They looked at each other bug-eyed, blinking. Present time tried to catch up to the surreal time lapse of the accident.
Fiona checked them over. “I don’t see any blood.” She held up her hand. “I’m a bit shaky but in one piece. I’m glad we had our seat belts on.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Jake said, as he looked her over.
Fiona nodded. “I think so. Where did that car go?”
Jake released his seat belt and banged on the door to open it. “That’s what I’m going to find out. Looks like he ended up in the hot spring. You wait here.”
Fiona never listened to well-intentioned advice. Her door was against a wall of crushed rabbit brush, so she climbed over the console and followed Jake out his door. On the ground she had to steady herself against the truck door until the ground stopped spinning. It had all happened so fast she was disoriented and a little dizzy.
Jake crossed the road and looked around, assessing the situation. Fiona saw the problem as soon as she joined him. The car had landed with its rear end in a pool of hot spring water. The front end of the car was facing up the embankment.
“I think I can make out two heads in the front seat,” Jake said. “Wait here. I mean it. Don’t follow me down the bank. I don’t know how deep the water is, and it is scalding along here. You wouldn’t want to accidently fall in.”
“I hope whoever is in the car isn’t par-boiled.”
“They’re lucky. I don’t think they hit the water. The way the car is situated, it looks like only the rear end slid into the water.”
Jake picked his way down the steep embankment to the wreck, holding onto brush as he went. Fiona was more than happy to take orders this time and hoped there wouldn’t be any blood. The sight of it made her faint. She couldn’t see any movement in the front seat. The slow moving muddy water eddied around the back of the car and wound through stands of grass. Fiona could see rocks and slimy looking stuff through the clear sections of the water upstream a little ways. Jake reached the car and made his way around to the driver’s side. Fiona looked up and down the road. She could see a long way in the distance. No help appeared along that forsaken stretch of gravel road.
Jake called to her. “A man is slumped over the wheel. He isn’t in water,” he said. “Looks like there’s a child with him. Neither is moving. Call 911.”
“Right.” She dug her cell phone out of her pants pocket and opened the phone.
“There’s no signal.”
“Walk around till you find one. Go up on that rise.”
The rise was to the west of the road where their truck had ended up. She trudged up the hill through rock and rabbit brush, the sun burning into her shoulders. Two bars on the phone finally lit up. She dialed 911.
“Your name and location, please,” said a pleasant female voice.
“Steens Mountains, I think, at a hot spring.”
“I can barely hear you ma’am. Which side of the Steens?
“East side.”
What is the nature of the call?”
“A car wreck. Driver is slumped over the wheel and there appears to be a child with him. They aren’t moving. The rear end of the car is sitting in the hot spring.” She gave the particulars including Jake’s name.
The dispatcher said, “I know Jake. He’ll know what to do. Stand-by.”
Fiona waited, watching Jake rap on the car windows, trying to rouse the passengers. He seemed to be having trouble getting the driver’s door open. Sound carried amazing distances where there was only the wind and crackle of sun shine to intrude upon the scene. Jake called to the passengers to open the door.
The dispatcher came back on. “We’ll dispatch first responders from Fields. They’ll be there as fast as they can. I can’t pinpoint a time when they’ll arrive, since the responders we have down there are ranchers, and it might take them a while depending on where they are and what they are doing. Can you make out a license number?”
“Jake, what’s the license number?” Fiona called from her vantage point on the rise.
He moved to the front of the car and called out the Oregon license number. She relayed the number to the dispatcher.
“Stay with the vehicle, please, until help arrives,” said the dispatcher. “And stay on the line.”
“I can’t. I have to help and there’s no phone signal down there.” Fiona closed the connection so she didn’t have to get into an argument with the dispatcher who was only doing her job. She trotted back to the edge of the road and gave Jake the news. She searched the horizon to the north and south for motion of any kind. Nothing.
Jake worked trying to open the driver’s door but had a tough time since the doors appeared to be locked as well as jammed. Fiona felt useless and racked her brain for something in Jake’s truck that could help him out. Bailing twine. Jake had regaled her with the many uses of bailing twine and said he always carried a supply in his tool box.
“Jake, what about bailing twine?”
He looked up. “Chain,” he yelled. “The child is moving. I can’t get the door open. See if you can get a chain from my tool box in the rig. I need something heavy. I may have to break a window.”
She rushed back to the truck, managed to get to the tool box in the bed and drag out a chain that weighed almost as much as she did. There was a stash of loose blue bailing twine, and she tucked a length into her belt just in case. She threw the chain on the ground and dragged it over. She scanned the horizon again for a vehicle. Any vehicle. Nothing. Since this was the only road on this side of the Steens, it would be hard not to find them. At the top of the embankment, she looked down. “Jake, I can’t throw this chain. Maybe I can slide it down to you, if you can come over here.”
He came up the bank as she tried to push the chain down to him.
“Do you recognize them?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not them or the car. They must be from out of town. Must be tourists who don’t know how to drive these roads.”
She looked around. She could have sworn she heard the hum of a motor. Jake looked up, too.
“Do you hear that?” she asked. “It sounds like a vehicle. Where’s it coming from?”
Jake pointed up the side of the mountain. “That’d be the Easton brothers in their old Chevy.”
The sound of the motor got louder, and they watched the hill. Around the bend of the last rise, a faded blue truck lumbered into sight, bouncing and jostling over the road.
Jake struggled up the bank, slipping and sliding on loose stones.
The truck slowed and ground to a halt beside them.
“What’s up? We heard the 911 call on our radio,” said a man who might have been in his seventies somewhere. In the driver’s seat sat another man about the same age.
Jake touched his hat. “Caleb. Zeke. This car tried to pass us and went off the road. We ended up on the bank on the other side trying not to hit him. The child is moving, the driver isn’t, and I can’t get the windows open.”
The brothers got out and stepped over to the side of the road to assess the accident. They wore baseball caps, as well as faded jeans and plaid shirts, sleeves rolled up. For an interesting fashion twist, they both wore Nike running shoes.
“How many in there?” asked Caleb.
“Two, as far as I can see. One appears to be a child.”
Caleb rubbed a stubble of beard. “That’d be our nephew from Portland. He has a little girl. We’re expecting them. They were on their way here to visit. Zeke, we better hook up the winch. See you got a chain there. Hook it under the front bumper, and we’ll pull the car up the bank.”
Jake and the Easton brothers got to work. The two old guys stepped into the task with a speed and economy of motion not seen in younger men. They intrigued Fiona, and she wanted to know more about who they were and where they lived but now wasn’t the time.
By the time a couple from a ranch south of the hot springs arrived, Jake and the brothers had the car hooked to the winch but w
ere having trouble getting the winch to engage. Dora, the woman from the ranch, checked in with Jake then started down the bank, Jake right behind her. Fiona watched from her safe perch by the side of the road, feeling useless. Caleb and Zeke continued to fuss over the winch on their old rust and blue truck.
Dora tapped on the window of the passenger door. “Can you hear me? Open the door,” she said, her face close to the window. “Unlock the door,” she said, louder. To Jake she said, “The child inside appears to be responding.” She kept rapping. “Open the door,” said Dora again. “The inside lock. Open it. Excellent.”
Jake had to yank the door open since at first it wouldn’t budge and was barely clear of the water. He opened it wide and supported it as Dora leaned in, talking to the child in the front in a tone Fiona couldn’t hear. She said something to Jake, and he called up the bank to the brothers who stood watching the operation.
“Dora says we should leave them in the car and winch them up the bank. The driver’s eyes are half open but he isn’t talking. She doesn’t want to move them until they are properly examined.”
“What about the child?” asked Fiona.
“She’s talking, but they’re both in shock.”
Dora shut the door. “Okay, boys, see if you can pull the car out. Easy now.”
Fred, her husband, yelled from the bank, “Dora get away from the vehicle. You don’t want to get sucked into some place you don’t want to be.”
Jake helped Dora back from the car. Zeke started the winch that the two brothers finally had gotten to operate. Slowly the car started moving out of the spring, advanced about two feet and got stuck. Fred came down the bank with waders on and went in the spring to see what the trouble was. The car appeared to be hung up on rocks. Fred called for a shovel and the Easton brothers threw a couple of shovels down the bank. Jake and Fred worked with the shovels trying to clear the wheels of rocks only to stir up the water and make it cloudier with mud and silt.
“Try it again,” yelled Fred.
Zeke started the winch which had a thick twisted cable hooked to Jake’s heavy duty chain. The car moved again with a loud crunching sound and an accompanying screech from the winch. The man and child were barely visible, because the windows were darkened, and the sun against the windows made a glare. Fiona stood beside Caleb watching the operation.
“That boy never could drive worth a darn,” said Caleb.
“If he’s from the city, it would be tricky to navigate a gravel road going the speed he was doing. Where do you live?” Fiona asked.
Caleb jerked his thumb up toward the mountains. “Up the mountain a piece.”
Fiona looked up to where he pointed. She saw only canyon and rim rock.
“You say these are your relatives?” Fiona asked.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s one of our brother’s boys. Never had an ounce of sense that one. His little girl got more sense than he does.”
The car’s nose was now even with the dusty bank which was strewn with rocks and pebbles and peppered with brush. Zeke stopped the winch when Jake held up his hand.
“Give us a minute,” he said, “to clear some of the brush in front of the fender.”
They chopped away at grease wood that blocked the upward advance of the vehicle. Caleb lent a hand, and when they were satisfied the car had clear passage they gave the sign for Zeke to start the winch. The car looked like it had been in a demolition derby.
The focus of the operation was on the car, but Fiona’s eyes were drawn to something that bobbed up out of the water behind the car. She looked around at the others but they were concentrating on the car as it was hauled up the bank. Zeke got in his truck and pulled the car the rest of the way to level ground. Dora went immediately to the driver’s door, and Fred helped her open it.
Fiona’s attention was drawn back to the blob that floated on the surface of the cloudy water. It looked like clothes or an old sheet puffed up in the water. Had the car hit someone or something in careening down the highway? She watched but saw nothing in or attached to the dirty gray thing that bobbed in the water. Fiona joined the people on the road, wanting to tell them about the odd thing in the water.
The driver sat in the car, and Dora was checking him over. He held his head in his hands like it hurt. The little girl sat on the seat at the other side of the car, its door wide open to the sun. She clutched a small stuffed toy that looked to Fiona like a frizzy headed rooster. Jake was kneeling, talking to her. Caleb stood by him.
“We’re good at fixing things,” said Caleb, “but Dora knows a lot more about doctoring than we do.”
“I hope they’ll be okay,” Fiona said.
“If anyone can make it right, Dora will,” he said.
Fiona was impressed with his faith in the small ranch woman, who went to the little girl and asked her name.
“Molly,” said the little girl. “My name is Molly.”
“How old are you?” asked Dora.
She held up seven fingers. “I go to school.”
“Good,” said Dora. “May I check you for cuts?”
“Okay,” said Molly.
“Does anything hurt?” Dora asked as she checked and prodded the girl.
The little girl touched her leg. “My leg hurts.”
Dora continued her exam while Jake joined Fiona and Caleb. He had opened his sweat darkened shirt to let the breeze blow through.
“You can come up and dry off at our place. We got a clothes dryer,” said Caleb.
“I’ll wind dry here any minute,” said Jake, pulling the tails out to aid the drying process.
Caleb said, “I’m glad those two are alive. Molly’s mama is going to be upset.”
Jake nodded. “I hope they’ll be all right. They got knocked around pretty good.”
Caleb nodded toward Jake’s truck. “Better check your rig over to see if it runs.”
The two walked over, and Jake started the truck but couldn’t get it to move. It landed straddling a rock on the front end and wouldn’t move front or back. Caleb hooked up the winch again and pulled Jake’s big Ford 350 out with his ancient truck. The truck bounced off the bank. The two men checked under the hood. Fiona walked around the chassis checking for damage.
“It’s got a few dents,” said Fiona.
“That won’t hurt nothing,” said Jake. “The engine doesn’t seem to have any leaks. I’ll go over it good when we get home. Do you know if your nephew had insurance?” he asked Caleb.
“Don’t rightly know. This is the first time he ever came to visit.”
The three of them watched Dora ministering to the accident victims, and Fiona said, “Did you notice there’s something bobbing out there in the water?”
Jake and Caleb followed Fiona’s finger to the odd phenomenon out on the water.
“What do you suppose that is?” asked Caleb.
Jake shaded his eyes to see. “Can’t say. I’ll check.”
“Check what?” asked Fred. He came over to see what they were looking at.
“Was anyone else with them?” asked Jake.
“Not that I know,” said Caleb, “but I’ll ask.”
While he walked over to his nephew, Fred said, “I got my waders on. I’ll go in to take a look. The waders cut down on the heat of the water a little.”
He went down the bank and into the water shovel in hand. Carefully, he approached the bobbing object. He tapped at it with the shovel and the bubble collapsed. He poked around in the water, caught a hunk of fabric with the shovel, and pulled up. A long piece of fabric came up and Fred grabbed hold of it.
“It feels like it’s caught on something,” he said. He pulled harder but the fabric wouldn’t budge.
Caleb shouted from the bank. “My nephew says they were the only two in the car. He doesn’t know what that might be.”
Fred put his weight into the pull, leaning back. With a jerk the fabric came free. Fred’s legs went out from under him, and he fell backward onto the bank.
“G
uess I pulled a little too hard,” he said, standing and brushing off.
More bits and pieces of fabric floated to the surface.
“This looks like a man’s shirt,” said Fred. He grasped and pulled. “Someone’s dumped their laundry in the spring.”
He kept pulling and a pair of pants surfaced, too.
“Something is in these pants.” He hefted them out of the water. “Good golly, these are bones, and this looks like a rib cage in this old shirt.”
End Chapter 2, High Desert Detective, 2nd book in the Fiona Marlowe Mystery series, now available on Amazon.com.
Designer Detective (A Fiona Marlowe Mystery) Page 22