"What the—" Karen said.
It was right at that moment, just before the Hummer slammed into the van's right side, that Gage realized that this wasn't some drunken asshole they were dealing with here. He may have had the realization only a split second before the truth of the situation would have been obvious to anyone, but that split second was just enough lead time to get him to jerk the wheel to the right, toward the Hummer, instead of to the left, which was what instinct was telling him to do.
The two vehicles collided with a bang, the metal impact as loud and as powerful as a grenade going off between them. Gage felt the reverberations right into his bones. The Hummer may have had twice the size and heft of the Volkswagen, but he'd actually turned the wheel harder, veering with more force, and that action had prevented the van from being cue-balled across the road and into the barrier.
Or no barrier.
He saw, as he swerved back and forth trying to regain control, that they'd just passed the area where there was no barrier. On the downhill slope of the hill, there was a gap in the metal structure that had been missing for the better part of a year, a gap big enough that if the van had careened in that direction instead of holding its own, it would have allowed Gage and Karen to sail off the edge of the cliff to the beach below. Instead of metal, the only things blocking them from the drop were three flimsy freestanding orange road signs.
The Hummer's driver, who must have realized he was missing his chance, came at them again with a renewed fury.
Gage lifted his foot completely off the accelerator, but the Hummer smashed into them a second time before the van started to slow. The van's passenger-side window splintered but didn't break. Even strapped in with seat belts, he and Karen bounced around like balls in a lottery machine.
This time all the weight and bulk of the Hummer kept coming at them, sweeping them across the highway and toward the gap. No more than three seconds had passed since the first impact, but it felt much longer. The heartbeat in his ears and the adrenaline coursing through his veins lit the world on fire. He smelled smoke and gasoline, but he didn't know if it was all in his mind. He caught a glimpse of a man's silhouette in the window, but it was nothing but a black shape, obscured even further by the moisture on the glass.
"Gage!" Karen cried.
There may have been other options available to him, but only one flashed into Gage's mind. He turned the wheel hard to the left, toward the gap, and slammed on the brakes, thinking if he could gain even a few inches of breathing space between the van and the Hummer, that room might be all he needed to screech to a stop and let the Hummer pass.
At first, that's exactly what happened. The van, losing all momentum, began to drop back from the Hummer even as the gap loomed dangerously close. If he'd had his hand out the window, Gage could have touched the orange road signs that sat in place of the metal barrier.
The problem was the Hummer's massive size. Gage had enough time to feel the thrill of the matador who has managed to get the bull to pass under his red cape before the Hummer, still veering toward them, hit their right front fender with its back corner.
The crackle of metal was like two giant pop cans smashing together. He saw that the Hummer wasn't black, or even dark blue, but forest green flecked with bits of gold. Tiny details. This time Karen's window, already spiderwebbed with cracks, shattered completely, spraying them both with glass. Even worse, the corner-to-corner impact—combined with the screeching brakes of the van—caused the van to spin.
The roar of the wind in the broken window. The red glare of the Hummer's taillights. The pressure of the seat belt straining against his chest.
Gage had only an instant to take in these sensations before the world tilted on its axis with such ferociousness that Gage had no time to do anything but white-knuckle the steering wheel. The van flipped. He thought he heard Karen scream, but it may have been the shriek of the metal on the road.
Then there were a series of bangs and smashes, the world flashing through blackness, his body pulled in every direction at once.
Gage may have blacked out. If not, time appeared to skip a beat, because one moment he was still hanging onto the steering wheel, floating weightless, and the next he was on his side, hanging in his seat belt as if it were a twisted hammock.
They were spinning. He was on a merry-go-round of crumpling metal. Something was burning. He caught a glimpse of Karen's face, eyes shut, a bloody gash on her cheek, before there was another impact, one so jarring that it felt as if he'd been punched in the back.
Scraping metal, roaring engine, a rumble like an earthquake—then, mercifully, all the tortures of the moment came to a whimpering conclusion.
He was on his side in darkness, the seat belt cutting into his ribs. Complete darkness. He tasted blood in his mouth. For a few seconds, all he heard was the ringing in his ears, and when this subsided, the patter of rain on the asphalt. The whisper of wind. His own ragged breathing.
"Karen?" he said.
His voice sounded odd to him, as if he were trying to talk with a mouthful of marbles. There was no answer.
"Karen, are you all right?"
Still nothing. Panic began to swell inside him. Was she dead? He blinked, focusing, trying to get a sense of things. Shapes took form. He could just make out the edge of the dashboard. Who punched him in the jaw? Somebody had, by the feel of it. His eyes adjusting to the darkness, he finally saw the line of the road through the cracked windshield. He rolled his head to the right, a sharp pain shooting up his neck, and for an instant it looked as though Karen wasn't there.
The seat was gone.
But then—as the first sirens rose above the wind—he saw that the seat wasn't gone. It was turned, the back of the seat facing him. Somehow it had dislodged during the crash, and Karen, if she was still in it, was face down, pressed against what was left of the passenger-side window.
The sirens grew louder. Gage fumbled for the buckle of his seat belt, found it, and was careful to swing his legs around and prop himself against the dashboard before unbuckling himself. Now both knees hurt like hell, though he didn't think anything was broken. Everything was bruised, but not broken.
Planting first one foot, then another, on the side of the van, he managed to get his legs under him. The sirens were now almost as loud in his ears as his beating heart. He heard the screech of tires. He settled his weight onto his legs, and it felt like standing on toothpicks. He grasped at the ripped seat cushion, fingers slipping, found purchase, and with immense effort began to tilt the seat on its side.
By the weight of the thing, she was still in it. Voices shouted outside. He heard more tires screeching. Blue and red lights strobed through the interior. Bright lights illuminated the map of cracks on the windshield and allowed him to see inside the van. What was left of it. The seat felt like it weighed more than the van, but he got it around, and there she was, blood all over her face, eyes closed. She was dead. He was sure she was dead, and he felt disbelief and rage and sadness that she'd been taken from him, taken from the world.
Of course it would be this way. Of course Gage would lose her. He lost everyone eventually. It was the way it was. It was like the sun rising in the east and the moon never showing its dark side and seven billion people taking a breath.
But, defying the universe, her eyes fluttered open.
"Karen—" he began.
"I killed her," she said. "I killed a little girl."
Then her eyes closed.
Chapter 18
The ambulance was halfway to the hospital, sirens screeching through the night, when Karen spoke again.
"It happened—happened at a drug house," she said. "A drug house outside Boise, Idaho."
"Shh," Gage said.
"No," she said. "No, I've got to say this. I've got to say it now."
Her voice rattled, throaty and deep, and she coughed. On the gurney, she tried to roll on her side to face him, but the paramedic in the back with Gage restrained her. Like Ga
ge, he urged her to be still, but his voice was tuning in from a distant planet. It was just the two of them in the jostling little cave inside the van, Gage and Karen, him crouched on a bunker seat, her on the gurney. Miraculously, Gage had survived the ordeal with only minor bumps and cuts, at least as far he could tell, but the paramedics wanted him to be checked out at the emergency room anyway. He wouldn't have argued with them. It wasn't like Gage would have let them take Karen without him.
It was too soon to say how beat-up Karen was. If it was bad, it was all internal—which of course would make it all the worse.
"I've got to say it," she said.
"All right."
"I should have told you. Should have told you before. I'm sorry I didn't. I don't know why."
"You don't have to be sorry."
"Oh yes I do. I have—have a lot to be sorry about. I'm just ashamed. That's all. A coward. Don't want to face it. But I'm going to face it. It was like this. We'd … we'd gotten a tip from a meth addict, me and Ben, about a drug house. We were in Boise on another thing, following a lead on a possible homegrown terror cell, a bunch of skinheads, but it didn't—didn't—didn't —"
"Karen," Gage said.
"It's all right. Just got to get my breath. It didn't pan out. But while we were there, we got this tip and end up at this ranch house with weeds as tall as the roof. It's one of those streets with shit cars parked up and down the street. Hot August day. Blistering hot. We knock on the door, just to see if we can shake out what's going on without a warrant, and this Hispanic woman with no teeth opens the door. She's wearing a big Tweety Bird T-shirt but nothing else. Her eyes are like saucers. And right there, right there behind her, we see two skinny white guys on a ratty couch, needles and bags of meth laid out on the coffee table like a Thanksgiving dinner. Shirtless. One in boxers, the other in briefs. Funny how I remember that. And this little girl. This little girl, this little skinny thing all bruised and wasted, sitting between them, dressed in a black tank top and black panties. I found out later she was actually nine years old, but she looked more like seven."
"We're almost there," Gage said.
"And we pull out our badges and tell them who we are and this chick, she drops to her knees and starts to cry. Both guys jump and run, both for the hall behind them, the one in the tighty-whities snatching up the little girl. We got our guns out and shout for them to stop, but they're so jacked up they're probably not even hearing us. I don't even think. I just go after the guy with the girl. Ben's shouting at me to stop, but I'm not letting this guy button down a hostage situation."
The ambulance swerved around a corner, bumped over a pothole, and Karen groaned. Gage reached for her hand, but the paramedic shook his head at at him.
"The guy without the kid bolts into a side room and the other keeps going, to the master bedroom at the back of the house. I follow him. Ben must have gone in after the first guy, because then it was just me and the guy with the girl in the master. Piss-stained mattress, clothes and fast-food packaging all over the floor. Smelled like they were using the closet as a toilet, which it turned out they were. The guy with the girl, he's got short bleached-blond hair set in cornrows and tattoos up and down both arms. Thin as the curtain rod—which was the only thing on the window, no blinds or curtains."
The ambulance made the hard right turn onto Big Dipper Road, the last leg of the journey before the hospital. Leaning forward, peering through the front windshield, Gage glimpsed the lake through the Douglas firs, a black tarp flecked with occasional spots of yellow from the house lights surrounding the water.
"A minute away," he said.
"Let me—let me finish," she said. "Got to get this out. So this guy, I yell at him to stop, but he doesn't listen. He's still got the girl under his arm. She's got blond cornrows just like him. The way she lays limp in his arms and doesn't blink, it's like she's a doll. I figure her to be in shock. The guy's fishing under some rumpled jeans next to his bed and he comes out with a revolver. A little piece, a Colt Mustang. I'm screaming at him to drop the weapon, but he's got it in his hand and he's swinging ... swinging it around."
"Jesus," Gage said.
"Got that right. So here I am, alone in the back room without my partner. In a meth house we weren't even supposed to be in. A jacked-up druggie with a human hostage bringing his weapon to bear on me. I don't have a clear shot. He's really got the girl in front of him, and the gun is coming around, it's coming around and it's going to be pointing at me in a second. I'm screaming at him so much my throat will be hoarse for three days. I'm screaming and screaming, telling him to drop it, and that gun is coming around. It's coming around, Garrison. It's—it's coming around."
"All right," Gage said, giving her hand a squeeze. The ambulance tore into the parking lot. He saw the Emergency Room sign glowing green in the darkness just ahead. "Save your breath. We're almost—"
"No. Got to say it now or I won't later. So this guy, he's just about got his gun pointed at me. I have no shot. I'm telling him to drop it. I'm thinking he won't fire. He's just scared. I'm taking the chance of a lifetime, but I'm thinking he won't fire. But bam! He fires. He fires again. Three times, just clicking them off. Plaster flying off the walls behind me with the first two shots. The third one rips a hole in the sleeve of my leather jacket. No choice, I pull the trigger. I hit the guy squarely in the chest. I miss the girl. I don't know how, but I miss her."
The paramedic scurried around Karen's gurney, preparing it for the move.
"So this guy, this meth head, he crashes against the wall. His piece goes flying. So does the little girl, crashing to the mattress. Blood sprayed all over the wall, like some kind of abstract art. He's got his hand behind him and I'm thinking he's got another piece in his back pocket, so I rush him. Kick his arm out. That must have been all the life he had left, though, because when I kicked him, he sort of spasmed once and that was it. Gave me the long dead stare. And my heart is pounding hard in my ears and I'm thinking it's a miracle. It's a miracle, right? I made the one-in-a-million shot and saved the hostage. That's when I turned to look at her."
The ambulance screeched to a stop in the roundabout under the emergency-room overhang.
"She's crouching on all fours. She's looking up at me and her eyes are all dead inside. Nothing there. Probably shock, I think. I finally notice the bruises on her arms and legs. Little bruises, not big ones. Like the kind you'd get when somebody grabs you too tight. I also notice that the black tank top and the panties are lace. Lace! Like what you'd buy at lingerie shop, not right for a little girl. That's when I see the … the sex toys on the bed."
The back doors to the ambulance flew open. Both paramedics wheeled the gurney out, and an attending doctor in a white coat and two nurses in blue uniforms were there to greet them. One nurse reached for Gage and he shrugged her off, hobbling after the gurney as a bevy of medical professionals barreled Karen into the hospital. They ambled through the cool night air for only a second before they were under the bright fluorescent lights and into the warmth of the hospital.
"Garrison?" Karen called after him.
"Right behind you."
"I got to—got to finish." They tried to shush her, but she wouldn't listen. "So this girl, I found out later her name was Bo Peep. Named by … by a meth head, what can you expect? Bo Peep reached for something in front of her, still staring at me … staring at me with dead eyes. I see that it's the gun. The Colt. She's reaching for it. I still don't really register what she's doing. I tell her she's safe. I tell her it's over. Her hand, her wasted little hand, grips the handle. Now I finally get it and I shake my head at her. I say, ‘Don't.' That's all I say. One word, the whole time. She doesn't even blink. She's got the piece now and she's bringing—bringing it up."
Double doors loomed ahead. They were almost to the operating room.
"She's almost got it pointed at me. I'm shaking my head, but she's not even there. The gun goes off and I'm sure it's hers. I even flinch. But it's not hers. It's m
ine. I shot her. I shot this little girl, right in the chest. I shot her and she flopped back like a rag doll, like she never had any life to begin with. I let some meth head get off three shots before taking him down and this little girl … this little girl, I shot her … before she could even … pull the trigger once. Little Bo Peep. I shot her dead. Shot her right in the heart, it turns out. And that's … that's not the worst part."
The gurney crashed through the doors, speeding away from Gage. Two nurses held him, restraining him from following her. He heard Karen's final words before the doors swung shut.
"Her gun," she said, "was empty."
Chapter 19
The first cops, hounding him with questions, showed up only seconds after Karen was wheeled into the emergency room. What was the other vehicle involved in the crash? Did he see the license plate? The driver? If Gage didn't have a headache already—and he did, a steady throbbing at the back of his skull—this would have guaranteed it. They followed him into a smaller exam room, where Gage received five stitches to patch up the gash on his left arm. The rest of his wounds were superficial; some antibacterial cream and bandages took care of them.
He was only vaguely aware of what he told the cops, but he must have said something that satisfied them, because the next time he looked past the flank of blue uniforms and white coats, they were gone.
Another doctor, an old guy with vaguely Japanese features and thinning black hair, stopped into his room when the last nurse was disposing of all the gauze and wrappers.
"She's going to be all right," he said. "A mild concussion. Two broken ribs. She'll have a minor scar from that cut on her cheek, but it won't be too bad. No internal bleeding, which was the worry."
"Can I see her?"
"Probably another hour before she's in a room. And she's unconscious right now. Let the charge nurse know. They'll come get you when she can have visitors." He patted Gage's shoulder gingerly. "Your friend got very lucky. Maybe not as lucky as you, but considering the circumstances ..."
The Lovely Wicked Rain: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series) Page 19