John D. MacDonald

Fatal Accident

Banning knew how it was with me, knew I couldn’t get the dead face of the Miller kid out of my mind. It was he who talked me into taking two weeks off in the spring.

I had taken my time packing; so, well after dark, I was roaring up Route 14 north out of Williamsport, my hands light and easy on the wheel of Banning’s car. Mine was in the shop and he had insisted.

There was one of those Pennsylvania fogs. It was just heavy enough so that I didn’t dare pass the car ahead of me, and was content to cruise along just far enough behind him so that his twin tail-lights made a red glow on the fog that tore by in shreds from the breeze of his fast travel.

It was hypnotic, driving behind the other car, and, as I drove, I thought back over the last ten years and wondered why I had become a cop. Lots of security, sure, but damn low pay. And you never manage to get tough enough to keep things from getting to you, from getting down through your thickened hide and stinging the few soft parts you had left.

I thought of the Miller kid and of the hammer murders in the shanty down by the river, and the gray, bloated look of the bodies that came out of the river. Violence. Diseases of the mind. Shifty eyes. A thousand lineups. You walk into small, dingy sitting rooms and you can smell the blood in the air and hear a woman moaning. It’s a dirty business. Thankless.

The guy ahead of me had Pennsy plates. I was looking ahead to Jack Farner’s lodge in the hills where I could sleep twenty hours a day and eat like a horse and come back to life.

A few miles north of Roaring Branch, Mr. Buick ahead of me slowed down and I dropped back, figuring he was about to turn. A light rain had started, cutting the fog, and his tail-lights were clearer. The road made a gradual bend to the right. He had dropped down to about forty. I held back, waiting for him to let me know what he was going to do.

He went part way around the turn, and the tires on the right side dropped off onto the wet shoulder. I braked, realizing that he’d have to slow down to get back onto the road. He didn’t. He kept on going, right across the shoulder and the right front of the big car smashed into a mammoth tree with a noise like a million bricks falling into a greenhouse. The smash threw the big car onto its side and it slid forty feet in the mud, wheels turning in the air.

I jammed on my brakes and fought to get Banning’s coupe out of a long skid. I pulled off onto the shoulder a hundred or so feet beyond the smashup and ran back through the rain, a flashlight in my hand.

The rain pattered on the black metal of the car. The front end was a complete mess. There was no sound. The door stuck. I managed to yank it open and pry it back. I climbed up and flashed the light down in there.

A man moaned. He was at the bottom of the heap. A bleeding woman was across him. The fresh blood matted her light hair. I bent down through the open door and felt for her wet arm. No pulse.

I flashed the light on her face. It was impossible to tell what she had looked like, but when I saw the depressed fracture of the frontal lobe, the pale, shell-like bones of the temple protruding through the skin, I knew there was no use in fooling with her. I pulled up hard on her arm, got her body up through the door, and put it on the grass.

The man’s face was covered with blood. His mouth opened as I held the light on him and he moaned again. Ambulance business.

I crawled in with him, hearing the glass of the window on his side crack as I stepped on it. I checked him over to make certain he wasn’t bleeding to death. No big holes in him that I could find.

Another car stopped. I climbed out, sent them down to the gas station to phone for an ambulance and the highway patrol. I handed the kid driving the car a buck and told him to bring back a couple of red flares.

He jumped the car away like a scared rabbit. I flashed my light back on the wreck. The guy was slowly climbing up out of the door I had propped open. I ran to him and steadied him as he climbed down.

His eyes were very wide and he was saying hoarsely, “Sleepy. Fell asleep.”

I found a blanket in the back of his car and wrapped him in it and made him sit down, leaning against the bole of the tree he had hit. There was a big gouge in the bark and the white wood underneath was ragged and splintered.

Another car stopped and a man hollered out the window, “Trouble?”

“All under control, unless you’re a doctor. Are you?”

“No.”

He started to climb out. I said, “Run along, friend.” He got back in, slammed the door and drove off.

The kid I had sent to the gas station came back and told me he had put the call through. He had a flashlight. He stared at the dead woman while I set the flares out on the shoulder.

When I got back to the man he said, “Janet! Where’s Janet?”

He tried to get up. I put my hands on his shoulders and held him down. “Relax. She’s hurt bad. A doctor’ll be along in a minute.”

Sirens growled in the distance, singing over the hills and around the curves. They bounced to a stop on the shoulder. Two of the Pennsy state cops, young, blunt, and efficient. They gave the woman one look and turned to the man.

At their request he tugged his wallet out of his pocket and handed it to them. One flashed his light on the license and papers while I explained what I had seen and what I had done. The other looked the car over, got a camera and flash bulbs out of his car, and took pictures of the tracks in the mud, the scar on the tree, the overturned car.

The ambulance pulled over close to the tree, right through the shallow ditch beyond the shoulder.

The man was moaning again. They got a stretcher and made him stretch out on it. The intern went over him with quick, careful hands. More cars stopped. People got out, their eyes big with curiosity.

They carted the woman into the ambulance and one trooper told me to report to the barracks near Canton while they got a formal statement from me.

I sat in the small front room of the trooper station after the questions were finished. They had, of course, learned that I was one of the brotherhood, and, after a drink, they asked me to stay overnight; one of the troopers was on leave and I could use his bed. I was too tired to object.

In a short while the younger one of the two, named Sid Graydon, came back from the hospital in Canton. He tossed his hat on the hall table, came into the room, and sat down wearily.

The older one, Charlie Hopper, asked, “Get much, Sid?”

“Not a hell of a lot, Charlie. They gave him a drug to quiet him. He isn’t hurt. Just shock and being shaken up. A fool nurse told him his wife is dead. He cried like a baby. Damn fool to drive while he was sleepy.”

“Where’s he from?”

“Philadelphia. Upper Darby to be exact. He and his wife were driving up to Elmira to visit her cousin there. His name is Walker Drock. He’s a broker. Just another statistic to write up, Charlie. Nothing to pin on the guy. His wife’s death is enough punishment for him.”

Charlie sighed. “Probably both of them were asleep. According to the coroner, she didn’t even get her hands up in front of her face. Just slammed her face right into the dashboard beside the glove compartment. Dented it right in. Funny about him slowing down. Usually they speed up when they fall asleep.”

“Foot probably slid off the gas. By the way, Charlie, I’ve got to call Kell’s garage in the morning and tell them not to touch the car. Drock was insistent about that. He told me that about four times.”

“That’s funny.”

“No, these accident cases, they get an idea in their head and you can’t get it out. He probably heard about some guy who had his car towed away by the police and then got a couple of hundred-dollar repair bill. I don’t think anybody is going to do much repairing on that crate.”

They gave me another drink and I sat with them and talked about the homicide cases in Philadelphia. I didn’t tell them about the Miller kid. I won’t be able to talk about that case for quite a while.

In the morning I drove on to Jack Farner’s place, and spent two long weeks there. I put ten pounds back on and got a little tanned in the sun and cut Jack enough stove wood to last him for six months. The calluses on my palms felt good and the new strength in my shoulders felt even better.

I stopped off to see Charlie and Sid on the way back. Charlie told me that Drock had stayed in the hospital for two days and then had gone back to Philly with the body of his wife. The car had been counted out as a total loss, and sold for salvage value. The thing was open and shut. A simple, tragic accident.

And yet, somehow, it bothered me. Curiosity is an occupational disease with a cop, I suppose. I still couldn’t figure out why Drock had slowed down before hitting the tree, why the jar of going off the pavement hadn’t awakened him, why he was so insistent on the car not being touched.

Banning is the guy who taught me the cop business. Banning says to always assume the worst and work a case from that end. It was none of my business. And it was silly. If you want to kill your wife, and you drive your car head on into a tree, you’ll probably end up knocking yourself off, too.

It bothered me and I know how I’m put together. I have to follow every little thing up or I can’t sleep nights. Maybe that’s why I’m a cop.

I drove to Kell’s garage. A guy climbed out from under a car and looked at the records and told me that the Drock car had been sold to an outfit named Higgins and Rigo.

Higgins was a puffy little man with watery eyes and a soiled shirt. He gave me the busy-man routine and I flashed the badge and watched him become very affable. He left me alone with a boy named Joe Baydle who had pulled the Drock car apart.

Joe acted very nervous until he found out that I wasn’t interested in him. He leaned against the bench and said, “Anything funny about that Drock car? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean. You’ve got to help me, Joe. I don’t know what I’m looking for. They told me over at Kell’s garage that Drock had got his stuff out of the car while it was there, and that he had brought a suitcase to carry off tools and things in.”

“He must have had a hell of a lot of tools.”

“How so?”

“The crate hasn’t been sent to the bailer yet. It’s still out in the back. Come along and I’ll show you.”

It was barely recognizable as the same car I had followed on that dark foggy night. It had been stripped.

Joe yanked the front door open on the driver’s side and said, “Look here.”

I bent over and looked where he pointed. The car was a four-door and a wide special compartment had been built under the front seat with a drop door that would open right under the driver’s thighs.

I borrowed a flashlight and stretched out so I could look in there. It was empty. At first I thought there was no clue to what it had contained. Then I noticed a small fragment caught in a front corner. I pulled it out.

It looked to me like a piece of sponge. I showed it to Joe. He shrugged and I put it in my pocket.

The nurse at the hospital, a pretty little thing with a turned-up nose and wide, wise Irish eyes, said, “Yes, I took care of Mr. Drock. He was very upset about his wife.”

“Did he make any phone calls?”

“Why, yes, he did. The morning after he came in here. He called the garage where his car had been towed and told them not to touch the car or anything in it until he had seen it. He called his wife’s parents and her sister and her cousin in Elmira. He sent a few wires.”

“Was he hurt badly?”

“No, he was very lucky. He didn’t even get badly bruised. Just shock.”

“How do you tell about shock?”

“The patient perspires a great deal, losing the body fluids from the pores. That fluid has to be replaced. Plasma.”

“Did they use that on him?”

“No. Dr. Flanagan said that it wasn’t a bad case of shock and just to keep him warm and give him a lot of fluids to drink.”

“Thanks a lot, nurse. You’ve given me the information I want.”

“You’re quite welcome.”

Banning drummed his fingers on the desk top. “It’s wild geese you’re after, Tom. I can give you one explanation. You say he’s a broker. Well, for some reason he was carrying some negotiable securities and he had them hidden in that compartment.”

“Ed, all I want is your permission to work on it for a couple of days.”

“Go ahead, Tom. Go right ahead. Get the doubts out of your thick skull so you can come back to work. The couple of days, my boy, will be leave without pay.”

“So be it.”

The little green house in Upper Darby had a “For Sale” sign on it. Walker Drock had moved down to an inexpensive apartment hotel on Chestnut.

I picked him up the first night he left the office and followed him to his apartment hotel. I waited up the street and he came out in different clothes an hour later. He went to a cocktail bar on Woodland and fifteen minutes after he arrived, a good-looking blonde joined him.

They got pleasantly tight and then went up and took a room at a cheap hotel on Market near Thirty-eighth. He left her there at dawn and I let him go. She came out at quarter to eleven and walked two blocks toward town before she found a breakfast spot.

She sat at the counter and I went in and sat beside her, in spite of the empty stools on both sides of us. In the mirror I saw her give me a long, skeptical look while she ordered a big breakfast. She was the type who always have trouble with citizens trying to pick her up. A long lean girl with abundant curves in the right places, pale, go-to-hell eyes, and a wide, heavy mouth.

I didn’t say a word until she had her coffee cup to her lips. Then I said, “Known Walker Drock long?”

She sputtered and the coffee ran down her chin and she sponged it off with a paper napkin.

“Who the hell are you?” she snapped.

“Just a cop, honey. A plain, dumb cop. Known Walker Drock long?”

“For a year. What’s it to you?”

“Mrs. Drock didn’t like Walker Drock knowing you, did she?”

“She didn’t know—” She stopped suddenly. “What’s this all about?”

“All about the sad and untimely death of Mrs. Drock. Very unfortunate, wasn’t it? Or maybe fortunate. Depends on how you look at things.”

“Mister, if you want to know anything, talk to my husband. His name happens to be Walker Drock.”

“Sure and husband and wife sneak off to a cheap hotel. That sounds good.”

“You think so? It happens that Walker has a certain position to maintain and it wouldn’t look right if he married too soon after his wife’s death. So we were married secretly in Maryland, and after a decent period we’ll be married all over again.”

I could tell she wasn’t lying.

I said, “You’ll have a great future, honey. You can wait for him to get tired of you and get chummy with some other gal. Then he’ll kill you the same way he killed his first wife.”

That was a shock to her. Her eyes widened and her hands shook. She glanced nervously at the counterman standing ten feet away. She said hoarsely, “You’re mad! It was an accident. Walker was in it, too! He could have been killed.”

“Could he? Suppose you ask Walker.”

I turned away from the look in her eyes. I threw a dime on the counter for my coffee and walked out.

I used the badge on the resident manager of Drock’s apartment hotel and got myself a room across the hall from his door. I propped the door open a crack so that I could watch his door.

I had nothing to go on. Just a hunch.

I didn’t have a long wait. She probably met him for lunch. He came storming in at two o’clock. He looked down the hall behind him as he fumbled with the key. His face was white.

He went on in. I gave him three minutes. Then I took the passkey and let myself in. He was bending over the fireplace. I slammed the door behind me. As he spun around, his mouth open, I said, “Hot day for a fire, isn’t it?”

You’ve got to give him credit for spunk. He rushed me. I rolled away from his punch, feeling the wind of it on my cheek. I dug a left hook deep into his gut and crossed a right to his face as he bent over.

He dropped on his back and was still. I dragged the smoldering, stinking mess out of the fireplace and stamped on it until it no longer smoked.

I sat on the other side of Banning’s desk. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk and said softly, “I’ll be damned!”

“Yeah, he got tied up with this Miss Eletha Forrest and his wife didn’t like it a bit. She wouldn’t give him a divorce. He planned it nicely. What he forgot to do was to get rid of the gimmick while he had a chance. But I suppose it wasn’t too easy to get rid of, at that.

“He waited until another car was following him, and then he picked out a deserted locality. His wife had gone to sleep. That was essential. He had to slow down to about forty going off the road, and probably had it down to thirty-five when he hit the tree.

“He hadn’t figured on it tipping over. That made it tougher for him, but he managed. I was the sucker witness — to tell people that he was in the car when it happened. He came out babbling about having fallen asleep, you remember.

“As soon as he had the general locality selected, he reached down and got the gimmick — the big thick sheet of sponge rubber out of the compartment — and kept it ready by his feet. He slowed down to forty, and as he headed for the tree he yanked it up between him and the steering wheel, leaning hard against it to kill the shock. The nurse said he didn’t even get badly bruised.

“His wife was asleep. The smash into the tree threw her against the dashboard with killing force. The car turned over. He had a few minutes to wedge the sponge rubber matting back into the compartment under the seat. That’s why he didn’t want anybody poking around the car.

“He had read that people get killed when they hit unyielding surfaces. He made sure he had one with some give to it, and he probably realized that he had to force himself to relax against it. She had no protection at all.”

I found the tall blonde signing her statement. She looked up and saw me, and her lip curled. “You fixed everybody good — real good,” she said.

“I can’t help that. Isn’t it better to know?”

Her eyes were puffy and red. “I suppose so. I hate him, now. I hate him!”

“Come along and I’ll buy you a drink.”

She looked into my eyes and I saw that there was something about her that I hadn’t seen. A sort of integrity. She said, “I hate him, but I’m married to him. I’ll stick around and do what I can for him until the State of Pennsylvania electrocutes him. Maybe some day you can buy me that drink.”

I walked out, remembering the look in her eyes, adding it to the looks in other eyes, the expressions on other faces.

A cop never grows a hide that’s quite tough enough. You always end up hating yourself, too.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Fatal Accident