“I wish we had,” Hub admitted.
The car topped the ridge. Washingtonville’s valley lay before them, snow-covered, silent, and marked by only a few lonesome-looking lights along the highway ahead.
Hub said, “There’s a gas station. Let’s try it.”
He urged the reluctant car toward Amos White’s gas station half way down the gentle slope of the hill. And the Plymouth’s engine chose that moment to conk out completely.
Hub took advantage of his downhill momentum to pull to the edge of the highway where the car buried its right wheels in a bank of plow-piled snow and came to a cushioned stop. Hub opened his door and got out into the chilly darkness. No sign of dawn showed yet. He walked into Amos White’s service station and saw that it was deserted. Amos didn’t open up until seven o’clock these winter mornings.
Hub came back to the car. “Nobody there.” He looked down the road toward Washingtonville’s sparse lights. “Guess I’ll try down in the valley. Looks like something might be open.” He beat his arms against his sides. “Boy, it’s cold out here! You sit there and wait for me, honey, and keep the doors locked. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”
“I won’t be long, I hope.” He slammed the car door and walked down the road toward the shopping center.
It was 5:41.
At that moment, Sarah Benson was walking from her home on Washingtonville’s outskirts toward the concrete ribbon of Highway 78 where it touched the periphery of the town at the shopping center. Sarah was bundled up in a heavy plaid coat and wore a green scarf over her Titian hair. It was her week to open up Wright’s Truckers’ Rest and prepare the first enormous urn of coffee for the sleepy, chilled truck drivers who would soon begin arriving. They were regular customers, most of them; they knew that Wright’s opened at six A.M. sharp, that Wright’s coffee was good and hot, and that Sarah Benson was the best-looking waitress between New York and Chicago.
When she reached the highway, Sarah walked toward Wright’s cafe, a hundred yards down the road from the shopping center parking lot. It was awfully cold, must be near zero, she thought. And still dark. No one was about. Only an occasional car or truck swished past her on the concrete. She was reaching into her bag for the key to Wright’s Cafe when she heard a man’s footsteps on the road behind her.
She turned in surprise and saw a dark form approaching from the west, his lanky figure silhouetted for her against the snow bank that edged the highway. He saw her at the same time, apparently. For he lifted an arm and called, “Hey, there...!”
Whatever he intended to say, he never finished it. A car rocketed down the highway toward him, coming fast on the outside right-hand lane of Route 78, the one he was walking in. He was suddenly caught in the beam of the approaching car’s headlights. Sarah could see him make a startled move toward the snow bank beside him to avoid the on-rushing vehicle. But he was too late.
Transfixed by horror, Sarah watched the car swerve wildly as the driver applied his brakes with a scream of rubber against the road; she saw in slow-motion detail the heavy, pinwheeling arc described by the pedestrian’s body after the sickening sound of its impact against the car’s bumper; she saw the body come to rest in grotesque, spread-eagled limpness on the snow bank not twenty yards from where she stood.
It was only as a dazed afterthought that she looked at the car again. It slowed almost to a halt, its stoplights glowing red, and Sarah thought it would stop. But then, with a snarl of desperately applied power, it gathered speed and made off down the highway toward the eastern ridge of the valley.
Sarah couldn’t believe her eyes. “Stop!” she shrieked after the vanishing car. “Stop!” She thought she was going to be ill. “You hit a man!” Even while she screamed, the tail-lights of the murder car winked out over the eastern ridge.
Sarah tried to control the trembling of her legs and the heaving of her stomach. She ran to the motionless man in the snow bank. When she saw that nothing could be done for him, she returned to the cafe, opened the door with her key, switched on the lights inside, and telephoned the Washingtonville police.
It was 5:55.
Lieutenant Randall and the police ambulance arrived at the scene of the accident at 6:05, just as the first faint glimmer of daylight showed. By then, a lot of cars and a truck had stopped beside the snow bank, drawn by the sight of the spread-eagled body and the bloodied snow, and by Sarah Benson’s slim figure standing beside it, waiting for the law.
When Randall arrived, he detailed a policeman to send the curious on their way when it was certain none of them had witnessed the accident, and dispatched the hit-run victim to Washingtonville Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival of multiple external and internal injuries, including a smashed skull.
Randall sat clown at the counter of Wright’s Truckers’ Rest and talked earnestly with the only witness to the accident, Miss Sarah Benson. She was being as helpful as she could, though she was still pale from shock and wisely sipping a cup of her own coffee, black, to settle her nerves.
Randall was full of driving urge to get a description of the murder car as quickly as possible, but even so, he couldn’t help noticing with approval how pretty Sarah Benson was — how well her Titian hair set off her creamy skin and level blue eyes.
“What kind of a car was it?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. It was dark. And coming toward me, the headlights blinded me. I couldn’t tell anything about it.”
He sighed. “I was afraid of that. But after you saw the car hit the man, you looked at the car again, you say... as it was going away from you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you didn’t recognize its make?”
“No. It seemed to be a dark-colored sedan, all one tone. That’s all I can be sure of. And that it’s stoplights were on, bright red, before the driver decided to run away.”
“Those stoplights,” Randall said. “What shape were they?”
“Round, I guess,” Sarah said.
“You guess? Don’t you know?”
“No, I can’t be sure.”
“Big and round, or small and round?” Randall insisted.
“Medium and round, I guess,” said Sarah. “I didn’t really notice. I was so shocked...”
“You saw the back of the car,” Randall interrupted her rudely, “with the stoplights on and nothing between you and the car. Surely you saw the license number or at least the license plate. Think hard, please.”
“I’m thinking, Lieutenant.”
“Well, was it a Pennsylvania license? Or New York?” He was still hopeful. “Did you see it?”
She shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid not.”
“Damn it,” Randall said, “you must have!”
She smiled at him sympathetically, conscious of how anxious he was to elicit a description of the car from her. “No,” she said very quietly, “I didn’t see any license plate.”
He flushed. “I’m sorry, Miss Benson. But a description of the car, some description, is essential if we’re to have any chance at all of catching this man. You understand that, don’t you? If you didn’t see the license plate, did you notice anything else about the car? A dent in the rear fender, maybe, a cracked back window, luminous tape on the bumper, anything at all?”
She closed her eyes and conjured up the horror of fifteen minutes ago. She was silent for a long time. Then she opened her eyes and said, “I can’t remember anything more. There was this cloud of white steam coming out of the car’s exhaust pipe and it sort of hid the back of the car, I guess.”
Randall stood up. “Well, thanks very much. We’ll have to do the best we can with a general description. There is evidence of damage to the front end of the car. We found a piece of metal in the road that broke off the grill.” He turned to go, then paused. “Could you come down to headquarters sometime today and sign a statement? It will be helpful to have an official eyewitness record.”