didn’t appear to be trying to hold it still. The other hand seemed meant to soothe it the way someone might lay a hand on an injured pet.
“Do you think it’s broken?” Jake asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
Jake took out a notepad. “Could I have your name?”
“Jamerson,” she said. The corner of her mouth twitched.
Jake wrote. “And your first name?”
“Celia.”
“Thanks.”
She turned her head to look at him again. “Shouldn’t you be doing something about
“The fire truck’s on the way. My partner’s keeping an eye on things.”
“What about the…driver?”
“We can’t do much for him.”
“Is he dead?”
A shish kebab, Chuck had remarked when he saw the driver’s remains hanging out the windshield.
“Yes,” Jake said.
“He tried to hit me. I mean it. He had the whole road to himself. I’m over by the shoulder and I signal him to go around, and I look back and he’s actually swerving right at me. He’s grinning and he swerves right at me. Must’ve been going sixty.” Her face had a puzzled expression as if she were listening to a bizarre joke and waiting for Jake to feed her the punch line. “That guy meant to kill me,” she said. “He creamed my bike.”
She nodded toward it. The bike with its twisted wheels lay in the weeds on the far side of the ditch.
“What happened, I turned quick to get out of his way and it flipped on me. Just before he hit it, I guess. The van never touched me. Next thing I knew, I was landing in the ditch and there was this crash. Bastard. That’s what he gets, going around trying to…what’d I ever do to
“Did you know him?” Jake asked.
“I’ve heard of these guys, they’ll run down dogs just for laughs. Hey, maybe he thought I was a dog.” She tried to laugh and came out with a harsh sobbing noise.
“Had you ever seen the man before?”
“No.”
“Did you do anything that might’ve angered him?”
“Sure, I flipped him the bird. What is this? Is it suddenly my fault?”
“
“No, damn it. I didn’t even see him till he was about a foot off my tail.”
“As far as you’re concerned, then, his action was totally unprovoked?”
“That’s right.”
“You say that you heard the crash just after you landed in the ditch?”
“Maybe I hadn’t hit yet. I really don’t know.”
“What happened next?”
“I think I conked out. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I did. Then what happened, I heard your siren. That’s when I got up and…”
“Hey, Jake!”
Jake looked over his shoulder. Chuck, fire extinguisher in one hand, was standing by the open rear door of the flaming van and waving him over. “I’d better see what he wants. Sit tight, there should be an ambulance on the way.”
Celia nodded.
Jake stood up, brushed off his seat, and walked over to his partner.
“Take a look-see here,” Chuck said, pointing to the ground.
The pale dirt of the road’s shoulder was speckled with a few dark blotches. Jake crouched for a closer look.
“Looks like blood to me,” Chuck said.
“Yeah.”
“Was the girl over here?”
“Not according to what she told me.”
“We better find out for sure. Cause if she wasn’t…know what I mean?”
Jake heard a distant siren. He saw a smear of blood on the gray asphalt of the road. The fire truck or ambulance wasn’t in sight yet, so he rushed across both lanes. Chuck trotted along beside him, still hanging onto the fire extinguisher.
“How’d someone survive a crash like that?” Chuck said.
Jake shook his head. “Just lucky.”
“Yeah, I guess it can happen. You hear about folks making it through airline crashes.
“I see it.”
A slick of blood on a blade of crabgrass.
Jake stepped into the weeds. He scanned the ditch and the field beyond it. Both were overgrown with weeds that had flourished and bloomed under the recent spring rains. The uneven terrain of the field was dotted with clumps of bushes. There were a few trees scattered around.
He saw no one.
Chuck cupped his hands to the sides of his mouth and yelled, “Hello! Hey, out there!”
Jake, standing beside him, could barely hear his voice over the noise of the siren.
The siren died. Chuck called out again. Jake heard the groan of air brakes, the tinny crackle of a radio. He looked back and saw the town’s bright yellow pump truck.
“How come you suppose he wandered off?” Chuck asked. “It was me got banged up, I’d stick around and wait for help.”
“Maybe he’s in shock and doesn’t know what he’s doing. More likely, though, he wanted to haul ass out of here. The girl says she was riding her bike along minding her own business and the van tried to run her down on purpose. Which would mean the guy’s not a model citizen. You take care of matters here, I’ll see if I can dig him up.”
“Don’t take all day, huh? I’m getting the hungries and my stockpile’s dry.”
The stockpile was the cache of Twinkies, chips and candy bars that Chuck kept in the patrol car.
“You’ll live,” Jake said. He slapped Chuck’s paunch, then climbed down into the ditch.
After looking for traces of blood, he climbed out of the ditch on its far side.
Back on the road, the firemen were blasting at the flames with chemical extinguishers. Chuck was walking over to Celia, who was standing now, though bent over a bit and still holding her right arm.
Jake wondered if she was from the university. She was the right age, and he probably would’ve known her if she was a local. Also, there was her wise-guy attitude.
Don’t hold it against her, he told himself. She was hurting.
A good-looking woman, even with her face scraped up.
Came damn close to getting her ticket canceled.
He turned away and continued searching.
Two in the van, one bought the farm and the other guy got away. The dead guy was obviously the driver. The survivor must’ve been in the back of the van, or he would’ve gone out the windshield, same as the driver. And Celia didn’t mention seeing anyone in the passenger seat.
If he was in the back, maybe he wasn’t part of it.
No, he
Wandering back and forth, Jake spotted a dandelion with a broken stem, a smear of blood on its blossoms. It was a few yards north of where he’d come out of the ditch. In his mind, Jake connected the two points and extended the line across the field. It led to a low rise a couple of hundred yards to the northwest. The high ground
