James Siegel - Detour

“I went to work. It was the same work I’d always been doing. I just had a new paymaster. It’s amazing what happens when you follow the money. You never know where it’ll lead. In this case, to Miles Goldstein. And then you. You were kind enough to be my honorary deputy and help wrap it up for me. My signore salutes you. I’ve already cashed out. Just one thing left. Or two.”

“They tied her to something,” Ruth said.

“What?” The bird-watcher jerked his head around.

“My mother. They tied her to a pipe in the ceiling. They put me on a chair and ordered me to watch.”

Thirty-two percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by speeding.

“Now, sweetheart, we don’t need to be talking about that, do we? You’re my official navigator, correctomundo?”

“They burned her. She screamed and screamed. He showed me his knife—he made me touch it.” Her eyes were lost in time, Paul thought.

“Okay, I think that’s enough of that, don’t you? Just tell me when the exit comes, all right, sweetie?”

Twenty-two percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by driver inattention—e.g., changing radio stations.

“When she closed her eyes, they’d make her wake up again. They would start all over. I was in the chair. I saw it. They took her skin off.”

“Yes, you remember. I understand. No wonder Daddy dumped you in that bad place. Now, how about giving it a little rest?”

Ten percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by driver incompetence—e.g., pushing the wrong pedal.

“You’re falling down on the job, Ruth. Here’s the exit I’m looking for.”

The bird-watcher shifted into the exit lane, flicked on his right turn signal, began turning off.

“Seat belt on, Ruth?” Paul asked gently.

“Yes.”

Six percent of fatal SUV rollovers are caused by inadvertent action—e.g., lifting the emergency brake while the vehicle’s in drive.

“Good,” Paul said.

He pulled the transmission into reverse just as the Jeep went into the apex of its turn.

It took probably less than 2.6 seconds, because the bird-watcher was unable to get his Beretta loaded with snub-nosed bullets out of his shoulder holster. It likely wouldn’t have made a difference. The Jeep teetered violently to the left, partially righted itself, then went over.

Paul and Ruth were wearing their seat belts.

The bird-watcher wasn’t, as cowboys are wont to do.

Nearly two-thirds of passenger fatalities in SUV rollover crashes are unrestrained.

There was that moment when the Jeep hovered between air and ground, when Paul could see asphalt looming like a dark wave he hadn’t seen coming. Then it broke over him.

He heard glass shatter, a scream, the awful sound of shearing metal. He must’ve blacked out. When he came to, he was upside down and staring into a pool of blood. He was still in his seat, but the seat seemed half detached from the car, held there by a few flimsy screws.

Where was Ruth?

He turned his head around, half afraid he wouldn’t be able to, that he’d discover he was paralyzed and dying.

No. His head pivoted around just like God intended it to.

The entire backseat had disappeared.

He looked out the shattered window to his right.

There.

It was a surreal photo, something that belonged on the wall at MOMA. The backseat was sitting upright in the grass perfectly intact, and so was the person sitting on it. Intact, seemingly whole, and demonstrably alive. She looked as if she were simply waiting for a bus.

That accounted for two of them.

Where was the bird-watcher?

The entire windshield was blown out. Gone.

The interior of the upside-down Jeep was beginning to fill with thick, acrid smoke. Something else. The putrid odor of gasoline.

He unclasped the seat belt that was digging into his gut. He used his hands to feel his way through the window and out onto the pavement. He pushed himself out. Every inch of movement left a trail of blood.

His face. Something was wrong with his face. Numbness had given way to searing pain. When he touched his cheek, his hand came away bright red.

He stood up, somehow made it to his feet, both arms out for balance like a tightrope walker.

A body was lying about twenty feet from the totaled Jeep.

Paul stumbled toward it.

The bird-watcher.

He wasn’t moving. He was still as death.

And then he wasn’t.

He moved. One hand at first. Slowly feeling around as if looking for something. Then the other hand, Paul about five feet from him, caught between moving forward and moving back. The bird-watcher lifted himself up onto his palms—executing a kind of half push-up, gazing around like a man appearing out of a hole.

He saw Paul frozen to the spot.

The bird-watcher had been searching for something.

He’d found it.

He stood up—one leg, then the other—smiled through an ugly matting of blood and dirt. He pointed his gun at Paul.

“Remember Rock-’em ’Sock-em Robots, Paul?” Something was off with his speech—he seemed to be missing part of his tongue. “Had two as a kid. You could knock their blocks off, right off their bodies, but it didn’t matter, they kept coming.”

He took a few steps forward, gun still pointing at him.

Ruth began crying. When he gazed back at her, she seemed caught up in a shower of green leaves.

Paul turned back to face his fate—one way or another it was going to end here.

The bird-watcher was still stumbling, unsteady, oddly loose-limbed, but inexorably boring in.

“That was some trick you pulled.” He was having problems with his t ’s. Ha was some rick you pulled. “Learn that in actuary school?”

No. In actuary school you learned the difference between risk and probability. You learned that not wearing a seat belt during a rollover should kill you. Should, but not always. But you learned something else about life and its opposite number, something of a mantra around the halls of an insurance company.

If one thing doesn’t get you, the other thing will.

A Dodge Coronado had come hurtling off the LIE onto the exit ramp. Safety rules recommend a slowing down of at least 50 percent while turning into a highway exit. The driver of the Coronado must’ve missed that class.

When confronted with the smashed and smoking Jeep sitting in the middle of the sharply curving exit road, he was forced to swerve dangerously onto the shoulder, then lurch back onto the road to avoid a weeping willow. That brought him face-to-face with another slightly swerving object.

The bird-watcher had no time to react.

He was sent flying into the air, looking like one of those circus tumblers performing a gravity-defying finale.

He came down with a loud thud.

Then lay still.

FORTY-FIVE

She needed to dream tonight.

She’d noticed the looks from Tomás. The fact she’d received no dinner for the first time she could remember. The frazzled look on Galina’s face, and her trembling hands.

She’d kissed Joelle good night in a way that really was good-bye. She’d said her prayers, confessed her sins. She’d made peace with it.

She needed to dream.

If she was lucky, this dream would involve being woken in the middle of the night, not by a gun muzzle, not by the sharp blade of a knife, but by Galina’s soft whispers.

It would involve Galina quietly opening the lock that chained her leg to the radiator. Whispering directions into her ear. Then slipping silently out of the room the way people do in dreams.

It would involve standing up and padding softly through the door.

Slowly making her way down the empty hall and then pushing open the door to outside, the way she did once before.