Ill Wind (30 page)

“You better be clean, Tom,” Anna said as she pressed down. No pulse. Holding on to the rearview mirror for support, she crouched lower and repositioned her fingers in the hollow of Silva’s neck beside his trachea.

“Bingo,” she breathed as she felt the faint and thrilling thread of life. Given the mechanism of injury—a headlong flight off a cliff—and the absence of a seat belt, there was a good chance Silva had suffered damage to his spine and she was loath to move him without at least a short backboard. “Hills,” she barked into the radio. “Where are you guys?”

“Just starting down.”

“Jesus,” she whispered. Since she’d dropped into the truck it seemed as if half an hour must have passed but she knew in reality it had been minutes. “It’s bad,” she said. “Bring a short spineboard. He’s all crunched down on the passenger side and the truck’s tipped. We’ll have to haul him straight up through the driver’s door.”

Hills undoubtedly responded but Anna’d quit listening. Silva had made a sound. She crouched as low as she could, the man’s dark head between her knees. Cupping his chin in her left hand, she supported his head and neck in the position she’d found it. “Tom, Tom, it’s Anna.”

A gurgle, half felt through her fingers, half heard, came from the injured man. Liquid trickled over her fingers where they curled around his chin. “Hang in there, Tom, help’s here. Stay with me. We’ll get you out.”

“No,” came out with more blood. “Killed Pats.”

The adrenaline rush in Anna turned to cold horror. With her free hand she fumbled the radio from where it rested on the drunken tilt of the dash and held it to her mouth. Her right leg had begun to shake uncontrollably. “Hills, send somebody to check on Patsy Silva.”

He asked something but Anna’d dropped her radio. The fragile beat of life beneath her fingers had stopped. “Fuck.”

Silva was wearing a denim jacket, the collar turned up. Grasping collar and shoulder seams in her fists, she pulled the dead weight upward, straightening her legs to take some of the strain off her back. Silva’s head fell against her forearm. In the uncompromising light of the dome she could see the gash in his forehead. White bone gleamed through the torn flesh.

Grunting with the effort, she pulled him chest high and wedged her right knee under his rump. Locking him in her arms, she looked up at the driver’s window a couple of inches above her head. Impossibly far. Silva was a slight man, not more than one hundred and thirty-five or forty pounds, but she doubted she could push that much weight over her head.

“Come on, Tom, don’t wimp out on me, damn you, come on,” she murmured in his ear. Blood dropped onto her neck. “On three, ready, Tom. Jesus!” Anna coiled the strength she had into her legs and back. “One, two, three!” With all the power she could muster she pushed Tom up toward the night sky. Her back creaked in protest and she felt the muscles burn and grow watery in her shoulders.

Eyes squeezed shut, she tried to force him beyond her strength, but the soft weight of him was slipping from her.

Then, miraculously, he went, his body light as air. Anna’s eyes sprang open and the air exploded from her lungs. Her hands fell away and still Silva rose like Christ on Easter. As his feet drew level with her face, Anna heard voices. For an instant, Drew’s face was visible in the glare of someone’s light. He held Silva by the shirtfront, supporting him with one arm.

“Get him flat,” Anna shouted. With shaking arms, she tried to lever herself out of the cab. Drew grabbed her wrists, lifted her clear of the truck, and set her on the rock near Tom. “Get me an airway,” Anna said. “He had breath and pulse not a minute ago.”

Crawling, she positioned herself over Silva’s chest, placed two fingers on his carotid and her ear an inch from his mouth. “Damn.”

“Nothing?” Drew asked.

“Nothing. Airway,” she snapped. Behind her she could hear Hills pawing through the jump kit. She tilted Silva’s jaw, pinched his nose, and blew two slow breaths into his lungs. “Compressions, Drew.”

The big man leaned over Silva and, elbows locked, depressed the man’s chest for five counts, forcing blood through the now quiet heart and into the dying organs. Anna breathed for Silva. Five more compressions and another breath.

Sour vomit from Silva’s stomach filled Anna’s mouth and she spat it out, refusing to let her own bile rise in its wake. “Airway,” she barked as Drew compressed the chest.

A curved plastic oropharyngeal airway was pressed into her palm and she took a second to work the plastic into Silva’s throat to keep his airway patent.

Drew compressed and Anna performed rescue breathing while the backboard was moved into place. The time for delicacy was past. Emergency personnel often referred to the Golden Hour, those first sixty minutes in which quick transport to a medical facility can still save a life. Time for Silva was running out, if, indeed, not already gone.

Unceremoniously, Silva was slid onto the board and strapped in the Stokes. Paul Summers took one end, Hills the other and lifted. Anna breathed, Drew compressed.

“Can’t do it,” Paul cried, shame and anger hot in his voice. The downward pressure of the compressions were too strong for him to support.

“Switch,” Anna called.

Drew moved to the head of the Stokes and Paul took over compressions. “Breathe,” she said, and blew into Silva’s lungs.

“And one, and two . . .” Paul counted off as they crabbed awkwardly along the two boulders.

“Stop,” Drew ordered when they reached the edge of the second rock. Anna and Paul stepped back. Drew set the litter down, Hills knelt still holding his end. The helitack foreman jumped from the rock then took up the Stokes again.

Hills scrambled down and they moved with startling speed over the river of boulders. Paul and Anna ran after. The big men, the littler, the moonlight, the rocking and rocky passage, gave the scene a jerky, keystone-cops look and Anna felt inappropriate laughter pushing up in her throat.

It came out in gasps as they reached the foot of the steep incline.

“Now,” Drew said.

Anna felt for pulse, listened for breathing. Nothing. Again she gave two slow rescue breaths, then Paul began compressions. Bones broke—Silva’s ribs—another rescue breath, five compressions.

Jimmy appeared from somewhere with ropes. Stanton’s voice behind Anna said, “Can I spell you?” Anna blew oxygen into Silva’s lungs, then shook her head. Five more compressions, more ribs snapping.

“Stop,” Drew commanded.

Gratefully, Anna stepped back and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. The Stokes was roped up. Jimmy and Stanton had regained the top of the dirt slope and on a three count began to haul Silva upward.

CPR couldn’t be interrupted for more than a minute. Without bothering to catch her breath, Anna began to claw her way up the incline. On the other side of the Stokes, she could see Paul bounding up the hill and envied him his youth.

The Stokes bumped to a halt on the cliff top. Anna was there waiting. “Now,” Drew ordered. No breath, no pulse: Anna blew into the lungs. Paul did compressions. Bile spewed up, the acid burning Anna’s lips. She spit it out and heard gagging. For a second she thought it was Silva breathing on his own, but it was Stanton.

The agent pushed ahead, trying to keep the oakbrush from scraping the rescuers away from their patient. Branches scratched Anna’s face and hands but she was aware of them only peripherally, she didn’t feel the sting or cut.

Finally they broke free of the brush. In minutes the Stokes was loaded into the ambulance. “Jimmy drives. Me, Drew, Paul, here in back. You guys see if you can figure out what happened.” Hills slammed the door on the last of his words and the ambulance drove off, leaving Anna and Frederick standing in the middle of the road.

Darkness and stillness returned. The moon, temporarily eclipsed by the ambulance lights, reasserted its dominion. Shadows softened. Night creatures began timid explorations. Anna noticed she was cold and her back hurt like the dickens.

Pressing her hands into the small of her sacrum, she stretched in an attempt to ease it. “I’ve lost my strength of ten men,” she said to Stanton.

The FBI agent was looking at her oddly and pawing at the side of his mouth. Moonlight gave his face a ghoulish cast. Primitive fear of the dark pricked Anna’s sensitized nerves.

“What?” she demanded. “What is it?”

“You’ve... um... got something . . .” Tentatively he reached toward her but pulled back short of actually touching her. “It’s... ah... vomit.”

Anna wiped her mouth. Sour-smelling chunks came off in her hand. “I hate CPR. They’re dead. If they don’t sit up and take notice in the first sixty seconds, they’re going to stay dead. But we’ve got to pound and poke and blow just like it made sense. Got a hankie?”

Stanton fished an enormous white handkerchief from his hip pocket and handed it to her. She scrubbed her mouth and cheeks, then pocketed it out of deference to his hypersensitive gag reflex.

“So, what happened?” Stanton turned and looked down the hill. Oakbrush and serviceberry had closed ranks, creating a wall impervious to the moonlight. Beyond, down the sharp slope, the pickup’s carcass showed as a paler boulder in the boulder field.

“Drunk, I would guess. The cab reeked of alcohol, among other things.” Anna, too, stared down the slope. The excitement over, fatigue weighed heavily and the thought of climbing back down the hill wasn’t pleasant.

“Got a flashlight?” Stanton asked.

“It’s down there. You?”

“Not me. Got a spare in your car?”

“Of course. Doesn’t work though.” The dark grew darker. Prickly pear spines lodged in Anna’s hand were making themselves felt.

“The blind leading the blind?” Stanton asked.

“I’ll go first.”

“Good. Snakes and things, you know.”

“First person just wakes them up and makes them mad. They always bite the second person. That’s a proven statistic.”

“Where’d you read it?” Stanton demanded as he hurried after her into the arms of the oakbrush.

“U.S. News and World Report.”
Anna gave him the standard comeback of the 1968 Mercy High School debate team.

Without lights, music, and Silva, the wreck looked old, all life gone, metal bleached like bones. Anna appreciated its peacefulness. Lowering herself back down into the cab, she felt a kinship with Tom. It had less to do with ghosts than with the now all-pervasive odor of alcohol.

“Here but for the grace of God” crossed her mind like a prayer as she remembered the night she’d lost to booze and self-pity.

By the dome light, she retrieved her flashlight from where it had fallen down next to the door and passed it up to Agent Stanton.

Searching the cab was a job for a contortionist. Anna squatted over the broken passenger window and poked through the debris that had been shaken from under the seat and floor mats. A pack of Marlboros, two cigarettes remaining that would go unsmoked; five empty cans of Budweiser and one full, still cold to the touch; a McDonald’s bag, the contents so old they no longer smelled; bits of paper, maps, and registration from the glove box; a pencil with a chewed eraser and broken lead; and a golf ball completed the inventory. But for the golf ball, it was more or less what she had expected to find. Silva didn’t strike her as a golf sort of guy. A bowling ball or squirrel rifle would have been more in keeping with the image she had of him.

Hoisting herself out of the cab, she sat on the door with her feet still inside. The effort cost her a wrenching pain in her lower back, muscles protesting the lifting of one hundred and forty pounds.

“Ooof!” Stanton dragged himself up the boulder nearby. “Find anything?”

“Just what you’d expect: beer, cigarettes, fast food. The detritus of a misspent youth.”

“I didn’t find anything revelatory outside the truck,” Stanton said. “We ought to come back by the light of day but it looks like what it is: DUI with fatality. Back on the hill the truck left the ground and was airborne till it struck here. What I want to know is where Silva was between getting bailed out of jail and getting killed.”

“Killed. Patsy!” Anna remembered with a fresh sense of horror. “Tom said he’d killed her.”

PATSY WAS FINE, AT LEAST UNTIL THEY TOLD HER about Tom. “Seriously injured” was how Anna put it. One of the great contributions of cardiopulmonary resuscitation was that nobody ever died on a carry-out, or in an ambulance, for that matter. Through the vomit and the cracking bones and the blood, the body was kept pumped up with oxygen, the organs pantomiming life till a doctor pronounced it officially dead.

Patsy wept like a shattered bride. Regardless of divorce, this had apparently been a till-death-do-you-part kind of relationship. “There’s always hope, Mom,” Missy said, holding her mother’s shoulders in an odd moment of role reversal.

Anna had ambivalent feelings about hope. Just because artists depicting the last refugee from Pandora’s box always dressed the horrid little bugger like Tinkerbell, people tended to think hope was a good thing. Often it was the worst of the evils let loose to plague humankind.

“Is there hope?” Patsy pleaded.

“It was pretty bad,” Anna told her. “He was still talking when I got to him. He said your name.”

Patsy cried harder but it was different and Anna was glad she’d kept the context of Tom’s remark to herself.

The sun was rising when she and Agent Stanton left the tower house. Too tired to sleep, Anna sat for a moment behind the wheel of the patrol car, staring stupidly in front of her. “My back is killing me,” she said to no one in particular though Frederick was in the seat next to her.

“Want me to drive?”

The offer sounded so halfhearted, Anna realized she’d never seen Stanton behind the wheel of a car. “Have you got a license?” she asked abruptly.

He laughed, a sound that soothed her frayed nerves. “Almost like new, only use it on Sundays.”