Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
At which point, and dead on cue, a siren began behind us.
We were just then approaching an ancient-looking bridge. Gettis floored the accelerator, fishtailing the vehicle so that it slammed the rail of the bridge as we started over it.
We were about halfway across the bridge when two state patrol cruisers appeared ahead, blocking the way.
“It’s over,” I told him. “It’s over!”
But he didn’t hear me, and he was past caring.
Past thinking, too, because there was no way out, but he stomped on the brake, put the Jeep in reverse, and swung us around, slamming the back end into the wooden rail. Then he went forward, trying to turn the vehicle around, smashing the front into the opposite rail. Then he turned back again, trying to gain an angle, but this time went too far.
The back of the Jeep went through the rail, and we tilted, front end up.
We held there for a second or two — a very long second or two — then we flipped. Over and down, and hit the river hard.
And I was out for a while. The roof of the Jeep collapsed with the impact, and my head had gotten a bang, but I became aware again just as the water rose to cover my face. I got a good deep breath as the river current dragged us down and under and into a black, unforgiving world.
I got my seat belt off and pulled on the door handle, but it was jammed tight, and though I hit it with everything I had, it didn’t budge, so I raised my feet — or lowered them in my upside down world — and kicked out at the windshield twice before I felt it give. I managed to slip out of the vehicle just as it hit the soft river bottom.
I turned myself right side up under the hood of the Jeep, my knees sinking into the muck. Hanging onto the steering wheel with one hand because the current was pulling at me hard, I reached back inside for Gettis.
Who was still upside down in his seat, and he was conscious and looking at me.
I couldn’t read his eyes, but if I could, I would have seen that the heart had gone out of him.
His seat belt hadn’t been on, but when I grabbed for the front of his shirt, he pushed my hand away, and when I reached for him again, he reached up himself and pulled my hand from the steering wheel, and shoved me back.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
I tried to grab for the dashboard, but the current had me, and then I saw him smile — a kind of thanks-for-nothing smile — and finally, I was swept away. And he was gone in the dark.
I broke the surface of the river near to the east bank, about a hundred yards from the bridge, and hauled myself onto the muddy shore, then just sat there, watching the river.
Matini’s men spotted me, but I was too tired to budge, so I stayed put, sitting in the mud.
Eventually, they came down to me, and Matini himself after a while, and there was a lot of talk about what to do, but it was all their business, so I kept quiet.
An ambulance came for me, despite my protest, but once the EMT took a look at the top of my head, and the ugly welt I had along the side of my skull, he convinced me it might be serious.
A head can take only so many bangs.
I spent the night in the hospital, but the X-rays were clear, so I left the following morning, and did a long Q and A with the county D.A. that afternoon. By six o’clock I was back at the Congaroo.
I hung around a few days, there being no rush to be anywhere, and asked some questions — about Gettis, whom no one believed could have ever done anything wrong regardless of the news that was flooding the local media, and about the missing money.
About which I ended up talking with a very, very old man, a lawyer who lived in nearby Waverly.
He was an ex-judge, in fact, who’d been Gettis’s friend, and who, after we’d chatted most of an afternoon, in a getting-a-feel-for-each-other way, told me some things “in a hypothetical sense” that put everything together.
So it was almost a week since I’d last seen Scotty, before I went to visit again.
On one of his “good days,” he told me. A day when he could get out of bed and maneuver around on his wheels.
And now, sharing a six pack I brought, on the shaded porch that overlooked the ball field at Cormier Memorial, watching a September shower muddy up the world, I told him the whole story, and gave him the Purple Heart I’d taken from Steensen’s cabin.
Which he held and looked at for a long, quiet time, then finally said, “Crash got this saving my ass.”
“Oh?”
He nodded. “In Nam, a zillion years ago.”
I watched him remember.
“I’d only been in-country about a week,” he told me, “and my chopper went down up near Phu Bai. Dislocated my shoulder.” He shook his head. “The area was red with Cong, but old Crash come lookin’ for me anyway, and got me out.” He frowned sharply. “We was about a mile from the LZ, and we started taking ground fire, and a round hit Crash—” He pointed to his left temple. “—right there. Took out a chunk of brain. Blood everywhere.” He shook his head again. “Don’t know how he got us down to the LZ in one piece.”
“A good man,” I said.
Scotty nodded, sipped beer, and sighed. “Didn’t stay in touch with him much over the years,” he told me quietly. “Like I should have.”
“It’s like we’re all related,” I said. “Crash saved your ass, you saved mine.”
Scotty shrugged, then frowned at me. “So what did he do with the money?” he asked. “Gettis, I mean.”
I finished off the can of beer I held, and opened another saying, “Fourteen million, five hundred and fifty thousand in bearer bonds.”
“Whoa!”
I laughed, sipped some of my own beer, and said, “Turns out, he gave it away.”
Scotty stared. “You’re shittin’ me.”
I shook my head, then settled back in the big wicker chair I was in and explained. “Back fifteen years, three hurricanes, one after the other, hit the area down around Bayette hard. Dumped a lot of rain — too much — and Bayette was flooded out. Nothing was left.”
Scotty gave me a get-on-with-it hand wave.
“Bayette’s a real small town,” I went on, “right on the Neuse, and it had been flooded out before, and the man I talked to told me the people there just lost their will to start over. There wasn’t enough money coming in to rebuild anyway, so the town was going to disappear.” I smiled. “Harold Gettis had just been made chief of police of a town that wasn’t there anymore.”
I had some more of my beer. “But then Gettis stops a speeder, finds the money, and gets his big idea.”
“I’ll bet the sonofabitch did,” Scotty sneered.
I held a hand up. “Through a lawyer,” I told him, “who knows a lot more than he’ll admit to, Gettis made anonymous donations to people and to the town itself. Got homes rebuilt. Got a new levee constructed. Got better drainage. Kept Bayette on the map.”
“He gave it all away?” Scotty complained.
“No indication he ever spent a dime of that money on himself.”
He frowned all this over hard, then put his eyes back out into the rain-swept ball field, and for a while neither of us said anything, just watched the dark world outside, the rain sheeting across the field, the wind whipping some of the wet in on us. Then Scotty finished the can he was holding, popped another open, and said, “But — the sonofabitch killed Crash.”
I nodded, and agreed. “The sonofabitch killed Crash.”
And we mourned the loss of our brother.
Snow Angels
by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
So Gramps took them down to the road anyway. Bobberts stuck his hands in his pockets. His fingers found his dad’s Swiss Army knife. He didn’t even get to use it. Dad was kinda mean about that.