Джо Горес - Cases

They gassed up, then went south out of Reno on Nevada 395 to Carson City, then took Highway 50 southwest toward California. They would go up and over Echo Summit, over seven thousand feet high, then eventually down to Sacramento, where the palm trees started.

When they went back to the car after stopping for lunch at sleepy little South Lake Tahoe, Penny wanted to drive.

“I have to learn how to handle the Grey Ghost now that he’s part mine, too.” Dunc started to object because the road up over the summit might be icy, but she laughed him to silence. “Hey, big boy! I’m from the snow country, too, remember?”

He surrendered, closed her door, slid into the passenger’s side, and quickly relaxed against the seat. They sang songs together and miles flew. First camp songs like “Comin Round the Mountain” and “Little Brown Jug,” then on into “Down Among the Sheltering Palms” and “Sentimental Journey.” Dunc did a sonorous “Old Man River” with lyrics changes he’d learned in the Glee Club:

Penny, both hands on the wheel, shot a quick look over at him and said, “Seems to me that on our wedding night, big boy, you got a lot drunk and you got a lot of tail.”

“And I’m gonna get even more tonight.”

“You promise?”

At Echo Summit they pulled off into the vista point. Below them were sparkling, snowcapped peaks with dark armies of pine forests marching up their flanks. Penny plunged them down into the sunlight and shadow on the winding, narrow, two-lane blacktop. Snow was piled two feet deep on the verge of the road, but lay only in patches under the shelter of the trees.

Penny said, “Dunc honey, this is hard to say after Drinker and Sherry have been so nice, but don’t you think maybe you should start looking for a new job?”

“A new... but I love detective work! It’s fun and exciting and I’m getting a lot of material for my writing.”

“But you’re not writing, and it’s changing you, Dunc. When we’re together you’re sweet and loving, but when you’re talking about work you... you’re harder, colder, it’s like you’re losing all your finer perceptions. You just see the bold strokes—”

“Jesus!” he burst out. “First I lose my chance to be a writer, now you want me to quit detective work. Why?”

“So you can get back to your writing.”

“You’re saying it’s detective work that keeps me from writing? Here I thought having a wife and baby to support might have a little something to do with it.”

She looked over at him angrily. “You haven’t had a wife and you don’t have a baby yet, but I don’t think you’ve written a single story since you came to San Francisco. Why are you trying to blame me for that, Dunc? Are you sorry we got married?”

“Quit trying to twist around what I’m saying. Of course I’m not sorry, but the baby’s timing could have been better.”

She wailed in utter misery.

He said, “Oh Christ, honey, I didn’t mean — Penny! ”

Ahead the road had narrowed and steepened, made a sharp left-hand turn. Penny rammed the brake pedal right to the floor and kept twisting and twisting the wheel, the car wasn’t turning, wasn’t slowing, she screamed, Dunc saw the trunk of the tree coming at him with appalling speed...

He was standing on the edge of a curving blacktop road with the reek of raw gasoline all around him. Three or four cars were parked at goofy angles off the road. A half dozen people he’d never seen before were milling around aimlessly. Almost all the way off the road was a gray Ford with the open hood crumpled against the scarred trunk of a pine tree and its ass end up in the air with both back wheels three feet off the ground.

Some asshole was holding his arm. Dunc said, “There’s been an accident here, I don’t want anything to do with it”

Lying on the ground was a log or anyway something long and cylindrical with a couple of blankets laid over it. Just looking at it somehow made him queasy and reminded him of how much his head ached. He reached up with his left hand; his forehead over his eye felt slippery to the touch, as if he’d been rained on.

That irritating guy was still gently tugging at his sleeve.

“Why don’t you come over here and sit down for a minute?”

“Hell with you,” said Dunc, feebly pushing him. “There’s been an accident and there’s plenty of people to help out. I gotta find Penny, we’re on our way to Reno to get married.”

“But if you’d just sit down and rest for a few minutes...”

Dunc shook off the persistent Samaritan, started to stride away up the hill. He heard the far-approaching keen of sirens. He’d known it! An accident for sure. They’d wanta ask a lot of questions without answers, he had to go find Penny...

On the other hand it was a long way up that hill. Maybe...

He sat down suddenly in the road, then tipped over sideways and lay still.

“You made it up? ” demanded Sherry, an enraged hornet immobilizing an astounded Drinker with her appalled anger. “How could you be so goddamn stupid?”

“For Chrissake, Sherry, I wanted them to have some time alone, okay?” He made placating movements of hands and face. “You know Dunc. I just thought that when they get back he’ll get all caught up in his cases again, and—”

“You’re lying,” she said abruptly. “You didn’t make up that phone call you got in Reno.” Fury, fear, sorrow, fought in her face. “It was from her, wasn’t it? That woman. April-fucking-Wham. You told her where you’d be, and she called, so you made up your lies and came running down here to—”

He snatched up the ringing phone, snapped “Drinker Cope” into it, glad for the interruption. Listening, he sank down into Sherry’s chair like an old man not sure of his balance.

“Yeah,” he said tiredly. “Where is... I see. Yeah. Okay. I’ll be there tomorrow midday for sure.”

He hung up the phone. Stared up at her.

“Christ, Sherry, they were in the mountains, they went off the road a few miles this side of Echo Summit”

All color had left her face. “How... how bad is—”

“Penny’s dead. They called her family, the mother’s prostrated, the sister wants her body shipped back to Dubuque, pronto. They’re talking as if they blamed Dunc for—”

“Dunc!” she cried. Her voice was fearful. “Is he...”

“He’s still alive but he’s in a coma. They... don’t know i£ he’ll make it.”

“Oh, Drinker!” she wailed, crushing his big graying head to her bosom and crying like her heart would break.

Dunc jerked and opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling’s white foot-square tiles with rows of little holes in them. He licked his lips. Bad dream. Whew. “Penny?” he said cautiously.

“He’s awake,” a voice said. Penny leaned over the bed to look anxiously down into his face. He tried to smile. “Could you tell me your name, sir?”

Not Penny. Some of it rushed back, all in an instant.

She wailed in utter misery...

“Jesus Christ,” he said softly. It was not a curse.

“Try again,” said the woman in white bending over the bed.

“Pierce Duncan,” he said impatiently.

“And do you know where you are, Mr. Duncan?”

He sat up in the bed. Or at least that’s what his brain said he did, but he still just lay there looking at the ceiling.

“Hospital.” He thought he pointed at her. “Nurse.”

There was a log or anyway something long and cylindrical with a couple of blankets laid over it. Oh dear God.