Twilight (17 page)

There was a dusting of frost on the ground with patches of snow in the woods, but the bare trees and the fog of his breath, the smell of the pine and the smoke rising from the farmhouse chimneys was perfect Currier and Ives.

Most of the guys would be spending the day with their families. Perry and Rob weren’t married, but both had relatives in town. That’s what it was all about—being thankful for what you had, for the people who mattered. Provided, of course, you had people who mattered.

Both his parents in Phoenix and his sister in Seattle had invited him to come visit, but he’d declined. Not that they didn’t matter, of course they did; it was just that he hadn’t wanted to face the concerned looks, the well-meant questions.
“What are you drinking, son?”
as his father popped the tab of a beer.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
in his mother’s gentle voice.
“Maybe you should consider moving here.”

No, Montrose had his heart. These were his people, even if he was too damaged to serve them as he once had. Maybe that would pass. Maybe he’d snap out of it. Maybe he just had to find himself again like his brother Drew in Alaska, searching for identity in the wilderness experience. Cal might have considered going there, but he hadn’t been asked.

Cissy came out on the porch toting a pail of birdseed. She wore a lavender flowered dress and a yellow-green apron with zigzag trim. She gave him the same smile she gave the finches darting on the rail around her. “Hello, my pets. Hello, Cal.”

“Morning, Cissy.”

“Are you having turkey with us?”

He shook his head. “I’m at the station today.”

She clicked her tongue. “Oh, that’s a shame.” She scooped a teacupful of seed into one feeder.

The birds darted close, and Cal half expected one to perch on her head.
Feed the birds, tuppence a bag …
She seemed as happy among them as he’d ever seen her. No worry in her sweet doughy face, just pure contentment. He waved and left her to her feathered friends.

At the station Frank pulled on his coat the minute Cal walked in. “Margaret’s so tickled about this she sent a homemade pumpkin pie to keep you company.” He stood an ancient, olive green thermos on the table. “And hot spiced cider.”

“You’ve been covering the holidays a lot of years. You deserve the break.” Cal eyed the pie. “Thank her for me. That’s really nice.”

Frank didn’t waste any time heading for the door. “We’re going to Mary’s to see the grandbaby. Margaret’s helping Mary cook her first bird.”

“That’s great. Enjoy yourself.”

“You know how to reach me.”

“Yeah, I know.” Cal waved him out, then settled in for a quiet day. With most everything closed, not many people were out and about. After browsing the current
Newsweek
, he went down to the garage and walked the length of the engine. It didn’t shine as it once had, but every inch was clean and everything in place.

He pulled open the engineer’s cabinet and fingered the controls. He knew this truck like his own body. At one time they had been almost one unit, man and machine interconnected. Lifting a spanner wrench, he balanced it in his hand. The tool of tools for a fireman. What you couldn’t do with a spanner … He put it back and closed the doors.

A loud tone from the claxton device alerted him, and adrenaline surged as he picked up the hotline. “Lieutenant Morrison.”

The dispatcher was not Frieda. A male voice monotoned, “Man down on Route D.”

Cal listened to the specific location, then answered, “Engine two in service.” The call would have gone out to the volunteers’ pagers. Since it was a medical emergency, only the EMTs might respond, and that depended upon holiday availability. Taking the smaller search-and-rescue truck where he’d already stashed his jump kit, he hit the siren and sped out.

A car sat on the shoulder of Route D with hazard lights flashing, and the driver climbed out and waved him down. Cal parked and ran toward the bundle sprawled half on the road and half down the ditch. At the bottom lay a bottle of Wild Turkey. Guess the guy had drunk his Thanksgiving dinner first thing that morning.

After his own short romance with the bottle, Cal felt a singular sadness for the old guy and stood a moment, letting the emotion fade before he examined him. There was no hurry. He’d already noted the marked line of lividity—the top side of the face and neck white as wax, and the lower portion, where the blood had pooled, purple. By the angle of the head there was a C4 fracture, and “C4 breathe no more.” A break that high to the neck would have blocked the ability to expand the lungs—a quick death. There were also abrasions and blunt head trauma. He’d been struck, probably by a car.

Cal shook his head. No amount of hurrying or life support could help this ragged piece of humanity. But he dropped anyway and checked for a carotid pulse. Maybe he just wanted to touch him, to give him the dignity he might have known in a kinder life.

He pulled his handy-talkie from his belt and radioed the police officer who was probably en route. “Yeah, I’ve got a DRT, looks like hit-and-run.” DRT, dead right there. He was surprised at the sadness he felt saying it. He gave the mile marker on route D, then sat on his haunches and waited.

He looked up at the hum of an engine, tires on gravel and door closing. Patrol officer Simon Tate and Sergeant Danson, who more or less acted as detective. Danson’s shadow loomed over him, and Cal shook his head. “Checked out a while ago. Internal bruising near the waist, head trauma, and abrasion.” Again the sadness. Who was this old guy?

Danson stood like Matt Dillon, assessing the victim from his sixfoot-four vantage, then turned to the driver of the other car, whom Cal had scarcely noticed. “Did you see it happen?”

The man was a stranger, dressed in an oversized wool tweed overcoat with a black muffler at his neck and a cell phone sticking out of his pocket. He pulled a pipe from between his teeth and said, “I didn’t. I came over the hill and saw him lying there.”

“Were you alone on the road?”

The man took a puff. “I’m not saying it’s connected, but a way back, I was passed by a black sports car—”

“A Firebird?” Cal interrupted, and Danson frowned.

“Could have been. I didn’t notice the model, but he was late for wherever he was going.”

Danson asked, “Did you get a look at the driver?”

“Only that it was a man …” He eyed Cal. “About your age. I think there were others, at least one in the passenger seat. But like I said, I didn’t see them having anything to do with this.” He dropped his gaze to the corpse in the ditch. “What was he doing out here on a day like this?”

Cal shook his head as Danson searched the body for identification and came up empty. No name, no identity. Cal looked up and down the ditch for the parcel or pack vagrants usually carried. Except for the liquor bottle, the ditch was uncluttered. Not much to show for a life passing there.

Not much of a crime scene either, as far as he could tell. But that was Danson’s job. Officer Tate finished taking down everything the motorist said, then radioed the coroner, Dr. McGill, who was also the mortician. Cal doubted McGill would find anything surprising in his autopsy. Alcohol in the blood, and death by blunt trauma.

“Will there be anything else?” The motorist emptied his pipe onto the powdery frost at the edge of the road.

Danson scowled at that fouling of the crime scene. “As long as we know how to reach you.”

“The officer has my cell number.” The man walked back to his car. With one more glance at the victim, he climbed in and drove away.

Cal stood with Danson. There was nothing more he could do. It was in the hands of criminologists now, such as Montrose had. Rarely did they deal with homicide, even vehicular. He turned to leave.

Danson stopped him. “What’s this about a black Firebird?”

“One ran me off the road night before last.” Cal touched the stitched gash.

“You might have reported it.”

Cal shrugged. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t. Maybe a macho desire to handle it himself, maybe more. But now they were talking vehicular homicide, with no witness. For all they knew this poor, drunk fool was weaving down the street or fell in front of the guy’s wheels. That still made it hit-and-run, but it was a stretch to think anyone had hit the old guy on purpose. They had no I.D. on the vehicle. Not for sure. The old guy just got in the way of someone’s errand, someone who didn’t much care who got knocked down.

Cal hung the handy-talkie back on his belt and headed for the truck.

“Morrison?”

He turned.

“I want to know if anything else happens, you hear?”

“Yep.”

The pie was exceptional. He ate it ravenously as he filled out the report. Nothing like a good dessert for covering a bad taste, and that hit-and-run had left a bad taste. He’d seen death, God knew. Even senseless death. But not deliberate. Not out here where folks still lived by the golden rule. He swigged the cider and it warmed him.

What was he thinking? They had no proof that guy’s death was anything but an accident—freak accident of two objects following the same time-space continuum. For that matter, his run-in with the Firebird could be the same thing, so why was he even connecting the two?

The claxton device jarred him, jangling him worse than the first time. He answered the hotline and heard, “Uh, we got a cat poled at 1440 Walnut. Repeat—”

“Yeah, I got it the first time. That’s Ida Blair’s place, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry I don’t …”

Some of the volunteer dispatchers were less adept than Frieda, who handled the higher volume times with ease.

“Engine two responding.” Cal hung up. Where else in the country did the fire department still rescue poled cats? It was the chief ’s unnatural fondness for the fur balls that kept them at it. He pulled on his department-issue coat and once again took the rescue vehicle to the scene. As he drove, he tried not to think of the old guy in the ditch.

If he’d reported the Firebird incident before, would the man be dead now? Maybe. Probably. Chuck Danson could no more act on a sketchy, half-seen complaint like his than on a hit-and-run with no witness. Still, it hadn’t been professional to keep it quiet. It had been personal.

He’d assumed that the Firebird was somehow linked to Laurie. Okay, maybe he was paranoid. Maybe he still looked for an excuse, a reason why she needed him. But that broken window could have been more than she let on. He’d mishandled that. He should have forced answers from the start. Even if it pushed her away, as he knew it would.

He swung the corner wide and headed down First Street. He slowed at Walnut and took in the scene. Ida Blair, wrapped in a quilt, stood under the electrical pole with a saucer in one hand and a stuffed mouse in the other. Her hair looked as though she’d already made contact with the wires. He pulled the truck to a stop across the street parallel to the pole and got out.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Blair.”

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here. Bootsey’s got herself in a real fix. A real bad fix.”

Cal looked up the pole at the gray-and-black tiger whose eyes gaped like an owl’s. She was scared all right, but what did the stupid animal expect? “I’ll fetch her down for you.” He reached into the truck for his spiked boots and pulled them on.

Snapping the strap to the belt at his waist, he hooked it around the pole and attached the other end to the belt. Then grasping the ends of the strap, Cal dug the cleats of his boot into the pole and started up. With each dig, the cat’s eyes grew wider and she tightened herself into a ball, nails impaling the wood. “Hey, there, Bootsey. Remember me?” He neared the top.

The cat growled low in her throat.

“Oh, you do remember.”

The cat hissed.

“Come on, now …” He reached for the nape of her neck. Like a taut spring she launched herself over his head and sailed to the ground with a thud, then dashed to the back door Ida had left open.

“Oh! Oh, my baby, my poor Bootsey!” The milk from the saucer sloshed up her arm as Ida Blair followed her inside.

Cal slacked his weight against the strap and hung there. “You’re welcome,” he muttered, then let himself down. But he couldn’t blame Ida. From the looks of it, she had no one but Bootsey to spend the holiday with.

He drove back to the station. It was empty and cold. When had it gotten so dingy? It needed paint. It needed light and bodies and laughter. He missed the camaraderie, the roughhousing. He missed talking through the trauma, knowing the others felt the same.

He shook his head. He’d changed all that … for himself, anyway. He’d pushed them away, kept it in. No one, not one man there had broken through the wall, not even Rob, especially when the booze made Cal wild enough to use his fists. He gripped the doorjamb and went inside.

His footsteps echoed up the stairs and, entering the office, he thumbed through the reports. Car alarm, poisoning, dog bite … gasoline fire, just a shed. No one injured, thankfully. Gasoline went bad fast, too fast. He stared at the wall, remembering his training, not just the fire fighting, but the chemistry of extinguishment, CPR trauma injury, EMT and paramedic certification, his red card that interfaced wild land fire and urban …

He was more highly trained than anyone besides Frank; he made and ran the training videos for the whole area. And what was he now? A clown. He dropped the reports to the table. “I can rescue cats. There’s no better cat-nabber alive. So what if they hate me?” He rubbed the shoulder that was pulling a little from the climb. “And now I’m talking to myself. Not a good sign, Cal.”

The silence hung like fog. Even the phone stayed quiet. The hours dragged. He spent them doing housekeeping, cleaning out cabinets, sorting, filing. He even washed down the walls. One call came in, a choking, but before he could respond, the victim expelled the obstruction, and he could hear everyone in the background cheering. He readied to go out anyway and check the choker’s ABC’s—airway, breathing, and circulation—but the victim got on the phone and spoke clearly and strongly. She was fine.

Daylight faded and evening drew on. He wished he could get the old drunk out of his mind. What a way to go. Alone and senseless, out on some road like an animal, road kill. There should be more to life, more than checking out with no one around to care. He felt morbid and depressed thinking about it.