk lid, pulls into the yard.
Two plainclothes officers, who identify themselves as Sergeant Daniels and Detective Molina, begin examining the Mercedes.
A few minutes later, Daniels, the one with the bad hairpiece, turns toward me and nods. “That’s a paint transfer, no question about it.”
“And that dull black stuff’s what we call tire chatter,” Molina chimes in, gesturing to a pattern of semicircular marks on the door.
“We’re definitely talking hit-and-run,” Daniels concludes. “It’s a felony when a fatality’s involved.”
I nod despondently, still unnerved by the bloody air bag.
Daniels reaches into his pocket and produces one of those metal scrapers that uses a retractable razor blade to remove paint from glass. He turns back to the car, lays the blade flat against the Mercedes’ slick finish, and begins slowly working the honed edg
e beneath a section of transferred paint.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking a sample for the lab. They run what we call a spectroscopic analysis. Sometimes they come up with nothing, sometimes they nail the other vehicle right down to make, model, year, dealer—”
“Well, at least we know the color,” I say glumly as a large chip of white paint comes loose and drops into his palm.
“No, that’s primer,” he says matter-of-factly. Then he turns it over and shows me the other side, the side that had stuck to the Mercedes. “That’s the color.”
My eyes widen at the sight of it.
It’s blue. Metallic blue. The blue.
Now I know.
I have no proof, but I know I haven’t been irrational or paranoid. They were trying to kill me in Vegas. Nancy didn’t have an accident. Things do add up. Statistics don’t lie.
“With a little luck,” Daniels continues, slipping the paint sample into a plastic bag, “we might be able to identify the other driver. In the meantime, we’ll file a report with the coroner’s office. I’m sure the official cause of your wife’s death’ll be changed to vehicular manslaughter.”
“She was murdered,” I say angrily.
“We understand how you feel, Mr. Morgan, but it’s a good idea to keep an open mind in these matters,” Molina advises. “Just because the other driver left the scene isn’t proof he or she was at fault. It’s possible, and I emphasize possible, that your wife was responsible. She may have been under the influence, or passing another vehicle illegally, or—”
“No. No, you don’t understand,” I interrupt sharply. “I meant she was killed on purpose.”
The look that flicks between them leaves no doubt I’ve finally made my point.
“You mean homicide?” Daniels asks.
“I mean premeditated murder.”
That really throws them. They take a moment to regroup, unsure what to make of me.