As it turned out, the timing was perfect. Frank explained that he could arrive at the Thompsons’ at the appointed hour.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. She noted a tone of genuine willingness, even eagerness to do so.
“Are you okay to drive?”
He said, “Fine, sweetie. Believe me, you don’t want to be out in this. I’m in the car, it’s heating up. I’m already out, no need for you to go out, too. It’s not a problem. By the time I get the car brushed off, it’ll be warm.”
“I think I should get him.”
“Karen, I’m already in the car. It’ll take you ten minutes to get the snow off the Jeep, and the car will be freezing.”
She took a moment to glance out the window; yes, the Jeep was covered, six inches at least.
“Besides, I owe you,” he said. “I was an ass. What a crank I’m becoming.”
“You’re my crank,” she said.
“Forever, if you’ll have me.”
“Always.”
The were both silent. Karen suddenly had the urge to remain on the line, even in silence, the way they used to when one of them was in some distant hotel room, having exhausted conversation but not wanting to be alone.
At last Frank said, “If I don’t get going I’m going to be late.”
“Drive carefully.”
“Roads this bad I don’t have a choice.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s other drivers. It’s a big holiday party night. Keep your distance.”
“I’ll be careful.”
*
Once the headlights and the flashing red and blue lights appeared silently at the top of the hill and the car began its curving descent, it took only moments for Karen to make up her mind. They huddled cold in their driveway’s apron, Frank’s arm around her, her cheek and hand pressed against his chest. She said, “Everything happened exactly as it did except you and I were also at the party,” she said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We were both at the party.”
Officer Williams had been the first to arrive, coming to a halt in the middle of the street beside the Honda, which had stopped in the snowbank above the curb and nearly perpendicular to it. Williams did not step out of his car slowly as policemen typically did, as if they controlled time. Officer Williams was well over six feet and his heavy winter police jacket made him seem powerfully built. He bolted from the car, ignoring the shivering couple who had tried to approach him with an explanation. He ran in heavy black boots to the side of the car where the woman lay unconscious, half under the rear of the car. He felt for a pulse. He pulled a radio from his belt and it scratched to life. “This is Officer Williams, what’s the ETA on the—” and he stopped when the lights of the EMS vehicle appeared in the opposite direction from which he’d come. “They’re here, thanks.” A woman’s voice rogered that, and Williams stood as two men leapt out of the truck, each carrying a box of medical equipment.
“I’m not hopeful,” Williams said, stepping away.
You’d have thought it was a holiday party, suddenly, what with all the flashing lights everywhere. Karen’s stomach rolled as the last of six squad cars appeared. She felt dizzy from fear. The sounds of police radios, the lights, the cars, the silhouettes of neighbors in suddenly lighted windows, the incessant snow and Officer Williams’s definitive bark: “Secure the area!” Karen heard other words but didn’t comprehend sentences. “Punctured” and “aorta” and “bleed out.” It was as if she and Frank were invisible, all activity focused on the unconscious woman in the snow, and the composed but desperate (judging from the speed with which they were tearing packages open) maneuverings of the emergency medical technicians.
Once the EMTs were taking care of “the victim,” Officer Williams approached Frank and Karen and asked, “Can you tell me what happened?”
Each looked to the other, his blue eyes to her brown, and each back to the officer in one brief, fluid movement. Before Frank could begin, Karen said, “I was driving.” She and Frank were both taking deep, involuntary breaths. “We were pulling into the driveway,” she said. “I made the turn but the car just kept going forward. I missed the driveway and felt a thud.” Frank stood frozen, did not move or respond or even blink, and stared at the Honda.
Officer Williams looked toward the vehicle, one tire up over where the curb would be.
Officer Williams said, “You’ve been drinking.”
Frank snapped to attention at this. He locked eyes with Officer Williams.
“I can smell it on you,” Williams said.
“Yes, Officer.” And then he completed the lie. “That’s why my wife was driving. We were on our way home from a party. It’s not her fault, we didn’t even see the woman, the car just floated into her.”
Karen inhaled deeply.
“You live here?” he asked.
Frank and Karen answered yes in perfect unison, and Frank added, “We were pulling into our driveway.”
“Can I see your identification?”
Frank reached for his wallet.
Karen stood still.
Officer Williams took Frank’s driver’s license. He looked at Karen.
“My purse is inside the house.”
Officer Williams paused and asked, “Why is it inside the house?”
“I didn’t bring it with me to the party.” This could have been true. She often didn’t carry a purse to parties if Frank was driving. “I wasn’t planning to drive. My husband always drives. Should I go get it?”
“It can wait,” the officer said.
The victim had been loaded onto a gurney in the snow. The activity had ceased and the two men who had been kneeling in the snow were no longer working. Frank let out a relieved sigh as if to say, Thank God, they’ve got her stabilized. Officer Williams looked down. Karen’s stomach rolled again as one of the men, frizzy red hair and beard, a wool cap, called, “Officer?” Williams looked up. The man with the frizzy hair looked at his watch. “I couldn’t even intubate. I’ve gotta call it.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, dear God.” Karen began to cry. Frank looked to her, not completely understanding.
“Eleven fifty-five,” he said to his colleague. Officer Williams wrote this down and the EMT, who looked like a child to Frank, worked on a clipboard, wiping snow from it regularly, the paper so cold the snow didn’t melt on it.
Officer Williams looked at them both and, with a note of genuine comfort, said, “I’m pretty sure she died shortly after impact. She had a heartbeat but almost no pulse in her neck. By the time they got to her she had no blood pressure. Zero. She didn’t likely suffer. First shock, then nothing. I’ve spoken with survivors. They remember little.”
Other officers were with the emergency medical crew. An ambulance had arrived. A young officer, still in his twenties, approached and told Officer Williams, “She had a wallet, keys, ID, all there. Lived around the block. Okay to let these guys go?”
Officer Williams nodded. “But keep the street blocked.” He shook his head at the snow. That done, it seemed he could assess the situation. He looked up the street and down as if an answer had to be there, either end blocked off by a police car, lights flashing. He walked to the car. He looked at the corner that had struck the victim. He circled the car. He looked at the snow. Then he followed a line along the snow and up the driveway. Tracks, mostly obscured by the falling snow. Officer Williams looked at Frank and Karen. Karen was crying almost too quietly to hear.
Officer Williams took his time circling the car, making prints of his own, looking up the driveway. He wiped snow off his face as though it were weariness. He continued to write on the clipboard as he circled the car with his flashlight. He opened all four doors, peering in.
The ambulance had parked parallel to the emergency medical truck. The EMTs slid the gurney into the ambulance. When the doors were closed, the siren returned as the truck moved into gear. Soon after, the EMS truck departed. And then
there was complete silence. A dark night, snow coming down hard.
Officer Williams returned to Frank and Karen, and put what seemed to be a sympathetic hand on Karen’s back, but it was a preamble to a request. “Ma’am, I’d like to ask you to move the car now. Just pull it into the driveway, just past the sidewalk. Leave it here rather than in back. I’d just like it off the street now.” The house sat back on a deep lot with a long driveway. She nodded like a child who has been physically punished, choking back more tears, nodding vigorously. She absentmindedly felt the pockets of her puffy winter coat. She looked up at Frank, fear all but stopping her heart. She thought, Please don’t have them in your pocket.
Frank, eyes locked hard on hers, said evenly, “They’re probably still in the car, darling.”
She shook her head, sucked breath in through her snotty nose, and said, “Of course.”
Officer Williams watched her walk to the car. Williams didn’t take his eyes off Karen. She moved slowly as if half asleep. She adjusted the seat to reach the pedals, which is what she always did after he’d been driving the car they shared. This was the least expensive car they could find and they requested no extras whatsoever to save money, no button on the car key to pop the trunk, no electric seat adjusters, nothing. Frank had insisted. Frank was six feet, she five-six. She reached below the seat for the lever, pulled up, and the seat ratcheted several inches forward, one loud crank—and exactly as she realized her error, she heard Frank all but shout, “We didn’t see the woman!”
Frank continued pleading to keep Williams’s gaze. “We didn’t see a thing, even when we were sliding sideways.”
Williams didn’t respond, only turned back to see the car backing slowly off the curb, then watch the bright reverse lights go out as Karen shifted into drive and pulled into the driveway. She parked and exited the vehicle. She’d stopped crying and was stone-faced now, really only now beginning to realize all that had happened and what it might mean.
Williams said, “Ma’am, I’ll need the registration.”
She leaned back in, retrieved the envelope with the necessary papers. Thanks to Frank’s fastidiousness, all was easily at hand. Had it been her car alone, she’d have had to rummage through Lube Stop receipts and hair ties and bank deposit slips to find it.
She shuffled through the mounting snow, handed Williams the registration and insurance.
“Curt?” he called. The older officer with a thick black moustache, shiny bald on top, wearing a dark overcoat approached. “You can send the rest on.” Two squad cars had escorted the ambulance, and two more blocked either end of the street. Officer Williams’s vehicle remained in the middle of the street, lights still flashing like a carnival, and an unmarked car, Curt’s presumably, was just opposite where Frank’s car had mounted the curb.
Karen had adjusted the seat. She had adjusted the seat to reach the pedals, as if she were simply headed to the post office. What had she been thinking? Did Williams see it? He had to have heard the crank sound it made, but had it registered? Or had Frank distracted him in time?
Williams glanced at the insurance card and handed it back. He began to write and then said, “Do you mind if I finish this inside? It’s hard to write with this snow coming down.” When she paused he said, “I’ll need to see your ID before we go down, regardless.”
“What?” she said, snapping alert. “Down? Am I being arrested?”
“Not yet. We need to go to the ER. I’ll need a full tox screen.”
“Tox screen?”
“A full blood test. If you have any impairing substances, the DA will need to know. If you’re clean, then … well, one step at a time.”
Frank exhaled brusquely. Karen hardened. “Let’s go, then,” she said.
Before heading up the drive, Williams said, “Curt, breathalyze”—he looked at his clipboard—“Mr. Markstrom.”
Karen snapped around. “Why? He wasn’t driving.”
He looked at her hard. “Just covering all bases, ma’am, excuse me. If he’s very drunk, it could become part of the trial.”
“Trial? This was an accident!” Frank said, with an urgency bordering on desperation.
Startled by the volume, Silent Curt stiffened and Williams said, “I’ll need to ask you to calm down, sir.”
Frank snorted.
“You’re allowed to refuse,” Williams told him, “but that’s not usually wise. And since you weren’t driving—you weren’t driving, correct?”
Karen didn’t waste a second: “For Christ’s sake, I already told you I was driving.”
“Then you should consent.” He looked at Karen. She stared him back down, then turned and led Officer Williams up the drive to the open back door. “I’ll go get my things.”
Williams followed her, but he stopped at the car in the driveway. Karen turned back to look. He opened the front door and stared inside, as though sure a missing object could be found on the floor or in the crack between the seat and seat back. Karen could see it in his expression—something was bothering Williams, but he couldn’t place it. The loud ratcheting of her adjusting the seat. He closed the door and followed Karen, up the drive.
Karen, slipped the key into the lock and turned it, though she knew it was open. Inside she grabbed her purse, which was still on the stool at the kitchen island. Williams took a seat at the kitchen table without asking, wiped the paper on the clipboard clean, and carried on writing. His heavy-soled boots were dirty, so that when the fresh snow on them melted from within the treads, gray pools formed around his feet. She nearly asked him if he minded. But she didn’t want to slow down any of this. She set her driver’s license on the table. He lifted it, held it at arm’s length, looked at Karen and then set his hand down on the table so that he could copy the information from the license.
When he’d finished with it, he handed it back to her and said, “Try not to drive without your license.”
Did he know, she wondered? Was that tone he’d used ironic, suspicious? Why would he say such a thing? As if that was what mattered. A woman had been killed.
But he continued: “I don’t think you made the wrong decision. Your husband out there smells like all kinds of liquor.” He continued to write. “I think you chose to leave the party at the wrong time, is what I think. Five minutes either way, I’d be in a warm squad car, you’d be in bed, and—” and he stopped short of reiterating the worst of it. Instead he finished with: “Just another minute and I’ll be done.”
Feeling heat move through her, she unzipped her puffy black winter coat and leaned against the counter beside the stove, facing Officer Williams’s back. He turned and gave her a once-over and then turned back and resumed writing. “Don’t worry, we’ll leave ASAP. The sooner I get that tox screen, the better, from my position. I can finish the report at the hospital.”
Frank came to the back door, brushing snow from his jacket. His golden-brown hair was darkened and flat on his scalp from the melted snow. He stamped his feet hard on the back doormat and stepped into the kitchen. Both Williams and Karen looked at him.
“Point nine,” he said to Karen. “Just over the limit.”
“Still, I don’t know what the issue is,” Karen said to Officer Williams.
Williams answered by standing and saying, “All right, ready?”
Frank said to Karen, “I’m coming with you.”
Her eyes grew large and she shook her head once, no. She felt Williams’s gaze on her and said, “There’s absolutely no reason for you to go.” She hugged him, putting her face to his cheek and away from Officer Williams and whispering, “Stay out of this. Check Nick.” She released him and kissed his lips.
She zipped up the long black down coat and said, “Let’s go.”
*
“I couldn’t help but notice, Mrs. Markstrom, your clothes,” Williams said, staring at Karen in the rearview mirror and through the grate as they headed to the Cleveland Clinic’s emergency room. She’d never been in the back of a squad car. Officer
Williams had pulled away, Silent Curt in the seat beside him, having left his car along the curb in front of their house, like a black headstone, Karen thought, as they peeled away from the scene. The power of the car made her gasp. This was no ordinary car. Like Officer Williams, this vehicle felt charged, powerful. She guessed it had to be. They had driven in silence for only about a minute before Williams made the statement.
“I’m sorry?” she said.
“I saw in the kitchen, you’re wearing a sweater and jeans. But your husband is wearing a sport coat. Were you at the same party?”
“It was a casual get-together. My husband was late from work, he didn’t even leave the car. Just honked, I grabbed my coat and ran out.”
They rolled through the empty streets, lights flashing, pausing only to check at red lights before accelerating through intersections.
“Didn’t he have an overcoat?”
“No, remember how warm it was this morning? And dry?”
“It just seems odd.”
“Can I ask, am I legally required to answer these questions?”
“I haven’t made an arrest, I’m not making a charge till after the tox report, so I’m not required to read Miranda. But no, you aren’t. I will be asking for a full accounting of the events preceding the accident after they’ve drawn blood. You can refuse to speak, in which case I’ll have cause to up the charges. If I do that, you can also call or request a lawyer, or you can call one now, in which case—”
In Short Measures Page 18