Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Gavin Hoopes was just climbing down from his cab. He was a rangy, weather-beaten man in his mid thirties wearing cowboy boots. A pair of sunglasses hung in the V-neck of his pink T-shirt. He looked pale under his tan and his teeth chattered slightly. He smelled faintly of diesel fuel and less faintly of sweat.

Auburn showed his badge.

“Another city cop?” asked Hoopes. “Hey, man, I called a ten-forty-two in to the troopers, and I ain’t seen Smokey yet.”

“Our courts have jurisdiction over the part of the Interstate that’s inside city limits.”

Hoopes did a double take at the mention of courts. “Man, I didn’t even know we was in the city.”

“How many beers did you put down at lunch, Mr. Hoopes?”

“Zip.”

“Taking any pills? Been smoking anything?”

“Man, I’m clean.” He made a sweeping gesture with both palms down.

“What happened to your arm?”

Hoopes examined a long shallow abrasion on his right forearm and shrugged it off. “Must have hit something up in the cab.”

In the space between the truck and the wall, Hoopes successfully walked a more or less straight crack in the pavement, touched his nose with his eyes closed, and picked up a nickel from the ground.

“Did I pass?”

“So far. Blood tests for alcohol and drugs are mandatory after a fatal motor accident. You have the right to refuse, but in this state that’s an automatic six months’ suspension of your driver’s license.”

“Man, like I said, I’m clean. Let’s do your tests and get it over with.”

“Do you own this rig?”

“No, sir. Owner is Culver-Vaughan in Atlanta. I need to call in.”

“Couple other things first.” Auburn wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Could we get in the cab to talk?”

“Come up to my boudoir,” said Hoopes with a giddy quiver in his voice. He walked around to the driver’s side and climbed up behind the enormous wheel. Auburn mounted on the passenger’s side.

“Where were you headed, Mr. Hoopes?”

“Wheeling. Hey, I already told all this to the guy with the big moustache.”

“I know. I have Patrolman Bystrom’s report right here. He took your statement about the accident for reporting purposes, as required by law. I’m talking to you because, in this particular accident, a man died. That makes this a homicide investigation.”

The chattering of Hoopes’s teeth became more pronounced as Auburn read him his rights.

“What kind of cargo have you got back there?”

“Steel office furniture.” From a recess beside the seat Hoopes produced a battered aluminum case and handed it to Auburn. It opened like a book and each half contained a shallow compartment with a spring clip at the top to hold papers. Auburn quickly scanned a computer-generated cargo manifest, a routing slip, and a voucher from the truck scales east of town.

“Just tell me in your own words what happened.”

“Like I told the other guy, this biker cut in front of me a couple miles back east, just before we dropped down to three lanes and I had to jog onto the right shoulder. I figured he was heading for the next exit — otherwise he wouldn’t have come over in the slow lane.”

“Was he traveling alone? I mean, were there any other bikers with him?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you notice anything odd about the way he was driving?”

“Not then. And I was watching him pretty close, too, because he was right there like a fly on my nose.”

“Were you crowding him?”

Hoopes shrugged. “He knew I was there.”

“So what happened?”

“About three hundred yards back, I seen him let off his throttle and go into a kind of a wiggle, and then he went over. Man, I mean he went over. Him and that bike rolled like they was two alligators trying to eat each other.”

“Any idea why he lost control?”

“No, sir, unless he was full of booze or dope.”

“You didn’t see anything hit him or his bike? Like a rock, or something that came off a rig up ahead?”

“No, sir.”

“We didn’t find any goggles or sunglasses. Could he have been blinded by the sun?”

“Sure — could have been.”

“You say he cut in front of you. Could he have been wrangling with somebody else on the road?”

“Could have been. I didn’t see it.”

“And then you hit him?”

“Not till after he flipped a couple times like a hog on ice and bounced off the wall.”

“What was your speed at the time?”

“Probably doing about forty.”

That response was automatic: the posted limit in the construction zone. Auburn preserved a rhetorical silence, his pen suspended above the page.

Hoopes squirmed. “You ever drive an eighteen-wheeler before?”

“Not that I can remember.”

“Well, let me tell you, you don’t drive it, it drives you. Man, when you got twelve, fifteen tons of steel rolling behind you, you don’t tell it what to do, you ask it, real polite, and hope you asked soon enough. I stomped on that brake as soon as I seen he was out of control, but by the time we stopped, the rig had skated fifty, sixty — hey, can’t you measure my skid marks and tell how fast I was going?”

“There’s an evidence technician down there right now, sir. He’s going to measure those skid marks to the nearest centimeter, and take pictures of them from one end to the other. But the length of a skid mark depends not only on how fast the vehicle was going when the brakes were applied, but also on the coefficient of friction between the tires and the pavement. The judges in this jurisdiction won’t accept skid marks in evidence without at least three comparison sets of marks that have been made at different speeds by the same vehicle with the same tires on the same pavement.”

“Man, you’d have to shut down the whole Interstate to do that.”

“Exactly. But your speed isn’t the only issue here. However fast you’re going, the law requires you to stay far enough behind whatever’s in front of you to assure a safe stopping distance. If you kill somebody because you were tailgating, that’s manslaughter.”

Hoopes bit down hard on nothing. “So what am I looking at here? A fine, the slammer, what?”

“That’s up to the judge. On the basis of what you’ve told me and what I can see at the scene, I’m citing you for unlawful operation — following too close and causing a fatal accident. As we gather evidence and testimony from any witnesses we can find, those charges may be dropped, or others may be added.”

“So what’s next?”

“Next we go to the hospital, get a dressing on that arm, and have them draw blood for some tests.”

“Then do I get my license back?”

“Depends on what the tests show.”

“And in the meantime the rig is going to sit right here in the middle of the Interstate?”

“No, sir. We’ll have a driver move it off the highway. Unless it has to be towed.”

“Shouldn’t. She’s got some body damage to the front fender, but the tires and the steering should be okay.”

Auburn finished writing out Hoopes’s citation and had him sign a form indicating he understood he was summoned to appear in municipal traffic court on the following Tuesday morning. After verifying the truck’s Vehicle Identification Number from a plate riveted to the dashboard, he climbed down from the cab to recheck the registration number, examine the damage to the fender, and look for pellet marks on the front of the truck matching those on Mulreedy’s motorcycle. He found none.

Contrary to Auburn’s expectations, there was no indication that the road construction crew were getting ready to stop work for the day. The racket of the jackhammers went on unabated, and the excavating equipment and dump trucks still performed their clumsy adagio dance around one another. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a State Highway Patrol cruiser bouncing across the median from the eastbound lanes.