Clouds without Rain. P. L. Gaus

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ