He felt weak and old. He could move slowly, fumblingly. He turned. The girl was near him. Charlie was on top of her. She was dead. Her brows and nose were crushed in. She was hideous. He plucked weakly at Charlie. Charlie moaned. Charlie was all tangled up with the girl, wedged in by the wheel.
A stocky man opened the door above him, leaned it back and put his weight on it until something broke and it opened down. He reached his hand in. Frazier took the hand and wiggled weakly out. He slid down over the top of the car, fell, and got up. The flames were hot. The man reached in the car and fumbled at the other two. He shielded his face from the heat, tried again and then jumped down from the car. Frazier saw that the left side of the man’s face was blistered.
“I got a look at the woman,” the man said. “She’s dead.”
“I know,” Frazier said.
“I couldn’t get the guy. It got too hot.”
Frazier walked away and sat down on the grass. The man went over toward the smashed Chrysler. Frazier saw the troopers. He felt his insides twist. He looked at the flames. The car burned hotly. He could not see into the car. He turned away and felt the flame heat against his ear. He listened to the flames. He looked at his hands. The knuckles of his left hand were barked. His jacket sleeve was torn open up to the elbow. His mouth was puffed, two lower teeth loosened.
When the sound of the fire changed he looked again. Two firemen were plastering the car with foam. The flames were smothered and they died. The undercoat had caught. It burned stubbornly, emitting a greasy smoke. A tow truck backed into position and a man put the hook around a frame member. The truck moved and the car tilted and fell down onto its wheels, bouncing loosely. The firemen moved close and one of them shined a flashlight into the smoky interior, playing it around. A trooper came over and the firemen said something to him. They both looked toward Frazier, walked over toward him.
Frazier looked at the ground. They stood over him.
“Were there just two others in the car?” the trooper asked.
“Yes.”
“Can you give me the names, please.”
“I don’t know the names.”
“How come?”
“I was hitching a ride. They picked me up about a hundred miles back. A man and a woman. I guess they were man and wife. They talked that way.”
“Who was driving?”
“The man was. I was asleep in the back. I guess that’s why I didn’t get killed.”
“You were damn lucky to come out of that. I’ll send one of the doctors over. Don’t try to get up.”
“I’m all right.”
“You didn’t see how it happened?”
“I don’t know what happened. I was asleep.”
The trooper went away. Frazier tried to force himself to think clearly. They would check the Florida plate. But even before they found the plate was no good they might check in the back end. A little heat wouldn’t have hurt the Positive and the .357 Magnum. In fact, had it gotten too warm in the trunk compartment, the ammunition would have started to pop. That meant the clothes would be recognizable enough. Clothing for two men of different sizes. No woman’s clothing. Improper registration and a couple of guns. Enough reason to grab hold of one Frazier and put him on ice until they could find out what went on. He took his wallet out and looked through the bills. About eighty dollars.
And there was about forty thousand in the trunk compartment, wadded inside the extra spare tire. Nobody was likely to find it there. Not right off. He began to think more clearly. Percentage said to get lost in this crowd. Stay in the area. Find out where the car would be taken. It was junk now. It would be stripped after the police took the luggage. Drop around to whatever garage it landed in and make a fair offer for the spares. Both of them. That would look better than trying to get the right one.
It had seemed like the worst kind of luck. But things began to look a little better. Charlie had been too erratic lately. Sound on the job, but unpredictable otherwise. This broke it up. The girl was certainly no loss, to herself, or anyone else.
He stood up when the ambulance intern came over. “I want to check you over.”
“I’m fine.”
“You better let me take a look.”
“I’ve got a good doctor of my own. If anybody looks at me, it’s going to be him.”
The man looked at him and shrugged. “Suit yourself, mister.”
The torn coat was conspicuous. Frazier took it off and folded the torn sleeve inside and hung it over his arm. He went over to where two men with a tow truck were considering the problem of the upside-down convertible.
“Where’ll these cars be taken?” he asked.
“Which one?”
“The green Olds. It was green. Hard to tell now.”
“Ace Garage has got that one. Right in Blanchard. We’ll hold it until the insurance gets straightened around, and make a bid on it. Damn small bid. Joe, let’s run two lines right under it and bring them up the other side and hook on the frame. Then when we lift, she ought to roll over.”
“Hurry up and get this thing off the road,” a trooper said.
“Sure, sure,” the tow truck man said bitterly.
Frazier heard another man go up to the trooper and say, “How many killed here, officer?”
“Three in the Chrysler and two in the Olds so far. They’re trying to get the driver out of that truck but it don’t look good, I understand. And that woman in the Ford was hurt bad, and the girl in the Chrysler didn’t look good to me. So it could be anywheres from five to eight, Mr. Garrard.”
Frazier moved away into the crowd. People were walking back to their cars. The troopers were getting the cars moving. The Chrysler had been taken away. The Ford had been moved further off the road. Two tow trucks were working on the big truck. He looked back and saw the shattered Cadillac fall back onto its wheels and rock. Frazier put cars between him and the troopers. He walked down the shoulder of the road toward Blanchard. He was stiff and sore in every muscle. His mouth hurt. He sucked at his barked fingers. Traffic began to move swiftly again. He lengthened his stride, working the stiffness out of his legs. With any kind of luck it would work. He’d been careful not to look up into the trooper’s face. There ought to be some place to hole up in Blanchard. Throw the coat away and buy a different shirt. Hang around the Ace Garage. Move slow and easy, but, come what may, grab that tire.
The black Ford spun on the dry pavement. All sense of direction was gone. Cars were shadows that whipped by her and she clung to the wheel in momentary expectation of shock and death. Just as the wheels gained traction again, she saw the heavy pole beyond the shoulder of the road. She tried to steer away from it and felt the back end of the car swing again. It struck heavily against the pole and the door burst open and she was hurled out. In the final moment before the blackness, she felt acute irritation with the formlessness, the messiness of it. This was destruction and waste, devoid of pattern and meaning. She would be helpless among strangers.
chapter 10
FOR the fast through traffic, Blanchard was the annoyance of two traffic lights, a name half remembered. Route 56, however, touched only the south edge of the town. It was an old town, and it had grown up on the banks of a stream that wound down through a shallow north-south valley. In the beginning, when timber was heavy on the hills to the north, the stream had been a source of power. But as the hills were logged bare the water table changed and the stream became too meager. In the spring it often ran high, but in September and October it was quite often completely dry.
The first era of growth and prosperity came from the forests and the game and the stage line. After the forests and the game were gone, Blanchard became a trading center for the surrounding farms. For many years the wagons, and later the high square dusty cars, came down the dirt roads into Blanchard of a weekend, and merchants prospered.
With the improvement of roads, and the exhaustion of the surrounding land, Blanchard began to decay. Farmers preferred to make
the longer trip to the city twenty-five miles away where the range of choice was wider. During this period the town shrunk to little more than two thousand inhabitants. Old houses stood empty and the pipe plant was the only industry.
But with further improvement of the east-west highway prosperity of a different sort began to return. The old stream had dried up, but now a river of dollars flowed endlessly by. With the completion of the super-highway the transition became complete. The new center of growth and vitality was at the south edge of the town, an area of motels, restaurants and large glossy service stations.
Nor did the old town remain unchanged. The city was now only thirty minutes away. Foresighted people of means began to buy the old houses at bargain prices and restore them to their original pre-Victorian charm. Only the first few obtained bargain prices. As it became increasingly smart to move out to Blanchard, real estate prices moved steadily upward. Promoters purchased tracts of open land and built expensive ranch-style homes. As the population and the tax rolls increased, new money became available for schools and services. The grandsons of merchants faced old stores with plastic. A “city” group of professional and business people had moved into the town and changed its face.
The dividing line between the old residents and the new was sharply drawn, but as the young people of both groups began to mingle, the line of demarcation was becoming more fuzzy.
In some instances, in fact, a man who had moved his residence from the city to Blanchard would find it possible to change his place of business also. Such a man was Dr. Lionel Budischon. He had been one of the first who moved out to Blanchard and purchased one of the old houses. He had been a highly successful doctor in the city. As his father, before his death, had been the president of one of the larger banks and had served on the board of many local corporations, Budischon’s social contacts had been, from the beginning, excellent and profitable. His first patients were the friends of childhood. As he began practice with splendid offices, personal charm and great assurance, his career was never in doubt. He performed general surgery, kept up a general practice, and tried sincerely to stay abreast of new advances in the field of medicine.
At the age of fifty, when he moved to Blanchard with his thirty-year-old second wife and two small children, he was a hearty, florid, balding man who played robust golf and shrewd poker. He left, back in the city, a young associate who took those night calls considered necessary. Budischon was a profane man and an obstinate man.
During his first year in Blanchard he realized he was discontented. He was worth nearly three hundred thousand dollars, had a lovely wife, pleasant children, cars, friends—but he felt unused by his profession. His patients were so uniformly well-to-do, outside of his regular clinic work, that in the case of anything serious, specialists were called in.
Once he had made up his mind, golf and poker were given up. The young associate was burdened with a great deal more of the practice. His wife and children saw less of him. He worked and planned and argued fourteen hours a day. At the end of that time a great deal of his money was gone. But on the piece of property adjoining his was the new trim pale green building, with letters in chaste aluminum saying “BUDISCHON HOSPITAL AND CLINIC.”
It was tiny, but it was perfect. There were two six-bed wards and two three-bed wards in one wing, as well as four small private rooms. In the other wing there were twelve private rooms, nearly as luxurious as the rooms in a first-class hotel. The higher central portion of the building housed the clinic offices, laboratory, operating room, nurses’ quarters.
It did not take long to acquire a small competent staff. In addition to Budischon and the nursing office staff, there was a radiologist, an internist, a urologist, a neurologist, a dermatologist and an anesthetist. The other doctors came to Blanchard to live. As it was a private institution, admissions could be kept down to the number of patients who could be adequately cared for. It was generally full. Budischon found within himself unsuspected talents as an administrator. He was completely busy and completely happy.
On the afternoon of May seventeenth, the girl at the switchboard received the police request for the dispatch of the hospital ambulance to the scene of the accident west of the city. Hearing that it was a multiple-car crash, the switchboard girl, after dispatching the ambulance, contacted the local funeral home of Reedy and Quell which supplied their two hearses to be used as ambulances in case of emergency. The head nurse was advised of the situation, and by the time the ambulance returned four beds were ready, as well as the emergency facilities of the small hospital.
Dr. Budischon met the ambulance and spoke to Dr. David Prace, the young doctor who had ridden to the scene of the accident. “How many, Dave?”
“Just three for us, but six customers for Reedy and Quell. It was a nasty one. I brought our three back in one load. Funny thing. There was a fourth one, a man, but he disappeared. And before I forget, there’s a couple coming in to be checked over after they see to their car. They got shaken up and I took care of a laceration on the woman’s knee. We’ve got a head injury and I suggest we get George to take some pictures of that right away.”
Budischon watched them come in. He saw a woman in a torn, bloody, dark red suit, her dark blonde braided hair matted. There was a deep longitudinal laceration at the hairline and a great ugly contusion, the color of eggplant, covering most of the left side of her forehead. The eye was puffed completely shut. He saw that her features were regular and her skin good. The waste and pain saddened him. Disease was explicable to him. But not this smashing of healthy bodies. He saw the gleam of perspiration on her face, her grayish-yellow color. He stepped forward and felt the clammy chill of her hand, felt of the fast thready pulse.
“Treat her for shock,” he ordered.
The second one was a young girl in the torn matted ruin of a yellow sweater and heavy white skirt. Her face was unmarked. She looked about in a dazed, placid way. Dave stopped beside him and said in a low tone, “She’s got a hell of a rip in her thigh, broken left hand and wrist, dislocated shoulder and maybe some ribs snapped. Only one left out of a family of four. They really hit hard. Put the steering post through the driver, stuffed the mother halfway through the windshield and damn near beheaded her. Pulped the little sister’s head. I don’t know how or why this one came out of it. I’ll get to work on her.”
The last one was a big man with a strong heavy face. He was protesting, in a deep cultivated voice, that he was perfectly able to walk. His clothing, though badly damaged, looked expensive. The fingers of his right hand were bleeding. The lobe of his left ear was torn. Budischon spoke with curt authority and the man stopped objecting. This was the sort of accident patient you had to watch closely. There was so much raw animal energy there that, numbed by shock, such patients could walk around with incredible injuries, doing themselves much harm.
By four o’clock the last of the wet X-ray prints had been examined and the three unconscious patients, two of them under sedation, had been identified. Mr. Devlin A. Jamison, Miss Kathryn Aller, Miss Susan Ann Scholl. Mr. Jamison’s split fingers had been treated, his ear stitched, the abrasions on the side of his face, on his hip, on his elbow and shoulder cleaned and bandaged. His cracked ribs had been taped, and his dislocated finger reset and given a temporary splint. He was in the best shape of the three. Dr. Budischon, wondering about a sedative, watched the man, saw the way he seemed to be suffering some great mental stress. After he had found out whom to phone, he prescribed a sedative.
He placed the long-distance call from his office at quarter after four, a person to person call to a Mr. Roger Seiver.
“Mr. Seiver, this is Dr. Budischon. I’m calling in regard to a Mr. Devlin Jamison.”
At first Seiver couldn’t get it through his head what had happened. Budischon explained his position in the matter. Seiver got very concerned.
“You say other cars were involved, Doctor?”
“Several, I understand.”
“I guess Dev told y
ou I’m his attorney. I better come out there. I’ll be out some time tomorrow. In the meanwhile I’ll contact the insurance agent. Thanks for calling.”
Budischon felt slightly guilty as he hung up the phone. He knew that the State Police in their own good time would have made the necessary contacts. But Mr. Jamison looked like a man who would appreciate that little additional service. Dr. Budischon knew he had no intention of making any contacts for the other two patients. He sighed. Long years of service to the well-to-do led to minor forms of prostitution, disguised as personal favors.
He looked in on the Aller woman. The scalp laceration had been sutured. The contusion looked angrier than before. Plasma had removed the symptoms of shock. The nurse told him there was no change. The plates showed no fracture. He went to the bed and rubbed his thumb lightly across her eyelashes on the good eye, watching closely for any sign of reaction. There was none. She was in deep coma. At best it would be severe concussion. At worst—brain hemorrhage, a slow seeping of blood through torn tissues. He looked at the still figure and wondered who was waiting for her. Maybe somebody was, at this moment, beginning to worry. I wonder what can be holding Kathryn up. You’d think she’d at least phone.
He looked in on the Scholl girl last. She slept placidly. Her right arm and hand were in a cast. Her shoulder had been snapped back into place and strapped. Her broken ribs had been taped, and the deep laceration in the top of her thigh had been carefully sutured. The rip had gone deep enough to require deep stitches in the muscle tissue and to require the precaution of a drain. He had done the work himself, and he smiled as he thought how easily she would heal. Hers was a sturdy body fairly bursting with health. The smile faded. Mental and emotional hurt would not be so quick to heal.
When he got back to his office he found Lieutenant Fay of the State Police waiting for him.
Cry Hard, Cry Fast Page 9
