Читать книгу Clouds without Rain - P. L. Gaus - Страница 16

3

Monday, August 7

6:30 P.M.

SHERIFF Robertson was laid out, face down, on one of the metal hospital beds in the emergency room of Joel Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg. His large chest and belly sprawled over the white sheets, and his shoulders bulged over the metal railings on either side. His burned arms hung limply down and his shins hit the metal bar at the foot of the bed. The nurses had stacked two pillows there to soften the edge.

The nurses had also re-hung the IV lines that the paramedics had started, and now a regulator box clicked on a pole next to the bed, as fluids were pumped into Robertson to combat dehydration. They had also strapped his face with a clear blue plastic oxygen mask, and Robertson’s head hung over the front edge of the bed, mask down.

When he had first arrived, Robertson had insisted on sitting upright on the edge of the bed while they scrubbed the tattered and melted strips of his uniform shirt out of the second- and third-degree burns on his back and on the backs of his arms. He had made a nuisance of himself by taking his oxygen mask off to give orders to the nurses about who’d be coming in to see him and how soon he’d be needed back at the accident scene. Then the first doses of morphine had begun to wear off, and the nurses had convinced him to lie down on his stomach so that the doctors could tend to his burns. One of the doctors had called for another dose of morphine, and the nurses had pushed enough to sedate an average-sized man. Still, he lay awake on his stomach, grumbling about the procedure through his mask. He tried to sit back up, but an ER nurse kept him pinned on his belly. When Lieutenant Dan Wilsher arrived, Robertson was fighting with the nurse to remove his oxygen mask again.

Lieutenant Wilsher pulled a metal chair up to the head of the bed and sat to face the sheriff. He took one of Robertson’s hands, partly to help the nurses, and also to let the sheriff know he was there. Wilsher was dressed in street clothes, but his badge was out on his belt, and his face and white shirt were smudged with soot.

Robertson immediately asked, “How’s Schrauzer?”

“I’m not sure,” Wilsher lied.

Robertson scowled and said, “Get me a report, Dan. I’ve got to know.”

Wilsher answered, “I will, Sheriff, but you’ve got your own problems to worry about here.” He looked back and winced at the scrubbing that was underway on Robertson’s back and arms.

A doctor had a scalpel out, cutting skin loose where it was stuck to bits of tattered cloth. One nurse kept a flow of cool saline on Robertson’s burns, and another applied ice packs to those areas where the skin was only pink. The darkened skin on Robertson’s back had swollen considerably, and near the ugly splotches of third-degree burns, another doctor was cutting shallow lines into the flesh. A third nurse dabbed with a saline swatch at the open wounds to clean them.

Wilsher grimaced and said to Robertson, “We can handle this, Bruce. You’re gonna have to stay here for a while.”

Robertson groaned and shook his head. “Going back out there tonight. Something’s not right.”

Wilsher said, “It’s OK, Bruce. We’re doing everything that can be done. Even setting up portable floodlights for night work if that’s what it takes.” Relenting slightly, he reported, “The car is a total loss.”

Robertson asked, “Casualties?” His voice sounded muffled through the mask. He tried to lift his head to see Wilsher more directly, but couldn’t quite manage the angle.

“A young fellow died in the car,” Wilsher said. “He’s local. We’ve got some identification from the license plate, and the family is being asked to come in.”

“Won’t have a solid ID until Missy Taggert has a look,” Robertson said. He shook his head lightly from side to side, remembering the smoke and tremendous heat from the flames.

Wilsher opened a small spiral-bound notebook and said, “There were three others there, besides Schrauzer. Jim Weston in one truck, a Mr. Robert Kent in the second pickup, and Bill MacAfee driving one of his produce trucks. We’ve got preliminaries from all three.”

“Jim Weston owns a surveying company,” Robertson said.

“He’s surveying those high-end housing developments,” Wilsher added.

Robertson grunted. “How about folk in the buggy?”

“Only one, a something ‘Weaver.’ Taggert pronounced him at the scene. He was turning left into his own driveway when the buggy was hit. The truck driver is dead, too.”

“You figure it was the semi?” Robertson asked. He gave out a couple of groans and asked, grousing, “Hey, Doc. You sure you’re using morphine?”

The doctor came around to the front of the bed, leaned over, and asked, “You’re not comfortable?”

Robertson barked, “No!” and tried to lift his arms to register his dismay.

“We’ll push some more,” the doctor said and gave the order to the nurse.

Because of his large size and the intense pain, Robertson had worked through the initial doses of morphine quickly. Now the latest dose added its effects, and Robertson began to grow drowsy. Deputy Ricky Niell arrived in a neatly pressed uniform, eyed the sheriff’s back, made a pained expression for Wilsher, and took a seat next to the lieutenant. Robertson noticed the uniform and waved his hand feebly to urge Niell closer. Then he let Niell and Wilsher talk, while he struggled to follow the conversation.

“You got second statements from the witnesses?” Wilsher asked Niell.

Niell tapped a finger on his creased uniform breast pocket and said, “Got it all right here,” followed by, “How’s the sheriff doing?”

Robertson muttered something, but it was muffled by his face mask. Wilsher said, “Fine,” obviously not meaning it. He drew close to Niell’s ear and whispered, “Nothing yet about Schrauzer. Understand?”

Niell nodded and said, “Sheriff, the skid marks from the semi cab are not that long. And from the hilltop where the professor was, there wouldn’t have been more than three, four seconds reaction time, as fast as that truck was going. We figure he hit the buggy at close to forty-five, maybe fifty-five miles an hour, even jackknifed like he was.”

Wilsher asked Niell, “The Amishman’s name was Weaver?”

“Right. John R. Weaver. I think he’s connected up with Melvin Yoder’s bunch.”

“Weaver would have made that left-hand turn into his drive a thousand times. And it only takes a few seconds to swing one of those ponies off the road, buggy and all.”

“So you’re wondering why the buggy was standing there long enough to be hit,” Niell said.

“That, and why Weaver didn’t know a truck was coming.”

“There’s only about sixty yards from the hilltop down into the low part of the road where Weaver’s lane cuts in. That doesn’t leave much time for a reaction, even when traffic is slow.”

“Then we’ll be citing the truck driver for unsafe speed, in any case,” Wilsher said.

“Posthumously,” Niell said. “Still, you gotta figure the buggy had better odds than just to sit there and get hit like that.”

Wilsher thought a while and then asked, “Do we know the point of impact? Some buggy parts were thrown back at least thirty yards.”

Robertson tapped his fingers on the metal legs of the hospital bed to get their attention and said, “Cab pushed, kept on.” He stalled under the influence of the drugs. “I mean going. After. Twenty yards. Maybe more. Buggy parts at the drive. Parts, Dan.”

Wilsher turned to Niell and asked, “Are there any crashed buggy parts right at the turn onto the lane?”

“There are buggy parts everywhere,” Niell said, “but the first ones are there, yeah. At the turn onto the lane. The cab came on ahead after the crash and rolled over the point of impact.”

Robertson nodded weakly and tapped the legs of the bed insistently. In a faint, muffled voice he asked, “Why jackknifed?”

Wilsher shrugged.

Niell said, “The road curves as it crests there. At high speed, that would have brought the trailer around beside the cab somewhat. Jamming the brakes would have started the jackknife.”

Robertson said something like “Umph” and let his head drop. Wilsher made an entry in his notebook.

There was a knock at the door to the small emergency room, and, still dressed in his Amish costume, Professor Branden asked, “All right to come in?”

One of the doctors motioned for Niell and Wilsher to wait in the hall, and then he waved the professor in.

Nodding a silent greeting to the officers as they passed, Branden took one of the two seats at the head of Robertson’s bed and asked, “You going to make it all right, Bruce?” He was smiling, but vastly concerned.

He stood up briefly to evaluate the efforts of the doctors and sat back down heavily. Memories of an emergency room long ago surfaced in his mind, from a day in the seventh grade when Robertson had rolled a homemade go-cart on a dirt trail. Branden had been standing on the frame of the go-cart, bracing himself on Robertson’s shoulders. He was thrown clear when the go-cart flipped sideways, but Robertson was wedged under the hot lawnmower engine. Branden had fought desperately to lift the heavy engine and wooden frame while Robertson struggled to pull his broken arm out from under the sputtering engine. The burn that day had been bad enough, a patch roughly five inches wide on the back of his arm. The burns today looked like that ugly wound a dozen times over. The seventh-grader had healed quickly. This would be another matter entirely.

Again Branden asked, “Are you all right, Bruce?”

Robertson mumbled, “Drugged,” and lightly nodded his head.

Branden looked up to the doctors, and one of them said, “First- and second-degree burns on his back and arms. Several areas of third-degrees, too. We’ve got most of the shirt cut loose now, and we’ve had to lance some of the tissue because of the swelling. Mostly, now, we’re fighting dehydration and infection, but if I were guessing, I’d say he’ll be fine. A smaller man and it’d be a different story, burns as extensive as they are. We figure it’s fourteen percent by the body chart system. Now, it mostly depends on how well he cooperates with his recovery regimen.”

The professor said, “Oh, brother,” and winked at Robertson, well knowing how stubborn the sheriff could be. He leaned over, studied his friend’s face, and concluded the sheriff was out with the drugs. Then he said, “Hang in there, Sheriff,” and stepped out into the hall to confer with Niell and Wilsher. To them he said, “He got burned up pretty good, once, when we were kids. He’ll be fine.”

“The nurses say he’ll be okay,” Ricky said, and added, “They say Bruce was up on the hood of Schrauzer’s cruiser, trying to pull him back through the windshield.”

“It was a bundle of poles or something,” Branden said. “They got Phil out through the driver’s door.” After reflection, Branden added, “Does Bruce know Phil’s dead?”

“No,” Wilsher said, “and I’d like to keep it that way for now.”

“It looked to me like the eighteen-wheeler knocked the buggy into next week and jackknifed onto the car,” the professor said.

Niell said, “That’s about it.” Turning to the lieutenant, he delivered his report. “We talked again to the three witnesses. They all say the same thing, to a point. The buggy was stopped to make the left turn. The car was stopped behind it, plus Schrauzer in his cruiser, and up came the two other pickups and the produce truck. Then the accounts have it in different orders, but essentially they were all waiting in line when the buggy started its turn, and the back legs of the horse gave out. Two of the witnesses say they also saw Schrauzer backing his cruiser up at that point, and two also report hearing an engine backfire then.”

Branden asked, “How would Phil have known to back up that soon?”

Niell shrugged and Wilsher made a note in his book.

Niell continued. “I think it was the produce truck. That backfired, I mean. Anyway, they all saw the semi appear at the top of the hill, hit its brakes, trailer started around, the cab smashed into the buggy, and the trailer hit the car sideways and overturned. The impact threw the car back a ways, and the fire started under it. Probably the gas tank.”

Wilsher asked, “What about Weaver?”

“He was crumpled up in what’s left of the buggy. About thirty yards back and off to the side in a field.”

“Have you laid out most of the buggy?” Wilsher asked. “That’ll be important.”

“All that we could find so far. We’ll use floodlights tonight,” Niell said. “What’s left, we’ll get tomorrow.”

Wilsher made another entry in his notebook and asked, “Can either of you figure why Schrauzer was backing his unit up before anybody saw the semi coming over the hill?”

From the end of the hall, Ellie Troyer said, “I’ve got a better question for you, Dan.” Just coming off her shift at the dispatcher’s desk in the jail, she was dressed in a black skirt of conservative length and a white blouse. She walked briskly down the hall, hooked an affectionate arm into Niell’s, pulled him close, and asked, “How’s the sheriff?”

Wilsher said, “He’ll be all right. You said there’s a better question?”

“Phil called in the wreck himself,” Ellie said. “How did he have the time? He said something like ‘Big wreck, Ellie. Semi. Buggy. Maybe more.’”

From the emergency room, they heard Robertson pounding on the legs of his hospital bed and saw him waving them into the room.

Ellie led the other three in, and she and Wilsher took the two chairs by Robertson’s head.

Robertson’s muffled voice came through the plastic mask. “Phil called?” His head was lifted with extreme exertion, and his eyes were high in their sockets, trying to see Ellie’s face.

She bent low so she could look into the sheriff’s eyes, and Robertson relaxed his neck. Ellie said, “Phil’s call was the first one we got on the accident. It was brief, Sheriff, but I got it down that a semi and a buggy were involved. At least that’s what I put out on the radio.”

Robertson shook his head and mumbled. He reached over and squeezed Dan Wilsher’s hand. Softly, they heard him say, “Not enough time,” and then he let Wilsher’s hand go.

Niell pulled Branden and Wilsher back into the hallway. “He’s right,” he said. “There wasn’t time for Phil to have called it in.”

Wilsher frowned and rubbed at his gray hair.

Niell said, “Come out to the parking lot. I’ve got the poles that smashed through Schrauzer’s windshield.”

Ellie joined them and they all followed Niell out onto the blacktopped parking lot of the little hospital. Missy Taggert, in a white lab coat, was bent over the open trunk of Niell’s cruiser, studying something protruding from the well. She had a tape rule and a blood sample kit, and she was using tweezers to drop a small swatch of hair into a vial.

Taggert’s eyes remained fixed on her work in the trunk, but she heard them approaching and said, “Somebody tell me how Bruce is doing before I go nuts out here.”

Ellie said, “He’s bad off, Missy.”

Niell disagreed. “He can handle it.”

Branden, sensing great concern in the coroner’s voice, encouraged her with, “I think he’s going to be fine, Missy.”

“Third-degree burns?” she asked, looking up.

“In some places,” Branden said gently.

“I’m going in,” Taggert announced.

Branden laid his hand softly on her arm and said, “Take a minute and tell us what you’ve found.”

Taggert looked into the trunk and then back to the professor. She eyed the door to the hospital’s emergency room and said, “Phil Schrauzer was killed instantly by the blow from this instrument.” She reached into the trunk, took hold of the object with both hands, and lifted out a heavy, three-legged surveyor’s tripod. The baseplate on top was covered in blood, and clumps of skin, hair, and glass chips were pressed onto it. She stood the tripod on the pavement in front of them. The three wooden legs were painted yellow, and on one of them, lettered in red, was the name J. R. Weaver.

Niell said, “I’ve stood on that hill. There can’t have been more than five seconds between Phil’s seeing the semi come over the rise and the time of the impact. Three seconds would be more like it.”

Missy said, “All I know is that this tripod came flying out of the back of Weaver’s buggy and shot through Schrauzer’s windshield before any of the soot from the fires was deposited on the hood of the car.”

Ellie asked, “Then how did he manage to call it in?”

Taggert shrugged and said, “I don’t know. As far as I can tell, he died too soon to call anyone.”

Behind them, they heard a small commotion and when they all turned around they saw Bruce Robertson balancing awkwardly on a single wooden crutch, nurses scrambling to roll his IV stand along behind him, and one doctor storming down the bright hall with a wheelchair.

Robertson balanced on the pavement and glowered at Wilsher. “You didn’t tell me he was dead.”

Missy Taggert ran up to the big sheriff and steadied him under his free arm. “You’re not supposed to be out here, Bruce,” she said, and started shouting orders to nurses and doctors alike.

Wilsher took a step or two toward Robertson and said, “The doctors didn’t want you to know.”

Robertson wavered on his legs and leaned heavily off-balance. Taggert managed to steady him long enough for the professor and Niell to reach him and take hold. The doctor scooted the wheelchair under the sheriff, and Niell and Branden lowered him onto the front edge of it, taking care not to let his back or arms touch the padding of the chair.

From his seat, Robertson looked up to Taggert and said, “I suppose that means you, Missy. Not wanting me to know about Phil.”

Missy nodded and said, “I’m more concerned about you, Sheriff.”

Robertson made a dismissive gesture with his hand. The nurses turned him around on the drive, and the doctor pushed a syringe into the port of the sheriff’s IV lines.

As they wheeled him back into the hospital, Robertson said, “No time to call. No time to back up,” and then he leaned forward and passed out, with two nurses holding him to his seat on the wheelchair.

At the back of Niell’s cruiser, Missy said to Branden, “This surveyor’s tripod went flying with all the other debris from the buggy. It whipped through the air like everything else out there, and it came through Phil Schrauzer’s windshield before he would have had time to blink, much less do anything else. Certainly before he could have made a radio call.”