Sue Grafton - G Is For Gumshoe

"I don't want to leave my car."

"That car's not going to budge and I'm not either unless you do as I say."

I hesitated. The VW was totaled. The entire back end appeared foreshortened, the right rear fender crushed. The car had been suffering from countless dings and dents anyway, the beige paint oxidized to a chalky hue, highlighted with rust. I'd had the car nearly fifteen years. With a pang of regret, I turned back to the sedan, hobbling around to the passenger side. I felt like I was leaving a much-loved pet behind. I'd apparently banged my left leg from the knee right up my thigh and it was already stiffening up. When I finally dared to pull my jeans down, I was going to find a bruise the size and color of an eggplant. The old man leaned across and opened the door for me.

"I'm Carl LaRue," he said.

"Kinsey Millhone," I replied. I slid in, slouching down on the base of my spine so I could rest my head against the seat. Once I closed my eyes, the nausea subsided somewhat.

The sedan eased out into the highway again, heading south about a quarter of a mile before we made a left turn onto a secondary road. I sincerely hoped this was not part of some elaborate ruse, the old man in cahoots with the guy in the pickup truck. I flashed on the as is sticker in the window, the glimpse I'd had of someone peering out at me. Gingerly, I sat up, remembering where I'd seen the face. It was at the rest stop where I'd eaten lunch on the way down to the desert. There'd been a kid there, a boy maybe five, playing with a Matchbox toy. His father had been napping with a magazine laid across his face… a white guy, with big arms, in a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out. Once I made the connection, I knew I'd actually seen them twice. The same man had crossed the darkened motel parking lot with the kid perched up on his shoulders as they headed for the Coke machine. I felt a chill ripple through me at the recollection of how he'd tickled the kid. What sang in my memory was the peal of impish laughter, which seemed now as dainty and evil as a demon's. What kind of hit man would bring his kid along?

While mr. Larue put a call through to the county sheriff's department, I found myself folding up like a jackknife on the lumpy couch in his living room, overwhelmed by sleepiness. My head was pounding. My neck was stiff from whiplash, my rib cage bruised. I felt cold and little, as I had just after the accident in which my parents were killed. In a singsong voice, inexplicably, my brain began feeding back to me the text I'd read in the morning paper. "Palms grow to 70 feet and can produce 300 pounds of dates. A mature palm will grow 15 to 18 bunches of dates. Each cluster, when the fruit has reached the size of a pea, must be protected with brown paper covers to ward off birds and rain…" What I couldn't remember anymore was where I was or why I hurt so bad.

Carl was shaking me persistently. He'd apparently placed a call to the hospital emergency room and had been told to bring me in. His wife, whose name kept slipping away, had soaked a washcloth in ice water so she could dab the dirt and crusted blood off my face. My feet had been elevated and I'd been wrapped in a down comforter. At their urging, I roused myself and shuffled out to the car again, still wrapped in the puffy quilt like a bipedal worm.

By the time we reached the emergency room, I had come out of my stupor sufficiently to identify myself and make the correct answers to "How many fingers am I holding up?" and similar neurological pop quizzes I took while lying flat on my back. The ceiling was beige, the cabinets royal blue. Portable X-ray equipment was wheeled in. They X-rayed my neck first, two views, to make sure it wasn't broken, and then did a skull series, which apparently showed no fractures.

I was allowed to sit up then while a young doctor peered at me eye to eye, our breaths intermingling with a curious intimacy as he checked my corneal reflexes, pupil size, and reaction to light. He might have been thirty, brown curly hair receding from a forehead creased with fine horizontal lines. Under his white jacket, he wore a buff-colored dress shirt and a tie with brown dots. His aftershave lotion smelled of newly cut grass, though his electric mower had missed a couple of hairs just under his chin. I wondered if he realized I was noting his vital signs while he was noting mine. My blood pressure was 110 over 60, my temperature, pulse, and respirations normal. I know because I peeked every time he jotted anything down. In a box at the bottom of the page, he scrawled the words "postconcussional syndrome." I was happy to realize the accident hadn't impaired my ability to read upside down. Various forms of first aid were administered and most of them hurt, including a tetanus shot that nearly made me pass out.

"I think we should keep you overnight," he said. "It doesn't look like you sustained any major damage, but your head took quite a bump. I'd be happier if we could keep an eye on you for the next twelve hours, at any rate. Anybody you want notified?"

"Not really," I murmured. I was too battered to protest and too scared to face the outside world anyway. He moved out to the nurses' station, which I could see through an interior window shuttered for privacy by partially closed rust-red Venetian blinds. In the corridor, a sheriff's deputy had appeared. I could see horizontal slats of him chatting with the young female clerk who pointed over her shoulder to the room where I sat. The other cubicles in the emergency room were empty, the area quiet. The deputy conferred with the doctor, who evidently decided I was fit enough to answer questions about how my car came to be sitting in an irrigation ditch.

The deputy's name was Richie Windsor, one of those baby-faced cops with an uptilted nose and plump cheeks reddened by sunburn. He had to be a rookie, barely twenty-one, the minimum age for a sheriff's deputy. His eyes were hazel, his hair light brown and cut in a flattop. He hadn't been at it long enough to adopt the noncommittal, paranoid expression that most cops assume. I described the incident methodically, sparing no details, while he took notes, interjecting occasional enthusiastic comments in a borrowed Mexican accent. "Whoa!" he would say, or "Get real, kemosabe!" He seemed nearly envious that someone had tried to kill me.

When I finished my recital, he said he'd have the dispatcher broadcast a "be on the lookout" in case the Dodge was still somewhere in the area. We both knew the chances of intercepting the man were slim. If the guy was smart, he'd abandon the vehicle at the first opportunity. As the deputy turned to leave, I found myself snagging impulsively at his uniform sleeve.

"One thing," I said. "The doctor wants me here overnight. Is there any way we can keep my admission under wraps? This is the only hospital in the area. All the guy has to do is call Patient Information and he'll know exactly where I am."

"Good point, amigo. Let me see what I can do," he said. He tucked his pen away.

Within minutes, the admissions office had sent a young female clerk over with a wheelchair, a clipboard full of forms to be completed, and a patient identification strip in a cloudy plastic band, which she affixed to my wrist with a device that looked like a hole punch.

Carl LaRue and his wife had been sitting patiently in the corridor all this time. They were finally ushered in to see me while last-minute arrangements were being made for a bed. The deputy had apparently cautioned the old couple about the situation.

"Your whereabouts is safe with us," Carl said. "We won't say a word."

His wife patted my hand. "We don't want you to worry now. You just get some rest."

"I appreciate everything you've done," I said. "Really. I can't thank you enough. I'd probably be dead if you hadn't come along."