Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [103]
The speed limit was thirty-five, but we were doing closer to forty-five; behind us, the Suburban quickly matched our speed.
Without warning, the Suburban swerved across the yellow line and nearly struck an oncoming vehicle, overcorrected, and went off the road on the right, a sheet of dust flaring up as it crossed the dirt.
“Achara had an accident!” shrieked Allyson, who’d been watching the Suburban with me.
“Stop,” I said.
“What?” Stephanie glanced into her mirror and pulled onto the parking strip, reversing until we occupied the stretch of roadway directly opposite the accident. The Suburban had center-punched a small tree. The vehicle the Suburban had so narrowly missed was backing up, too.
“You girls stay inside,” I said.
“Can’t we go see?” Britney asked.
“No.”
The tree, about five inches in diameter, had creased the front bumper of the Suburban. Other than that, there wasn’t much damage. The windshield was intact.
“Oh, God,” said Donovan when I reached the vehicle. He was cupping his nose with both hands, blood leaking through his fingers. The deployed air bag had popped him good. I reached inside past Donovan and turned off the ignition.
As I moved around the vehicle to see how Achara was doing, one of our volunteers, Andre Stiles, climbed out of the pickup across the street, still wearing his uniform from the funeral.
He peered around the vehicle to see where I was headed, spotted Achara, and rolled his eyes. As a group, the guys in the department indulged in a lot of adolescent humor about my homing in on the best-looking woman at any accident scene—some of them even claimed I’d elbowed them aside to get to particularly pretty victims. I almost always let them run with their joke.
Achara was on the passenger side of the Suburban, hands on her knees, staring at the ground. “You all right?” I asked.
The ringing in my ears obscured her initial reply. When I asked her to repeat, she said, “Got a pencil? I’m going to give you some numbers. Don’t tell Scott.”
“Why not?”
“Write this down. I want you to have this before I tell you anything else.”
“I don’t have anything to write with.”
“There’s no time to get it. Just listen. Seventy-five, forty.”
“Seventy-five, forty.”
“That’s the first part. The rest goes, eighteen, twenty-four, eighteen, sixty-three, oh-eight, forty-six. Write it down first chance you get. Don’t let anyone see it until you need it.”
“Need it for what?”
“Give it back to me. Do you remember it?”
“Seventy-five, forty. Eighteen, twenty-four, eighteen, sixty-three, oh-eight, forty-six.”
“Not too many people could do that.”
“Bible school.”
She wasn’t bleeding, but she would probably end up with a black eye from the impact of her air bag. “You sure you can remember that?”
“I can remember anything.”
“Jesus Christ! You could have killed somebody,” Donovan whined, rounding the rear of the Suburban holding a four-by-four inch gauze pad to his nose, his tieless shirt dappled with red.
“It was your fault.”
“My fault? You grabbed the wheel. You don’t ever grab the wheel when somebody else is driving.”
“You were in the wrong lane, Scott. You were going to kill somebody.”
“The only person was going to kill anybody was you.”
“Look who’s talking. Mr. Ethical.”
“Now don’t get into that.”
“I’ll get into it if I want to get into it.”
“This is my last warning. Don’t go there.” His voice was surprisingly calm considering what they’d just been through.
They glowered at each other, and before anybody could react, Achara stepped forward and kicked Donovan in the shin. He stepped back and held his leg. The contrast in size between Achara and Donovan made the skirmish almost funny. I doubted she weighed a hundred pounds. At the least, Donovan weighed two-forty.
None of this kept her from