Into the Inferno - Earl Emerson [48]
I left the girls in the truck and went into a narrow building, where two men were sorting paperwork and slapping staplers at a long wooden counter. A woman sat at a desk on the far wall. Nobody looked up.
“North Bend Fire and Rescue. I called earlier?”
The man who spoke was maybe forty, husky, with thickset shoulders, knuckles like new potatoes, a wide face, and blue Steve McQueen eyes a susceptible woman might fall into. His curly hair was a faded rust color. He wore jeans and a plaid work shirt. His name was Cleve according to his name tag, and he didn’t look at me. Not once. Not until I started in on him.
“What can we do for you?” he asked.
“I need to see a manifest for one of your trucks that was involved in a wreck outside North Bend last February.”
“You the guy that called?”
“Yes.”
“February? Jesus H. We’re not librarians. I told you on the phone we don’t transport anything that would cause health problems. Go over to Mainland Freight on Utah Avenue. They do hazardous materials.”
“Holly Riggs was driving.” I could tell the woman at the desk knew Holly by the way she raised her head. With a shrug of his shoulders, Cleve turned his back to me and began filing papers in a metal cabinet. “Listen, we have people in a nursing home over this.”
“Try Mainland.”
“Holly Riggs wasn’t driving for Mainland. She was driving for you.”
“Look, pal. What I want right now is to see you pucker up and skeddadle out that door.”
“Holly Riggs is in a coma. I think there’s a chance whatever put her in the hospital was on that truck.” The woman at the desk was getting more and more interested.
“Out.”
There was no reason for his intransigence, no reason other than hubris and lassitude—or else he was trying to hide something. I wanted to smack him. It was the first time in years I’d felt like hitting someone. The Sixth Element of the Saints of Christ followers had been taught to avoid altercations, to heal the severed ear, to turn the other cheek.
When two truck drivers entered the room, the other man behind the counter assisted the first one while Cleve finished up his filing and headed for the driver beside me. I’d been dismissed.
Their small talk was just warming up when I stepped into the prissiest voice I could muster and said, “Cleve, sweetie. I’m sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” The room lapsed into a silence you could feel on the small hairs of your arms.
Cleve looked directly at me and said, “What are you talking about?”
“Cleve, come back to my pad tonight and nothing like that will ever happen again. Why, just this morning when I called here, I said to myself, Cleve is still thinking about me. I know he is. And that was good, because I was thinking about you, too, Cleve. Good thoughts, Cleve. Only good thoughts.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Everyone had a trigger point, and, by some instinct I couldn’t name, I’d put my finger on his.
“You and me, sweetie. You know what I’m talking about. Now don’t get fussy. You know Doctor said fussy is bad for your LDL.”
“What the hell do you want?” He turned to the others. “I don’t even know this asshole!”
“What I want is the shipping manifest for the truck Holly Riggs was driving the night she had the accident.”
Fists bunching at his sides, veins on the side of his neck distending, he strode to the end of the counter where I was standing and spoke through clenched and crooked teeth. Some of them looked like they were going to break. “What’s this crap about last night? If you don’t get off the premises in ten seconds, I’m going to climb over this counter and make you sorry you were born.”
“You’re actually going to lay hands on me?” I smirked lewdly at the others. “That would be so darn thrilling, Cleve. Don’t count to ten. Do it now. Come over that counter and hurt me, baby. Hurt me bad.”
The woman at the desk was