Chapter Seven
It was the accident, all over again.
The massive long-hauler loomed in the rearview mirror, bearing down like a hell hound, headlights flaring, steam puffing madly from beneath its heavy cowling. Big. So damn big. It filled my eyes until I could see only the grill: metal teeth, menacing and vicious: chrome-plated death. Massive already, it grew in size until it blotted out the sun. I sat motionless, frozen but for the scream coming from my mouth.
Death had come for me. This monster was going to consume me whole. Into its steel gullet I would disappear, never to be seen again.
Oh, Toni! I'm so sorry!
Hands shaking like a man with a palsy, I fumbled for the seatbelt and hit the release and fell forward—and continued falling. I tumbled farther and farther, beyond the floor of the Malibu, beyond the tarmac, while above me, the long-hauler collided with my car in a cacophony of twisted metal, shattered glass, and exploding gasoline. The intense heat washed over my body like a sun's burning surf, searing fiber and follicle alike, until naked I fell through the limitless space now surrounding me, dark and cold and bespeckled with a host of stars.
I fell, timeless, until I saw a mass, orange with a churning skin of yellowish vapor. It spun in a lazy circle around an enormous red star.
A planet. It had to be a planet.
Toward that body I fell. I curled into a ball. I may not know much about physics, but I knew enough to understand friction. The atmosphere was dense; denser by orders of magnitude than the void through which I fell. I knew what would happen upon entry, when the heat found your bones and began to melt them.
With eyes clamped shut and knees tucked under my chin, I rolled and rolled until I felt the planet's gravity latch onto me. Nowhere abruptly became somewhere as I regained my sense of direction. My descent accelerated. Soon my body was buffeted by the hellish forces of the alien atmosphere.
The wind howled in my ears as I waited for the flame of entry to burn me to ash.
Except it didn't happen.
Instead, I felt an icy cold grip me, and I began to shiver. Icicles grew in my nostrils, along my grimacing lips. Frost knitted across my skin until it cracked and flaked away like so much snow, leaving behind a slick mass of raw muscle. Traitorous, my eyelids dissolved to dust and fled with their brethren.
I saw for the first time the planet's surface.
Mountains high and wide, deep valleys, treeless for as far as I could see. Long, curving coastlines of orange soil. There were no buildings, no roads—not a speck of intelligent design. No oceans or lakes or winding rivers or little streams. No water, or any other kind of liquid. Nothing.
This planet was dry: a desiccated husk.
And I was about to impact with it.
As the ground surged up toward me, my eyes caught a glimpse of something in the distance, near the peak of a tall mountain. A crackle of light, bright for a second, then gone, and then back, pulsing, over and over. I sensed immense power and wondered what it could be, but then had to let it go.
The planet occupied my present, and what would surely be my all-too-brief future.
Locked in an armor of ice I screamed.
And, as if in response, I heard my name called out.
"Brad!" someone shouted. "BRAD!"
I turned my head.
It was the Raggedy Ann doll—Thumbkin. It was falling with me, a scowl on its cloth face.
"Brad!" Its stitched mouth had pulled apart, leaving behind broken threads like diseased lips. "Look away, Brad! You weren't supposed to see this!"
"Wha―wha―wha―?" I grunted, my frozen lips and tongue rebelling, the words never fully forming.
The doll's face twisted in fury. "LOOK AWAY!"
Hurtling toward the ground, eyes locked on the doll and unable to move, I could only weep. The tears froze to my skinless face.
Perhaps sensing its failure, Thumbkin gave an enraged shriek. Her button eyes narrowed, the corners of her mouth bent into a sneer. "I should let you die!" she cried, and hurtled herself at me.
Her soft body, now hard as concrete, slammed into me as brutally as the long-hauler should have.
The impact pushed me and I tumbled away. The alien planet slowly retreated into the distance.
Sadness consumed me. I was going to sail through outer space forever. I would never see Toni again.
Then I hit—
* * *
—my head on something.
"Ow! Ow! Shit!"
I opened my eyes to darkness. Gone was the planet; gone, the swirling yellow atmosphere. I still felt, though, the bitter chill of outer space deep inside me.
I heard a click. Light flooded the room, causing me to blink.
I was in bed, with Toni next to me, staring at me.
"Brad, what's the matter?"
"Bad dream." I scrubbed my face with my hands. “A really nasty one.”
She hugged me. We sat in silence. My heart gradually downshifted to a more normal rate. The chills faded as the heat from Toni's body warmed me. I leaned back against the headboard. The pain I'd felt must have been my head knocking against it as I thrashed in my sleep.
"Want to talk about it?" Toni said, rubbing my shoulder.
"I was in space."
"Space?"
"Outer space." I related what I could remember of the dream. "The damn doll was there."
"You mean Thumbkin?"
I nodded. "She spoke to me."
"And?"
"She said I wasn't supposed to see something. The planet, I guess."
"You were going to hit the ground?"
"Just before I woke up."
She gave me a gentle shake. "Good thing we didn't test it, huh?"
"Test what?"
"Whether you die in life when you die in your sleep." She hugged me for a few seconds more. "What do you think it meant?"
"The dream? It didn’t mean anything."
"You sound certain."
"It was vivid, and pretty terrifying, but it was only a dream. I wouldn’t make more of it than that."
Her mouth twisted. "It sounded so strange."
"I've had stranger. Where is the doll, anyway?"
"On the table near the front door, where you left it."
I slid out of bed. "Be right back."
"Seriously, Brad. You're not—"
"I am," I said, and padded out of the room. It was almost midnight and the house was dark. I felt my way down the hallway until my fingers brushed against the light switch. I flipped it—for some reason, I half expected the lights not to work—and was relieved when the ceiling light came on. Squinting through the sudden illumination, I found Thumbkin where I’d left her—on the table with her back propped against the wall. Her cherub grin was intact; her smooth, serene face unaltered. There was no hint of the rage she had displayed in my dream. Then again, why would there be? I'd chided Toni for making a big deal of a simple dream, albeit a bad one, and here I was doing the same thing. I must be losing my mind.
Disgusted, I flipped off the light and fumbled my way back to the bedroom.
"Was it there?" Toni asked sleepily. She'd rolled onto her side, the covers brought snugly up around her shoulders.
"Yes," I said, and slipped between the sheets.
"Good."
"Night, honey."
"Night," she murmured.
I turned out the light but didn't fall asleep for some time.
When I did, I didn't dream.
Chapter Eight
The next morning, I was enjoying a cup of Seattle's Best and working at Sudoku puzzles when the phone rang. I glanced at the Caller ID and picked up.
"Kind of early for you, isn't it?"
"Get dressed," Frank said. "I'll be out front in ten."
"Something wrong?"
"I need a painting, and you're my canvas."
"What does that mean?"
"Just be ready." He hung up.
True to his word, Frank rolled up ten minutes later. I cli
mbed inside.
"You look like shit," he said, pulling away from the curb. "Good."
"Gee, thanks. I love you too. Where are we going?"
"Culver," Frank said as we left the sedate streets of Rock Mills for the full-throated growl of freeway travel. He didn't use his flashers or his siren. Apparently, urgency wasn't a concern. "We're gonna exact a little revenge for the Malibu."
Culver was a small manufacturing town roughly thirty minutes north of Rock Mills. I'd been there on a few occasions, none of them memorable. "I don't get the connection."
"Remember the asshat who left the parts on the road?" Frank's lips peeled back into a predatory grin. "Well, I found him."
"What happened to not investigating?"
He pressed down on the accelerator. "Changed my mind. I drove to the Troop post yesterday. Figured they weren't doing jack shit about the accident, and I was right. Nothing going on, no plans to investigate. I finagled my way into the evidence room for a looky-look, found a piece of plastic molding with a serial number on it. Turns out it was from the bumper of a car. I tracked down the manufacturer, found out who sold it. Called that guy. He gave me the name of the guy who bought it. Then I called him. Guess what? His car's in for repairs. Had a fender-bender. I got the address of the repair shop from him. Hence, the road trip."
"You think it'll be open on a Sunday?"
Frank snorted, an ugly sound that would frighten a lesser man. "It better be. I called the fucktard myself and told him to be there."
"How long did this investigation take?"
"Dunno. Five hours, six maybe."
"Knowing you, it was more like eight, and now you're gone today. You squared this with Kerry?"
"She'll be okay."
"Which implies she isn't, at the moment, okay."
"I got a job to do, Paco."
"It didn't happen in Rock Mills."
He gripped the wheel like a man ready to do great bodily harm. "Don't you want to catch the guy who almost killed you?"
"And charge him with what? You can't even make an arrest. It's not your jurisdiction."
"I can’t believe this. I'm trying to help and you're arguing with me."
"We agreed that finding who did this wouldn't change a thing."
"That doesn't turn a wrong into a right."
I waited a few seconds before saying, "What's this really about?"
Frank's jaw clenched, the muscles bunching like hammer blows, and for a moment I thought he would start shouting. Then the tension unwound from his shoulders, and he let out a thin stream of air from between his lips. "You always gotta do that, huh?"
"Friends don't let friends drive deranged. You're doing eighty in a fifty-five zone."
Frank glanced at the speedometer and swore. The car slowed.
Minutes later, we passed mile marker forty-two, infamous locally for the billboard advertising a local Christian college's slogan: GRADUATE WITH 'A's NOT AIDS. Culver was about fifteen minutes away, ten if Frank kept speeding.
"Trouble on the home front?" I said.
"Yep."
"The baby."
"Yep."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Nope."
"You just want to give a guy shit over something he doesn't know happened."
"Sounds about right."
"And that's going to make everything better?"
"Of course not, but it'll help keep me from throttling someone I love." He changed lanes to pass a slow-moving Prius with Indiana plates. "You gotta admit," he said. "What this guy did was pretty irresponsible. Sure, you didn't 'almost die,' but you damn well got your bell rung. What if it'd been a mom with a car full of kids, or an old couple on their way to their fiftieth anniversary party? You got lucky. Someone else might not have. This guy's gotta understand what he did was dangerous."
He had a good point. "You mentioned a painting?"
"A picture's worth a thousand words, right? Figured if this joker got a look at your mug, my message would have the proper emotional impact."
"What if he doesn't give a rip? What if he looks at me, laughs, and throws us out of his shop?"
"Then his day goes from shitty to fucked up real fast."
Frank took the exit for Culver and kept driving until he pulled into an aged parking lot with weeds growing from the cracked concrete. The building reminded me of a flea market hand-me-down: festooned with rust, flaking paint, and soaped-over windows. There were no other cars in the lot, and the flip sign on the door said CLOSED.
"Womblic's Auto Repairs?" I said skeptically.
Frank nodded. "Let's go introduce ourselves."
This part of town was eerily quiet, even for Sunday. The other businesses were closed. There was no traffic, no pedestrians.
Frank rapped loudly on the door, then tried the knob and discovered it was locked. "The son of a bitch better be here," he muttered, and resumed pounding. The wood rattled until, finally, the door opened.
The man was about my height and build, with wavy brown hair and a beard, both of which were shot through with streaks of gray. He glared at us with startled blue eyes. "What?"
Frank badged him. "You Richard Womblic?"
"Ricky," the man said, squinting at Frank. "No one calls me Richard. I hate it. Makes me feel like I'm back in kindergarten."
"Okay," Frank said. "Ricky. I'm Detective Swinicki."
"The badge gave you away." Womblic turned his attention to me. "And you are?"
"Brad Jordan."
Womblic's eyes lingered on my bruises. He opened the door wider. "Let's get this over with. I have work to do."
I followed Frank into the shop. Womblic led us through the lobby and into the garage, where two cars sat on hoists, their underbellies exposed. At the far end was a door, and beyond it, a surprisingly large workspace filled with radio equipment, a computer, a laser printer, and a large monitor. Photographs of various space-related objects hung on the walls. Most were prints of galaxies, a few looked like planets in our solar system, and one was of the Hubble Space Telescope. There were three more photos, each of Womblic with another person. In them he smiled broadly, an arm around the other person's shoulder and his hand shooting a peace sign. I pointed at one. "Is that Neil deGrasse Tyson?"
Womblic bobbed his head. "I went to the Hayden Planetarium two years ago. Got a chance to meet him. Nice guy. Taller in person than he looks on television." His eyes cut to Frank. "You like science—you know, space stuff?"
"What I would like," Frank said, "are answers to a few questions. I'm not here because I got nothing better to do."
"Yeah, yeah, I figured as much." Womblic dropped into a chair. There weren't any others, so Frank and I were forced to stand. "Can't imagine what this is about."
Frank took out a small notebook from his pocket, flipped it open, and made a show of searching through the pages. It was such a cliché move I almost laughed.
"Can you tell me where you were on Friday afternoon, between two and six?"
"Which Friday?"
Frank gave him an unfriendly stare. "This last one."
Womblic scratched at his beard. "Lemme think. I worked on an '84 Benz that needed new rotors. Then there was Mrs. Andrzejewski's Montana. It blew an overhead gasket. After that I ran some old car parts..." His voice trailed off. "Oh, wow. I think I know why you're here."
"I bet you do," Frank drawled.
"Look," Womblic said, his eyes owl-wide. "The trailer's tailgate is twitchy. I try to keep it secure, but sometimes it pops open. I swerved to avoid hitting a raccoon and some stuff fell out. It wasn't a lot. Not enough to cause a problem."
I lifted my shirt, exposing the ugly bruise on my chest. "Would you call this a problem?"
Womblic's owl-eyes widened. He leaned back in his chair. "Oh, man. I'm sorry, really. I didn't think there was that much on the road. What a screw-up. I guess you guys are here to arrest me.” Womblic pulled a cell phone from his pocket. “Can I call my wife first? Let her know I won't be home for a w
hile?"
Frank closed the notebook. "No need for that, Mr. Womblic. At least, not yet. But tell me, why didn't you stop and pick up the debris? It would have saved this guy"—he cocked a thumb at me—"his car and a lot of pain and suffering."
"Your car got totaled?" Womblic asked me.
I spread my hands. "There wasn't enough left to bury in a shoebox."
"You're okay, though?"
"Luckily. Had it been an older couple, or a kid who just got his license, things could've turned out badly."
That seemed to erode what little resolve Womblic had left. His shoulders slumped so much I thought they might break in the middle. "Guess you gotta take me in. Negligence, property damage, personal injury. Shit, Polly's gonna kill me. Can I get a copy of the police report? I've got liability insurance on the truck. I might be able to replace this guy's car." He slammed his fist on the desk so hard a stapler jumped. "Polly's gonna kill me!"
Ricky Womblic started crying.
I glanced over at Frank. He gave me a questioning look and I nodded. The guy obviously felt horrible about what had happened. It was time to end the charade.
Frank cleared his throat. "Look, Mr. Womblic, we—"
"Give me a minute," Womblic said. "I was going to take the family to the apple orchard later. Now I gotta tell them that I'm going to jail instead. What are my kids gonna think?"
"Mr. Womblic, please—"
Womblic bolted upright in his chair. His face went deathly pale. "Halloween's next week. I'm gonna miss my kids trick-or-treating!"
"Mr. Womblic," Frank said loudly. "Listen to me. I'm not going to arrest you. You are not going to jail. You're not going to miss anything."
Womblic paused, his chest heaving. He stared at us for a long moment, then his expression changed—disbelief replaced panic, which finally gave way to relief. He ran a shaky hand across his mouth. "I’m not going to jail?"
"No," Frank said. "Provided you file the insurance claim. The doc here needs his car replaced."
"Of course!" Womblic smiled. "Thank you. Thank you. I thought this was it. I was done, finished."
I pulled out a business card and handed it to Womblic. "You can reach me at this number."
"Sure, sure. Anything you say." He read the card. "You a shrink?"
The Conveyance Page 10