“And did he slow down?”
No, he didn’t. I had told her this the first time, but she asked me again anyway, asked me to close my eyes and return to that night, see if the driver had paused at any time, either before or after striking Guerrero. I told her once more that the driver hadn’t slowed down and hadn’t stopped. If anything, he’d sped up. That’s what had made me look up from my bicycle—the sound of the car speeding up.
“When did he speed up?”
“When?”
“Before or after hitting the victim?”
“Before.”
“Are you sure about this?”
I had heard the car speeding up, then the sound of the impact. “Yes,” I said. “He sped up before. Then after he hit the man, he took the turn and ran off again down Chemehuevi.”
Again, she asked me to start over, tell the story from the beginning. By the time I stepped out of that room, it was well past lunchtime and I was exhausted. I wasn’t even sure whether I had been of any help, because the detective refused to say. All she said was that someone from the district attorney’s office would be in touch with me when the case went to trial.
When I came out to the lobby, Marisela stood up. “How was it?”
“It’s done,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I took her hand and hurried down the stairs to the glass doors. Marisela had taken the morning off from work to be with me, but as we came out into the sunlight I worried that I had only entangled her in this mess. I had spent weeks burdened by guilt and apprehension, and I still wasn’t completely free of either. If the case went to trial, I would again have to remember the accident and talk about it in front of others, and if there was no trial, my name was somewhere in those police files now, where it could be found at the touch of a button. “What about the reward?” she asked, touching my arm.
“They said they have to check if the information I gave is correct.”
Her face fell. Maybe she expected that I would walk out of the police station with one of those huge checks, the kind people get when they win the lottery, and now it was dawning on her that it would take a few days, maybe even a few weeks, to get the money. In the meantime, they would know where to find us. We walked the length of the parking lot, past the Morongo Basin courthouse, and up the street to the bus stop.
It was a cloudy day, but the heat was scorching. We sat together under the awning, sweating and waiting. Marisela took my hand and squeezed it. “Everything’s going to work out,” she said. She was trying to give me hope and, for once, I let myself believe her. Twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money, more than we’d ever had before. It was enough to start over in a new place, where the police wouldn’t know where we lived. The highway stretched for miles ahead of us, leading out of the desert toward the ocean. All we had to do was take it.
Nora
I was helping Marty hang a Memorial Day banner on the front window of the restaurant when Detective Coleman called to tell me she had a witness, a motel worker who’d been riding his bicycle on the highway the night of April 28. He mentioned a red sticker on the rear side of Baker’s window, a detail that had not been made public, and told her that the driver had sped up as he approached the intersection and again after the impact, which suggested that he was conscious he had hit someone, and should not have left the scene. This testimony was the first solid piece of evidence, she said, to show that the driver had been willfully reckless.
The word solid nearly took my breath away. My father’s dead body, my mother’s claims about Baker, the handwritten note about parking spaces—none of these had been solid enough. If it weren’t for this witness, the case would have dissolved like ether. My eyes welled with tears, and I had to move away from the ladder and sit down on the curb to catch my breath. Now that I’d started crying, it happened all the time, even when I tried to resist it. Wiping my cheeks with the palm of my hand, I asked, “So now you have proof that Baker killed my dad?”
“Proof that he knew he’d hit the victim.”
“But not that it was murder?”
“A murder charge requires a much higher standard of proof. I think the D.A. is looking at vehicular manslaughter.”
“He doesn’t believe the witness?”
“I don’t know what he believes, I couldn’t say. But it’s worth remembering that there’s no streetlight at that intersection and that Mr. Baker is seventy-eight years old. Some people shouldn’t be driving at that age.”
I was quiet for a while, trying to process everything the detective had told me. A blue van came into the parking lot, trailing thick exhaust, and the driver sat with the engine running as he fiddled with something in the backseat. Behind me, the diner’s door jingled and a woman came out, carrying leftovers in a Styrofoam container.
“Listen,” Coleman said. “I understand your frustration, I do. But vehicular manslaughter is a very serious charge and we might not have gotten this far if it weren’t for the reward you put up. You’ve done what you could.”
The sun had risen above the palo verde tree on the side of the restaurant, and the light was on my face. For the past five weeks, each day had begun with the same two realizations, agonizing and immutable: my father was dead and his killer was free. But now, for the first time, I could allow myself to imagine a day when Baker would have to answer, at least in part, for what he did. “Will he go to jail?”
“Probably. But that really depends on the jury.”
And, I thought, on the stories that the defense and prosecution told in court. “Can I at least meet this witness?” I asked. “I want to thank him for coming forward.”
“I wouldn’t advise it. I think it might be better to wait until after the trial.”
“What about the reward?”
“If you sign the check, we’ll make sure he gets it.”
“All right,” I said. “Thank you for everything, Detective.”
I stood up and dusted myself off. Marty walked past me, carrying the stepladder, glancing one more time at the banner that said HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY in red, white, and blue. Underneath the greeting, in block letters, came the plea, or perhaps the admonishment, to remember those who had made the ultimate sacrifice. Soon, newspapers would run their annual celebrations of American soldiers, and politicians would take turns pandering to them. Meanwhile, the civilians who died in American wars would receive only silence. National memory was built from such erasures.
But private memory was nothing but a struggle against erasure. I wanted to make sure that my father wasn’t forgotten. At the Pantry, I had kept everything exactly as it had been before he died. Already I was settling into a routine. In the mornings, I opened the restaurant and did whatever needed to be done—handled the cash register, restocked the bathrooms with paper towels, called the electric store for replacement bulbs for the kitchen. Usually, I ate lunch standing at the counter. In the afternoon, I went back to the cabin and took a nap, which was often interrupted by the sound of the turtledove teaching its chicks how to fly. Then I would make coffee and finally sit at the piano. In other words, I had been trying to hold on to the past at all cost. My mother knew better; she didn’t try to fight her feelings of pain or fear, but accepted them as she might accept unwelcome visitors, knowing that someday, even if it was very far in the future, they would leave. It was a strength she derived from her deep faith, and in that moment I envied her for it. All I had were uncertainties.
Jeremy