Death at the Wheel (32 page)

I clung for dear life... for dear, dear life, my lively, fun-filled life... something sharp cutting my arm, the hot flow of blood, and I'd been cut on the arm before and I pulled it back and screamed and screamed and screamed.

Suddenly everything was still. The ride had stopped. I was a little bit sideways and all around me the metal was groaning with the agony it had just endured.

A small voice in my head was giving orders, orders beyond the comprehension of my conscious mind. "Get out of the car. It might blow up. Get out of the car. It might blow up."

Years ago, on a stormy winter night, the kitchen in our house caught fire while we were making popcorn in a frying pan. My mother, conditioned by years of worrying about such an emergency, stood by the door and repeated, like mantra, "Everyone must get out of the house. Everyone must get out of the house." While she stood and chanted, the rest of us put out the fire and cleaned up the mess. She didn't get us to leave the house to burn down, but she instilled a lifelong fear of fire. I struggled with my door but it wouldn't open.

Fighting my way free of the air bag and seat belt, I crawled across the seat, pushed against the other door. It wouldn't open either. I pushed out the remaining glass with my feet and dragged myself out onto the ground. Cold, damp, sloping ground with thorns and bristly grass, soaked by the now-heavy rain. I scrambled a little way up it on all fours, slipping and sliding, and looked back. The car had rolled down a long slope, coming to rest with its last jarring bang in a ditch. Up above, I could see people milling and hear the commotion of voices above the hiss of traffic. Below me, the car gave a metallic groan and shifted.

If it was going to blow, I was still too close. I clambered on up the bank away from the road, which wasn't as steep as the one I'd rolled down, grappling weakly for handholds and footholds on the slippery grass, collapsing at last in a mass of trees, where the emerging leaves gave some shelter from the heavy rain.

Through the murky darkness, I saw a figure approach the car. I was about to yell "I'm up here" when it bent not to look inside the car, but to do something to the exposed underside. Rising on the damp air came the gurgle of liquid. I saw the flash of a lighter shielded by a hand and the figure hurried rapidly away.

Voices on the opposite slope, the crash of running feet. People coming to my rescue. What I could see, that they could not, was that beneath the car, flames were licking at the grass, leaping up the car, spreading like a wide orange blanket. I grabbed a tree trunk and pulled myself up, tottered toward them, my voice a deafening roar in my ears. "Get back! Stay back! The car's on fire."

My voice was drowned out by the
whoosh
of the fire as it swept over the car. My car. My beloved car. With my beach chair, picnic blanket, the dry cleaning that never made it, and a briefcase of mortgages belonging to the Grantham Cooperative Bank in the trunk. Flames licking out the windows like greedy tongues, curling over the sides, out of the engine. I was rooted to the spot, staring at the car that was supposed to have been my funeral pyre. A small explosion, like the pop of a cap pistol. Then a rushing roar, a sound that seemed to hold and tremble and then the big bang.

It knocked me right off my feet. I lay on the damp, April cold earth that smelled of dank and humus and mold. Rain soaked my hair and ran in icy rivulets down my neck. Got in my nose and mouth until I painfully turned my head aside. Soaked my legs and my feet. I'd lost my shoes somewhere. I wanted to get up but all my wits and all the bones in my body seemed scattered and disassembled.

I was supposed to call someone. Andre. Supposed to go somewhere. To Dom's. I went nowhere and called no one. No one called me, either. Infinity passed. A crowd grew down below, around my car. I would have called out to them but I had no voice. Crawled down to them, but I had no strength. The cold and damp seeped through my clothes, through my skin, through my bones. A warm, black cloud of oily smoke floated across my face. I reached for the warmth, fell into it, drifted.

 

 

 

Chapter 25

 

"You're wrong." A firm, decisive voice, a little irritated. "When she tells you what happened, it will be so fantastic you'll think you've been transported to Never Land, and every word of it will be true. Right, princess?" A hand patted my shoulder. I moaned and swatted it away. It felt like someone had laid a red-hot branding iron across my shoulder and chest and another one around my abdomen. The rest of me had just been kicked with hobnailed boots.

"Ah," the voice came again, "the lady wakes."

I didn't bother to open my eyes. I already knew I'd be in a hospital and hospitals make me sick. Indeed, I'd vowed to stay out of them, but someone who hadn't signed on as a guarantor had foiled me once again. I also knew, from Florio's comments, that he wasn't alone. There was at least one eager beaver cop there salivating for the details of the accident. "Florio, can I just die and get it over with, or do I have to linger here and chat with asinine cops who won't believe a word I'm going to say?"

"See!" Dom's voice was positively gleeful. He loves it when I'm surly. It used to shock him, but he's gotten over it.

"Mrs. Kozak..." New voice. Precise, officious. I still didn't open my eyes. I didn't care to see him. He'd be just like all the others. I'd seen them before. Asking questions, assuming he knew the answers, and not listening when I told him what he didn't expect to hear. It wouldn't matter to him if I'd just lost both legs. He had forms to fill out. "I need to ask you a few questions...."

"The Cabots speak only to the Lodges and I speak only to Florio," I said. "Dom. Am I alive?"

"Princess, as soon as you give Officer Crimmins here the answers to his questions, I'm going to take you home and Rosie will tuck you into bed."

It was the best news I'd had in years. "You mean I'm not broken? You mean they're not going to keep me here and poke and pinch and prod and stick me with needles until I go mad and have to be hospitalized?"

"At least your sense of humor isn't damaged."

"It's been a long day, Dom. A horrible long day. I had the worst fight with my mother and then my car... I want to go see Rosie." The thought of Rosie, beautiful, wise Rosie, waiting to tuck me in made me want to cry. "What does Crimmins want to know?"

"The details of the accident, ma'am," Crimmins began. "In your own words."

"As opposed to whose words?" I said. "The guy who tried to kill me?"

"Say what?" Crimmins said.

Dom took my hand in a firm grip and held on. My life line. I couldn't have continued without it. "Dom, do you know what's going on? What's been going on? So you can translate if this gets confusing. My mind is like a big soupy pudding right now."

He squeezed my hand. "Just tell the story as it comes. We can worry about details later."

"I'm cold," I said.

"I'm not surprised. You were lying out there in the rain for quite a while before they found you. They thought you were in the car."

"Good thing I wasn't."

"Let's see if we can get another blanket," he said. "Oh, here's one now." He wrapped it around me and took my hand again. "Go ahead."

I organized my thoughts as well as I could and began. "Where Route 24 merges from the left. A car came along side. Banged into me. Andre told me to be careful but I'd just been at my parents' for a party and had a big fight with my mother, and while I thought I was looking in every direction, with the rain and all, I didn't see him coming."

"Was there drinking at this party, Mrs. Kozak?" Crimmins interrupted.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. Baby-faced and pink skinned, with pinkish scalp under his marine-short hair. His face was too wide and his forehead too high. He looked unlined, unformed, and uncaring. Just because I'd been put through the wringer and left out in the rain didn't mean I had to let myself be pushed around by a baby cop. "I had perhaps half a glass of wine over the course of two hours," I said, carefully and precisely. "Then I had a disagreement with my mother and left." I closed my eyes again.

I heard the scratch of pen on paper. "So you were upset when you got in your car? Angry?" Crimmins said.

"He wouldn't listen to you, would he, Dom?" I said. I tried to turn my back on him but nearly every part of my body protested in a chorus of pain. "Oh, ouch! I don't suppose you could rustle up some Darvon or Demerol or something? I have never hurt in so many places. I feel like I've been bouncing around inside a dryer."

"Well, you were pretty wet," Dom said.

"Florio. Please?" I got a lot of pleading into that please.

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "And don't bother her until I get back, Crimmins. She's got an awful temper."

I opened my eyes and watched Crimmins warily. The curtain hadn't stopped swinging behind Dom's departing back before Crimmins was asking questions. "So, you were upset when you got in the car, is that right?"

"Is that a new crime in this state, Officer? Driving under the influence of a temper? Because, as someone said to me recently, tonight I didn't lose my temper, I found it. Is it still tonight? After he blew the car up and I was knocked over, I was watching the sky and then I drifted away with the clouds. Warm clouds."

"Very poetic, ma'am," he said. "Now, could we get back to the facts? When you left the party after having a few drinks, you were very upset... angry... at your parents?"

Never sign anything the police give you without reading every word. Never agree with a statement by a cop without parsing every word. Never eat at a place called Mom's, never play poker with a man called Doc, and never sleep with anyone more unhappy than you are. Rules for life. "Officer Crimmins," I said, gathering as much self-control as I could muster, which, as I was weary beyond words, wasn't much, "don't put words in my mouth. I did not say a few drinks, I said half a glass of wine over the course of two hours. Maybe you could repeat that back to me so I know you've got it right this time?" I waited.

Crimmins said nothing. He looked unhappy. People were supposed to cower before his authority. "So when you got in your car, you were very angry...."

Oh, please. I was too tired for this. I longed to bury my face in the pillow and weep. "I wish I had a court reporter here to read this all back, Officer. I believe, though with this headache and being in so much pain and it being so soon after an accident that I cannot be quite certain, that I said I left. Left. Not left suddenly or left rapidly or left in a huff. Just left. Isn't that what I said?"

The curtain parted to admit Dom and a nurse. I knew, from the look on Dom's face, that he'd been listening. The nurse popped some pills into my mouth and held the water so I could drink. I sank back on my pillows, depleted and discouraged. Infuriating as he was, I didn't have the strength to fight Crimmins through every line of my story. And I hadn't even gotten to the important part.

"Officer Crimmins," Dom said, "how long have you been in law enforcement?"

"Two years."

"Well, I've been in this business for twenty-eight, and I'd like to give you a little advice, if I may...."

"Sir?"

"If someone tells you not to question a witness unless they are present—" He let his voice drop, paused, and then said harshly, "you damned well better not try to question the witness while they're out of the room. You understand?"

"This is not your case, sir," Crimmins said stiffly.

"Dominic," I wailed, holding out my arms. He hugged me. Very, very gently because he knew how it hurt. "Thanks. Now I'm going to tell you everything I remember. Once. Straight through. Then we're going home, right?"

"Right."

"I was right at the merge where Route 24 comes in from the left. Another vehicle—car, truck, van, I couldn't tell you which, was suddenly along side, bumping me…." Crimmins cleared his throat, about to speak. "Don't interrupt," I said. "I'm only doing this once. Bumped. A hard, jarring bump... and you know how people drive... he didn't back off, he stayed there and kept pushing. I checked the next lane, it was clear, so I gave the wheel a hard jerk to the right... and the steering let go...."

"The steering let go?" Crimmins said, disbelieving.

"Well, something went wrong, because when I went to straighten it out again, the wheel just turned in my hands and the car didn't respond, it just kept heading right, into the next lane of traffic."

I cringed, remembering the noise, the lights, the bump when the car in that lane hit me, the jarring. "It hurts my bones, remembering. I thought I was dead." I closed my eyes, but the play of lights went on across the inside of my lids. Too painful. I opened them again.

"What did you do then?" Dom asked quietly.

"I hit the flashers and the horn and looked for a break in the traffic that might open if I could slow down.... It all felt like it was happening in altered time. That I was just drifting inexorably forward toward death and it was all out of my control. At least one car hit me. I heard an awful thud and it jarred the whole car. Spun me around so I was heading toward the guardrail driver's side first...."