The Ridge(11)

“He’s in a hurry,” she observed.

It was five minutes later when they turned onto the long gravel lane that led to their new home and saw a red light in the trees. As Wes drove on, Audrey stared at it, thinking that it might be from the lighthouse, thinking that the crazy neighbor was taking it up a notch, but then they rounded a bend and she could see the police car.

Or the remains of the police car.

The vehicle was upside down in the trees on the north side of the road, across from the preserve’s front gate. It looked as if it had been in the process of rolling a second time when the trees caught it, and now the car was propped at an awkward angle, the passenger side in the air and the driver’s side pressed against the ground. The roof was crushed down, fractured pieces of metal and fiberglass littered the gravel, and the headlights—both still on—were pointed crazily into the trees, one angled up, one angled down. The hood was torn and the engine showed like internal organs, things you knew you shouldn’t be able to see.

Audrey whispered, “He’s got to be dead.”

Wes didn’t argue. With the look of that car, there wasn’t much argument to be made.

“Call 911,” he said, and then a figure emerged from the trees just behind the car, stepping out of the shadows, and Audrey almost screamed before she realized that it was Dustin Hall, her own employee. He looked up at them, then back to the car, and shook his head.

Audrey knew what he meant. The driver was dead.

Wes popped open the door and stepped into the rain while Audrey took her phone out and dialed, gave their location, and explained the situation.

“It’s bad,” she said. “It’s really, really bad.”

“Is the driver breathing?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine… the car is just demolished.”

“Could you check? Can you get close enough to see if there’s any sign of motion? We have an ambulance en route, but I need to know what to tell them.”

Audrey got out of the truck. Wes had dropped to his knees by the shattered window, and now he removed his jacket, wrapped it around his fist, and began swinging at the car, trying to clear away the remaining glass from the passenger window.

“Is he alive?” Audrey asked.

“I don’t know.”

She walked closer, knelt in the wet gravel beside him, and peered inside the car. The roof had been crushed down to the headrest, both airbags had deployed, and the inside of the car was a cloudburst of broken plastic, glass, and fabric. The airbags had left a chalky dust in the air, the smell faintly like gunpowder. Pinned between the steering wheel and the remains of the passenger seat, which had been shoved toward him, was the deputy’s crumpled body. Audrey was just about to speak into the phone again, just about to say that the man looked to be dead, when he moved his head and focused his eyes on hers.

She almost screamed. It was stunning to see him move. She jerked upright and stumbled backward as the operator said, “Ma’am, what do you see?”

“He’s… um… he’s moving,” Audrey said, watching in astonishment as the deputy blinked, narrowed his eyes, and frowned at her and Wes as if he didn’t know what they were doing there and didn’t like seeing them. “He’s alive. I don’t know how, but he’s alive.”

The operator was busy telling her not to try to move him until the paramedics arrived when the deputy reached out of the broken window and placed one white palm on the gravel, dug his fingers in, and tried to pull himself clear.

“Tell him not to move,” Audrey said, but Wes was already leaning forward to help.

“Give a hand,” he shouted to Dustin, who had been one of David’s favorite students and was always capable around the preserve but now stood pale-faced and motionless. Dustin responded to the order, though, leaned down and helped support the deputy’s weight while Wes pulled a pocket knife free, opened the blade, and hacked through the seatbelt, whispering to the deputy to take it easy, not to rush. The whole time the guy was reaching from the wreckage with that one free arm, pulling at the mud and gravel, as if determined to claw out from within the car that should have been his coffin. Wes and Dustin caught him by the shoulders and lifted and then, somehow, he was out of the police car and on his back, breathing and alert.

Audrey hung up the phone. “What happened?” she asked Dustin.

“I think he missed the turn or something. All I know is one second I heard the siren and then the next he was in the trees.”

Dustin’s face looked bloodless, and he was weaving on his feet. She said, “Do you need to sit down?”