“I know it’s been a rough night for you,” I continued, without the vaguest idea what sort of night she’d had, “but I need to ask you a few questions about the truck accident.”
She nodded and clasped her hands together between her knees. Her eyes followed my hand as I slipped a microcassette recorder out of my pocket and placed it on the footstool in front of me. I leaned forward, locking my eyes on hers. “I’d like to record, if it’s all right with you.” I smiled ruefully. “My hands get so lame in this cold weather it’d take me all day to write down a few notes.” I glanced at Mrs. Scutt. “Is that all right with you, Maryanne?”
She nodded and put her hand over her daughter’s.
“Good. Now, Gail, the bus driver, Stub Moore, says that you were one of several students sitting on the left side of the bus last night. Is that right?”
She nodded and said in a hoarse whisper, “I was sitting three seats behind the driver.”
“By the window?” I asked.
She nodded and then, like the sharp little kid she was, said for the benefit of the recorder, “Yes.”
“All right, Gail, I’m most interested in what you saw when the pickup truck passed the school bus. The truck that later crashed into the rock. Where you looking out the window when it passed the bus?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Is there any particular reason you looked out just then?”
“Well, I heard somebody behind me, and they’re all, ‘Here comes Denny and Ryan.’ So I turned to look. There was lots of cars passing us on the way home.”
“Could you see clearly?”
“Yeah, pretty.”
“And was it them? Was it Dennis Wilton and Ryan House?”
She nodded and frowned.
“Was the truck going very fast?”
“No. Not really.” She moved her hand from side to side. “It just went by, like.”
“And you could see them clearly?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you see who was driving?”
“Well, I could see Ryan, so I guess it was Denny behind the wheel.” She bit her lip.
“You could see Ryan House clearly?”
She nodded and I could see tears in her eyes. Her mother slipped an arm around her.
“Gail, can you remember what Ryan House was doing? Did he look up at the bus, was he waving, what?”
“He was asleep.”
“He was asleep?”
“Yes, his head was leaning against the thing there,” and she tipped her own head and indicated with her hand about where the passenger window’s rear post would be. “He’s all with his jacket, or something, wadded up like a pillow.”
“And he didn’t appear to wake up when the truck went by the bus?”
“No, sir.”
“Were you able to see Dennis Wilton?”
“Not really. Only for a second as the truck came up beside us.”
“And not after that?”
She shook her head.
“Now I’d like you to really bring that picture back in your mind, Gail. Could you see, or did you notice, whether Ryan House was wearing his shoulder harness?”
She frowned and looked at the rug. “Yes, he was.”
“You noticed that particularly?”
She looked up at me. “Yes. Because I could see that he had his coat all squished under the belt where it went by his neck, like it was holding it in place. His jacket.”
“Okay. Did the person sitting with you see them, too?”
“Yes.”
“Who were you sitting with?”
“Melissa Roark. She leaned across me to wave, but they didn’t see her.”
“Do you remember if Vanessa Davila was on the spectator bus?”
Her pretty little eyebrows twitched a hair when she heard the name, as if puzzled that I would think that she’d know Vanessa. “I didn’t see her.”
“And one last thing. Did you see the truck veer off the road?”
This time her reply was just a small, strangled croak that I took for a “no.” She wiped her nose. “I heard the driver shout something, and then all of a sudden we slowed down and stopped. He was all shouting for us to stay in our seats, and then he grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran up ahead. I couldn’t see very well.”
I nodded and reached for the tape recorder, then hesitated. “Gail, did you know Maria Ibarra?”
“Who?”
“Maria Ibarra. She was a student from Mexico who just came to Posadas High a few weeks ago. She’s a freshman.”
“You mean the girl they found under the bleachers?” She scrunched her shoulders together, making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. “I knew who she was, is all. A couple of times, I knew some of the kids were all talking about where she lived and stuff like that.”
“Where she lived?”
“They were just stories, I think. And they’re all, ‘She lives in an old truck out in the arroyo,’ but…” She scrunched a little more, as if she were trying to touch together the outboard ends of her young, pliable collarbones.
“But no more than that?”
“No.”
I stood up amid a cracking of joints and creaking of belt leather. “Mrs. Scutt, thanks. And Gail, you, too. You’ve been a big help. I shouldn’t have to bother you again.”
Gail Scutt was all too happy to head for her room, and Maryanne Scutt saw me to the door. I thanked her again, mostly because she had the good sense to let me leave without badgering me with questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer.
An hour later, I had three nearly identical copies of my interview with Gail Scutt. Her seat partner, Melissa Roark, confirmed what Gail had seen.
Sitting directly behind the driver had been a sleepy high school junior, Bryan Saenz. He’d seen the truck go by, had remembered a vague image of Ryan House snoozing, and then had been jarred into full wakefulness when the bus driver shouted and spiked the brakes.
Three rows behind Gail, Tiffany Ulibarri, a sober-faced senior, had seen the pickup glide by as well. She’d seen the somnolent Ryan House, even noticed a small patch of breath condensing on the side window by his slack mouth.
That was as far as I cared to go. I didn’t need sixty adolescent bus passengers to tell me that Ryan House certainly had been sound asleep when the truck passed the school bus and then pounded itself and him into the limestone.
32
I drove past the high school, saw the deputy’s car parked in front along with Glen Archer’s station wagon, and on impulse pulled into the circular driveway. I got out of the car. The gray sky was unusually bright even though the sun hadn’t been able to crack through the solid high overcast. The light breeze had died, leaving just the leaden, uncharacteristic sky like a pewter bowl inverted from horizon to horizon.
The sidewalk, a full sixteen feet wide, led from the curb to the quadruple glass doors under the lunging gold jaguar that was the school’s mascot. For a moment, as I started up the walk, I thought I was looking through my bifocals with one eye and through cloudy water with the other. The sidewalk’s neatly clipped margins appeared to converge.
Before I had time to pause and reflect on that odd visual aberration, a sudden and vicious pain lanced through my skull from back to front, traveling in an arc over my left ear. With a yelp, I staggered sideways, tripped over my own feet, and sprawled on my hands and knees, partially off the concrete.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered and remained frozen, waiting for my skull to crack into little pieces. But the pain subsided as quickly as it had come, and with a grunt of relief I pushed myself up to my knees. I reached up with an unsteady hand and wiped the tears out of my eyes.
Apparently no one had seen my swan dive, or if they had, they figured I could pick myself up. I did so, grimacing at the rip in my left trouser knee and the skin scrubbed off the heel of my left hand.
“Absolutely goddamned wonderful,”
I said. I considered the mishap a sure sign that I wasn’t needed inside the school. Sergeant Torrez could search through lockers all day long without help from me. I turned and walked back to the car, still rubbing my bruised hand. I plopped down in the car and just sat still for a few minutes.
“Well, shit,” I said finally, not sure of my next step. That in itself was irritating. Usually dogged persistence, if nothing else, had always saved my day. Now I didn’t know what to doggedly pursue.
I swept my right hand up to pull the gear lever into drive and missed it by three inches, instead making a ridiculous motion with a clawed right hand like I was trying to catch flies.
The second attempt did the trick, and I pulled 310 out of the school’s driveway. Even without making any stops, it seemed an inordinately long distance back to the house. I parked the car, called dispatch and told them where I was, and went inside. I could see Wes Crocker still out cold in the living room, and that seemed about the right decision.
I headed for the dark, quiet confines of my bedroom, closed the door, and shed jacket, hardware, hat, and anything else with hard corners that might disturb me. I could play the waiting game as well as anyone. The bed felt cool and wonderful, and before I’d exhaled ten times, I was hard asleep.
As was usually the case, my brief sleep was a colorful parade of ridiculous dreams. This particular session was dominated by my youngest grandson, Kendall, who was trying to persuade me that yes, his old wooden toboggan had front-end steering. I looked down the slope at the thick forest of Douglas fir through which he proposed to slalom the thing and tried to convince him that his plan was idiocy.
I was irritated that he was right, all along. As soon as we started down the hill the trees disappeared, giving way to thick pasture grass that somehow hadn’t been bent by the snow burden.
When I awoke, we still hadn’t solved the riddle of the grass. I didn’t bother to look for my watch, but swung out of bed and plodded toward the bathroom.
I didn’t remember leaving the bathroom and returning to bed, but the dreams started up immediately, and even more ridiculous than before. Wesley Crocker’s face refused to come into focus, and he kept making suggestions that really had nothing to do with the problem at hand…whatever that was.
The light seemed harsh, and suddenly, as if something had tripped a switch far inside my skull, I could see the bottom of the bathroom sink, its porcelain slightly dimpled, with a strand of cobweb running from one side over to the center drain trap.
“What the hell’s this?” I said, because I’d never had a dream quite so stark and clear. Movement above the sink attracted my eyes, and there was Crocker again, his face more or less in focus.
“I’ll call someone,” he said, and this time I heard him clearly.
“What the hell?” I said, quite loudly. I was lying on the floor of the bathroom, my head under the sink pedestal, my feet by the commode. It wasn’t a resting spot I normally would have chosen, and the concern on Crocker’s face echoed that.
“I heard you fall,” Crocker said, and then repeated, “I’ll call someone.” He turned and started to hobble off.
“No, wait, damn it,” I said. Like most people, I had preferences about where strangers might find me and in what condition, and lying under a sink wasn’t a top choice. I twisted around until I could draw my knees up, flailing for purchase with my hands at the same time…no doubt looking a good deal like a beached whale.
“You probably oughtn’t to move,” Crocker said helpfully.
I grunted something rude and continued to flail. Crocker reached down a hand and I waved him off. I didn’t care for the vision of him slipping and falling on top of me, the two of us forever tangled on the floor in the bathroom of my master bedroom.
With enough effort to set my pulse hammering in my ears, I managed to roll the right direction and push myself to my hands and knees. I reached up and rested my left arm on the sink’s rim.
“I still think I ought to call someone,” Crocker said. “I was just thinkin’ about stretchin’ out for a few minutes, and I heard this God almighty crash, so I come on in.”
“Well, here I am,” I said. I lifted my head up and pushed against the sink, driving myself upright. My right leg tingled. Shakily, I rested both hands on the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. “Shit.” I didn’t much care for the aging, fat, old man that stared back at me, a little tremor pulling at the right side of his mouth.
I stood up straight and buttoned my shirt, then ran a hand through quarter-inch-long hair that didn’t need combing no matter what acrobatics I performed.
Crocker stood in the doorway of the bathroom, hands on the jamb. Evidently he’d left his crutches behind. I tried a grin at the sight of his worried reflection. With an effort I turned around, one hand still on the sink.
“You want some coffee?” I asked.
“You ought to call somebody,” he said, and I grimaced with irritation.
“I’m fine.” I let go of the sink and hobbled past him to make my way to the kitchen, thankful that the walls were holding still so that I could find them for support.
Once in the kitchen, familiar things worked their magic. I put on coffee without making a mess even though I had to hold the decanter under the faucet with my left hand. By the time I snapped the “on” button of the coffeemaker, I was feeling human again. The clock on the stove told me it was five minutes to four, and I had to look at it several times before I could believe I’d managed to turn a nap into a major crash.
I walked into the living room and thudded into my leather chair. My stomach growled.
Crocker had made his way along the hall wall from my bedroom to the living room, keeping his weight off his knee. He reached the sofa and eased himself down.
“I don’t much care for this getting old business,” I said.
“Well, no,” Crocker said slowly, as if he didn’t quite know what to say.
I leaned my head on one hand and regarded him from across the room. “What are you going to do when you’re too old to ride a bike?”
The question surprised him and he smiled. “Walk, I guess. It’s slower, but I got time.”
“I suppose you do.”
He nodded. “I ain’t got anything I just have to finish,” he said. “So I got time. How much ever I got, it’s what the Lord gave me.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” I said, not in the mood to discuss personal theology. The only mental image I could conjure was Maria Ibarra, maybe happy for one of the few times in her life, reaching eagerly for a big piece of sloppy, greasy, pepperoni pizza, the food offered to her by a good-looking American kid whose motives were probably not obvious to her. She wouldn’t have understood anything about theology if someone had told her that she had only seconds to enjoy life.
My lapse into silence worried Crocker. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“A little woozy, but otherwise all right,” I said. “You never said if you wanted coffee or not.”
He shrugged and I took that for a yes, even though I knew damn well what was going through his mind. I suppose that’s why it seemed necessary to me to push myself out of the chair with what I thought was my usual vigor and go to the kitchen.
The cups were sitting on the counter, and I had only to pick up the pot from under the machine and pour. My right hand went exactly where I sent it, but from there the signals were botched. With perfect ease, I drew the full decanter off the hot plate and swung it just enough that when my right hand spasmed, the pot crashed to the tile floor.
Glass and hot coffee sprayed into every corner of the kitchen. The string of oaths was painful for the gentle Crocker to hear. I bit off another curse and stood silently regarding the mess on the floor, on my shoes, even on the Navajo rug that lay just beyond the step down into the living room.
“You really ought to call someone,” Wesley Crocker said.
“What I need is a goddamned maid,” I replied. The
broken glass seemed very far away. “Shit,” I added, and went into the pantry for the sponge mop, broom, and dustpan. I managed to sweep the most lethal of the glass shards into the dustpan, surprised and not a little alarmed at how useless my right hand had become. I opened the cupboard door under the sink and missed the trash can with the dustpan. The broken glass cascaded back onto the floor at my feet.
I rested with my hands on the sink, a posture that had become familiar to me. Wesley Crocker watched the performance in silence. Without looking up, I said, “How about a beer?”
“No, no,” Crocker said hastily, no doubt imagining the havoc I could wreak with a zip-top can. “No, beer and I don’t get along so well.” And then, like a recording, he added, “But I still think you ought to call someone.”
“I dropped the goddamned coffeepot, for God’s sakes. Why should I call somebody?” I regarded the mess again, the lake of coffee puddling nicely on the vinyl flooring, various tributaries and extensions and inlets spreading here and there, some of them scuffed into lines by the broom.
“To find out what to do,” Crocker said.
I looked at him and frowned. “What’s to do is clean up this mess.”
“You have a seizure like that, you got to take care of yourself.”
I stared at him. “I didn’t have a seizure,” I said with more irritation than necessary, partly because I knew that Crocker was right. It didn’t take a doctor from the Mayo Clinic to figure out what a flash headache with loss of consciousness and partial numbing of one side meant. That didn’t mean I had to dwell on it.
I glanced at the stove clock, then at my wristwatch. Estelle had had all afternoon, and there was no way of telling what I had missed by napping away those hours.
The telephone was only a step away, and I picked up the receiver, ready to punch in the number. My mind was blank. I closed my eyes, but that didn’t do any good. I had called Estelle Reyes-Guzman so many times that I hadn’t even bothered to write her number in the back of the phone directory.
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