John MacDonald - Fatal Accident

Banning knew how it was with me, knew I couldn’t get the dead face of the Miller kid out of my mind. It was he who talked me into taking two weeks off in the spring.

I had taken my time packing; so, well after dark, I was roaring up Route 14 north out of Williamsport, my hands light and easy on the wheel of Banning’s car. Mine was in the shop and he had insisted.

There was one of those Pennsylvania fogs. It was just heavy enough so that I didn’t dare pass the car ahead of me, and was content to cruise along just far enough behind him so that his twin tail-lights made a red glow on the fog that tore by in shreds from the breeze of his fast travel.

It was hypnotic, driving behind the other car, and, as I drove, I thought back over the last ten years and wondered why I had become a cop. Lots of security, sure, but damn low pay. And you never manage to get tough enough to keep things from getting to you, from getting down through your thickened hide and stinging the few soft parts you had left.

I thought of the Miller kid and of the hammer murders in the shanty down by the river, and the gray, bloated look of the bodies that came out of the river. Violence. Diseases of the mind. Shifty eyes. A thousand lineups. You walk into small, dingy sitting rooms and you can smell the blood in the air and hear a woman moaning. It’s a dirty business. Thankless.

The guy ahead of me had Pennsy plates. I was looking ahead to Jack Farner’s lodge in the hills where I could sleep twenty hours a day and eat like a horse and come back to life.

A few miles north of Roaring Branch, Mr. Buick ahead of me slowed down and I dropped back, figuring he was about to turn. A light rain had started, cutting the fog, and his tail-lights were clearer. The road made a gradual bend to the right. He had dropped down to about forty. I held back, waiting for him to let me know what he was going to do.

He went part way around the turn, and the tires on the right side dropped off onto the wet shoulder. I braked, realizing that he’d have to slow down to get back onto the road. He didn’t. He kept on going, right across the shoulder and the right front of the big car smashed into a mammoth tree with a noise like a million bricks falling into a greenhouse. The smash threw the big car onto its side and it slid forty feet in the mud, wheels turning in the air.

I jammed on my brakes and fought to get Banning’s coupe out of a long skid. I pulled off onto the shoulder a hundred or so feet beyond the smashup and ran back through the rain, a flashlight in my hand.

The rain pattered on the black metal of the car. The front end was a complete mess. There was no sound. The door stuck. I managed to yank it open and pry it back. I climbed up and flashed the light down in there.

A man moaned. He was at the bottom of the heap. A bleeding woman was across him. The fresh blood matted her light hair. I bent down through the open door and felt for her wet arm. No pulse.

I flashed the light on her face. It was impossible to tell what she had looked like, but when I saw the depressed fracture of the frontal lobe, the pale, shell-like bones of the temple protruding through the skin, I knew there was no use in fooling with her. I pulled up hard on her arm, got her body up through the door, and put it on the grass.

The man’s face was covered with blood. His mouth opened as I held the light on him and he moaned again. Ambulance business.

I crawled in with him, hearing the glass of the window on his side crack as I stepped on it. I checked him over to make certain he wasn’t bleeding to death. No big holes in him that I could find.

Another car stopped. I climbed out, sent them down to the gas station to phone for an ambulance and the highway patrol. I handed the kid driving the car a buck and told him to bring back a couple of red flares.

He jumped the car away like a scared rabbit. I flashed my light back on the wreck. The guy was slowly climbing up out of the door I had propped open. I ran to him and steadied him as he climbed down.

His eyes were very wide and he was saying hoarsely, “Sleepy. Fell asleep.”

I found a blanket in the back of his car and wrapped him in it and made him sit down, leaning against the bole of the tree he had hit. There was a big gouge in the bark and the white wood underneath was ragged and splintered.

Another car stopped and a man hollered out the window, “Trouble?”

“All under control, unless you’re a doctor. Are you?”

“No.”

He started to climb out. I said, “Run along, friend.” He got back in, slammed the door and drove off.

The kid I had sent to the gas station came back and told me he had put the call through. He had a flashlight. He stared at the dead woman while I set the flares out on the shoulder.

When I got back to the man he said, “Janet! Where’s Janet?”

He tried to get up. I put my hands on his shoulders and held him down. “Relax. She’s hurt bad. A doctor’ll be along in a minute.”

Sirens growled in the distance, singing over the hills and around the curves. They bounced to a stop on the shoulder. Two of the Pennsy state cops, young, blunt, and efficient. They gave the woman one look and turned to the man.

At their request he tugged his wallet out of his pocket and handed it to them. One flashed his light on the license and papers while I explained what I had seen and what I had done. The other looked the car over, got a camera and flash bulbs out of his car, and took pictures of the tracks in the mud, the scar on the tree, the overturned car.

The ambulance pulled over close to the tree, right through the shallow ditch beyond the shoulder.

The man was moaning again. They got a stretcher and made him stretch out on it. The intern went over him with quick, careful hands. More cars stopped. People got out, their eyes big with curiosity.

They carted the woman into the ambulance and one trooper told me to report to the barracks near Canton while they got a formal statement from me.

I sat in the small front room of the trooper station after the questions were finished. They had, of course, learned that I was one of the brotherhood, and, after a drink, they asked me to stay overnight; one of the troopers was on leave and I could use his bed. I was too tired to object.

In a short while the younger one of the two, named Sid Graydon, came back from the hospital in Canton. He tossed his hat on the hall table, came into the room, and sat down wearily.

The older one, Charlie Hopper, asked, “Get much, Sid?”

“Not a hell of a lot, Charlie. They gave him a drug to quiet him. He isn’t hurt. Just shock and being shaken up. A fool nurse told him his wife is dead. He cried like a baby. Damn fool to drive while he was sleepy.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Philadelphia. Upper Darby to be exact. He and his wife were driving up to Elmira to visit her cousin there. His name is Walker Drock. He’s a broker. Just another statistic to write up, Charlie. Nothing to pin on the guy. His wife’s death is enough punishment for him.”

Charlie sighed. “Probably both of them were asleep. According to the coroner, she didn’t even get her hands up in front of her face. Just slammed her face right into the dashboard beside the glove compartment. Dented it right in. Funny about him slowing down. Usually they speed up when they fall asleep.”

“Foot probably slid off the gas. By the way, Charlie, I’ve got to call Kell’s garage in the morning and tell them not to touch the car. Drock was insistent about that. He told me that about four times.”

“That’s funny.”

“No, these accident cases, they get an idea in their head and you can’t get it out. He probably heard about some guy who had his car towed away by the police and then got a couple of hundred-dollar repair bill. I don’t think anybody is going to do much repairing on that crate.”