A Killing in China Basin

FOURTEEN


Charles Bates’s wife, Jacie, routinely took an evening walk, mostly when there was still light and often with CD, the D for Charles’s middle name, Douglas. Tonight she was walking alone. Not even their old dog, Chief, was with her. With his back legs Chief was too slow. She left the house a little after five, knowing it would get to dusk as she came through the end of the walk. Even so, she stopped to chat with a neighbor before starting for the dead-end street that turned into the park.

She picked up her pace. Jacie heard that she could lose weight at her hips by walking faster and she wanted to be down five pounds before she and CD went to Hawaii. They had a condo rented on Maui, same one they went to last year on their thirty-second anniversary. She looked forward to going there more than anything else right now.

Up ahead, joggers, hikers, mountain bikers, parked their cars in the rough dirt lot between the trees near where the park trails started. Lately, there were two small construction remodels in the neighborhood and those workers were still figuring out that the road didn’t go through, so when a white pickup passed her going fast toward the dead-end she figured it was another construction worker about to make the same mistake.

The man driving the pickup glanced at her as he passed. Where she was she wouldn’t see him turn around, but she knew it wouldn’t be long. It wasn’t. She heard his truck rattling back down the narrow road, coming faster making up for the lost time, and she moved over to the side, close to the edge but not in the mud. When he got closer she might step off, but because he had come by her slow on the way in she wasn’t much concerned.

Now the truck rattled around the corner, frame floating toward the crown of the road and Jacie frowning disapproval. She heard it accelerate. In the cool gray light of dusk she made out his white face and dark hair, but not his features. She raised a hand, meaning to say slow down, but not waiting, getting out of the way as he swerved, either losing control or coming on purpose. She was once a very good dancer and was on her back foot turning and two steps off the asphalt before the gap closed. She heard the sound when it hit her, but that was all.

She didn’t know that afterward he wrestled the truck back on to the road, straightening the wheel to keep it from rolling, or that his bumper carried dry grass and dirt from where it gashed the hill. She didn’t know that the old pickup’s glove compartment had popped open or that he’d recovered from his near crash and backed up over her body, resting the truck with a foot on the brake as the wheel rose up on her chest.

The impact crumpled the right fender and broke the headlight. A chrome headlight ring was left up on the slope. Pieces of headlight glass were all over the road shoulder. Neighbors heard tires squeal. But the whole thing took less than ninety seconds from start to finish. What the driver worried most about was his right headlight. If traffic was bad it would be nearly dark when he got there. Last thing he wanted was getting pulled over for a blown light.

But, hey, no worries, everything went fine. He parked under the freeway among the empty warehouses in drug city and moved quickly, emptying five gallons of gas inside the truck cab, coughing blindly at the surge of fumes as he backed away. He was in the car, engine on, headlights off, when the flash of light came and the faint tinkling sound of windows breaking came from well down the street. Warehouse windows caught the light and made the fireball bigger. So big that as he drove away the street radiated a cheerful orange-yellow light.