A Bend in the Road (16 page)

“I’ve got
something important to tell you.”

“You told Charlie
it was a matter of life and death.”

Sims wiped his
lips again. “I can’t go back to jail. If you charge me, that’s where I’ll go.
I’m on probation.”

“That’s the way
it goes. You break the law, you go to jail. Didn’t you ever learn that?”

“I can’t go
back,” he repeated.

“You should have
thought of that last night.”

Miles turned
again and Sims rose from the cot, a panicked look on his face.

“Don’t do this.”

Miles hesitated.
“I’m sorry, Sims. I can’t help you.”

“You could let me
go. I didn’t hurt nobody. And if I go back to jail, I’ll die for sure. I know
that as sure as I know the sky is blue.” “I can’t do that.”

“Sure you can. You
can say you was mistaken, say I fell asleep at the wheel and that’s why I was
swerving. . . .”

Miles couldn’t
help but feel a little pity for the man, but his duty was clear.  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and he started
down the corridor. Sims moved to the bars, grasping them.

“I got
information. . . .”

“Tell me later,
once I get you upstairs to do the paperwork.”

“Wait!”

There was
something in his tone that made Miles stop once more.

“Yes?”

Sims cleared his
throat. The other three men who’d been in the adjoining cells had been brought
upstairs, but he looked around to make absolutely certain he hadn’t overlooked
anyone else. He motioned with his finger for Miles to come closer, but Miles
stayed where he was and crossed his arms. 
“If I got important information, would you drop the charges?”

Miles
suppressed a smile.Now we’re talking.

“That’s not up
to just me, you know that. I’d have to talk to the district attorney.”

“No. Not that
kind. You know how I work. I don’t testify, and I remain anonymous.”

Miles said
nothing.

Sims looked
around, making sure he was still alone.

“There ain’t no
proof of what I’m saying, but it’s true and you’ll want to know it.” He lowered
his voice, as if confiding a secret. “I know who did it that night. Iknow. ”

The tone he used
and the obvious implications made the hairs on the back of Miles’s neck
suddenly stand on end.

“What are you
talking about?”

Sims wiped his
lip again, knowing he had Miles’s full attention now.

“I can’t tell you
no more unless you let me go.”

Miles moved
toward the cell, feeling off-balance. He stared at Sims until Sims stepped back
from the bars.

“Tell me what?”

“I need a deal
first. You gotta promise me you’ll get me out of here. Just say that because I
didn’t take the Breathalyzer, you don’t have any proof I was drinking.”

“I told you—I
can’t make deals.”

“No deal, no
information. Like I said, I can’t go back to prison.”

They stood facing
each other, neither of them looking away. 
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you?” Sims said finally.
“Don’t you want to know who did it?”

Miles’s heart
began to race, and his hands clenched involuntarily at his side.

His mind was
spinning.

“I’ll tell you if
you let me go,” Sims added.

Miles’s mouth
opened, then closed as everything—all the memories—rushed back, spilling over
him like the water from an overflowing sink. It seemed unbelievable,
preposterous. Yet . . . what if Sims was telling the truth?  What if he knew who killed Missy?

“You’ll have to
testify,” was all he could think to say.

Sims raised his
hands. “No way. I didn’t see nothing, but I overheard people talking. And if
they find out that I’m the one who told, I’m as good as dead. So I can’t
testify. I won’t. I’ll swear that I don’t remember telling you nothing.  And you can’t tell ’em where you learned it
from, either. This is just between us—you and me. But . . .”

Sims shrugged,
his eyes narrowing, playing Miles perfectly. 
“You don’t really care about that now, do you? You just want to know who
did it, and I can do that. And may God strike me dead if I ain’t telling the
truth.” Miles grabbed the bars, his knuckles turning white. “Tell me!” he
shouted.  “Get me out of here,” Sims
responded, somehow keeping his cool in spite of Miles’s outburst, “and I will.”

For a long
time, Miles simply stared at him.

• • •

“I was at the
Rebel,” Sims finally began, after Miles had agreed to his demands.

“You know the
place, right?”

Sims didn’t wait
for an answer. He swiped his greasy hair with the back of his hand. “This was a
couple of years back or so—I can’t really recall when it was, exactly—and I was
having a few drinks, you know? Behind me, in one of the booths, I saw Earl
Getlin. You know him?”

Miles nodded.
Another in a long line of people well-known in the department.  Tall and thin, pockmarked face, tattoos up
both arms—one that showed a lynching, the other a skull with a knife driven
through it. Had been arrested for assault, breaking and entering, dealing in
stolen goods. Suspected drug dealer. A year and a half ago, after being caught
stealing a car, he’d been sent up to Hailey State Prison. Not due for release
for another four years.  “He was kind of
antsy, fidgeting with his drink, like he was waiting for someone. That’s when I
saw them come in. The Timsons. They stood in the door for just a second,
looking around until they found him. They ain’t the kind of people I like being
around, so I didn’t draw no attention to myself. Next thing I know, they were
sitting across from Earl. And they were talking real low, almost whispering,
but from where I was, I could hear every word they were saying.”

Miles’s back
had gone rigid with Sims’s story. His mouth was dry, as though he’d been
outside in the heat for hours.

“They were
threatening Earl, but he kept saying that he didn’t have it yet.  That’s when I heard Otis speak up—until
then, he’d let his brothers do the talking. He told Earl that if he didn’t have
the money by the weekend, he’d better watch out, because nobody screwed with
him.”

He blinked. Blood
had drained from his face.

“He said the same
thing would happen to Earl that had happened to Missy Ryan.

Only this time,
they’d back up and run him over again.”

Iremember that
I was screaming even before I brought the car to a halt.  I recall the impact, of course—the slight
shudder of the wheel and the nauseating thud. But what I remember most are my
own screams from inside the car. They were ear-shattering, echoing off the
closed windows, and they went on until I turned the ignition off and was
finally able to push open the door. My screams then turned into panicked
prayer. “No, no, no . . .” is all I remember saying.

Barely able to
breathe, I ran to the front of the car. I didn’t see any damage:

The car was, as
I said, an older model, one structured to withstand more impact than the cars
of today. But I didn’t see the body. I had a sudden premonition that I’d run
over her, that I’d find her body wedged beneath the car, and as the horrible
vision passed in front of my eyes, I felt my stomach muscles constrict.  Now, I’ll tell you that I’m not the kind of
person who is easily rattled—people often comment on my self-control—but I
confess that at that moment I put my hands on my knees and nearly vomited. As
the feeling finally subsided, I forced myself to look beneath the car. I didn’t
see anything.

I ran from side
to side, looking for her. I didn’t see her, not right away, and I had a strange
sense that maybe I’d been mistaken, that it must have been my imagination.

I started to
jog then, checking one side of the road and then the other, hoping against hope
that somehow I’d simply grazed her, that maybe she’d merely been knocked
unconscious. I looked behind the car and still didn’t find her, and I knew then
where she had to be.

As my stomach
started doing flip-flops again, my eyes scanned the area in front of the car.
My headlights were still on. I took a few hesitant steps forward, and it was
then that I spotted her in the ditch, about twenty yards away.  I debated whether I should run to the
nearest house and call an ambulance or whether I should go to her. At the time,
the latter seemed like the right thing to do, and as I approached, I found
myself moving more and more slowly, as if slowing down would make the outcome
less certain.

Her body, I
noticed right off, was lying at an unnatural angle. One leg looked bent
somehow, sort of crossed over the other at the thigh, the knee twisted at an
impossible angle and the foot facing the wrong way. One arm was sandwiched
beneath her torso, the other above her head. She was on her back.  Her eyes were open.

I remember that
it didn’t strike me that she was dead, at least in that first instant. But it
didn’t take more than a couple of seconds to realize that there was something
about the glaze in her eyes that wasn’t right. They didn’t seem real—they were
almost a caricature of the way eyes look, like the eyes of a mannequin in a
department store window. But as I stared, I think it was their utter stillness
that really drove the point home. In all the time I stood above her, she didn’t
blink at all.

It was then
that I noticed the blood pooling beneath her head, and everything sort of hit
at once—her eyes, the position of her body, the blood . . .  And for the first time, I knew with
certainty that she was dead.  I think I
collapsed then. I can’t remember making the conscious decision to get close to
her, but that’s exactly where I found myself a moment later. I put my ear to
her chest, I put my ear to her mouth, I checked for a pulse. I checked for any
movement at all, any flicker of life, anything to prod me to further action.

There was
nothing.

Later, the
autopsy would show—and the newspapers would report—that she died instantly. I
say this so that you’ll know I’m telling the truth. Missy Ryan had no chance at
all, no matter what I might have done later. 
I don’t know how long I stayed beside her, but it couldn’t have been
long. I do remember staggering back to my car and opening my trunk; I do
remember finding the blanket and covering her body. At the time, it seemed like
the right thing to do. Charlie suspected that I’d been trying to say that I was
sorry, and looking back, I think that was part of it. But the other part was
that I simply didn’t want anyone to see her the way that I had. So I covered
her up, as if covering my own sin.

My memories
after that are hazy. The next thing I remember was that I was in my car,
heading for home. I really can’t explain it, other than that I wasn’t thinking
clearly. Had the same thing happened now, had I known the things I do now, I
wouldn’t have done that. I would have run to the nearest house and called the
police. For some reason, that night, I didn’t.

I don’t think,
however, that I was trying to hide what I had done. Not then, anyway. In
looking back and trying to understand it now, I think I started driving home because
that was where I needed to be. Like a moth drawn to a porch light, I didn’t
seem to have a choice. I simply reacted to a situation.  Nor did I do the right thing when I got
home. All I can remember about that is that I’d never felt more exhausted in my
life, and instead of making the call, I simply crawled into bed and went to
sleep.

The next thing
I knew, it was morning.

There is
something terrible in the moments after waking up, when the subconscious knows
that something terrible has happened but before all the memories flash back in
their entirety. That’s what I experienced as soon as my eyes fluttered open. It
was as if I couldn’t breathe, as if all the air had been forced out of me
somehow, but as soon as I inhaled, it all came surging back.  The drive.

The impact.

The way Missy had
looked when I found her.

I brought my
hands to my face, not wanting to believe it. I remember that my heart started
beating hard in my chest, and I prayed fervently that it had simply been a
dream. I’d had dreams like that before, ones that seemed so real that it took a
few moments of serious reflection before I realized my error.  This time, the reality never went away.
Instead, it grew steadily worse, and I felt myself sink inward, as if drowning
in my own private ocean.  A few minutes
later, I was reading the article in the newspaper.

And this was
when my real crime occurred.

I saw the
photos, I read what had happened. I saw the quotes from the police, vowing to
find whoever had done this, no matter how long it took. And with that came the
horrible realization that what had happened—this terrible, terrible
accident—wasn’t regarded as an accident. Somehow, it was regarded as a
crime.  Hit-and-run, the article said. A
felony.

I saw the phone
sitting on the counter, as if beckoning to me.

I had run.

In their minds, I
was guilty, no matter what the circumstances were.  I’ll say again that despite what I had done the night before,
what happened then wasn’t a crime, no matter what the article said. I wasn’t
making a conscious decision to flee that night. I wasn’t thinking clearly
enough for that.  No, my crime hadn’t
occurred the night before.

My crime
occurred in the kitchen, when I looked at the phone and didn’t make the call.

Though the article
had rattled me, I was thinking clearly then. I’m not making excuses for that,
since there are none. I weighed my fears against what I knew was right, and my
fears won out in the end.

I was terrified
of going to jail for what I knew in my heart was an accident, and I began to
make excuses. I think I told myself that I would call later; I didn’t. I told
myself that I would wait a couple of days until things settled down, then call;
I didn’t. Then I decided to wait until after the funeral.  And by then, I knew it was too late.