by Lee Killough
Once through the traffic onto 282, Garreth floored the accelerator.
The lights of Maggie’s car flashed up 282 by the Co-op. Approaching, he saw the car parked behind the Silverado, with the F-150 sitting sideways across the southbound lane looking t-boned by a third vehicle. His first thought was to cut in at Gfeller Lumber and drive around the accident to block the southbound lane, but as he arrived the driver’s doors of both pickups opened. The Silverado's driver staggered out and toward the 150, cursing, fists waving.
The 150’s driver almost fell out of his vehicle, but caught the door and stayed upright…then dragged himself around the door to grab the pickup’s hood for support, screaming, “Diane! Diane!”
“Garreth, stop him!” Maggie shouted from the far side of the 150.
First he need to stop the Silverado’s driver, whose intent seemed to be bodily harm. He leaped out of his car into a flood of human and vehicle fluid smells…caught up to the driver and spun him. “Hey. Hey! Look at me! Stop. You need to lie down. Lie…down.”
The driver’s knees buckled.
Garreth eased him to the pavement. “Stay there.”
Then he ran after the 150’s driver…reaching him as the boy round the front of the truck, still yelling the girl’s name. Beyond him, Garreth saw with dismay why Maggie wanted him restrained. A female sprawled on the hood of a Ford Fairlane with her head embedded in the windshield.
Inside the Fairlane a female passenger screamed hysterically, almost drowning the male voice trying to calm her. Maggie straightened beside the driver’s window and headed for the bed of the 150.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
As Garreth dragged the boy back and turned him, to his further dismay he spotted a second motionless figure…this one male, lying on the highway several yards ahead of the Silverado, a dark stain spreading around his head.
Two fatalities? Damn!
He jerked his focus back to the boy whose arms he held and after capturing the boy’s gaze, laid him down on grass beside the highway.
Maggie, having peered into the back of the 150, gave Garreth a thumbs up and ran for the passenger side of the Silverado.
Garreth checked the 150, too. A juvenile male lay curled in the truck bed, motionless but signaling life by whimpering, clutching the Cougar banner, which had torn loose from one pole.
“Passenger’s alive but unconscious!” Maggie called from the Silverado, raising her voice above the nearing sirens.
The sirens announced Fire Rescue’s arrival. Soon they had other assistance, too: two Bellamy SO deputies, one in uniform, the other in a Cougar sweatshirt with his badge pinned on the front, and Duncan in a Timberwolf sweatshirt, face painted blue and yellow. Duncan and a deputy set out flashing cones and diverted traffic from 282 to Kansas via cross streets north and south of accident. Sue Ann reported that Serk had moved from the stadium to handle traffic downtown.
Fire Rescue took the injured victims to St. Francis. The deputies left when the last of the injured victims were on their way to the hospital, the sweatshirted one agreeing to contact the families of the two Bellamy boys. Duncan disappeared about the same time. Leaving Garreth and Maggie photographing the fatalities — named Diane Barnes and Jonah Wiltz — so the wagon from Sterling-Weiss Funeral Home could transport the bodies to the hospital, too.
Looking after the Sterling-Weiss vehicle’s departing tail lights, Maggie visibly braced herself. “I need to go notify our parents.”
The grimmest job of the night. “Would you like me to come with you?” Garreth asked.
She hesitated only a moment before shaking her head. “I know them. You finish up here.”
So he took final photos and measurements of the scene and made a rough sketch, watched while A-1 towed the vehicles, then helped them clean up debris and fluids, so he could finally pick up the cones and re-open the road.
Maggie radioed to join her at the hospital.
Taking the photos and accident scene diagrams from him, she tallied the injuries for him: James Coffey, driver of the Fairlane, broken ankle; Arlene Coffey, his wife, possible whiplash; Matt Schaller, driver of the 150, possible whiplash; Gary Canfield, passenger in the Silverado, concussion and frontal sinus fracture; Kenny Creager, the Silverado’s driver, and Peter Barns, passenger in the 150 and brother of Diane Barns, under observation but apparently sustaining only contusions.
She had taken a statement from Mr. Coffey but was waiting until tomorrow for the rest. Mrs. Coffey, Matt, and Peter were all under sedation,and the parents of the Silverado's driver and passenger had not arrived yet. Matt and Peter’s parents were here, devastated. Mrs. Barnes, Maggie reported, sat at her son’s bedside weeping quietly but ceaselessly. Quietly forewarned about Diane’s injuries, Mr. Barnes insisted he alone identify her…which he had done by her clothes and a necklace she wore, then needed fourteen stitches in his hand after punching out a window. Mr. and Mrs. Wiltz had been there to identify Jonah but now gone home, Mrs. Wiltz with sedatives.
All people Maggie knew. This had to be hard for her. Garreth said, “How are you doing?”
Her jaw went square. “I’m fine!”
Meaning, no but damn if she would admit it. He retreated to patrol.
Meeting with Serk to thank him for the help downtown, Garreth gave him details of the accident.
Serk shook his head sadly. “I worked plenty of fatalities in the Highway Patrol but the accidents involving young people always got to me the most. And this…such appalling consequences for a prank.” He sighed. “There’s one more victim we need to remember, too, Jonah’s brother Darrell. Darrell made the football play of his life tonight, and now how can he ever enjoy the memory?”
A tragic ending for what should have been a night to celebrate.
Echoing that, Baumen settled into the silence of a graveyard. Walking Kansas, then cruising down random streets, all empty, Garreth felt like the last man on Earth.
Around two-thirty Doris radioed: “Can you come to the station?”
When he arrived, he found Maggie bent over a typewriter. He eyed her in surprise. “You haven’t gone home yet?”
“I need to finish this accident report while everything is still fresh in my mind.” Diamonds would have shattered on her voice.
Doris gestured him to her with a crooked finger and whispered, “She’s been at it since one, but keeps tearing up forms and starting over. Can you do something?”
Maybe.
He walked back to her desk. “Maggie.” He expected her to at least glance up so he could look her in the eyes. But her focus stayed on the typewriter. Might voice alone work? “You’ve been on duty over ten hours. Go…home. Finish…this…in…the…morning. Believe me, you’ll still remember every detail.”
The temperature dropped twenty degrees. “You’re in my light.”
Garreth shrugged at Doris and left. Frosted again.
So he never expected to find Maggie sitting on his stairs when he came home.
“I finished the report.” Her tone challenged him…what, to apologize for doubting she could?
He kept his own tone casual. “But you still haven’t gone home.”
“I’m not tired.” Still challenging him.
He recognized that syndrome…had been there. In fact she was probably exhausted but too wound up, too haunted, to sleep. In a bigger department she could have decompressed in a bar with a group of fellow cops. Here, now, she had only him.
He climbed past her and opened the door. “Then come in and have some tea.”
Her nose wrinkled even as she followed him. “Tea!”
Not that tea interested him, either. What if he just went ahead and had his blood. His throat burned for it. How would she know what it was?
“I don’t have anything stronger.” Blame hunger for the impulse that made him add, “I never drink…alcohol.”
She missed the Dracula reference. “Oh…recovering alcoholic?”
A reasonable assumption, he had to ad
mit. “Alcohol allergy.” He put two mugs of water with tea bags in the microwave. “Have a seat.”
Instead, she paced. Several times she took a breath as though about to speak, then paced on. Not sure what she wanted to say….or how to start?
She needed a nudge. “You keep seeing it happen, right?”
She halted, eyed him, and dropped into a chair at the table, staring into the past. “Over and over, in slow motion. The Silverado pulling out around Matt to run from me, realizing there’s an oncoming vehicle and trying to pull back in…but too soon, impacting at Matt’s rear wheel. Matt spinning out…ejecting Jonah. Diane…” Maggie sucked in a breath. “Diane had been hanging out her window howling back at the Silverado. When the Fairlane t-boned Matt, she — ” Maggie choked…swallowed. “I heard her hit the windshield.” Her tone went defensive. “It’s wimpy, I know.”
Was that what she thought? “Wimpy?” The microwave dinged. He set a mug in front of her. “Let’s review this. You watched two kids you know die violently, but despite that you worked their accident and notified all the parents. Probably the toughest part of this job.”
“I almost lost it at the parents’. The Wiltz’ were having a party, celebrating the game and Darrell’s play. The minute I said I needed to talk to them in private Floyd jumped to the conclusion the Bellamy boys had sworn out a complaint about their banner and started ranting at me for the stupidity of arresting Jonah over a prank. I wanted to put a bullet in the ceiling to make him shut up and listen to me!” Her hands tightened around the mug as if to crush it.
He knew that feeling. “But you didn’t.”
“Because Abbie realized I wasn’t there about some stupid prank and she dragged Floyd outside!” Maggie shoved the mug away with a force that almost sent it off the table. “He wouldn’t have given you or Duncan that shit!”
“I think he would. He sounds like he’d had a few beers, and maybe something stronger. In the face of which I’m confident you maintained your professionalism…as I saw you maintain it the rest of the night. So…wimpy? Hell…you’ve got bigger balls than a lot of cops I’ve worked with.”
She stared at him as if stunned, then started to tremble. Garreth reacted as he had when reaction to a tough case at the hospital caught up with Marti. He circled the table to lift Maggie to her feet and put his arms around her.
The flood of her blood scent turned his hunger ravenous, the heat of it surging outward through him, including to his groin. Feeling himself harden, he let go and started to step back. “Shit, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean — ”
Her arms locked around him. “No, no; it’s…” She fairly lunged for his mouth, kissing him with violent, desperate urgency.
He recognized what drove her…had been there, too…using sex as an affirmation of life.
He gave her the affirmation, meeting her ferocity with his hunger goading him almost to savagery, as it had in San Francisco. Only this time he fought against biting, making the one penetration substitute for sinking his fangs into a vein.
Her convulsive release shattered all control and the tension, horror, and grief bottled up all night turned into wracking sobs. Garreth held her through the storm, and even after it spent itself and she slid into exhausted sleep. Ignoring hunger, he enjoyed the feel of a woman in his arms again.
Eventually she began shivering…with cold this time, her goosebumps told him. He lifted her to the couch from the pile of their discarded uniforms on the braided rug and tucked the afghan from the back of the couch around her. Then snatching the last bottle from the fridge, he headed to the bathroom for his robe, slugging down half the quart on the way.
Coming back shortly, to his surprise he found Maggie awake and struggling into her shirt and trousers. Minus underwear, which still lay on the rug.
“Maggie…what — ”
“I have to go.” Without looking at him she jammed the underwear into her pockets and her feet into her shoes.
Was she so embarrassed by what happened? “No, please stay. I’ll reheat the tea.”
“I need a clean uniform.” She scooped up her vest and was across the room and out the door.
He stared at the closed door. Shit. Was it something he did? Maybe going after his robe made her think he wanted to get away from her, though he had not just left her lying there on the rug. Did she think she would now be a locker room joke? Or did proving herself the equal of male officers make any softening unacceptable?
Not that the reason mattered, he reflected with a sigh. The result was probably a professional relationship back in the deep freeze for the rest of his time here.
13
Garreth woke to the smell of rain and sound of it drizzling on his balcony. No surprise; he smelled it coming during his blood run last night. Dressing for duty, he tried not to brood about Maggie. Whatever her attitude now, he would live with it. The nearing prospect of crumbling into dust after catching Lane here, or abandoning Baumen to follow Anna to Mexico, left no time to care about relationships anyway.
So it felt anticlimactic to reach the station and not see her typing up reports.
“Is Maggie still out?” he asked.
Nat looked up from going over reports. “Danzig let me send her home at six and order her to get some rest.”
“God, yes!” Sue Ann said. “Then maybe we can live with her tomorrow. She ran registrations and DL’s right and left…” Both arms waved in demonstration. “…and wrote up every blessed moving violation she caught, not cutting anyone slack. Rolling stop, pull over, buddy; jump the light, step out of the car; change lanes without signaling, your ass is grass; three miles over the speed limit, see you in court!”
Nat chuckled at Sue Anne’s vehemence.
“Even pre-menstrual she’s not that hard-nosed!”
That was harsh. “You can’t blame her for being sensitive to moving violations today.”
Sue Ann sighed. “I guess.”
“Speaking of moving violations…” Garreth turned to Nat. “…what’s the rain doing to cruising tonight?” For safety’s sake, reducing it, he hoped.
Nat tapped reports into a neat stack. “The rain isn’t a factor.”
Garreth frowned at him. “Meaning what?”
“You’ll see.”
Once on patrol, Garreth saw. Whether there were fewer vehicles than usual, he could not say…because they used a single lane. No one passed, no one honked, no one leaned out a window to call to riders in another vehicle. With lights reflecting off wet metal and rain-slicked pavement, they followed the customary circuit around and around in silent single file, moving at the speed of a funeral procession. Including Scott Dreiling’s Trans-Am. A few windows had the names Diane and Jonah painted on them.
Garreth parked on a railroad crossing to watch.
Before long, Duncan pulled up to his window. “Creepy, isn’t it. I wonder when they planned this. There are vehicles with Bellamy High parking stickers, too.”
“I don’t think anyone planned it,” Garreth said. “In ‘78, when Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated in San Francisco, somewhere between twenty-five and forty thousand people spontaneously gathered in Castro Street and walked to City Hall in a candlelight vigil. They didn’t plan; it just happened.” He eyed the slow procession. “It almost makes you believe in a universal consciousness.”
Duncan grimaced. “That sounds like California hippie mumbo-jumbo. But,” he added, “I have to say the whole damn town has been like this today. God knows how Lebekov found those violations she wrote up. Come and see 282.”
Garreth had seen plenty of these yard and streetside memorials before. Still, he followed Duncan out to the highway. And caught his breath.
The memorial stretched along both sides of the highway, in front of the Co-op, just short of blocking its entrance, and at Hammond’s across the road. Piles of flowers, photographs wrapped in plastic against the rain, the inevitable candles — doused by the rain except for several in small lanterns. Hand-pain
ted signs with Jonah and Diane’s names established the Co-op side as Jonah’s and the Hammond side for Diane. Jonah’s side included Timberwolf flags, a basketball jersey, and several basketballs; Diane’s, photos of her sitting on a bay horse and bending around a big oil drum on the same horse, cowboy hats, plastic trophies, toy horses.
“Jonah was the Timberwolves’ star guard,” Duncan said. “My niece keeps begging my sister for a horse so she can barrel race like the Barnes girl. I guess she was good.”
As Garreth pulled away, car lights appeared in his rear view mirror and stopped for a passenger to leave yet more flowers for Jonah. When he passed the Barnes and Wiltz houses later, lights shone from all the downstairs rooms and cars lined their streets. Everyone in town coming to offer condolences it looked like. Including Martin Lebekov. Garreth recognized the Caravan outside the Wiltz house…reminding him this was the second Wiltz death in a week.
Through the evening Garreth mused that the silent cruise did reflect the town mood, as Duncan said. Even in the bars. He took not one drunk and disorderly complaint. Either the usual weekend hard drinkers were doing so quietly or had gone somewhere livelier.
A whole town in mourning. It awed him. The Moscone/Milk murders had shaken San Francisco and produced that massive walk to City Hall, and brought thousands to view the bodies lying in state at City Hall, but it had not shut down the city. Once the cruise petered out, Duncan went off duty, and the bars closed, the graveyard silence of last night enveloped Baumen. Again he seemed the only living — undead — thing walking Kansas or driving through the rest of town. And the rain drizzled gently but steadily.
Like angels weeping.
Who had he heard say that? Probably Grandma Doyle.
Maybe the mood soaked into him, too. He just knew he finished the easiest shift of his career totally exhausted. So on reaching home and finding Maggie on his steps again, this time in civilian clothes, leaning against the garage sound asleep under her slicker, his first impulse was to slip up the stairs past her.
Instead he shook her awake. “Maggie.”
