Pretty Girl Gone (21 page)

“I suppose I’m being unfair. It wasn’t Victoria that Jack despised. It was his father. Jack’s mother died when he was a baby. When he was ten, Jack’s father told him, ‘When your mother died, they all said I should put you in an orphanage. I didn’t, and it was the worst thing I ever did in my life.’ Can you imagine that? A man saying something like that to his ten-year-old son?”

I flashed on my own father, who did everything for me after my mother died.
No, I couldn’t imagine it.

“Jack remembered the words verbatim,” Monteleone said. “They haunted him. Because of those words, Jack never asked for anything from his father. The reason he spent so much time playing basketball was so he could get away from him. His father, for his part, never went to see Jack play. Not even the title game. Jack was a hero in Victoria, but not at home. I wasn’t surprised at all that he refused to attend his father’s funeral. Instead, he went to Europe to play basketball. Given his background, it’s a wonder Jack turned out as well as he did.”

“Perhaps you had something to do with that,” I suggested.

Monteleone gave it a moment’s thought before saying, “It’s nice to think so.”

“Have you seen him, spoken to him, since he left school?”

“No. I shook his hand once during a campaign fund-raiser here in Mankato a couple of years ago, but he didn’t recognize me.”

I wasn’t surprised. Monteleone no longer resembled at all the attractive young woman in the Victoria High School yearbook.

“I’ve been in Victoria,” I said. “Some people blame Governor Barrett for Elizabeth Rogers’s death.”

“What nonsense. He couldn’t possibly have known she would be killed when he left the party.”

“Lynn Peyer—”

“Lynn Peyer.” Monteleone spoke the name like it was an obscenity.

“She, for one, thinks Jack actually killed her.”

Monteleone rose quickly to her feet.

“That’s a lie. An absolute lie. A damnable lie.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Monteleone slowly sat down.

“I just am,” she said.

A few minutes later—after Monteleone decided she had more important things to do than speak to a muckraker like me—I was back on the road. Driving alone, I lapsed into a freeway fantasy. I had a fast car, plenty of money, and no encumbrances. I could go where I pleased, go where I’ve never been before, and do things I’ve never done. There was nothing holding me to the road I was traveling except a sense of duty, of responsibility, that I couldn’t even define. Turn off at the next exit, I told myself. Or the next one. Or the one after that. Just turn off . . .

A dozen exits later I was approaching Victoria. I was still way above the speed limit, but promised myself I’d slow down before I reached the city limits.

“No way I’m going to let that cowgirl give me a ticket,” I said aloud.

What the hell, you’ll probably never see her again,
my inner voice reminded me.
Considering your relationship with Nina, that’s probably for the best.

My plan hadn’t changed. I would find Josie Bloom in the hope that I could persuade him to tell me what he knew about the night Elizabeth was killed. I didn’t expect much to come of it.
“Oh, what did we do?”
The line still hung in the air, demanding explanation. Only it could mean anything. From a chronic alcoholic? Absolutely anything.

Still, I’d love to get a long look at the case files. Maybe there was something there besides the unsubstantiated allegation that Elizabeth was killed by roaming transients. Something that would categorically
clear Governor Barrett. Only I’d have to give Mallinger something in return, and I had nothing to swap.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension? That was just something to annoy Dr. Peterson and the boys. I had no intention of bringing official attention to Elizabeth’s murder and subsequently to John Allen Barrett.

Which brought me back to Lindsey’s elusive e-mailer.

“We’re gonna have to do something about him,” I said aloud.

I had been driving with both hands on the steering wheel in the ten and two positions, just as I had been trained. I took my right hand off the wheel only long enough to switch the radio to the classic rock station.

In that moment, the Audi lurched hard to the right.

Blowout,
I told myself.

I gripped the wheel with both hands and twisted it to the left to compensate and removed my foot from the accelerator.

Only it didn’t feel like a blowout.

A loud, high-pitched grinding sound added to my confusion.

The car edged closer to the shoulder and the ditch beyond.

I tried to pull it back.

It was like leaning against a moving wall.

A big blue wall.

A truck.

A pickup truck with a plow blade.

The plow blade was digging into my car just below the door handle, leaning against the Audi, pushing it toward the ditch.

I saw the truck, but not the driver. The driver was too high in the cab.

Doesn’t he know I’m here?

I leaned on the horn and screamed at the truck to stop.

It didn’t stop.

I downshifted and hit the brakes hard.

I felt the antilock braking system shuddering under my boot.

The pickup slowed as I slowed.

It wouldn’t let me go.

I downshifted again and punched the accelerator. The Audi pitched forward. The pickup did the same.

I went for a matchup—wheel to wheel, bumper to bumper, trading paint as my father would say—my one chance.

Only I didn’t have a chance.

If it had been another car, I would have been able to outdrive it. It wasn’t.

The Audi was 53 inches high, 73 inches wide, and 159 inches long. The truck was at least 80 inches high, 80 inches wide, and 247 inches long. They did not match up wheel to wheel, bumper to bumper.

The Audi weighed approximately 2,650 pounds. The truck was four times that heavy. I had four cylinders and 225 horsepower. The truck was a V-8, maybe a V-10 with over 300 horses.

The numbers were not on my side.

I cranked the steering wheel to the left just the same, slamming into the truck.

The pickup rocked, but stayed its course.

I kept leaning against it, even as my fear grew that soon the front tire would fold, sending the Audi spinning into the ditch or under the truck.

Be afraid, be very afraid,
my inner voice said.

Dialogue from SF movies I didn’t need.

It was quickly replaced by something else, something inexplicable that I would noodle over for weeks to come—advice my father had once given me.

Never bet on professional boxing or amateur figure skating.

The truck had too much advantage. It was going to shove me into the ditch, probably roll me over. A bad thing, high-speed rollovers.

I knew of only one way to escape it.

I swung the steering wheel to the right.

The Audi flew off the highway at sixty-three miles an hour.

For an instant, I was airborne, the car soaring above the roadside ditch.

There was nothing for me to do except wait for impact. It seemed to
be a long time in coming, long enough anyway for my inner voice to announce,
You love this car.

The Audi splashed into the snow.

I felt the unyielding pressure of the seat harness on my shoulder and across my stomach, keeping me from leaping through the windshield.

The car skidded forward, losing speed rapidly as it plowed through the deep drifts. It reminded me of diving into a pool. The snow eased the Audi to a stop the way water slows a diver.

I bounced back against the bucket seat even as I gripped the steering wheel, still anticipating the sudden, excruciating jolt of collision. When I finally realized that the Audi was no longer moving, I leaned back against the seat, marveling that my air bags hadn’t deployed. The engine had stalled, but the radio was working. Leslie Gore. “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To.” I switched it off. An eerie silence enveloped the car. I sat there shaking for a full thirty seconds. I reminded myself to breathe. It took a few moments until I remembered how.

The nose of my car was now buried in snow; the silver hood and windshield were splattered with it. I was grateful for it. Grateful that it had snowed the evening before, grateful for all the snowfalls that had come before that one, and grateful for the snowplows that had pushed the snow off the highway into the ditch.

I glanced out my side window. I could see only the rooftops of the vehicles that passed me on the highway, oblivious to my predicament. I rested my forehead against the steering wheel. All those driving lessons that my father, that my skills instructor at the academy had given me—“We never covered this,” I said aloud.

It didn’t take long before my warm breath fogged the windows. I powered down the driver’s-side window, letting clean, clear frozen air into the car. After a few deep breaths, I found my cell phone, dialed 911, and explained where I was.

“I need the police and a tow truck,” I told the operator.

“Are you the driver of the vehicle?”

“Yes,” I said, identifying myself.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Was anyone else hurt?”

“No. There’s just me.”

“Police cars and an ambulance have already been dispatched. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Quite sure.”

“I’ll recall the ambulance, then.”

“What do you mean police have already been dispatched?”

“Someone witnessed the accident and called it in a few minutes ago.”

“Who?”

“The caller refused to give his name. He said he didn’t want to get involved.”

The light bars on two police cars flashed above me. The cars halted. Doors were opened and slammed shut. Someone shouted something at someone else. Danny Mallinger appeared on the rim of the roadside ditch. During my duel with the truck I had crossed into her jurisdiction. I gave her a wave.
How embarrassing.
She plunged into the snow and plowed toward me. I told the 911 operator that the police had arrived and thanked her. The operator told me to have a nice day.

I deactivated my cell phone and jammed it back into my pocket just as Mallinger arrived at my door.

“Are you all right?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

“There’s an ambulance on the way.”

“I’ve already canceled it.”

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“Help me out of the car.”

I unlocked the door and tried to force it open, but it wouldn’t budge.
Mallinger frantically cleared the snow that was jammed against it. Finally, with her pulling and me pushing the door, we made an opening. She told me to be careful as she helped me from the car. I felt steady on my feet, but let her hold my arm just the same.

The second officer was now at the side of the car—a man even younger than Mallinger. Mallinger looked beyond him, following the long furrow the Audi had dug into the snow from where it left the highway to where it had settled.

“Going a little fast, were we?”

“I was under the speed limit,” I told her. “Someone ran me off the highway. He did it deliberately. Just look at my car. Oh, my God. Look at my car.”

The second officer was squatting next to the Audi, running his gloved fingers over a series of two-foot-wide grooves cut deep into the metal from the center of the car door to the rocker panels and all the way to the back bumper, the bumper nearly torn off. Most of the paint had been chipped and scraped off, replaced in a few instances with streaks of blue.

“Look at my car!”

“What hit him?” Mallinger asked the officer.

“Just look at my Audi.”

“What hit you?” Mallinger asked me.

“A truck. A pickup. My car. I just bought it.”

“What kind of pickup truck?”

“Blue. With a plow blade. I was a little too busy to get make and model.”

“A blue pickup truck,” said the young officer. “By the height of the grooves, I’d say it was a heavy-duty model. A lot of farmers with that kind of vehicle.”

“Andy,” Mallinger said, drawing out the name. “Andy?”

Andy wasn’t listening. He pulled a plastic bag from the pocket of his bulky coat and a pair of tweezers. He began prying blue paint chips off my Audi and dropping them into the bag.

“Andy, what are you doing?”

Andy seemed surprised that Mallinger would ask such a question.

“Collecting evidence,” he said.

“Evidence?”

“Paint samples for the PDQ.”

“Don’t waste time.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I interrupted. “PDQ?”

“Paint Data Query,” Andy said, obviously pleased to demonstrate his knowledge. “It’s a database of paint samples. The FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police set it up about ten years ago. We send in an unknown paint chip and the lab will determine make, model, and year of the vehicle. We’ll run that information through the DMV.”

“Andy, the odds of getting a hit—it’s a waste of time,” Mallinger insisted.

“No, it’s not. I have a girlfriend who works for one of the labs that collects paint samples for PDQ and she says—”

“Andy.” Mallinger sighed impatiently and turned to me. “He’s new.”

“Hell with that.” I looked directly into Andy’s green eyes. “You collect all the paint samples you want. You get the sonuvabitch that wrecked my car and I’ll make it worth your while.”

Mallinger looked skyward and frowned.

“I need this,” she muttered. “I really need this.”

It took over an hour for a wrecker to get my Audi back on the highway. I warned the operator not to damage the car. He told me they could always wait until the spring thaw before trying to get it out of the ditch. I reminded him that it was a $45,000 car. He said, not anymore. I told him he wasn’t very funny. Mallinger suggested I wait in her cruiser while they worked. I insisted on watching from the shoulder of the highway where I could get a better look. I cringed, closed my eyes, and more than once held my breath as the Audi was yanked, dragged, and generally
muscled onto the pavement. I realized it was just a car, but still . . .

I thanked Mallinger for her help and arranged to get a copy of the accident report for my insurance company. Man, were they going to love this. Afterward, I accompanied the tow truck driver to the garage. They put the Audi on a hoist and determined that there had been no damage to the undercarriage. After reattaching the bumper and engineering a temporary fix of the rear lights and filters—there was a lot of duct tape involved—they pronounced the car drivable as long as I didn’t drive it too hard. They told me they’d be happy to fix the Audi “as good as new,” but I would have to wait a good long time for parts. That didn’t seem like an option to me. I paid with a credit card, thanked everyone, and drove off.