Deceit

THREE

We had a terrible accident just outside town.

That’s what Hinch’s secretary said-scratch that-his assistant, political correctness having intruded 150 miles into the California desert. Stewardesses were attendants now, secretaries were assistants, and occupying armies in the Middle East were defenders of freedom.

It’s a measure of fast approaching my second anniversary there that when Norma said we-I thought we. It was official: Tom Valle, one-time denizen of SoHo, NoHo, and assorted other fashionably abbreviated New York City neighborhoods, had become a true Littletonian.

“What kind of accident?” I asked her.

“A smashup on 45,” she said. “A goddamn fireball.”

For a dedicated churchgoer, Norma had a strange affinity for using the Lord’s name in vain. Things were either God-awful, Goddamned, God-forbidden, God help us, or God knows.

“Aww, God,” Norma said. “You kind of wonder how many people were in that car.”

The sheriff had just phoned in the news, assuming Hinch might be interested in a suitably gory car crash. If it bleeds, it leads, and all that. Hinch was currently at lunch. The other feature reporter, Mary-Beth, was on ad hoc maternity leave. When she got tired of watching her unemployed husband down voluminous amounts of Lone Star beer, Mary-Beth showed up. Otherwise, no. There was an intern on summer break from Pepperdine, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Maybe I should go cover it.”

Norma, who was not the editor, but the editor’s assistant, shrugged her shoulders.

This time I took a camera.

I wasn’t fond of accidents. Some are.

The smell of blood excites them. The aura of death. Maybe the simple relief that it happened to someone else.

The problem was I felt like that someone else.

Like the unfortunate victim of a car accident. The fact that I was the driver, that I’d soberly taken hold of the wheel and steered the car straight off a cliff, didn’t do anything to alleviate the uncomfortable empathy I felt in the presence of a wreck.

Norma was right about the fireball.

The car was still smoldering. It looked like a hunk of charcoal that had somehow fallen out of the backyard grill.

One fire engine, one sheriff’s car, and one ambulance were parked by the side of the two-lane highway. Another car was conspicuously present, a forest green Sable. Its front fender was completely crumpled, a man I assumed to be the driver leaning against the side door with his head in his hands. Everyone was pretty much watching.

Sheriff Swenson called me over.

“Hey, Lucas,” he said.

I’ll explain the Lucas.

It was for Lucas McCain, the character played by Chuck Connors in The Rifleman. After The Rifleman, Chuck moved on to a series called Branded, where he played a Union soldier who’d allegedly fled from the Battle of Bull Run and was forever after branded a coward. He drifted from town to town where, despite selfless acts of heroism, someone always discovered his true identity. You might imagine that’d be hard to do in the Old West.

Not in the new west.

Sheriff Swenson had Googled me.

He couldn’t recall the character’s name in Branded, so he called me Lucas.

It was better than liar.

“Hello, sheriff.”

Sheriff Swenson didn’t look like a small-town sheriff. Maybe because he’d spent twenty years on the LAPD before absconding to Littleton with full pension. He still had the requisite square jaw, bristle cut, and physique of a gym attendant, the palpable menace that must’ve made more than one Rodney King spill his guts without Swenson ever having to pick up a stun gun.

Today he looked kind of placid.

Maybe the dancing flames had mesmerized him. He had that look you get after staring into a fireplace for longer than you should.

There was something worth mentioning beside the burning car. Something everyone was politely declining to acknowledge, like a homeless relative who’s somehow crashed the family reunion.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of smelling burnt human, it smells like a mix of honey, tar, and baked potato. One of the truly worst smells on earth.

“How many were in there?” I asked the sheriff.

“Oh, just make it up,” he said after a while. I imagine he was being half funny and half not. Just like with the nickname.

“Okay. But if I wanted to be factual?”

“If you wanted to be factual, the answer would be one,” he said.

I looked back at the other driver, who still had his face pressed to his hands as if he didn’t wish to see. When the body shop commented on the sorry state of his car, he’d say you should’ve seen the other guy.

“How did it happen?”

“You mean, how did the accident transpire?” the sheriff said.

“Yeah.”

“Quickly.”

“Right. But who hit who?”

“He was going south,” the sheriff said, motioning to the man covering his eyes. “He was going north,” nodding at the smoldering wreck. “Northbound car drifted into the southbound lane. At least, according to our sole witness.”

“Who’s that?”

“Our sole survivor.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“I don’t know. Can you?”

“It’d be nice.”

“Then have a nice time.”

I walked over to the crumpled Sable; the man had finally picked his head up out of his hands. He had that look-the one you see in the faces of people who’ve just juked death. Cursed with the awful knowledge of life’s ridiculous fragility. He was moving various pieces of his body in halting slow motion, as if they were made of fine, breakable china.

“Hello. Tom Valle of the Littleton Journal. Could I speak to you a minute?”

“Huh?”

“I’m from the newspaper. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

“Newspaper?”

I’d said nothing to dissipate that dazed look of his.

“That’s right.”

“I don’t really feel like talking. I’m… you know…”

Yes, I knew. But there were other tenets of my profession, which were maybe less than noble. The one, for instance, that says you have to get the story. Even when that story involved the kind of personal disasters that made up most of the news these days. You know what I’m talking about: murdered wives, missing babies, beheaded hostages-there were a lot of those going around.

It’s pretty simple. Even when someone doesn’t feel like talking, you have to feel like asking.

“I understand he drifted into your lane,” I said.

He nodded.

“And then, uh… what’s your name, sir… slowly, so I don’t misspell anything.”

“Crannell. Edward Crannell. Two Ls.”

I dutifully scribbled it down. I’d always forgone the tape recorder for the more tactile sensation of writing notes. Maybe I had an instinctual abhorrence of tape’s permanence-even at the beginning, long before I began taking liberties.

“Where are you from again, Mr. Crannell?” An old technique; ask a question as if they’ve already given you the answer.

“Cleveland,” he said.

“The one in Ohio?”

He nodded.

“Long way from home.”

“I’m in sales. Pharmaceuticals.”

“Rented car then, I guess?”

He grimaced as if that fact had just occurred to him; maybe he’d rolled the dice and forgone the accident insurance.

“So he came right at you, just drifted into your lane. That’s what happened?” This area of Highway 45 was devoid of a single curve-it had the unrelieved monotony of a ruler-drawn line.

Crannell nodded.

“I beeped the horn at the last second. He jammed on the brakes… I guess he couldn’t get out of the way.” He looked down in the general vicinity of his dust-covered shoes and slowly shook his head. “Jesus…”

“Have they checked you out, Mr. Crannell? Are you okay?”

He nodded. “I was wearing my seat belt. They said I was lucky.”

“Oh yeah.”

Swenson was poking around the wreck. Fine black cinders hovered in the air like gnats. The fire had mostly burnt itself out-it looked like the fire engine had sprayed it with anti-incendiary foam.

“Any idea why he did that? Why he drifted into the wrong lane? Did he fall asleep, maybe?”

Crannell seemed to ponder this for a moment, then shook his head no. “Don’t think so. I really can’t tell you.”

“Okay. Well, thank you.”

I walked a few feet away and snapped some pictures. Black car, purple sky, white-shirted sheriff, green cactus. If the Littleton Journal published in color, it really would’ve been something.

On the other hand, black-and-white was probably more appropriate. When I saw it on the front page of the Littleton Journal the next day, it seemed to capture the immutable contrast between life and death.