Suggestion of Death

by Susan P. Baker

  Bitsy stood up after a few moments when there were no other questions. “Thank you, Mr. Dorman. If you’ll sit at this here table, the ladies can come up and speak to you if they want. Okay, ladies. Quiet. The executive board will meet for a few minutes in the Sunday school room. Otherwise, the meeting is done. Coffee and cookies in the kitchen as usual. Don’t forget to pick up your kiddies in the day care room. Ha ha. We don’t want to keep them. Good night.”

  Bitsy headed for the back of the room. Patty approached him but kept an eye on Bitsy as she did so.

  “Jim, I need to speak to you,” Patty whispered as she brushed by him. She patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t leave without me.”

  He started to get up, but a woman plopped into a chair adjacent to him. “I’ll let you interview me. I like to do stuff like that,” she said. The woman smelled of sour milk. She had red, rosy cheeks, and the biggest breasts Jim had ever seen peeked up at him from a round neck, fitted T-shirt. Although he was interested in looking at them—amazed that she found anything to cover them—he wanted to catch Patty. Find out what she had to say. And he would love to see who was on the executive committee and find out exactly what their duties were.

  He looked over his shoulder at Patty, but all he saw was her back. She didn’t turn around. Bitsy stood in the hallway that led to the meeting rooms. She was giving him the Medusa eye. She wore an artificially brilliant smile, but her eyes clearly sent a message to him not to move. She said something to Patty and then followed her into the hallway, turning sideways to aim her finger at Jim like a pistol.

  “Mister, I’ll be a guinea pig, I said,” the woman at the table said loudly and pulled on his sleeve. “What do I have to do? Got some forms for me to fill out?”

  “Uh, no, ma’am.” Jim turned back to the woman and was again confronted by her breasts. “I just need to get your name, address, and phone number, and I’ll call you and set up a time that would be convenient for us both.” He pulled his pen out and poised it over his notepad.

  “It’s convenient now. I don’t mind staying. I don’t like to drive in the rain anyhow.” As she spoke, a bolt of lightning struck nearby, illuminating the trees blowing in the wind.

  “I can’t right now. I wanted to sign up as many of you as I could, so you see, I need to speak to a lot of your friends tonight, too.” He was trying not to stare and focused on the lady behind her. She was a tall redhead with freckles covering her face and arms.

  “Oh, well, they won’t mind waiting.” She wiggled around on her chair until she was closer to Jim.

  The redheaded woman standing behind her with a rolled up newspaper under her arm was leaning on every word.

  “You don’t mind waiting, Mary Beth, do you? Mister—”

  “Dorman.”

  “Dorman wants to interview me right now.”

  The redheaded woman said, “I thought you were going to interview everybody tonight.”

  “Well, that’s what Bitsy said anyways,” the first woman said, looking from Jim to the woman behind her.

  “It’s such a lengthy process that I couldn’t possibly get it all done this evening,” Jim said. And if he got the chance, he wanted to high-tail it out of there. He didn’t like the idea of the executive board possibly conspiring about what to do with him in the next room like kidnappers with their victim. “You understand, don’t you, ladies? I mean, I have to get all the information about yourselves, your children, your divorce, the amount of child support, when he first quit paying—you do understand, don’t you?” He smiled into the eyes of the big-bosomed woman and took her hand, shaking it. “You aren’t afraid to see me later at your home, are you?”

  She grinned and swiped at the thin blond bangs brushing her forehead. “No, I am not.” She turned to the line of women behind her. “What about the rest of you? Any of y’all afraid to have Mr. Dorman come to your house to interview you?”

  Laughter rippled through the line. Now that the ice was broken, way more than five women lined up. He wrote down a name and address and looked for Pat. Took down a name and address and looked for Pat. He promised each one of them he would call and every time he looked for Pat.

  But she was never there.

  Jim finally decided not to wait. He hurried the women, ushered them in and out of the chair, cut the conversations short, and rose, heading for the front door over the protests of the last two women who wanted to ply him with coffee and cookies. He rushed through the rainstorm to Ethan’s car. He was soaked but safe and saw no sign of Bitsy or Patty, as he raced away, breathing a sigh of relief as the church grew smaller in his rearview mirror.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The drought having dried and cracked the earth, the plants having withered and died, the road being old and rutty and unkempt, the rainwater was slow to be absorbed.

  Standing water forced Jim into the left lane of the four-lane highway, the highest part. He rounded a sharp curve and felt the car plane for a few moments. His heart hammered from a combination of events, the dangerous road conditions being only one of them. Putting distance between the church and himself became less important than avoiding careening off the hillside. He reduced his speed as he approached a particularly hilly portion of the highway and swallowed several times to calm himself.

  He couldn’t completely relax under such conditions, but just getting away from Bitsy and her gang lifted the high level of tension he’d been under, and his knees quit shaking. He shifted about in the driver’s seat, trying to get support for his back instead of hunching over the steering wheel. Though the aches and pains of his earlier accident still bothered him, his mind kept targeting the point at which he realized Bitsy held a gun on him.

  Carol Ann’s coming outside was literally the luckiest break of his life. Now out in the countryside in a thunderstorm, rain crashing down like the storm that wrecked the Hesperus, in a borrowed car, not in possession of a cell phone, what should he do? He needed a plan. He needed to get off the street. He needed to be where Bitsy couldn’t find him.

  He couldn’t go home. He could go to the police, but would they believe his story? Bitsy would say she was a certified peace officer—and everyone knows cops are cops 24/7—and Jim was a peeping Tom. He was the one snooping around in the dark looking in the windows at a bunch of women. Yeah, he’d really get a lot of sympathy from the cops. Unless Denholt happened to be on duty. Denholt would believe him. He’d have to believe Jim, and Jim would have to trust Denholt. He could no longer go it alone.

  So that’s what he’d do. Head for the police station.

  An enormous bolt of lightning burst overhead, lighting up the sky like Memorial Day fireworks. The highway ahead of him was desolate, no rearview lights for him to follow around the curves. He glanced in his rearview mirror and, to his relief, saw nothing but empty, glistening road behind him. He slowed the car a little more, falling under the speed limit, and felt his tight muscles loosen. He could get to the police station in about ten minutes even driving slow and being careful. His stomach rumbled. “Not now,” he said aloud, as if it were a living thing.

  Moments later, the inside of the Taurus lit up. There had been no additional crash of thunder. No lightning. But now light flashed from behind him.

  In his rearview mirror two enormous, beaming lights approached at a speed that would break the sound barrier. There was nothing in the right hand lane so Jim moved out of the way. The crazy guy must be going ninety. Lightening lit up the sky again. A white Ford dually—a gigantic four-wheel drive pickup truck with double rear tires and a huge iron grill guard on the front—closed the distance between them and came alongside. The thing was huge and high up off the ground—way higher than the Taurus—preventing Jim from seeing who was inside even if the windows hadn’t been tinted black.

  Jim’s hair bristled and goose bumps covered his arms when he realized the dually was like the one that had tried to run him over. The truck began crowding his lane. Bump. Ee-raaa-ch. It scraped the side of the Tauru
s.

  A surge of adrenaline jolted him into action. He jammed the pedal to the floor. The Taurus lurched and sped up but had no get up and go. The truck had little trouble keeping up. They ran parallel down the rain slick, potholed road for several moments. Those several moments felt like hours.

  The Taurus careened close to the edge. There was nothing to stop him. Just road, hillside, and valley below. He hit his brakes. The Taurus spun around on the slick highway and faced the way he’d come.

  Jim accelerated and cut across two lanes, heading back in the other direction. In his rearview mirror, he saw the brake lights of the white truck before it made a wide U-turn and came after him. The Taurus didn’t have a big enough engine to get any real speed out of her. Jim knew it was just a matter of time until the pickup caught up with him.

  As the truck sped closer, Jim moved to the outside lane. The truck remained on the inside lane. At the last moment, before it caught him, Jim jerked the steering wheel and turned across the highway in front of the truck. The truck swerved to the right. As Jim reversed his direction once more, he watched behind him. The truck planed on the water and crashed into a tree.

  Jim accelerated, going as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast. “Come on, baby,” he said in a coaxing voice. When he got little traction, he yelled, “Move. Move. Move you rattletrap!”

  In his rearview mirror, he saw the powerful truck backing away from the tree and turning to come after him like a single-minded monster. He had only hoped to slow whoever was inside down a little. He wanted to find a turnoff to civilization before the truck caught up to him again. He suspected it was Bitsy behind the wheel. He hadn’t been close enough to see who it was through the front windscreen. He’d been too busy trying to outsmart them.

  As the bright lights rushed up to his rear end again, Jim calculated that he was still a good couple of miles away from the closest turnoff. The road rose as he approached a hill. He’d have to top the hill and get down the other side before it was too late. “Come on, baby,” he said again. At that moment, the lights seemed to envelope him. The truck smashed into the Taurus’s rear end, causing it to leap forward.

  A balloon burst in his chest as he tried to get a breath. Another smash. A sensation of helplessness came over him as he swerved into the next lane. The truck did the same. It was as if the driver was inside his mind and could anticipate his every move.

  The truck crawled right up onto the back of the Taurus and with its greater power began pushing the Taurus up the hill toward the peak. Jim knew there was a cliff off the side of that particular hill, but was defenseless against what was coming. The gas pedal was all the way to the floor, and the Taurus could not break away.

  Who was behind the wheel of the truck? He couldn’t see but felt sure it was not Patty. Patty could never do this. Even if she were a party to planning it, deep inside Patty was too kind. She would never be able to kill him. He would take that with him to his grave.

  The Taurus was like a hood ornament on the front of the truck. Jim tried to swerve into the left lane, away from the steeply sloping side of the hill, but the car wouldn’t move sideways. He was being propelled in the direction the truck wanted to go. It didn’t matter whether he accelerated or braked, he had no choice in his destination.

  As they reached the top of the hill, the Taurus lurched again as the truck quit pushing. Instinctively he hit his brakes and screeched to a halt just over the crest. Glancing again in the rearview mirror, Jim saw the truck backing up. He jammed his foot on the accelerator, but the engine had died. Turning the key in the ignition, Jim heard the starter grind but the engine failed to catch.

  The truck made a wide turn and was coming toward the driver’s side of the Taurus with everything it had. The truck’s grill and grill guard looked like gleaming black teeth of a giant white monster. Jim felt like David in the shadow of Goliath, but his story would not end as well.

  He twisted the ignition switch over and over and pumped the gas pedal but never got a response. When he looked up from the truck’s grill, he glimpsed the wide, glazed, fish-like eyes of Bitsy Wink just moments before impact. His body rattled like a dried up old skeleton. Refusing to let her take pleasure in watching his pain, he turned his head away and took a deep breath, reaching for the armrest on the passenger side of the car. It was just a bit too far out of his reach.

  The whole situation was incomprehensible, but he couldn’t think about it just then. His immediate concern was survival. He pressed the release on his seatbelt and gripped the steering wheel with all his strength. The Taurus crashed against the guardrail and stopped for what seemed an eternity. Jim was thrown to the passenger side of the car. He feared that if the guardrail held, he was about to be squashed between it and the truck, a human sandwich. He punched the button to crank the window down, but it stopped after a couple of inches. The passenger door was smashed flat; no chance of opening it.

  Bitsy—her lips spread across horse-sized teeth—backed the truck up. Jim searched for a way to get out of the car. There was no escape route. The roar of the diesel engine exploded in his ears as the pickup aimed at the Taurus again.

  In lieu of escape, he fastened the seatbelt on the passenger side, hoping if he weren’t squashed—if the car bounced down the hill—he wouldn’t be thrown. At the very least, the truck wouldn’t be smashing into his ribcage. Gripping the armrest, tensing his body for the impact, he glanced down the highway, amazed no other vehicles had come along. A flash of lightening lit up the huge valley below.

  As the impact smashed the Taurus through the guardrail and threw it sideways over the edge, Jim’s body flipped upside down, all his nerve endings shooting painful alarms through him like flares. He heard a man agonizing and recognized the howls as his own.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The next morning, the swollen river continued to sweep tree limbs and other debris downstream. Leaves and bits of branches lay scattered across lawns. No one minded because the drought had caused the river to dry up and the plants to wither on the banks. Now the rain bath made the town of Angeles squeaky-clean and shiny, the streets still glistening wet when it was time to go to work. The air smelled fresh and green. Birds sang. People were more cheerful than they had been over the intensely hot months of summer, though that day, too, was heating up to be a scorcher, barring any more thunderstorms.

  At the county courthouse, it was child support Friday. Associate Judge Maria Lucia Lopez was in a good mood; the rain had made her feel reborn. Yards would turn from brown to green again, shriveled plants would be replaced with new ones, and flowers would spruce up gardens. Now that there had been a break in the weather, everyone would be more optimistic that autumn and cooler weather would be coming soon.

  “Cause number seventy-five, six-twenty-eight, Dorman versus Dorman,” Judge Lopez called. Everyone watching could see her scan the courtroom in search of the writer and the schoolteacher. No one said anything. Not even a sheet of paper dared make a crinkling sound.

  Judge Lopez frowned and glared out at the court participants, her pleasant mood soured by the lack of response to her case announcement. “Dorman versus Dorman,” she said louder. “The rest of you people pipe down.” As if anyone had uttered more than a breath. People sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the packed courtroom. It was always like that on the Friday nearest the first of the month. More people were scheduled because of paydays coming up.

  Judge Lopez glanced at her staff. “Am I going to have to issue a capias for Mr. Dorman’s arrest for failure to appear?” She muttered something else, something about lawyers under her breath. No one understood what she said, therefore, no one responded.

  “Ms. Reinhart here?” She cupped her hands over her eyes like binoculars and leaned on her elbows and peered toward the back windows. “Ms. Reinhart?”

  Judge Lopez licked her lips and scanned the faces in the courtroom. “Mrs. Peterson,” she said to the clerk. “I’m going to give Mr. Dorman the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s
just running late. I’m going to put his case at the back, take up the next one, and only issue the capias if he doesn’t appear by the end of the call.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Peterson said. The clerk sat in her usual place in the box-seat next to the judge’s bench.

  The court reporter wrote down what the judge said and smiled up at her, awaiting her next words. The bailiff stood solemnly next to the jury box and stared at the audience behind the bar.

  Mrs. Peterson cleared her throat. “Excuse me, Your Honor,” she said.

  “What is it?” Judge Lopez rolled her chair toward the woman.

  “One of the clerks just brought me this.” Mrs. Peterson handed up two sheets of paper.

  Judge Lopez scrutinized the two pages. She leaned over the bar separating her from Mrs. Peterson and whispered, “Who filed this? It doesn’t have an attorney’s name and address on it.”

  “I don’t know, Judge. One of the clerks just handed it to me and left. Want me to call downstairs and find out?” The woman adjusted her glasses and stared up at the judge.

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Peterson. I’ll just read it into the record right now. I’ll get my court coordinator to call down later.”

  Lucia Maria Lopez called out the cause number and the style again to the court reporter and then said, “Let the record reflect that a Suggestion of Death was filed this morning, and it reads as follows: ‘Be it remembered that on this day the Court was duly notified that James W. Dorman, Respondent in the above styled-and-numbered cause, met his demise as a result of a traffic accident on the evening prior hereto. That a certified copy of the death certificate will be filed herein as soon as one is available from the county medical examiner.’ Let the record further reflect there is no signature on this document, and the Suggestion of Death was filed in this cause by some unknown person along with a Motion to Dismiss the Motion for Enforcement of Child Support Order by Contempt.”