Death at the Wheel (36 page)

I shook my head. "Dom might. It is cold out here." Dom declined the offer, too. His job was to take care of me and he was going to do it if it killed him. Which, given the weather, it might. Dom suffers in the cold. After a few minutes of fruitless conversation, we lapsed back into silence. There wasn't anything to do but wait, and talking didn't make it any easier.

Defying Jack's instructions, I peeked around the front of the van for a look at the house. We were parked several hundred feet down the road, with a few vehicles sitting closer. The house the gunman had invaded and taken refuge in was plain, desolate, and ugly, a square little box without ornament, lapped with dull brown siding, sitting in a patch of brown lawn, behind a muddy brown driveway. A few sections of white fence, once added for decoration, tipped drunkenly toward the road, while a one-winged wooden butterfly, that once-ubiquitous decoration of rural Maine homes, perched forlornly beside the door. Strips of torn plastic that had once sealed the door off for winter snapped angrily in the wind.

It was worse than a dentist's waiting room, where you hear the agonizing sound of the drill and breathe the hot, bitter scent of pulverized teeth. Here there was only silence and waiting. Busy lights and busy, purposeful people, going nowhere and doing nothing. There was nothing to be done until Moreau made a move or the sharpshooters could see him. It was too dark, too dim, too rainy, for them to see much. Moreau didn't have any lights on.

We lounged against the truck, leaning against each other for comfort, watching the distant house, the empty yard. Rain dripped off my slicker and soaked the backs of my borrowed jeans. I was wading inside my shoes every time I shifted my feet. I thought about Andre lying in there. Maybe in pain. Maybe scared. All alone. Nothing I could do to help him. "I feel so useless," I said.

"So does everyone else out here," Dom said.

"I'm a terrible person," I said.

"How so? You think this is all your fault? That's something else everyone here thinks. That if they'd just gotten a shot at the scumbag or gone in themselves..."

"That's not what I meant. I mean that I always think I'm trying to bring order to the world and all I'm really doing is screwing things up. Everything I get near, I screw it up. I only end up hurting myself and I'm not doing a shred of good for anyone else. Like this business with Julie and then last night with my mother and I wrecked my car and nearly wrecked myself and now I'm just standing around and there's nothing I can do here, either."

"Thea, what the hell are you talking about?"

"I don't know. After last night, I don't think I've got any family. I used to think I had such a happy family. I had such a happy life. I loved David and I loved my work and I had Mom and Dad and Carrie... and now it's all gone. David's dead and Carrie's dead and Suzanne's talking about moving. It's all collapsing around me. Everything I used to think was fixed and secure. All I've really got left is you and Rosie and Andre... and if anything happens to him, I just don't know if I can—"

He grabbed me and squeezed so hard I screamed. "Dammit Thea. Don't even think like that!"

I put a hand over his. It was like ice. "And I'm making you stand out here in the rain and be miserable, just because I'm so stubborn."

"So let's go sit in a car, like the boss suggested, and while we warm up you can confess to Father Florio all the ways in which you've failed in this world... okay?"

"Can I start with last night?" He nodded. "It was my brother Michael's engagement party and my mother forgot to invite me. She only called to invite me at the last minute...."

"Takes advantage of you, does she?"

"I didn't say that. Anyway, just before dinner, she called me into the kitchen and started in on me again about not doing enough for Julie...."

"Did she know what you had done?"

"No."

"No? You didn't tell her?"

"Tried to. Many times. She never listened. Last night, when she started in on me again, I just lost it. I couldn't be polite any more. I told her everything I'd done. All the time I'd spent. All the danger I'd been through... all the hurt..."

"You wanted her to acknowledge your efforts, to be proud of you. To appreciate you." I nodded. "And did she?"

"She just brushed it off. Said she was busy. I got mad that she wouldn't listen, when she diminished what I'd done. When she accused me of going out to play instead of helping, I yelled at her. I told her all that I'd been through on Julie's behalf. And they both—she and my dad—yelled at me for choosing the wrong time and place to bring it up. And he yelled at me for not being nice to my mother. So I walked out. Just gave up and walked out of my brother's engagement party. Listen to me, Dom. I sound just like a little kid saying that parents are unfair."

"Yes, you do," he said, "and, yes, they are. Don't you realize that you can't please them, no matter what you do?"

"But I—I just can't seem to get anything right."

I confessed all my sins and Dom listened well, occasionally telling me they weren't sins, and if it didn't make me feel any better, at least it didn't make me feel worse, and it passed the time.

An approaching siren signaled the return of the trooper who'd gone for take-out. He came charging down the road, too fast for the rain-slicked tar, braked, skidded, and slid with a jolt into us. I heard the metallic thud, felt the car shudder behind my head from the impact, felt the whiplash snap of my neck, and for a minute I was plunged back into the swerving, skidding, crashing nightmare of the accident.

 

 

 

Chapter 28

 

I was back in my car, sitting stiffly in the seat, clenching the wheel, trying to stay in a lane while the rain made the lane markers disappear, my windshield a glare of lights off the rain the wipers couldn't keep up with. The steady tunk of the wipers, the skin-pricking scrape of sandy rubber across the glass were the background din as I scanned the side mirrors for careless mergers, behind me for tailgaters, in front of me for cars cutting in too soon, for cars going slowly in the fast lane.

Suddenly, it was there beside me, a low, blue car, hovering for a minute just at the edge of vision and then swinging violently toward me. A crash, the car backing off, another swing, another crash. I checked the mirrors, swung sharply to the right, and plunged helplessly out of control, reliving the uncontrollable skid across the next lane, the thud as another car struck mine, sawing helplessly at the wheel as mine turned, crashed over the guardrail, and began that long rolling journey down the hillside. I put my hands over my face, trying to blot out a vision that was inside my head.

"Thea! Thea! Are you all right?" Dom asked, his hands on my shoulders as he stared at me with a worried face.

I stared at him, confused, not quite sure where I was, what he was doing in the car with me. "Hey, hey, come on. Talk to me. Are you all right?" he repeated slowly.

My neck hurt and my head was filled with cement. "I... the crash. It was happening again. What just...?"

Someone jerked the door open and leaned in, staring at us. "I'm sorry," a voice said. "I didn't know there was anyone in the car. Are you guys okay?" A hand reached toward me and I took it, let him help me out of the car. A burst of rain slapped my face, reviving me a little. Reminded me I wasn't at the crash scene. I looked around for Dom.

He was right beside me, glaring at the trooper who'd helped me out, who held McDonald's bags in his free hand. "Drive much?" he muttered. The trooper ducked his head apologetically and turned away without answering, carrying the food to Jack Leonard. "You don't look good," he told me.

"I was in the accident again. I remembered. It was a car," I said. "Last night. You can tell Crimmins. It was a car. A car. A blue car. A low, blue car." I touched my head, which was still swimming, and closed my eyes.

"Good girl!" he said, wrapping me in a bear hug. "I knew you could do it."

I pressed my cheek against the cold, wet rubber of his raincoat, happy to have finally done something right. I didn't feel like I'd done anything right. "But I was expecting a black van," I whispered. "I don't know who drives a blue car." I leaned against him, feeling useless. My brain might have been surgically removed. I simply couldn't think. "My father drives a blue car."

"It will come to you," he said gently. "And it wasn't your father."

I could see Jack, surrounded by a cluster of troopers, shaking his head, talking loudly, making angry gestures with his hands. In one hand he held the bag of food. "I wonder what's going on," I said. "I'm going to see." I took off before Dom could stop me, and approached the group. They were arguing about who would deliver the food.

Jack's searching eyes found me and locked on. "I told you to stay in the car," he said.

"It's not a safe place to be," I told him with something approaching a giggle. "Gets run into." I was bizarrely lightheaded, as though the jolting and snapping of my neck had shaken all sensible thought out of my head and disconnected the synapses.

"Oh, Jesus, look," Dom said. We all looked. Moreau was standing in the door, holding an elderly woman before him. I heard the sharpshooter behind me suck in his breath as he searched for a shot that wouldn't hurt the woman. The old lady was screaming and struggling and begging to be freed.

"Shit!" Jack said. "Where'd she come from? That old man said there was no one else inside. No one else! She must have been his wife or his sister or something and the old fool just plain forgot she existed. Happy enough to get out of there and save his own hide and not a thought for anyone else. Not just him. His neighbors..."

The bags of food were still dangling from his waving hand. Without thinking what I was doing—I was too woozy to think clearly about anything—I dropped my hood, letting my hair blow free so Moreau could see I wasn't just another cop in a yellow raincoat, grabbed the food from Jack's hand, and took off across the field. I'd waited long enough. I was going to find out if Andre was alive.

"Thea, don't you dare!" Jack yelled. "I can't let you... you come back here... it's too dangerous. You don't know what you're doing."

I never even looked back, just kept heading toward the old lady and the man with the gun.

The damp air brought Dom's voice, a fragment: "...have told you that she's a bit headstrong...."

Headstrong. A nice solid word. Not pejorative. A bit complimentary, even. Not a bad sendoff for a journey from which I might not be returning. "Thank you, Dom," I whispered.

Determined or not, the distance to the door seemed eternal. Every step jolted my aching head, so that it was an act of will to keep going. I wanted to fall over, close my eyes, and sleep. I knew that at any second I might be shot, but I had been walking toward that gun—a gun that I knew was loaded—ever since I'd heard the news this morning. I was almost there.

I stopped about fifteen feet away and held out the bags. Dizzy. Disoriented. Scared stiff. "You ordered takeout?" The voice, I suppose it was mine, sounded perky and cheerful.

"Come here." His voice had the harsh grate of stone against stone. It sent a shiver singing down my spine. I took a few steps forward. Slowly now. Baby steps. That was all my trembling legs allowed. Trembling legs. Trembling arms. Trembling heart. I had to remind myself to breathe.

"Stop!" he ordered.

I stopped.

"Take off the raincoat and drop it on the ground."

Very slowly and carefully, with hands that were shaking violently, I took off the coat, one sleeve at time, and laid it on the ground. When I bent down, my head swam. "Good girl."

I peered at him through the rain, everything slightly blurry like an out-of-focus camera. Not a tall man, but broad, with massive arms and a big round head, balding on top, with curly tufts of gray-yellow hair. Eyes recessed under thick eyebrows like yellow caterpillars crawling on his forehead. I couldn't see their color, only an impression of wild paleness peering at me over the old lady's head. The woman's face was gray and I could hear the ugly rasp of her frightened breathing from where I stood.

"You've got to..." I searched for words but I was brain-dead. "...let her go," I said finally. "Listen... She'll die if you don't."

"Shut up! I give the orders around here," he yelled. He waved the gun at me. "Take off the rest of those clothes. Everything but the underwear."

I didn't move.

"Do it! Now! An' I better not be seein' no gun on you." A burst of gunfire kicked up the ground around my feet.

I held out the bags. "What shall I do with these?"

"Set 'em on the ground. And hurry up. You try an' run back, I'll shoot her an' then I'll shoot you."

The things we do for love, I thought giddily, fumbling with the heavy sweater, performing my first, and hopefully last, striptease before every major network and nearly every trooper in the state of Maine. I could sell my story to "COPS" and retire for life. I'd have to. I'd never be able to show my face, or anything else, anywhere again, except when I went on "Oprah" to talk about how it felt to strip at gunpoint.