Double blind

Chapter Nine

A little past a quarter of five the next morning, Special Agent Wilbur Boggs regained consciousness and found himself lying face down on a carpet in almost total darkness.

A few seconds later, he became aware that he also felt dizzy, nauseous, cold, hungry, thirsty, and, as best he could tell, he hurt in every muscle and bone in his body, from the top of his head to the soles of his bare feet.

Unable to recall what had occurred during the previous twenty-four hours, Boggs initially thought that he must have hit the Jack Daniel's pretty hard the night before and now had the worst hangover he had ever experienced in his entire life.

That meant the best thing he could possibly do for himself was to get something in his stomach — a handful of buffered aspirin for a start — and he attempted to heave himself up into a sitting position to do just that.

Which turned out to be a terribly serious mistake.

However, once he managed to stop screaming and cursing and gently probing his horribly swollen hand, he discovered that his memory of the last twenty-four hours had returned in vivid detail.

And, in fact, the particularly vivid memory of cursing Lt. Colonel John Rustman and the Honorable Regis J. Smallsreed provided Boggs with enough energy to work himself into a sitting position with his more or less good hand and look around for the telephone — which he finally found at the end of the cord wrapped around his hips.

Once his still-muddled mind finally accepted that the phone really was dead, he felt his way all the way down to the opposite end of the phone cord, only to discover that he had somehow managed to rip all but the little square connecting-end out of the wall when he fell.

No problem, phone in the kitchen, he told himself, only to remember mere moments later that, no, there wasn't a phone in the kitchen, because he'd thrown it out months ago when the third telemarketer had called to solicit his opinion while he tried to eat his dinner.

Which definitely presented a problem, Boggs realized, because that only left the phone in the upstairs bedroom. And even in his muddle-minded state, he realized that he probably couldn't navigate a set of stairs since he could barely stand upright without falling over.

But he could still crawl if that's what it took to get help, he reminded himself. Either up the stairs or out to the truck, didn't matter.

In the end, it came down to pride: He would go for help himself.

After determining by trial and error that he could navigate pretty well using one hand and two knees, Boggs crawled out the front door.. and fortunately discovered that he'd left his keys in the lock, which immeasurably simplified the process of securing his home. Then he crawled down the steps and across the sidewalk to his truck which he, unfortunately, had locked.

With a great deal of effort, he raised himself enough to unlock and open the cab door, and then hauled himself into the driver's seat.

Exhausted by the effort, the wildlife agent rested his head on the steering wheel until the waves of nausea and dizziness ebbed. Then, after finally managing to pull the door shut, he sat up, looked over his shoulder, and noticed the boat trailer still attached to the back of his truck.

Wilbur Boggs knew that he lacked the strength to climb back out of the truck, unhitch the trailer, move it out of the way, then climb back in the truck again. So he simply leaned forward, braced himself against the steering wheel, fumbled the key into the ignition, started the engine, put the truck in reverse, gave it some gas, eased out the clutch… and felt his head snap forward with dizzying speed when his foot slipped off the clutch, his right foot slammed forward on the gas pedal, and the truck shot down the driveway backwards.

A brief flash of blinding pain seared what little remained of his conscious thought processes when his already broken nose slammed solidly into the truck's unpadded steering wheel.

That gave way to a fleeting sense of rapid, uncontrolled, downward motion which then came to a sudden, metal-grinding halt.

Whereupon it all disappeared into merciful blackness.

The paramedics who responded to a neighbor's call at five-thirty that morning found Wilbur Boggs slumped over the steering wheel in the cab of his truck… unconscious, covered with blood, breathing erratically, and looking exactly like someone who had just been involved in a violent head-on collision.

Except that made no sense to the highly experienced and observant rescue team because, other than the damage to the back of the boat — apparently the result of Boggs backing his trailer directly into his new neighbor's very sturdy new mailbox post at a fairly high rate of speed, which the neighbor claimed had occurred at about quarter after five that morning — they saw no evidence that the truck had been involved in any kind of accident, recent or otherwise.

A cautious examination of Boggs revealed a grossly swollen hand, a smashed nose, severely split lips, and a wide assortment of head and facial bruises, most of which — judging from the degree of discoloration — he'd sustained at least several hours earlier. And when they finally got him out of the cab and onto a stretcher, they discovered that in spite of the decidedly frosty temperature that morning, their patient was dressed — if that was the proper word — in nothing but a pair of damp jeans and a down jacket. No socks, shoes, underwear, or shirt.

A careful search failed to locate a wallet or any other identification on the victim. However, the truck was registered to a Wilbur Boggs at a Loggerhead City address located directly across the street from the now mangled mailbox post. Unfortunately, the reporting party — a new arrival in the neighborhood the previous weekend — had never actually met his neighbor, only saw him come and go in a different vehicle, a Ford Explorer with some kind of government plates, he thought. And though it was hard to tell with all the swelling and bruises, this man did sort of look like the guy he had seen.

In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he decided he hadn't seen his neighbor at all the last couple of days, and the boat and truck had been parked in the carport all that time.

The reporting party's eyes widened when he came to the perfectly logical conclusion that the man who flattened his mailbox — presumably his neighbor — must have had a drinking problem. After all, he reasoned, what else would anybody dressed like that and driving like that — he added, giving his mailbox post a meaningful glance — being doing at five-fifteen on a cold winter morning?

The paramedics had to admit that the reporting party had a point there.

But that wasn't their problem.

The man in the truck obviously had sustained serious injuries in some kind of accident. And he equally obviously was in dire need of professional medical attention. At this particular moment, who he was and what he was doing semi-naked in the cab of a truck that might or might not belong to him, at five-fifteen in the morning, really didn't matter.

So after carefully strapping him down on the stretcher, taping a series of spinal-cord-protecting pads and blocks around his neck and head, and securing a similar set of pads around his swollen hand, the paramedics radioed the Jasper County sheriff’s deputy that they were transporting a John Doe with serious injuries to Loggerhead City Hospital immediately.

They'd leave it for the cops to figure out the who, what, when, where, why, and how.

When a thoroughly fatigued deputy finally arrived at the scene of Wilbur Boggs's accident — almost an hour later, because a frantically waving woman standing in the middle of the road forced him to stop and assist when she couldn't find her child — he found himself in possession of three significant pieces of information:

First and foremost, he now had four calls waiting, including a report of a man with a gun acting suspiciously outside the local 7-Eleven.

Second, the odds greatly favored the "injured party in a vehicle" situation being a simple, single-party-accident insurance claim requiring little if any investigation on his part.

And finally, a note — written by the reporting party to "whomever it may concern at the Loggerhead City Police Department," and taped to the partially destroyed mailbox — had informed the deputy that the reporting party had to go to work and couldn't wait any longer, so he'd backed the vehicle into his neighbor's covered carport to get it out of the street, and locked the truck so no one could steal it or the boat… and would keep the keys for safekeeping until someone came for them, if that was all right with the police.

Deciding that was perfectly all right with the police as far as he was concerned, especially since there was no such animal as the Loggerhead City Police Department in the first place, the overworked deputy sheriff quickly scribbled the reporting party's address on the note, folded the scrap of paper, stuck it in his notebook, and decided that was enough paperwork for a single-party accident on this particular morning.

As he did so, the deputy had no way of knowing that the emergency room doctor at the local hospital who examined Special Agent Wilbur Boggs, AKA "John Doe," had just ordered him transported to Providence Hospital in nearby Jackson County, where they were better equipped to handle potentially serious head injuries.

The deputy reached for his mike and notified the dispatcher that he was clear on the "injured party in a vehicle" call, and would respond immediately to the "man with a gun acting suspiciously" call — that was, by his calculation, at least twelve miles and a good fifteen minutes away — ideally with some backup, if any of the other units might possibly be available and in the area.

The dispatcher acknowledged the clearance with a chuckle.

Two units responding to a call for a man with a gun, no shots fired, in Jasper County, Oregon, where pretty much every man, woman, and child owned at least one gun, and the entire graveyard shift amounted to three patrol units when everyone was actually on duty?

That would be the day.