Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

“I know it’s been a rough night for you,” I continued, without the vaguest idea what sort of night she’d had, “but I need to ask you a few questions about the truck accident.”

She nodded and clasped her hands together between her knees. Her eyes followed my hand as I slipped a microcassette recorder out of my pocket and placed it on the footstool in front of me. I leaned forward, locking my eyes on hers. “I’d like to record, if it’s all right with you.” I smiled ruefully. “My hands get so lame in this cold weather it’d take me all day to write down a few notes.” I glanced at Mrs. Scutt. “Is that all right with you, Maryanne?”

She nodded and put her hand over her daughter’s.

“Good. Now, Gail, the bus driver, Stub Moore, says that you were one of several students sitting on the left side of the bus last night. Is that right?”

She nodded and said in a hoarse whisper, “I was sitting three seats behind the driver.”

“By the window?” I asked.

She nodded and then, like the sharp little kid she was, said for the benefit of the recorder, “Yes.”

“All right, Gail, I’m most interested in what you saw when the pickup truck passed the school bus. The truck that later crashed into the rock. Where you looking out the window when it passed the bus?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Is there any particular reason you looked out just then?”

“Well, I heard somebody behind me, and they’re all, ‘Here comes Denny and Ryan.’ So I turned to look. There was lots of cars passing us on the way home.”

“Could you see clearly?”

“Yeah, pretty.”

“And was it them? Was it Dennis Wilton and Ryan House?”

She nodded and frowned.

“Was the truck going very fast?”

“No. Not really.” She moved her hand from side to side. “It just went by, like.”

“And you could see them clearly?”

“Yeah.”

“Could you see who was driving?”

“Well, I could see Ryan, so I guess it was Denny behind the wheel.” She bit her lip.

“You could see Ryan House clearly?”

She nodded and I could see tears in her eyes. Her mother slipped an arm around her.

“Gail, can you remember what Ryan House was doing? Did he look up at the bus, was he waving, what?”

“He was asleep.”

“He was asleep?”

“Yes, his head was leaning against the thing there,” and she tipped her own head and indicated with her hand about where the passenger window’s rear post would be. “He’s all with his jacket, or something, wadded up like a pillow.”

“And he didn’t appear to wake up when the truck went by the bus?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you able to see Dennis Wilton?”

“Not really. Only for a second as the truck came up beside us.”

“And not after that?”

She shook her head.

“Now I’d like you to really bring that picture back in your mind, Gail. Could you see, or did you notice, whether Ryan House was wearing his shoulder harness?”

She frowned and looked at the rug. “Yes, he was.”

“You noticed that particularly?”

She looked up at me. “Yes. Because I could see that he had his coat all squished under the belt where it went by his neck, like it was holding it in place. His jacket.”

“Okay. Did the person sitting with you see them, too?”

“Yes.”

“Who were you sitting with?”

“Melissa Roark. She leaned across me to wave, but they didn’t see her.”

“Do you remember if Vanessa Davila was on the spectator bus?”

Her pretty little eyebrows twitched a hair when she heard the name, as if puzzled that I would think that she’d know Vanessa. “I didn’t see her.”

“And one last thing. Did you see the truck veer off the road?”

This time her reply was just a small, strangled croak that I took for a “no.” She wiped her nose. “I heard the driver shout something, and then all of a sudden we slowed down and stopped. He was all shouting for us to stay in our seats, and then he grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran up ahead. I couldn’t see very well.”

I nodded and reached for the tape recorder, then hesitated. “Gail, did you know Maria Ibarra?”

“Who?”

“Maria Ibarra. She was a student from Mexico who just came to Posadas High a few weeks ago. She’s a freshman.”

“You mean the girl they found under the bleachers?” She scrunched her shoulders together, making herself as small and inconspicuous as possible. “I knew who she was, is all. A couple of times, I knew some of the kids were all talking about where she lived and stuff like that.”

“Where she lived?”

“They were just stories, I think. And they’re all, ‘She lives in an old truck out in the arroyo,’ but…” She scrunched a little more, as if she were trying to touch together the outboard ends of her young, pliable collarbones.

“But no more than that?”

“No.”

I stood up amid a cracking of joints and creaking of belt leather. “Mrs. Scutt, thanks. And Gail, you, too. You’ve been a big help. I shouldn’t have to bother you again.”

Gail Scutt was all too happy to head for her room, and Maryanne Scutt saw me to the door. I thanked her again, mostly because she had the good sense to let me leave without badgering me with questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer.

An hour later, I had three nearly identical copies of my interview with Gail Scutt. Her seat partner, Melissa Roark, confirmed what Gail had seen.

Sitting directly behind the driver had been a sleepy high school junior, Bryan Saenz. He’d seen the truck go by, had remembered a vague image of Ryan House snoozing, and then had been jarred into full wakefulness when the bus driver shouted and spiked the brakes.

Three rows behind Gail, Tiffany Ulibarri, a sober-faced senior, had seen the pickup glide by as well. She’d seen the somnolent Ryan House, even noticed a small patch of breath condensing on the side window by his slack mouth.

That was as far as I cared to go. I didn’t need sixty adolescent bus passengers to tell me that Ryan House certainly had been sound asleep when the truck passed the school bus and then pounded itself and him into the limestone.

I drove past the high school, saw the deputy’s car parked in front along with Glen Archer’s station wagon, and on impulse pulled into the circular driveway. I got out of the car. The gray sky was unusually bright even though the sun hadn’t been able to crack through the solid high overcast. The light breeze had died, leaving just the leaden, uncharacteristic sky like a pewter bowl inverted from horizon to horizon.

The sidewalk, a full sixteen feet wide, led from the curb to the quadruple glass doors under the lunging gold jaguar that was the school’s mascot. For a moment, as I started up the walk, I thought I was looking through my bifocals with one eye and through cloudy water with the other. The sidewalk’s neatly clipped margins appeared to converge.

Before I had time to pause and reflect on that odd visual aberration, a sudden and vicious pain lanced through my skull from back to front, traveling in an arc over my left ear. With a yelp, I staggered sideways, tripped over my own feet, and sprawled on my hands and knees, partially off the concrete.

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered and remained frozen, waiting for my skull to crack into little pieces. But the pain subsided as quickly as it had come, and with a grunt of relief I pushed myself up to my knees. I reached up with an unsteady hand and wiped the tears out of my eyes.

Apparently no one had seen my swan dive, or if they had, they figured I could pick myself up. I did so, grimacing at the rip in my left trouser knee and the skin scrubbed off the heel of my left hand.