Ed McBain - Driving Lessons

‘Breathalyzer was negative, right?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ Carl said.

‘So what was he on?’

‘Who knows?’

‘Whatever it was, he’s wide awake now,’ Katie said.

‘Can we do a blood test?’ Carl asked.

‘Under Miranda, you mean?’ Alyce said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Not without his consent. Nothing I’d like better than to see what kind of juice is running through his veins, have him pee for us, too. But we’d need a court order for that, and we can’t get one till he’s arraigned. This was New York, Chicago, any other big bad city, we’d find an open court, have him arraigned tonight. River Close, though, just try to wake up some judge this hour of the night. We’ll be lucky if he’s arraigned by two, three tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Which may be too late,’ Katie said.

‘Depending on what kind of shit he took,’ Carl said.

‘If we can’t show he was on something ,’ Alyce said, ‘we’ve got no case.’

‘Well, we’ve got witnesses at the scene,’ Carl said.

‘The girl’s a witness, too,’ Katie said.

‘Sure, but Newell’s attorney might...’

‘No question,’ Carl said.

‘Right, claim he...’

‘You can bet the farm on it,’ Alyce said. ‘He’ll say the accident caused it. Shock, whatever. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t remember his own name. Anyway, let’s charge him and hold him. We may be able to get an early-morning arraignment. If not, we pray it was a drug with a long half-life. You agree with vehicular manslaughter?’

‘I wish we could go for reckless,’ Carl said. ‘Guy pops pills, and then knowingly gets in a car with a learner ? He’s not only risking her life, he’s courting disaster with everybody on the street.’

‘Let me offer the grand jury a choice,’ Alyce said. ‘Shoot for reckless manslaughter, settle for vehicular. How does that sound?’

‘Good to me,’ Katie said.

‘Me, too,’ Carl said.

‘Let’s get some sleep,’ Alyce said.

Don’t let the bimbo answer, Katie thought.

She was sitting at the kitchen counter, sipping a Scotch and soda. The clock on the wall read three minutes to midnight. The phone kept ringing. Three, four, not the bimbo, she prayed.

‘Hello?’

The bimbo.

‘Let me talk to Stephen, please,’ she said.

‘Who’s this?’

‘Mrs Logan,’ she said.

‘His mother?’

Sure, his mother, Katie thought.

Who happens to be dead.

‘His wife ,’ she said, hitting the word hard.

‘Oh.’

Long pause.

‘Just a sec, OK?’

Sounding like a teeny hopper. Twenty-two years old, Katie thought. The minute hand on the wall clock lurched. Eleven fifty-eight. My how the time flies when you’re having...

‘Hello?’

‘Stephen?’

‘Yes?’

‘Katie.’

‘Yes, Katie. Do you know what time it is?’

‘I spoke to my attorney today...’

‘Katie, we’re not supposed to be doing this.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Talking. The attorneys are supposed to do all the talking.’

‘Oh dear, am I breaking the law?’ she asked.

‘You know you’re not breaking the law. But...’

‘Then hear me out. We sent you a counter-proposal last week, and we haven’t yet heard from you. I’m eager to get on with this, Stephen. I thought you were, too. Instead...’

‘I am.’

‘That’s what I imagined. You’re the one who left, Stephen.’

‘Katie, I really think we should let the lawyers handle this, is what I think, really.’

‘I really think you should tell me what’s taking you so long to study a one-page document, is what I think, really.’

‘Katie...’ he said.

And hesitated.

She waited.

‘Give me a little time, OK?’ he said softly. ‘Please.’

And all at once she was bewildered.

In bed that night, all night long, she kept remembering. Because, honestly, you know, she’d had no clue. Smart cop, first in her class at the academy, promoted to detective after a year on the force when she’d walked into a silent-alarm holdup and apprehended two guys twice her size who were wanted for armed robbery in Indiana, a hell of a long way away, but who was measuring? Smart detective. Had no clue at all that Stephen was cheating on her.

Well, married to the same guy for ten years, who would have guessed? Such a lovely couple, everyone said. High-school sweethearts, everyone said. She’d waited for him while he was in the army, waited for him when he was called up again and sent to yet another distant nation. There was always something to defend, she guessed, honor or oil or some damn thing. But, oh, how handsome he’d looked on the day they were married, Captain Stephen Gregory Logan, in his dress uniform, Miss Katharine Kyle Byrne, all in white, though certainly no virgin. Well, high-school sweethearts, you know. Met him when she was sixteen.

Who would have guessed? Not a clue.

There were the hours, of course.

A policeman’s lot is not a happy one, the man once wrote and he’d been right. The graveyard shift was the worst. You wouldn’t think there’d be much crime in a small city like River Close but there were drugs everywhere in America these days, and drugs moved day and night, so you had to have round the clock shifts, and you had to have cops who caught those shifts, on rotation, every three months. Whenever she jammed what was officially called ‘the morning shift’, Katie left for work at eleven fifteen to get to the squadroom at a quarter to midnight, and didn’t get home till a quarter past eight, by which time Stephen had already left for work. During those three months, she saw him maybe five, six hours a day. That wasn’t too good for the marriage, she realized now, but who would have guessed then? They’re so much in love, everyone said.

So last month, she gets home from a long hard afternoon shift, four to midnight, gets home at about a quarter to one in the morning, and he’s sitting in his pajamas in the living room, the lights out, a drink in his hand, and he tells her he’s leaving.

Leaving? she says.

She doesn’t know what he means at first. Well, the thought is inconceivable, really. His job doesn’t call for travel, he’s never been sent anywhere in all the years of their marriage, so what does he mean, he’s leaving? He’s a vice president at the bank. In fact it was his bank the two hoods from Indiana were trying to rob that day she caught the squeal, away back then when she was twenty-five and riding shotgun in a patrol car with Carl Williams. She always kidded Stephen that he got his promotion to vice president only because she thwarted the hold-up. So what does he mean, he’s leaving?

You, he says. I’m leaving you.

Come on, she says, I had a hard day.

Irish sense of humor, right?

Wrong.

He was leaving her.

The police had confiscated the training vehicle the school used for its Driver’s Ed course. Technicians from the lab had searched it for evidence that Newell — as instructor and supervisor — had, in effect, been ‘driving’ the car in violation of subdivision four of section 1192 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, which stated: ‘No person shall operate a motor vehicle while the person’s ability to operate such a vehicle is impaired by the use of a drug as defined in this chapter.’ The drugs referred to were listed in the Public Health Law and constituted a virtual pharmacology of every opiate, opium derivative, hallucinogenic substance and stimulant known to man. And woman, too, Katie thought.

On Thursday morning, the day after the fatal accident, they drove over to Our Lady of Sorrows in one of the Pontiac sedans set aside for the Raleigh Station’s detectives. Carl was driving, Katie was riding shotgun beside him.