Finally, she swerved over to the narrow shoulder, hoping her car would fit. It almost did, but the roughness caused her to swerve a bit too far, and she began driving down the deep embankment, bumping up and down. One particularly large jolt snapped her neck forward, and her car lurched over, finally coming to rest on its side in the deep ditch. Her ears were ringing, and dots began to cloud her view before everything went dark.
Chapter 31
The first thing Celia noticed was the smell – that strange, slightly burnt chemical smell from the airbag. The car was on its side, but she was still fastened into her seat belt. Thank goodness it rested in the passenger side, she thought. It took a bit of doing, but Celia was able to unfasten her belt, get the door open, and climb out of her car, taking her purse with her. Traffic was still moving inch-by-inch on the road, and a few people were rubbernecking to see her emerge. Celia pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911 to report the accident. Then she called Keith.
“Hey, Celia, when is that pizza gonna be here? I’m starving!”
“Well, I think it’s all over the car interior. I had a little problem.”
“What’s wrong?” She could hear the change in his voice. “Are you okay?”
“I am, but my car isn’t. I ran off the road and went into a pretty deep ditch. The car’s on its side. Can you come to get me? I should be close to mile marker 14.”
“God, Celia! Yes, I’ll be right there! Did you call the police? Is anyone hurt? Are you okay?”
“It was just my car. I couldn’t stop so I had to get on the shoulder.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes. Stay put.”
Keith arrived just ahead of the police car. Celia waved him over, and he jogged down the embankment, concern on his face. He helped Celia up and checked her over. “How’s your head? Can you track my fingers?”
“I’m fine, just a little jangled.”
“What happened? You said you couldn’t stop.”
“Yeah, I crested the hill and noticed the stalled traffic, but my brakes wouldn’t work. I pumped them and such. No luck. So I tried to ride the shoulder, but apparently, it’s too narrow, or I was going too fast.”
“Your brakes didn’t work? Have you been having trouble with them?”
“No, not at all.”
Keith went to her car and began inspecting its underside. He managed to get the hood partially open and looked around a bit. Celia’s fog cleared, and she realized he was looking for evidence of tampering. He and the officer were chatting, and then he pointed to something. Celia felt a sinking in her stomach, and she knew what he was going to say before they came back over to her.
“Someone messed with your brake line,” Keith said flatly.
“By someone you mean Bart.”
“Well, we can’t prove it at the moment, but that would be my guess.”
“Dammit! Would somebody please just kill him for me?”
The officer with Keith chuckled a bit. “I’ll chalk that up to a head injury.”
“You need to get checked out. Do you need an ambulance?” Keith asked.
“No way. No ambulance.”
“Well, either way, you need to get checked out. I’ll take you after we finish here.”
While the officer took down Celia’s account, Keith went back to the car, took out his phone, and took a few photos. By the time they were ready to go, a wrecker had arrived, and Keith told them where to take her car. The two of them climbed into his jeep and headed to the ER.
“Thanks for coming,” Celia said.
“No problem. So no problems until just now with the brakes?”
“No, everything was fine. I didn’t notice anything until I crested that hill and tried to stop.”
“Well, the hole is small. You could have been leaking all day, or even more than a day. You’ll have to make a list of every place you’ve been. I’ll see how quickly Walt can get video. If there is video everywhere you’ve been.”
Celia cursed again. “I can’t believe this is still happening. For an attorney, Bart is an idiot.”
“He isn’t thinking rationally. Whatever it was, something switched in his brain. And I don’t think it’ll switch back on his own. I can’t believe there’s no record of him doing this before.”
Celia thought about his wife and her conversation with Walt. “There may be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I knew he had a wife. She died a few years ago. He still kept in touch with her family, which seemed kind of nice when he told me. But then Walt wondered about her accident.”
“She died in an accident?”
“Yeah, apparently it was one car, at night, on a curvy road.”
Keith sighed. “This isn’t good.”
“You think he probably killed her.”
“It’s not a stretch. He could have done the same thing. And depending on the extent of the crash, no one would have noticed a hole or tear in the brake line.” Keith looked at Celia. “He’s done this before.”
“Well that’s just great,” Celia muttered.
“Let’s just get you checked out, and then we can deal with the accident.”
There was a pretty good crowd at the ER, but Keith talked to the nurse and showed her some credentials, so they took Celia back quickly. She could feel angry stares at her back, but she didn’t care. She was being stalked by a psycho. That trumped pretty much everything in her opinion. A nurse took her vitals and did the usual neurological checks and asked them to wait for one of the doctors on call.
“Let’s see,” a middle-aged doctor walked in and picked up the clipboard with Celia’s information. “It says here you had a single-car accident. Can you tell me about it?”
“I was
