So Clay for the first time approached his assignment with some eagerness. He wanted the paperwork done double quick now, and he would put in for three and a half hours even though the work would cost him six easy, just to stay on Fat Chance’s good side. He’d had sort of an interview with Cannon; he had accident reports, insurance applications, even the newspaper account of the accident, so he could fill out most of the forms and fudge what he didn’t know. He told himself that this was all a formality anyway. Acme would pay off, but only by the numbers.
Clay dropped the manuscript of Love Me Now, My Love into the bottom drawer and spread Acme’s paperwork across his desk. He’d have to start all over, read thoroughly this time. He began with the ambulance report and was struck again by the conglomeration of Cannon’s injuries, wincing at each cold detail. The emergency room write-up was even worse. He put both reports aside. He’d get to them later.
He picked up Acme’s own information, beginning with the application for Mrs. Cannon’s insurance. It was dull reading, mostly statistical, the have-you-ever-had, is-there-a-history-of variety, but he read line by line, detail by detail, unable to break his scholarly approach to serious reading even for this. When he finished, he found himself chewing on two of the details — the policy was six months old; there were no other life policies on Mrs. Cannon with other companies.
Mountain? he thought, staring off blankly. Mountain? Something about Cannon and a mountain? Mountain Valley, of course, but there was something else. As he thought of Cannon, he found himself running his fingers through his thinning hair and he was suddenly angry. “Everest,” he said aloud. Didn’t Cannon say something about Everest? And wasn’t that an insurance company? Life insurance or health?
He found Everest Insurance (“The Pinnacle of Protection”) in the Yellow Pages. Even if Cannon had lied on his insurance application to Acme about not having other life policies, would that give Acme grounds to negate the policy? And if it did, did Cannon deserve that kind of treatment from him? “Vengeance is petty, Adameus,” he said as he finished dialing, but he didn’t hang up.
He didn’t get far, either. He could almost see the sneer on the secretary’s face when she said, “We don’t just give out information on clients to any Joe who calls, y’know, bub.” She hung up before she heard his apology. Then he was angry again. Rudeness made him angry. There were no decent standards left. What had happened to courtesy, to respect? He called back. The same secretary answered.
“Hello,” said Clay, lowering his voice and rounding his vowels, “I’d like to speak to someone about taking out a group health insurance policy. I run a small business, fourteen employees, and we’re interested in...”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she answered in a voice distinctly more polite now, “but we don’t carry health. Now if your company needs life or fire or casualty...”
No, he told her, and thank you. She told him to have a nice day.
So, he thought. No health. Acme’s file showed the health policy at Mountain Valley, the company Cannon had mentioned. Maybe he meant a man named Everest. He called Mountain Valley and asked to speak to Mr. Everest. No one by that name. Just to be sure, he called Acme and Everest, asked both the same question, got the same answer. So perhaps Cannon had meant Everest Insurance, and perhaps he did have a life policy on his wife there. And maybe with other companies, too. For a moment Clay entertained the thought of murder, a diabolical plot to get rich from his wife’s apparently accidental death. He imagined calling every insurance company in the area and finding that Cannon had a huge policy on his wife at each one. “Pops” brings murderer to justice. More important, Adameus Clay makes better than a year’s salary in a week. Invest ten thousand dollars each for the twins now and they’d be able to go to college even if he were...
“Cut it out, Adameus,” he muttered. “Five dollars an hour and you’re being Walter Mitty here.” But he went back to the police report anyway.
It was gruesome. The car had hit the bridge abutment almost head on, impact on the passenger side. The car was virtually sheared in half. Woman apparently dead on impact, thrown through the windshield into the concrete pillar. Male driver wearing seat belt, multiple injuries. There were no skid marks. Investigating officer says mechanism of accident consistent with driver falling asleep at the wheel and drifting straight into abutment. Theory backed up later by victim interview: Victim claims to remember driving, then to remember waking up in hospital. Feels he fell asleep at the wheel.
There was more, but Clay wanted the reports he had seen earlier, the ambulance and emergency room reports with their lists of injuries. He found them. For the woman, no life support given at the scene. Man had to be extricated from the car with heavy tools and “jaws,” whatever they were. The injuries were listed more specifically on the emergency room report, and Adam had to reach back into his own college physiology class to remember what all the words meant — open fracture of the left clavicle, fracture of the right olecranon process, anterior dislocation of right shoulder, fracture of ribs eight through ten left side, lacerated liver and spleen, ruptured bladder, crushed metacarpals on right hand, broken nose, laceration of scalp, face, and neck, crushed right ankle. Clay shuddered and fought nausea, almost feeling the pain in each part of his own body as he read the report. He rubbed his elbow fitfully.
No, he thought, there’s no murder here. Death was riding too close for murder.
He finished filling out the report as quickly as he could.
The next day, before his first class, he took the report to Acme. He found himself badly shaken by the descriptions of the accident and injuries. He’d had nightmares all night, filled with screaming brakes, splintering glass, twisting metal, bodies flying to pieces, blood. It took him fifteen minutes more than usual to get to Acme, certain that every other driver was out to get him.
He gave the ungrateful Fat Chance his work, took his seventeen dollars and fifty cents without grace, got back into Brunhilde, and crept to the university, parking at the far side of the lot. He usually ate lunch at home, but today he would have chanced the Ptomaine Tower, as the students called the dining hall, rather than drive again. But the twins needed food, too, so he reluctantly climbed back into Brunhilde, stood his briefcase in the passenger seat, buckled in, and took his chances in the streets. At the Winn Dixie he parked as far away from the other cars as he could, and even though he spent his seventeen fifty and then some, he had only one bag to show for it, full of junior meats and strained prunes and the like, and the bag was heavy, so he was tired and irritated and sweating by the time he balanced it in front of his briefcase and strapped himself in again.
Driving was worse than ever. He felt absolutely paranoid until he finally saw his house two blocks away, and he was just feeling safe when some idiot in a jeep with a bumper made out of steel pipe jerked away from the curb and stalled out right in front of him. By all the laws of physics, he knew he couldn’t stop in time, but his reactions were fast and instinctive — he slammed on the brakes, cut the wheel to the left, flung his right arm to the grocery bag, and hit the jeep.