“He is. I think he’ll turn around.”
“Oh-three from One-two. I’m coming onto Exit Two from West Bratt. Want me to join One-five?”
“Ten-four.”
Klesczewski’s face was tight with concentration as he tried to keep out of the ditch rounding the corner of the on-ramp. “You better be right, or we’re going to look like a bunch of assholes.”
I grinned at this rare profanity; in fact, I knew that soon, especially in the eyes of several of our town leaders, we would earn the label regardless of today’s results.
Cappelli’s truck was swerving slightly from side to side, making it impossible for the patrol car behind him to pass. As he drew abreast of the interstate at the top of the ramp, he added to the obstacle course by clipping a Subaru station wagon and causing it to twirl into a series of multiple pirouettes, which made all of us slam on our brakes to avoid joining in. Thus shielded, Cappelli cut into a controlled slide and sliced across the emergency U-turn lane a bare hundred feet away from the ramp. He was going for the southbound route.
The unit immediately behind him missed the U-turn completely, since it had veered to the wrong side of the dizzying Subaru and was hurtling north in the far breakdown lane. Klesczewski was luckier, as were the two units behind us.
“One-two and One-five from Oh-three. He’s headed your way.”
The thousand-foot-long West River bridge, one hundred feet above the water and now just a mile ahead of us, was undergoing repairs. The entire southbound span was closed, and traffic had been rerouted to one half of the northbound span, which was split down the middle by a row of heavy concrete dividers. The speed limit, for good reason, was forty. We were going ninety-five.
The approach to the bridge is a slightly descending slope. Units Twelve and Fifteen, their blue lights twinkling fiercely, were clearly visible on either side of the single southern lane at the far end of the bridge. Real roadblocks, unlike those in the movies, should always allow an exit. They are supposed to show the bad guys that escape is fruitless, not to provide them with cinematic opportunities to create mayhem. At midpoint on the bridge, in the gap that separated the two spans, workmen were operating acetylene torches from a long wooden platform, suspended by cables from the railing above. The flames from their torches looked like minuscule chips of sunlight.
“Ease up a little, Ron, the switch-over is bumpy.”
Klesczewski slowed down. Cappelli did not. His truck hit the thin, ripply asphalt overlay linking the southbound lane to its half of the northbound bridge, bounced once, and began to twist sideways, spewing several small rooster tails of burning rubber.
“Holy Christ, he’s going over.” Klesczewski slammed on the brakes hard, making my seat belt cut across my chest.
The truck hit the bridge sideways, with its rear wheels in the lane, its middle straddling the guardrail, and its cab hanging over the gap between the two spans. I could see the looks of horror on the faces of the workmen on the platform as the Freightliner screamed toward them, riding the guardrail sideways like some huge bizarre toy run amok. Now, added to the black smoke from the burning tires and the diesel exhaust, there was a shower of flaming sparks cascading from where the railing cut the truck undercarriage as it slid.
Slowly, as if tantalizing us, the cab began to peel forward off the chassis, exposing the engine beneath and throwing the whole disastrous mess off balance. For a moment, the truck’s wheels left the pavement and then, with the last of its momentum, it flipped on the guardrail like an acrobat somersaulting on a tightrope. The cab flew high in the air, its driver catapulting through its front window like a champagne cork. The chassis settled back onto the road, a smoking, twisted wreck, while Cappelli and the cab landed with an explosion onto the wooden platform below the bridge. We watched transfixed as the cab, surrounded by debris, spun silently through the hundred feet down into the shallow river. The platform, hanging on by a single cable, swung in a wide arc, and below it, swinging in turn by his leg, which was tangled in the remains of the other cable, was Mark Cappelli. The workers, hooked to their safety harnesses, were glued to the metal undercarriage of the bridge like insects to flypaper.
There was a deathly quiet as Ron and I left the car and stepped out onto the bridge. All traffic had frozen in place, all the topside workers were as still as statues at the railing; the one sound I could hear distinctly for that brief moment was the gurgling of the water far below as it swirled around its newfound obstacle.
I began to run.
19
It took an endless thirty minutes to get Cappelli up onto the bridge, never knowing when the tangled cable around his leg might suddenly unravel. Finally, two members of the Special Reaction Team managed to rappel down to the hapless trucker, hook a harness to him, and have him pulled to safety. When he reached us, he was unconscious but alive, and for the second time in two days, I rode in the ambulance to babysit someone I hoped would wake up to answer my ever-growing questions.
It was not to be. Dr. Franklin met us at the emergency-room door, shaking his head and telling me his practice could survive without my supplying him extra patients. He assessed Cappelli’s condition, had several X-rays done, ordered a CT scan, and told me to take a hike. Cappelli would not be waking up anytime soon, and when he did, Franklin and his neurosurgeon pals would have first dibs. Only then would I get a call. I arranged to have a uniformed officer stay at the hospital to keep a discreet eye on him anyway.
Ron Klesczewski was waiting for me in the hospital parking lot.
“We kill anyone in that free-for-all?” I asked.
“Nope, not even a flesh wound, but the powers-that-be are still pretty pissed. The motorist who almost got clipped at the intersection is pounding the chief’s desk right now, unless he’s left to get his lawyer, and Wilson is walking up and down the hallway as if he’d like to put a chain saw to someone’s neck.”
“Mine, presumably.”
Klesczewski started the car engine. “Oh, I don’t know. He looked pretty undiscriminating to me; that’s why I’m here.”
It turned out Klesczewski had painted a rather rosy picture. When we pulled into the Municipal Center’s parking lot, I recognized not only Stan Katz’s car, but Ted McDonald’s, as well as a station wagon advertising the Keene Sentinel and one from the Greenfield Recorder. In a few hours, I didn’t doubt Channel 31’s broadcast truck and others would also be jockeying for space.
“Let me off at the back door.” I pointed to the police department’s private entrance, opened only by key and leading to the hallway around the corner from Brandt’s office. I wanted to talk with the chief first, to put together a coherent party line, always an improvement over “no comment.”
That, at least, was the plan.
“Hi, Joe.”
I turned, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding my key.
Stan Katz had been sitting in his car, waiting, typically bypassing the organized circus that was probably clogging the building’s main corridor.
He rose from his seat and slammed the door. “I guess you guys thought you were being pretty clever keeping John Woll out of the limelight.”
The shock was worse than I’d imagined. My heart skipped several beats, and a nervous sweat sprang out all over my body.
“What?” My voice sounded strangled to my own ears and was obviously no clarion of innocence to Katz, for he smiled broadly.
“John Woll-patrolman, husband, and drunk. The same John Woll who went to high school with Charlie Jardine, whose wife had an affair with Charlie Jardine, and whose squad car was seen at the Canal Street dam about the same time Charlie Jardine was planted there.”
I considered denying it, bluffing my way through the door and out of his reach, but I realized he’d quote me later as proof of a cover-up. I could talk to him about it; I’d had conversations with him in the past when I’d thought such honesty might serve to set him straight. But there too, he had me. I didn’t know who else in the department he’d challenged, or how they might have responded. I also doubted that whatever I told him, even if I confessed all my sins for the past eight years, would have the slightest impact. This was a man with a long-sought-after bone, and he was savoring the flavor.