Ed McBain: Driving Lessons

At first she thought he’d said they’d found cocaine in the car. She thought he’d said, ‘We also found a cup with a little coke in it.’ Which was what he had said, but at the same time hadn’t said.

A moment later, she learned that what he’d actually said was, ‘We also found a cup with a little Coke in it.’ Coke with a capital C. Coca Cola was what he was telling her. In the Ford’s center console cup holder on the passenger side, they had found a medium-sized plastic cup with the red and white Coca Cola logo on it, which cup they had immediately tested.

Katie held her breath.

‘Nothing but Coca Cola in it,’ the tech said. ‘But the guy sitting there could have used it to wash down whatever shit he ingested. A possibility, Kate.’

But...

He didn’t have anything to drink while we were driving, so how could he be drunk!

How indeed? Katie wondered.

Katie got to the school at two twenty that afternoon. She went directly to the general office, showed a twenty-year-old brunette her shield and ID card, and asked for a copy of Rebecca Patton’s program. The girl hesitated.

‘Something wrong?’ Katie asked.

‘Nothing,’ the girl said, and went to the files.

Katie waited while she photocopied the program. It told her that Rebecca would be in an eighth-period French class till the end of the school day.

‘Where’s the Driver’s Ed office?’ she asked.

‘What do you need there!’ the girl asked.

Katie looked at her.

‘Down the hall,’ the girl said at once, ‘second door on the left. You’re trying to send Mr Newell to jail, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Katie said, and walked out.

What she needed in the Driver’s Ed office was a feel of the place. This was where Andrew Newell came at the end of each school day to consult the chart that told him which student would be driving that day. This was where he’d come yesterday, before getting into the car that would run down his wife. Here was the wall. Here was the chart. Here were the teachers’ names and the students’ names. Was this the room in which he’d ingested the drug — whichever the hell drug it was — that had, minutes later, rendered him incompetent?

‘You’re the detective, aren’t you?’ a man’s voice said.

Katie turned from the wall chart.

‘Saw you on television last night.’ He was sprawled in an easy chair, open newspaper on his lap. ‘Right after Andy was charged,’ he said. ‘Eleven o’clock news. The red hair,’ he explained.

Katie nodded.

‘Ed Harris,’ he said. ‘No relation.’

She must have looked puzzled.

‘The movie star,’ he said. ‘Ed Harris. Besides, he’s bald.’

This Ed Harris was not bald. He had thick black hair, graying at the temples, brown eyes behind dark-rimmed eyeglasses. He rose and extended his hand. Katie guessed he was half an inch short of six feet. Forty, forty-two, or thereabouts. Lean and lanky, like Abe Lincoln. Same rangy look. She took his hand.

‘Are you going to send Andy to jail for the rest of his life?’

‘Hardly,’ she said, and almost shook her head in wonder. Their case was premised on the presumption that Newell had knowingly entered the training car while under the influence of a drug that had rendered him incapable of performing in his supervisory capacity. This constituted a criminally negligent act which had caused the death of another person. But the penalty for vehicular manslaughter in the second degree was only imprisonment not to exceed seven years. ‘If he’s found guilty,’ she said, ‘the maximum...’

‘I sincerely hope he won’t be.’

‘Well, if he’s convicted, the maximum sentence would be seven years. He could be out in two and a third.’

‘Piece of cake, right?’

Katie said nothing.

‘Two and a third days would destroy him,’ Harris said.

She was thinking, If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. She still said nothing.

‘For a lousy accident, right?’ Harris said. ‘Accidents do happen, you know.’

‘Especially if a person’s under the influence.’

‘Andy doesn’t drink.’

‘Ever see him stoned?’

‘Andy? Come on. If you knew him, you’d realize how ridiculous that sounds.’

‘I take it you’re good friends.’

‘ Very good friends.’

‘Do you know Rebecca, too?’

‘Sure, she’s in my algebra class.’

‘Is she a good student?’

‘One of the best. Smart as hell, curious, eager to learn. And from what Andy tells me, a good driver, too.’

‘Not good enough. That’s why there’s a brake pedal on the instructor’s side of the car.’

‘Let me tell you something,’ Harris said, and immediately looked up at the wall clock. She had seen his name on the chart for a driving lesson at two fifty with a student named Alberico Jiminez. The clock now read two thirty-five. In five minutes, Rebecca would be coming out of her French class. Katie didn’t want to miss her.

‘Andy and I both teach Driver’s Ed,’ Harris said. ‘The classes are two hours long, twice a week. I teach them on Mondays and Thursdays, Andy teaches them on Wednesdays and Fridays. This is class time, you understand, not road time. Four hours a week. We try to teach responsible driving, Miss Logan, and we spend a great deal of time on how substance abuse affects ability and perception. These are teenagers, you know. Some of them drink, some of them smoke dope. We’re all aware of that. Rebecca would have known in a minute if Andy had been under the influence. She knows all the signs, we’ve been over them a hundred times.’

‘We have witnesses who saw him staggering, saw him—’

‘Your witnesses are wrong.’

‘My witnesses are police officers.’

Harris gave her a look.

‘Right,’ Katie said, ‘we’re out to frame the entire nation.’

‘Nobody said that. But you know, Miss Logan...’

‘Newell should have hit the brake. The responsibility was his.’

‘No. If anyone was responsible, it was Mary Beth. She’s the one who wasn’t looking where she was going. She’s the one who stepped off that curb and into the car.’

‘How can you possibly know what she did?’

‘I read the papers, I watch television. There were witnesses besides your police officers.’

‘And she was your friend...’

‘She was.’

‘Any idea what might have been troubling her?’

‘Who says she was troubled?’

‘You didn’t detect anything wrong?’

‘No. Wrong? No.’

A bell sounded, piercing, insistent, reminding her that this was, in fact, a school, and that she was here to see a student.

As she turned to leave, Harris said, ‘You’re making a mistake here, Miss Logan. If nobody hit that brake, there simply wasn’t time to hit it.’

‘Good talking to you, Mr Harris,’ Katie said.

‘Ed,’ he said. ‘Don’t hurt him.’

Rebecca came down the front steps of the school at a quarter to three, her books hugged to the front of her pale-blue sweater. Girls and boys were streaming down the steps everywhere around her, flowing toward where the idling yellow school busses were parked. A bright buzz of conversation, a warm consonance of laughter floated on the crisp October air.

‘Hey, hi,’ she said, surprised.

‘Hi, Rebecca. Give you a ride home?’

‘Well... sure,’ she said.

Katie fell into step beside her. Together, they walked in silence across the curving drive and into the parking lot Leaves were falling everywhere around them, blowing on the wind, rustling underfoot. Katie reached into her tote bag. Her keys were resting beside the walnut stock of a .38 caliber Detectives Special. She dug them out and unlocked the door of the car on the passenger side.