“Hello, Doctor. What’s the score on the accident?”
“Hi, Tommy,” Budischon said, and sat down at his desk. “We’ve got one very sick lady. Your office called and gave us her name. Aller. Head injury. I don’t know how serious yet. She’s comatose. Jamison and the Scholl girl are doing fine.”
“We got all the stuff out of the cars back at the barracks and we’ve been going through it to see what we could do about notifications. The Aller woman is a stopper. California plates, but enough stuff with her, personal stuff, so I’d guess she was moving east. But no indication of where she was going. The girl found some things that indicate she originally came from Philadelphia. She has a wallet in her purse with a card that says in case of accident notify somebody named Houde, president of some chemical company out there. But she was carrying a letter of recommendation from him saying she was quitting to come east. I don’t know. We’re stopped, I guess, until she can tell us who to notify. On Jamison, I have his home number, but we haven’t been able to raise anybody.”
Budischon coughed and said, “Mr. Jamison gave me the name of his attorney and I took the liberty of notifying him. I guess I should have phoned you and told you.”
Fay, a heavy, freckled, red-haired man, gave Dr. Budischon a sharp look. “That’s good service, Doctor. Thanks. And he’ll probably need a lawyer.”
“How so?”
“He jumped the center strip right into oncoming traffic. I’ve got an expert going over his car.”
“How about the Scholl family?”
“That one was easy. He had a card in his wallet saying to get in touch with a fellow named Krissel. Turns out it’s his brother-in-law. He’ll get here tonight or tomorrow. The truck driver was easy too. The man at the trucking company offices said he’d contact the family and tell them the score. That’s a nasty job I’m glad I don’t have to do. I haven’t told you the real package yet. It’s the main reason why I stopped by.”
“Some of the ones that were killed?”
“Yes. A pair of them. Man and woman. There were three of them in the car. One got out in good shape. A man. Did he show up here for treatment?”
“Not yet. And there’s a couple who…”
“I know about them. This is a man about thirty, dark hair and eyes, gray sport jacket with a torn left sleeve, pale blue sport shirt, bruised mouth, scraped knuckles. No sign of him?”
“Not yet. Why?”
“He claimed to Shedd that he was a hitchhiker. The car burned with the other two inside it.”
Budischon made a face of distaste. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“They burned good. We got the stuff out of the back end of the car. Clothing for two men. No clothes for a woman. And no signs that her clothes burned up inside the car. Just clothes, some purchased in Florida and some in Jersey. Not a single damn personal thing, unless you want to call safety razors personal. And two nice fat revolvers, Doctor. Loaded. And extra boxes of shells for both of them. We checked the license fast. It didn’t belong on the Olds they were in. It belonged on a Studebaker that was smashed up a couple of months ago. Tallahassee says that car was a total loss. We’ve got the motor and chassis numbers on the Olds and my guess is that it will check out hot. The guy who got out of it refused to be looked at by your Dr. Prace. He just wandered off.”
“What do you make of it?”
“Two sharpies in a hot car. And probably hot themselves. They picked up the girl someplace. They were headed east.”
“Can the man in the car be identified?”
“Maybe by his teeth. I don’t know of any other way.” Fay stood up. “I thought I’d stop by and ask you to keep a look out for him. He may need attention. If he stops by, try to hold him here. Let me know. And expect some reporters on your tail, Doctor. They’ve already hit my shop. They know about the guns, and they’ve got their teeth into that. And they’re already talking about the Aller woman as the mystery woman.”
It was nearly five o’clock before the crushed body of Cherrik had been removed from the collapsed cab of the truck and taken to the back entrance of Reedy and Quell. The body was placed on the zinc-topped table in the middle of the small concrete room.
LaFleur leaned wearily against the wall and smoked a cigarette while Smith took the clothing off the body.
“You could help, couldn’t you?” Smith said.
“You’re doing fine, kid. Fine. Hose it down and then I’ll see what we got here.”
When Smith had finished LaFleur took a closer look at the body. “There isn’t a shot glass of blood left in this critter. But this won’t be as bad as the fat woman was. It won’t take long. It’ll be a transfer too. What do you say we finish up now?”
Smith looked at his watch. “Might as well, I guess.”
“This one is going to look just fine.” He nudged Smith. “A lot better than three others I could mention, hey?”
“Knock it off,” Smith said sullenly.
“Your attitude isn’t right yet, kid.”
“I said knock it off!”
“Now you take that burnt gal. You could still see she had a real good built.”
“Shut up!”
“It’s such a kind of waste, isn’t it, kid? All that woman all used up all at once and poor Smith can’t even get himself a date.”
Smith gave him a look of hate and indignation and ran out of the room. LaFleur chuckled softly, stepped on his cigarette, and approached the work at hand.
Out at the scene of the accident men were transferring the load from the shattered truck trailer to a truck parked near by. Local people slowed down as they passed the place. Aside from the truck there was little to see. Scars gouged deep in the center strip, streaks of black rubber on the concrete, a darkened, scorched place, some small fragments of glass. At Station Eight were piles of luggage, neatly tied and tagged.
Twenty-five miles east, in the city, twine-tied bundles of the second evening edition were dumped off the route trucks at the corner stands. There was an item at the bottom of page one with a two-column head: “SIX KILLED IN HIGHWAY SMASH NEAR BLANCHARD.” The subhead said, “TWO BODIES UNIDENTIFIED.”
Five out-of-state cars and a truck were involved early this afternoon, six miles west of Blanchard, in a high-speed collision that took six lives and left five injured, one of them seriously. Officials term it the worst accident since the opening of the new highway three years ago…
Neighbors filled the home of the Cherriks. Two of the women were in the bedroom with Sophie Cherrik. The men talked in the small living room, their voices slow, hushed, heavy.
A reporter named Steve Lanney waited patiently in his car outside the Budischon Hospital for a chance to talk to the doctor.
chapter 11
THEIR maroon Plymouth was in the Ace Garage and they had been told that if they came back by six the mechanics would have been over it and could then give an estimate of the amount of money and the time involved.
Paul sat with Joyce at a small table against a front window of a luncheonette diagonally across from the Ace Garage. Coffee cooled in front of him. He looked out at the traffic, waiting in impatient fuming glitter at the traffic light, the sun slanted low behind the buildings, dust opaque and golden where the sun came between the buildings. He felt as if he saw each small thing with a clarity he had never known before. And each small thing seemed weighted with symbolism, with meanings that reached far down into the texture of his mind. He saw a silver devil on the hood of a teen-age car, silver thumb to silver nose. And in that there was a referent point to himself. He saw a man, waiting for the light, make a delicate adjustment to his side mirror. He saw a square, brown, bored, insolent, civilized dog pause on the curb, flick wise eyes at light and traffic and trot across between the moving cars.
He looked at the tan burn-proof, stain-proof, chip-proof top of the luncheonette table and at Joyce’s slim hand which rested there, fingers slightly curled. He saw the pore texture of the back of her hand, raised hint of tendon,
tributary shadow of vein, unique whorls along the edge of the pad of her index finger. Her hand seemed the most clever and perfect and mysterious thing he had ever looked at. He had never looked at a hand before, at that strange instrument for grasping, for work, for caress.
Whenever he loosened his firm hold on his mind for an instant, he was transposed back to that moment of truth on the highway. He was back in the speeding car, aiming for the gap which was not opening fast enough. He felt again the shock as he struck the back of the blue car and ricocheted diagonally across the highway, out of control. He held the useless wheel and awaited the crushing shock that would come from the right. It would come from the right and smash in the side of the car and grind the quick life from the slim woman who sat beside him, rubbing away the aliveness of her, taking away every meaningful thing from life. He caught a photographic glimpse of the great red truck which towered over them and he wanted there to be some way wherein he could grasp Joyce and fling her to some high place of safety and turn to take the vast sledge of metal against his own body.
Then, incredibly, they were by. The car hit the far side of the wide shallow ditch, missing the corner of a retaining wall by inches. It bounded into the air, all four wheels clear of the earth, and when it fell it turned slightly, landing on two wheels. The steering wheel wrenched at him and the car swerved hard in a change of direction, rocking up onto the other wheels. He fought for control, knowing enough not to touch the brake. When it banged down onto all four wheels it swerved again. He regained control and saw they were headed directly at a rock half the size of the car. He missed it, somehow, and the car dipped sickeningly into a depression in the ground, bounded up and over a ridge and, by then, he risked the brakes. There were three trees directly ahead. He turned the wheel, pushing down on the brake pedal. The car skidded sideways on the grass and came to rest.
He sat, still holding the wheel, looking directly ahead at nothing. She made a faint sound beside him, like the exhalation of breath long held. He turned blindly toward her, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tightly against him, her forehead hard against the angle of his jaw. He rubbed his chin back and forth against the crispness of her hair, and kneaded her back strongly with his fingers.
Entirely without forewarning, he began to cry. It had been a dry-eyed world for nearly all of his life, and the tears burned like acid. She could not see his face and so for a time he tried to keep it from her, fighting to control his breathing and make no sound. But the inner pressures grew and he moved sharply away from her, cupping his face in his hands, making a lost sound of children. She held him and talked to him and comforted him and stroked his head. When at last he had regained control sufficiently to risk giving her a shamed grin, he saw that there were tears on her still cheeks and her gray eyes were like lights behind mist.
“Reaction, I guess,” he said, making his voice flat, matter-of-fact.
She looked at him. “Only that? Only that?”
He sensed that it was a moment of terrible importance to him, to both of them. There was a choice to be made in that instant, and he guessed that he would never be given a choice again.
“Not only that. I thought I… was losing you.” The words came hard. She did not help. She sat and waited for him to say them. “I knew I didn’t want to lose you or lose us. I knew I didn’t want it to end like that. I love you. Now. Not ever before. I said the words before. But now I love you. I know that because now I know I care more for you than I do for myself.”
“I love you, Paul.”
He looked at her and kissed her, and then blew his nose. Maybe she had been right, talking about adolescence. Maybe this was a step toward growing up. But how the hell long did it take to grow up? As he put the handkerchief back in his pocket, he noticed her knee.
“You’re hurt!”
“The glove compartment came open and when we bounced that last time I hit my knee on it. It doesn’t hurt much.”
He examined it. The cut was long but it didn’t look deep. The blood had run down her leg into her sandal. “We’ll have to get it treated. Can you walk on it?”
“Oh, sure.”
They got out of the car. He felt unsteady on his legs. The front left corner of the car was badly smashed. The whole front end was subtly wrong, the wheels at an odd angle, the frame sagging. He looked back toward the highway and laughed with shrill nervousness. “It’s a long walk back.”
She took hold of his arm strongly. “Paul! Look at the truck. I thought he was going to hit us. He must have turned off.”
He looked at the truck and he looked at the other cars. A green car was on its side. A man was pulling another man out of it. Their figures were small in the distance. He saw the flame and smoke and he swallowed. There was high glee in the knowledge of having escaped death or serious injury, but it faded as he thought of the others.
He turned back and locked the car and they hurried toward the highway. The trooper car arrived before they got there. They went to the truck. A man with a square face climbed up the hill. He wiped his hands on his pants. There was black dirt on his shirt.
“Are you the driver of the truck?” Paul asked. “I want to thank…”
“No. I’m not the driver. He’s still in there. I think he’s alive. Look at the cab. I don’t know how the hell they’ll get him out.” He looked at Paul indignantly. “You were in the red car. I saw it. By God, that guy did you a turn.”
“I know. But I couldn’t help it. The blue car…”
“I saw that too. I saw the whole thing. That truck driver took the ditch to keep from killing the two of you.” He looked at them with a hard bright stare of accusation. He turned and headed toward the troopers.
Paul and Joyce looked down at the crumpled cab below them. Joyce moved closer to him and took his hand. He turned and saw that the green car was burning furiously, people standing back from the heat of it. At least sixty feet beyond the blue car a man lay on his face on the grass of the center strip. The trooper and a man in T-shirt and jeans were taking people out of the brown car. Paul saw what they were taking out, and he took Joyce by the shoulders and turned her away. “Better not look,” he said softly.
The crowd and confusion grew. While the more seriously injured were being loaded, the doctor cleansed Joyce’s knee, wrapped it in gauze and quickly taped the gauze in place. “You both better stop in at the hospital in Blanchard for a checkup,” the doctor said. “Just follow the signs once you get in the center of town.”
One of the troopers had a portable battery-operated speaker. His voice was loud, harsh, metallic. “Get in your cars and clear the highway. Get in your cars and move along. You in the gray Buick. Move along. Go on. That’s the way. Lady—you in the red slacks—there’s nothing to see here. That’s right. Just go back and get in your car. You kids gets off the highway. All right, you can get by there, mister. There’s room. You’re holding up the cars behind you. Let’s get this show rolling, folks. Will the driver of the red Plymouth out in the field go to his vehicle, please.”
Paul looked over and saw a tow truck in front of his car, a man fastening the cable on the front end. He hurried out with Joyce.
The man looked at them. “You own this? Unlock it and take it out of gear, please.”
“Where are you taking it?”
“Ace Garage in Blanchard. You can ride in the car, or up in the truck with me. How’d you get way the hell out here?”
“I wouldn’t want to try it twice,” Paul said. “Can we ride in the truck?”
“Sure. We’re ready to go.”
The truck circled out of the field at what seemed to Paul to be a careless speed. The Plymouth, nose in the air, rocked and bounced behind them. The driver said, “Bunch of damn vultures. I swear there’s ten tow trucks in this stretch of highway. We got three. We keep a radio turned on to the police band. If you think you got a chance, you jump in and go like hell. This brought everybody out. At least we got three jobs out of it. Scanlon got the truck. He
got here first. That’s the cream job. Brudderhoff didn’t get a damn thing, and brother, that does my heart good.
“Two weeks ago I got a Mercury went into the ditch, rolls over twice. I mean, I really got there first. Hell, they were still taking a lady out of it. Like a damn fool I decide to swing around and get it from the other side. I’m backing the truck and when I look up there is that Brudderhoff with a hook already on the front X, grinning all over his damn face. The boss gave me hell. Brother, the next time I jump out of the truck, run my line out and slap a hook on the crate and then figure how I’m going to roll it. These vultures, they got no sense of ethics. It’s not like we were that hungry for work. Hell, the shop is full up, but a truck like this, you got an investment. You don’t get it back if the truck sits in your yard and the other boys go out and hook onto the business, do you?
“A month ago I guess it was there is this old Chev that busts down on a Sunday in heavy traffic. What turned out was, he threw a rod. Anyhow, he can’t move it and Chuck, he’s on the big wrecker we got, he gets there about the same time as the patrol car. Chuck was cruising. The boss says we cruise the big truck on Sunday. It’s got a police radio in it. The Chev is in the middle lane and he can’t get it over to the side of the road. Traffic is too fast. The troopers say hook on and get it out of there. The guy is crying. He’s got a garage of his own, and he’s in the other direction. Chuck says if he hooks on, he’s got to bring it back to Blanchard. They practically have to hold the guy while Chuck hooks on. What a mess! Car full of screaming kids, and the guy’s old lady giving Chuck a bad time. Chuck brings it in and then he won’t let it down off the hook until he gets the fifteen bucks. Me, I’m too soft. I would hauled him off the road, dropped him and said the hell with it.
“Brother, you don’t know what kind of a business this is. There used to be a sort of agreement about sharing the work, but it didn’t last long. A thing like today, and you get all the vultures swarming in on it. This was a bad one. I took a look and come right out after your car. Chuck got the Cad and poor Sid got the burn job. Sid usually gets the messy ones. I don’t know why. It just works out that way. Here we are, and you folks go right in there and talk to Ray. He’s the service manager. It says so on his coveralls. Give him your name and he’ll give you the poop on your crate here. It don’t look too awful bad to me unless maybe the frame is out of line and then you got some expensive trouble.”
Cry Hard, Cry Fast Page 10