Ginger kept her eyes on the road. “Really beautiful country, don’t you think?”
“Which one of you is the changeling?”
She smiled and patted his knee.
What he wanted, he finally decided, was a second opinion. He wanted to understand the mechanism of injury.
“Oh, yes, I remember that accident well,” said Lewis over a second cup of coffee at his kitchen table. “We’re a volunteer service in this county, Mr. Clay. Not enough action around here to support a paid service. We don’t see as much as the city units do, thank God. That accident was one of the worst. I remember it too well.”
“Did anything... do you think...” Adam broke off and stared at his coffee, glancing first to Ginger at his right before looking back at Lewis. “I don’t know quite what to ask, Mr. Lewis. I’ve read the reports and the injuries strike me as unusual. But I’m not an expert in these matters.”
“Neither am I. Yeah, lots of injuries, bad ones. But it was a bad wreck. You can’t believe what the car looked like.”
Adam swallowed and found it hard to swallow. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This must be unpleasant for you.”
“It is,” said Lewis. “Not real good for you, either, from the way you look.”
Adam felt that Lewis was waiting for something from him, but he had no idea what it was. “I imagine these ambulance calls can be very trying.”
Lewis shifted back in his chair. “Can be.”
I’m losing him, thought Adam. What am I doing wrong? “Lots of blood sometimes?” He could think of nothing else to say, but that sounded terrible even as he said it.
“Sometimes,” said Lewis.
Ginger’s hand brushed Lewis’s arm with the lightest of touches. “Mr. Lewis, I guess we should have made it clear that whatever suspicions we have are directed at the occupants of the car only.” She met Lewis’s eyes for a half second before adding, “Could I have some more coffee, please?” and she reached for the pot.
Lewis leaned forward, put his elbows on the table, and stared into Adam’s eyes. “Not that time,” he said. “Not enough blood that time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Clay, you’ve got to picture what things are like. It’s just getting dark. Winter then, remember. I’m sitting down right here, halfway through my supper, when the call comes in. We get out there, it’s really dark, but there’s headlights and floodlights, the cops’ blue lights flashing, our red and whites flashing, big clouds of exhaust fumes, and there’s what might have been a car and what might have been people. Noise, dark, cold, adrenalin, death, okay? The woman was dead, anybody could see that right off. The ER doctor wouldn’t even let us unload her. We took her right to the morgue. You can’t get all of that out of you right away. Something bothered me later that didn’t bother me then. There wasn’t enough blood at the scene. There was blood around her, on her, but not enough.” He paused a second. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Clay, I think she died some time before she went through that windshield.”
Clay let his breath out slowly and loudly. “Thank you, Mr. Lewis. I thought that something was wrong here. It is quite a relief to hear you say that.”
“No more than it is to me.”
“Could I ask you about the husband? He...”
“Banged up really bad.”
“Anything unusual about the injuries? I have a list here.” He passed the emergency room report to Lewis.
Lewis read for a few moments in silence. “Thought that was right,” he said softly.
“What, Mr. Lewis?” asked Clay.
“Oh, I see where the broken ribs got the liver. That’s what I thought in the field, but no way to tell for sure out there.”
“Can you describe the mechanism of injury for the ones on that list? For the liver and ribs?”
“I can try. The guy was wearing his seat belt and shoulder harness way too loose. He’d smack into them hard. The harness could have gotten the ribs, or he might have had the belts so loose that he got a little of the steering wheel. Belt that loose could help that bladder rupture, too, especially if it’s full. Broken left clavicle and, uh, yeah, these deep abdominal contusions — same thing, seat belt too high, shoulder harness too loose.”
“Pardon me for saying this, but I thought you said you weren’t an expert in these matters.”
“A lot of this is textbook answers, Mr. Clay. And I saw that wreck. I saw it, understand?”
Adam nodded.
“Let’s see,” Lewis continued. “Crushed ankle probably from the car just buckling back on his foot. The passenger side was displaced almost six inches back. Lacerations from flying glass. Broken nose? Could be steering wheel, could be missile of some sort. Broken hand, same thing. Fracture of the olecranon process? Now that’s harder. That’s this bone here, sticks out behind your elbow, part of the joint. Usually takes a direct blow or some strong leverage to break it. Something loose in the back seat, on the ledge, maybe, smacked it from behind. Dislocated shoulder, maybe whatever got his elbow. Maybe just impact. It was a hell of an impact.”
“Have you ever connected the husband with your belief that Mrs. Cannon was dead before impact?”
Lewis looked uncomfortable. “Got to, don’t you? But I don’t see how.”
“Have you ever fallen asleep at the wheel, Mr. Lewis?”
“Sorta nodded off once or twice. Hitting the shoulder woke me up.”
“Where were your hands when you woke up?”
Lewis sat straighter, closed his eyes, and raised his hands. “On the steering wheel still,” he said.
“So were mine, when it’s happened to me. If Cannon went to sleep at the wheel, then I think that’s where his hands would be, too. But that makes those injuries difficult to explain.”
“Maybe he woke up.”
“If I had been he and had waked up, I would have hit my brakes. There were no skid marks. I would have swerved. He didn’t. Now, Mr. Lewis, would you find all of this easier to explain if Mr. Cannon had hit that bridge on purpose? And would you find broken metacarpals, dislocated shoulder, and fracture of the olecranon process easier to explain if Mr. Cannon had been using his right arm and hand to prop up the body of his dead wife so that she would in fact go through the windshield and hit that abutment, thereby duplicating the expected mechanism of injury and mangling her beyond...”
“Of course,” whispered Lewis, sinking back into his chair as if suddenly tired. “That’s why his belts were so loose — so he could reach over. Her body smashed his arm into the dash on its way out. Why didn’t I see it before?”
“I didn’t see it, either,” said Clay, raising his bandaged right hand, “until it happened to me.” He winced at the pain in his shoulder and elbow and quickly added, grinning ruefully at Ginger, “With a bag of groceries, that is.”
“You’re nuts, you know that? Fruitcake. Bananas.”
Fat Chance paused long enough to remove the bitten-off butt of his cigar from his tongue. Clay took advantage while he could.
“Let me lay it out for you, Marv.” He’d heard that the night before on a Dragnet rerun. He found he was watching more cop shows. “It seems to me that you can’t lose here. You forward my report to your boss. One of three things happens. One — he follows up and I’m right and we prove it. You get part of the credit for saving the company big bucks. Maybe a promotion. Two — he follows up but we can’t get enough evidence to prove the theory. You’re still due for congratulations for hiring good people and for making the company sharper on elaborate fraud cases. Three — I am, as you say, a dessert plate. You blame me and can me and never have to see me again except at family reunions. At best you’re a hero. At worst I’m your goat.”