The Victim (2 page)

Oh my God
.

He cranked the door handle and heaved his shoulder into it to pop it off the jamb. He hopped down onto the highway. The winds were heavy and dry, rustling the sage and scrub oaks that dotted the rugged landscape along the Beeline Highway. A sliver of fiery light barely illuminated the peaks of the Mazatal Mountains, which rose and fell against the horizon. Giant saguaros stood like sentries.

The back half of a red two-door sedan lay beneath the shredded front tires of the RV. Flattened like an aluminum can. On impact the RV must have bucked forward, rolling up onto the rear bumper of the smaller car, coming to rest on its roof. The significant weight of the RV crushed the sedan into something you might see stacked in a junkyard.

The highway was quiet. Just the rush of hot wind crackling the delicate spines of the sagebrush. He got his bearings quickly, the initial shock of the crash having passed. A sobering experience. Literally. Half a handle of Jack Daniels coursing through his veins had been replaced by something stronger.

Panic.

He saw long hair, a young female’s. How he could tell her age by the back of her head, he would never know. Maybe by its length and sheen—bright, yellow-blond. Slick with blood. Her forehead propped on the steering wheel. The driver-side window blown out. The windshield was a shattered web.

The man beside her—or boy, he was arguably young—was out cold, his body positioned in the passenger’s seat in a gimpy, off-kilter fashion. The passenger side had been thrust into the guardrail, which molded itself to the frame of the car. His head lolled against the door. Blood leaked from his ear and ran down his neck.

“
Are you okay?!” he screamed, although he knew he would get no reply. His voice resonated throughout the valley. “Hello?”

He braced himself against the ruined front end of the RV. He felt a surge of bile and whiskey come up in the back of his throat. He heaved forward but held it in. He was lightheaded.

Oh God, please let this be a dream. Oh God, please…this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening…

“
Hello?”

Not a bit of movement.

The sun inched its way over the tallest peak. The long strands of clouds were ablaze with brilliant orange, casting shadows across the coarse terrain. A woodpecker had carved out a little home inside the dried-out husk of a rotting saguaro. Across the highway, a gray cottontail emerged from behind a thatch of chaparral, anxiously gazing about.

The Beeline Highway wasn’t some desolate desert road. It was the main northbound artery out of the valley, into Payson, Winslow, all the way up into Navajo country. No doubt some potbellied state trooper was finishing up at Dunkin’ Donuts, ready to start his 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift. He’d come up over the grade, see the wreck, and start nosing around.

Whoo-hee, son,
the make-believe trooper would say with a rural Arizona twang. His bushy mustache would be yellowed from two packs a day.
I light a match anywhere near that breath o’ yours an’ I could start a fire’d burn clean clear to Show Low.

It was Sunday morning, his only saving grace. He figured he had twenty, maybe thirty more minutes of solitude before traffic on the highway picked up.

He wanted to help, render some type of aid. But he was too scared to look. If he craned his neck really hard he could still make out the long hair of the driver, which gleamed like gold in the rising light.

The emblem on the hubcap indicated it was a Honda. Likely a Civic, maybe a two-door Accord. He couldn’t tell. Not in this condition anyway. The roof bent and buckled under the weight of the RV.

He couldn’t remember if he had dozed off or just hadn’t seen the smaller car. He recalled the sound—an ungodly crunch—followed by the skidding of rubber and metal and fiberglass grating along rough asphalt as the RV drove the Honda into the guardrail before riding up on the roof.

Don’t make excuses for yourself. You didn’t see the car because you were stone cold drunk, that’s why. If those folks are dead—which, c’mon, look at their fucking car—then you’re going to prison.

He tried to collect himself but desperation burned. He sensed that his sanity was waning as he pondered an infinite number of variables as if trying to solve some fucked up logic game.

Is my DNA in the car? Is there enough physical evidence to put me behind the wheel? How many years can you get for vehicular homicide?

He wished he could squeeze his eyes shut and he would wake up.

This has to be a dream. This can’t be happening…

He breathed a deep lungful of air, which brought him back to a mere simmer. He needed a cigarette and a minute to collect his thoughts.

He reached for the half-empty hard pack of Marlboros in his pocket and lit one. He took a few short puffs, but the nicotine just made him more anxious.

He sat on the guardrail behind the wreck, tapping his foot on the asphalt.

The sun had cleared the peak and the sky was a palette of orange and blue. A hawk circled lazy patterns, its cry echoing throughout the valley.

He flicked some glowing ash onto the highway, contemplating his next move. At this point, he was confident he could pass a breath test. At least he felt sober. But this was a crash with two people seriously injured, probably dead. The authorities would want blood.

He felt the outline of the cell phone in his pocket. It was a bulky Nokia clamshell. He thought about calling 911, but remembered that cell phone signals can be used to locate the user’s position.

He took a long drag. The paper flared orange and sizzled.

Amid the dry wind he couldn’t hear the drip from the sedan’s broken fuel line. Gasoline pooled and coursed in little rivers through the grooves in the asphalt.

He smoked the cigarette until it was down to the filter. Embers of burnt tobacco flaked off and drifted in the wind. He took his last drag and mashed the butt out on the asphalt.

The whole trip from Tempe to Payson had been his idea. As chapter president, he was expected to put these things together.
Brotherhood retreats
they called them, but any fraternity event was merely a vessel by which alcohol could be consumed en masse.

It had been his idea to rent the RVs.

He figured it would keep the guys from driving home drunk.

Of the eighty-four active Theta Phi Sigma brothers, only twenty-six showed up at the house the night before, bags packed and coolers stocked. Twenty-six because it was eighty miles from home on a Saturday night and no girls would be there. All things considered, he was surprised at the turnout.

He flipped open his cell phone, rereading her text message.
Can u comn ovr?
He didn’t know where she was. Acme? Axis/Radius? But the subtext and the misspellings of her message were clear. He knew what she wanted. He wanted the same thing.

He had begrudgingly responded with a
yes
only because he couldn’t get a cell signal out here. He kept it short and to the point. Texting was a fairly labor-intensive endeavor, having to punch the same key two or three times just to get the right letter.

Her name was Amber and they had been casually hooking up for the past month. It was a mutually self-serving relationship as neither seemed to want, nor expect, anything other than some company after last call. They met at karaoke night at the Vine where, after a couple of two-dollar steins, he struck up a conversation. Eight hours later she was ambling down the front walkway of the Theta Sig house, holding her high-heels in one hand, cupping the morning sun out of her hungover eyes with the other.

At the campsite, the brothers had passed out shortly after five-thirty. Of the twenty-six who had come on the trip, not a single one was awake when he decided to commandeer the RV in an effort to make it back to Tempe before Amber’s rum and cokes wore off. There were still three RVs back at the campsite. The guys could cram into them and make the drive home in the morning. Given the circumstances, they’d understand.

That damned text message. Four tipsy words, teeming with promise. The ripe anticipation of her soft white skin, how she liked to bite his bottom lip when they kissed. The smell of her perfume. The way she arched her back and dug her heels into the mattress when she climaxed.

The horizon faded and fell out of focus. He had never had an out-of-body experience but he imagined it felt very much like this.

A sharp odor stung his sinuses. He looked down and saw a stream of liquid collecting, changing course around the toe of his shoe. He dipped his fingers in the liquid and brought them to his nose.

Gasoline.

He traced the source of the liquid to the underside of the wreckage. He couldn’t tell which vehicle was leaking. They were both mashed and melded together. The stream ran steady, holding its surface tension, following a path down the gentle grade of the Beeline.

He heard the faintest rumblings of a diesel engine.

Sunlight poured into the valley, burning off the haze of dawn. He could see the highway for a good five miles in each direction, rolling with the grain of the land. He saw it approaching from the south, could hear the eighteen-wheeler straining, chugging up the grade.

It played out like a word problem.

If you’re shit-canned out on a desolate Arizona highway and plow into a car killing two people, how long before that semi coming up the hill arrives and calls the cops on his CB radio?

He looked over his shoulder. He was just above the tree line. Beyond the hundred yards of dry earth was a dense forest of ponderosa pines. If he really turned on the jets he could sprint down the embankment and disappear before the truck made it.

The semi’s trailer continued over a distant ridge, falling out of focus. He could hear the whine of second gear, the low growl of the downshift. Two miles away? Maybe less.

He patted down his jeans to make sure he hadn’t left anything inside of the RV. He felt the bulk of his wallet, cell phone, and cigarette lighter in his pockets.

The keys were still in the ignition.

Maybe it was the adrenaline in his system that allowed him a moment of clarity. Or maybe the whiskey had initiated a thought process that was precisely the opposite. Either way, he had come to a startling realization.

His fingerprints were on the keys. His fingerprints were on the steering wheel. The droplets of panic sweat that had dampened the back of his T-shirt were now DNA evidence, seeping into the cloth seats.

Blood from his nose was on the airbag.

That was the moment. That distinct fraction of time that would serve as the very benchmark of his life, upon which only the
before
and
after
could be measured. That moment, standing there on the side of a highway, his blood-alcohol level beyond reproach, something plucked that iron string down in his gut that sent terrifying vibrations throughout his body.

It gripped him, turned his bowels to liquid. A stinging pain blossomed from the pit of his stomach and spread throughout his sides and down his legs.

He swallowed a quick gasp of air and forced enough breath to whisper, “God, please forgive me.”

He removed his lighter from his pocket. A red plastic Bic. He flicked the flint a few times until it sparked and caught, cupping the flame to guard it from the wind. He knelt at the stream of gasoline and carefully lowered his hands.

The fumes caught immediately, erupting into a ball of fire, singeing the hairs off the back of his hand. He tumbled backwards into the guardrail, watching the flame race along the surface of the stream like a fuse burning down to the nub. It vanished in the undercarriage of the sedan before heavy black smoke began pouring out from beneath the car, scattering into a haze in the stiff wind.

Run!

He leapt the guardrail and sprinted down the hill, high-stepping over shrubs and low-lying cacti that clung to the ground. He dodged saguaros. His lungs burned. His T-shirt stuck to his chest.