"That doesn't sound good."
"It sure doesn't. Damn." He picked the phone up again and dialed Dale's number. It took conversations with three dispatchers, but Jay got through at last. He explained about the short cut, listened to Dale beef, and hung up.
"Well?"
"They can't search it tonight. Two injury wrecks outside Kayport. First thing tomorrow." He got up and took his cup to the sink. "I hate waiting."
Chapter 12
It may be possible to collaborate on nightmares. Jay and I spent the night tossing and turning, more or less in unison. I gave up at six and went for a run, though it was still semi-dark. When I got back, Jay was in the shower. He had made coffee for me, so I drank some and mixed muffins before running up for my own shower.
I came back down in jeans and a sweatshirt. "I suppose you're going to drive to that awful road and take a look."
He blinked at me over his tea mug. "How do you figure that?"
"I know the way you think." I popped the muffins in the oven.
"It'll be a couple of hours before Dale sends a crew out there--"
"And every second counts."
He sighed. "That's right."
"I'm coming."
"I thought you had to go out to the farm."
"I hate it when men whine."
He grinned. "Okay. I know I'm out-flanked."
"Leave my flanks out of this. You can drop me at the farm afterwards."
We ate breakfast in companionable silence, uninterrupted by the telephone. The sun shone between squall lines, turning my kitchen into a riot of daffodil yellow. I was going to have to do something about the color.
We were halfway out to the car when I stopped. "The map?"
"Got it."
"The cell phone?"
"What?"
Jay's brother, Freddy, had given him a cellular phone for Christmas. Since Jay had spent more than half his working life tied to a beeper, it was one of those gifts that evoke the 'just what I've always wanted' response. Jay had never used the phone.
"I'll get it. If we find the pickup, we'll need it."
"Maybe the battery's dead," he said hopefully.
I unlocked the back door and went in. It took me fifteen minutes of hard searching, but I finally found where he had hidden the device. For good measure, I brought one of those aluminum emergency blankets, too, a thermos of leftover breakfast coffee, and half a dozen highway flares, though Jay kept a good supply of emergency equipment in his Honda. It was almost eight by the time we got started.
When we reached the Ridge Road and turned south, I tried out the phone. I called Meadowlark Farm. Marianne answered from the kitchen. I could hear the coffee maker burping away. I gave her the cellular number but didn't say where I was going. When I told her Jay would bring me out to the farm later on, she didn't sound thrilled.
Jay drove all the way to Shoalwater College, past the huddle of cheap apartments that housed most of the students who didn't live at home. The apartments were privately owned and managed, not dormitories.
The college has a beautiful setting. Jay's office overlooks the bay, and the grounds crew does good things with native plants. Still, the architecture is basically early biscuit factory. The student population exceeded capacity two years ago, but there are no new classrooms in sight.
Jay drove past his own building to the student parking lot behind the science labs. A dozen or so parked cars indicated that some unlucky students were attending a lab. Jay got out and walked around for a while, hands in the pockets of his jacket. A light wind ruffled his hair. I was about to jump out and join him when he came back.
"What were you looking for?"
He started the engine and put the car in gear. "Just visualizing. I want to try to retrace their route."
He eased onto the highway, drove half a block, and made a right turn at a Seven-Eleven. Again he got out. He was gone quite a while. I read the booklet that came with the phone, though it sounded as if it had been translated from Japanese by a computer. I even considered telephoning my parents in New York to see if the phone worked for long distance calls.
"That was a good guess," Jay said as he got back in the car. "They stopped for a six pack of Bud and a frozen pizza."
"The clerk remembered?"
"It's a family place. The owners are on the premises night and day, apparently. The man says he remembers them because he carded Jason, thought he looked too young to buy beer. Jason turned twenty-one in December."
"You know a lot about these kids."
"The Dean did ask me to look after them." He wheeled into the parking lot of the apartment complex. "Bill's nineteen."
"I thought he looked young." I began to have a clearer understanding of Jay's urgency. He tends to take responsibility seriously. If the Dean had trusted him to look after the students, he would do his damnedest.
Jay got out. So did I. He looked at me over the top of the car. "Jason's apartment is 722B. It's over there. Second floor." He gestured. "Will you knock on the door? Just in case. I want to look around the parking area."
The apartments were strictly motel modern. I climbed an open-work stairway and walked along the passage until I came to the bright red door of 722B. The paint was beginning to peel. I knocked and listened. No answer. I knocked again. Silence.
"What a dump," I said as we pulled out of the lot. "Carol lives there?"
"It's the social place to be."
"Hey, are you saying Carol's a sosh? That young woman is not stupid."
"No. She aced organic chemistry."
"But not English?"
"A C in composition."
"From Keith McDonald?"
"No. She's never had a class from McDonald. Mary Sadat took his ballad seminar. So did Letha Carlsen. Not Carol."
"He mentioned that Mary took it." It was just possible that Keith's feeling of concern for his students was as protective as Jay's. Keith had seemed far more shaken by Mary's disappearance than by Hugo's death.
Half a mile south of the campus, Jay slowed the car. We crept along to an illegible signpost and turned left.
"Are you sure this is the road?"
"Pretty sure. Carol said it wasn't well marked."
For the first few miles the road was not bad. We passed farmhouses, a collapsing machine shed, a fishing cabin. The road began to climb and the surface got bumpier. Nobody had painted the white line along the shoulder or the yellow line down the center for a long time. Winters on the Peninsula are not severe by Eastern standards, so the frost damage was subtle. The county's road crew had tossed a mixture of gravel and asphalt into the worst cracks. Even so, the roadbed was rough.
We wound through second-growth forest, almost ready for harvest, for a few miles. Then we hit the first clear-cut. It was recent, and it looked like hell.
I know the timber company propaganda in favor of clear-cutting trees, but the fact remains that it's an insult to nature and an insult to the eye. This area hadn't been cleaned up and replanted. It would look better in a few years. In a few years it would look like a Christmas tree farm, which is what timber companies want. Now, early in the season, before the bushes had leafed out, the clear-cut looked like photographs of Belleau Wood circa 1917.
We climbed past the blitz into another stretch of second-growth. As we rounded a curve, a log truck loaded with one mammoth cedar barreled toward us, horn blaring. Jay bumped the Honda onto the shoulder as the noise doppelered. Gravel sprayed, but we didn't spin out.
Jay's knuckles showed white on the steering wheel. "Good thing we met him here. No drop-off."
I drew a breath. "That was an old-growth cedar log."
"Are you looking, Lark?"
"For signs of the pickup? Yes. Pity it's silver and black. If it was fire-engine red, it would be easier to spot. Do you really think we'll find it?"
"I hope it's not out here."
We continued to climb. The road surface was dry. The previous evening, it would have been wet and treachero
us. We passed the derelict fishing lodge. Stumps surrounded it.
We pulled around another curve, and I made a noise that may be represented as Ulp. A sheer drop-off skirted my side of the road. The cliff ran several miles, with the misty foothills and a bend of the Coho visible below in the blue distance. I made myself look straight down.
"Stop!"
Jay slowed the Honda but didn't stop. "What is it?"
"Never mind. Sun on water." A creek must run at the base of the canyon.
Jay grunted and drove on.
About a hundred yards farther along, I glimpsed something else. I squinched my eyes. "Better stop. I can't tell. Could be water...damn." A tree that must have grown straight up the side of the ravine blocked my sight. "Slow down, damnit. There. You have to stop, Jay."
"I can't stop yet. I need a straight stretch or a wide place." He kept going.
I had lost sight of my glittering patch. I blinked hard. It was a good quarter mile before the road straightened, the shoulder widened, and Jay could pull over without endangering us or the car.
He set the brake. "We'll have to walk back."
"I know. Do we need a flare?"
"Not yet."
We got out. I zipped my all-weather jacket and tugged my gloves on. Jay reached into the glove compartment on my side and took out his binoculars. "Show me."
Every ten yards or so Jay lifted the binoculars and scanned the canyon below us. It was brushy and had been logged, but noble firs had begun to rise above the deciduous undergrowth. We trudged to the tree that had blocked my view.
We had already passed the tree when I glimpsed the patch of color from the car. I jogged back toward the Honda about ten yards and looked down. At first I didn't see anything but the brown of the undergrowth and the somber greens of the dominant conifers. Then I stepped sideways and there it was. "Come here."
Jay walked over to me.
I pointed.
He steadied the binoculars and focused. "Yeah. That's it, about halfway down. They must've been flying. I don't see--"
"It's the pickup?" My pulse accelerated.
He lowered the glasses and looked at me, his eyes grave. "I can see the sleeve of a jacket in the underbrush. One of them was thrown. I don't see the other. The truck smacked into a blackberry patch, so it's half-hidden."
I gulped. "What now?"
"We call for help. Then I'm going down with a medical kit. Let's hope I need it."
It took us about four minutes to jog back to the car. Jay called the sheriff's dispatcher while I set flares in front of the Honda and at the curve behind it. We would have to trust the next log truck to avoid it.
I retrieved Jay's first aid kit from the trunk, his emergency blanket, and a canteen of water. I got my aluminum blanket and more flares from my side of the car. When Jay finished talking, I reached for the telephone.
He grabbed my wrist. "Who were you going to call?"
"Bianca."
"No."
"But I'm obviously going to be late ...oh."
"I don't want those people to know what's happening. We'll take the phone, though, in case I need to relay information on the injuries. I gave the number to the dispatcher. Did you bring the rope?"
"Rope?"
He popped the trunk again and got out, leaving me to retrieve the phone. I was laden like a camel. I lumbered around as he pulled a coil of climbing rope from behind the black plastic box of snow chains we had never used. He also took out his point-and-click camera with the built-in flash, which he stuffed into one of my pockets.
I regarded the rope with interest. "You're taking up mountain climbing, and I'm your faithful sherpa."
"Very funny. I want a lifeline. I'll use that tree by the road. The first ten or fifteen feet are steepest."
We redistributed the load and slogged back to the marker tree. Jay would have to lower himself through the brush then make his way along the milder slope to the wreck. I was ready to go down, too, but he made me promise to wait for the rescue car. We wrapped a bight of rope around the trunk of the tree. It was some kind of native evergreen and probably shallow rooted. I hoped it would hold.
"Phone?" Jay said, reaching for it.
"Why... Oh, in case you need to describe the injuries."
"Come on, Lark. Get it into gear." He stuffed the phone in one pocket and the emergency medical kit in the other, and draped the canteen across his chest. He also managed to squish both blankets into his jacket. They folded up small.
I held the rope against his weight as he picked his way down the slope. Once he lurched off-balance and the rope jerked at my hand, but I dug my heels in and held on. When I felt the rope go slack I peered down at him.
"I'm okay. Set the flares out," he called.
"Okay," I yelled back.
I set four flares both ways from the tree, with attention to the curves in the road and the probable speed of the rescue vehicles. I also had instructions to photograph the skid marks and the point at which the truck had left the road. Neither of us thought the photos would substitute for professional work, but the rescue vehicle might arrive before the patrol car. Rescue crews tended to take first things first, and as far as they were concerned preserving evidence came a long way behind saving lives. That was a viewpoint I could sympathize with. Nevertheless, I did my best with the camera. Just in case.
The marks were fairly obvious, now I knew they were there. I wondered how many less lethal times Jason had burned rubber. His tires had ground tread marks into the weedy shoulder before the pickup became airborne. I shot the tread marks from a couple of angles. The natural light must have been adequate because the flash didn't discharge.
Then I stuffed the small camera back in my pocket, walked to the tree, and watched Jay's uncommunicative head bobbing in the brush. I dislike waiting. I hoped the paramedics and the cops would hurry.
Since I knew where the pickup was, the path it had cut was visible. It had sailed over the edge, hit the ground beside a noble fir, and rolled down through the blackberries until it came to rest on its side against an alder. The blackberry vines had whipped back, partially obscuring the truck so I couldn't see which side was down. Blackberries are the kudzu of the Pacific Northwest.
Jay stopped by the patch of color that was one of the boys. He squatted there a long time. Then he inched his way through the vines to the pickup. Once, I thought I could hear him talking on the phone, but the wind had picked up and a stream gurgled nearby, so I couldn't be sure.
I didn't see how anyone could have survived a crash like that. I thought of Bill's ingenuous face and Jason's twisty little mouth, and I began a kind of preliminary mourning. It was such a stupid waste.
Jason was a rotten driver, however youthful his reaction time, capable of running the truck off the road on his own. He was the personification of adolescent male insurance rates. I was no expert, but, from the look of the tread marks, he had been speeding. Was the wreck an accident, a nasty coincidence, or had it been engineered? I shivered in the rising breeze.
I also thought of Mary Sadat. Mary's car had been found in Astoria. If someone had murdered her, the killer could have dumped her body along this road with perfect confidence. Hunters were always getting lost in the hills. Sometimes the ground searches found them, sometimes not. Sometimes their gnawed bones showed up years later, a nice academic puzzle for forensic anthropologists.
"Hey!"
I jerked back to the scene before me.
Jay indicated that he wanted to come up. I took up the rope and braced myself. He needed it more coming up than going down. He grabbed the tree when he reached the top and scrambled onto the road. His face and hands were scratched and bleeding.
"Blackberry vines?"
"What? Yeah, it's a jungle."
"Are they dead?"
He shook his head. "Both unconscious, though. I don't like the look of Bill Johnson. He was thrown. Head injuries, possible spinal damage. The damn fool wasn't wearing a seatbelt."
"
What about Jason?"
Jay divested himself of most of his gear. The canteen clanked on the gravel. "Jason's trapped in the truck, but he was moaning a little. They're both dangerously cold. I wrapped Bill in one of the blankets. Couldn't get to Jason." He sat on the edge of the road and took out the phone again. "Reception's lousy down there. The rescue team will need the jaws."
The Jaws of Life. I wondered if the chrome roll-bar had done Jason any good.
Jay was talking to the dispatcher. She crackled back. After a while he signed off. "That line's not clear, but I think she said they're on the way."
It was a good half hour before the fire department rescue truck and the first of the sheriff's cars arrived, time for us to carry our gear back to the Honda. I was expecting Dale Nelson, but I didn't recognize the deputy who came.
The rescue crew was smooth and professional. The paramedic in charge questioned Jay, as the others, who included a young woman, readied stretchers for the descent. Then they went down. They were at it a long time.
Jay talked to the deputy about the skid marks. He also made it plain they should check the pickup for evidence of tampering. There was a lot of radio chatter back and forth. Eventually, the paramedic called for the Life Flight helicopter from Kayport.
I felt like a fifth wheel. Still, the process was interesting in a horrible way. After a long while, Jay came over to me. His scratches had scabbed.
I gave him a hug. "I'm cold."
"Me, too. Won't be long. They'll fly Bill out in the chopper. Jason's in somewhat better shape, though he's still unconscious. They'll transport him in the ambulance."
There was no ambulance. Even as I formed the idea, one roared up from the south, from Kayport. The driver slewed the vehicle around importantly and parked behind the rescue van. Then Dale showed up, light flashing. He liked the revolving light. It wasn't necessary.
Jay said, "I can ride back with Dale. Why don't you take the car on down?"
"I'll wait until the helicopter comes."
He smiled at me.
"Well, I've never seen a helicopter rescue." I felt defensive as well as redundant. Jay didn't argue. He gave me another hug and walked off to talk to Dale. I remembered the thermos of coffee and went for it.
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