Glass Tiger

‘I saw you drive up. I bet you want Daddy.’ Without waiting for a reply, she turned to the open door of the house and yelled, ‘Daddy, there’s somebody here to see you.’ She turned back to Thorne. ‘He’s in his study, first door on the left.’ Then she was gone again, back to the pool-party.

‘Come in, come in,’ called a voice from down the hall.

Harris Spencer was just standing up from an easy chair near the picture window, shoving reading glasses up on his forehead. A hardback book was tented open on the chair-arm. He looked a vigorous seventy, with dancing blue eyes in a narrow, mild face.

‘I see my daughter as usual has bullied you into taking a glass of her lemonade.’ He held out his hand. ‘Harris Spencer. Glad to meet you.’

‘Brendan Thorne.’ They shook.

Spencer gestured him to the couch across from his easy chair. He sat back down. Thorne sat on the couch.

‘I’m retired from the Clinic, the freezer is full of walleyes and mallards, and you can play only so many rounds of golf. So these days I’m catching up on all the reading I missed over the years. Do you like to read, Mr. Thorne?’

‘Anything I can get my hands on.’

‘Good man. I read a lot of mysteries, all kinds. But especially medical mysteries. I’m addicted. But I’m rambling. How can I help you?’

Thorne opened with, ‘You must have seen dozens of drunk-driving accidents over the years. I’m sort of snooping into one particular one that happened on New Year’s Eve, 1966. A boy named Halden Corwin—’

‘Ran over a girl named Heidi Johanson. Damn!’ Spencer slammed a fist on his chair-arm for emphasis. ‘I’ve been waiting forty years for that other shoe to drop!’

Thorne set his lemonade on the arm of the couch. ‘What other shoe?’

‘I was only twenty-nine at the time, doing my very first tour of night duty at St. Mary’s ER. Life and death. Heady stuff. You remember your first one.’

Thorne could vividly remember his first night patrol in the Panama jungle. He’d been nineteen. Nothing had happened.

‘You probably know the basics. Corwin had always been a sort of wild kid, but not a bad one. He was underage, but that night he’d been drinking at the Rainbow, then went out and stole a car, and ran over the Johanson girl by accident on a nearby country road. He plowed the stolen car into a tree a couple of hundred yards beyond. The sheriff’s men brought him to the ER.’

‘I didn’t know about him drinking at the Rainbow.’

‘He was out cold when they brought him in to us, but after he woke up he told me the only thing he remembered was being at the dance.’ He leaned forward, face intent. ‘His blood alcohol level seemed to me too high for him to be able to drive a car. Somehow he did. That bothered me. Still does.’

‘I thought no alcohol tests were run until too late.’

Spencer gave a little half-laugh. ‘I told you I was young and eager. I ran ’em myself and didn’t tell the police when he was arrested because I hadn’t recorded them so they couldn’t be used in evidence. Besides, I felt he had enough trouble.’

Thorne sipped his lemonade. It was good. The sounds of summer carried from behind the house. Spencer cocked his head.

‘The wife, kids, grandkids. God bless ’em, every one.’

Thorne said slowly, thinking it through, ‘If he was so drunk he was passed out, how did he remember the Rainbow?’

‘He wasn’t passed out — knocked out. His head hit the steering wheel when the car hit the tree. No seatbelt, of course. Twenty-two stitches. Retrograde amnesia, common with severe concussions. Sometimes part or all of the events shortly before the blow comes back, sometimes none of it ever does.’

Amnesia. In Corwin’s case, apparently permanent. Again the prickle up Thorne’s spine that he had felt leaving the Johanson farm.

‘What did he think happened?’

‘He had no idea. Even when he was all patched up and awake, he didn’t remember much beyond the Rainbow. Something about someone helping him into a car...’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe a false memory, maybe Heidi herself. I guess we’ll never know.’

Thorne said, ‘He and Gus Wallberg were teammates in football and hockey, and great buddies off the field. Why would he steal the car of his best friend’s old man? He could have just borrowed it. And since he and Terry Prescott had broken up, why weren’t Corwin and Gus Wallberg out together that night?’

‘Who knows? Maybe Gus had a date of his own.’

‘Good point. But then wouldn’t he have been driving his dad’s car?’

Spencer nodded. ‘It never came out, but some other kids claimed the two of them were drinking together at the Rainbow.’

‘Both of them drunk?’ mused Thorne. ‘Corwin maybe more so? You said he was a wild kid in those days. Maybe he was even already passed out in the car when they left the dancehall.’

Spencer kept it going. ‘And Gus Wallberg is driving—’

‘Hell yes,’ said Thorne eagerly. ‘It’s his father’s car. Wallberg goes roaring down the little country road, Heidi pops up in front of him, he hits the brakes, too late... WHAM!’