The sick man's eyes fluttered open again, and now they were filled with an intense, sharp concern. He struggled again to sit up. Sweat ran down his face. He grabbed Hap.
"Are Sally and Baby LaVon all right?" he demanded. Spittle flew from his lips and Hap could feel the man's burning heat radiating outward. The man was sick, half crazy, he stank. Hap was reminded of the smell an old dog blanket gets sometimes.
"They're all right," he insisted, a little frantically. "You just... lay down and take it easy, okay?"
The man lay back down. His breathing was rougher now. Hap and Hank helped roll him over on his side, and his respiration seemed to ease a trifle. "I felt pretty good until last night," he said. "Coughing, but all right. Woke up with it in the night. Didn't get away quick enough. Is Baby LaVon okay?"
The last trailed off into something none of them could make out. The ambulance siren warbled closer and closer. Stu went over to the window to watch for it. The others remained in a circle around the man on the floor.
"What's he got, Vic, any idea?" Hap asked.
Vic shook his head. "Dunno."
"Might have been something they ate," Norm Bruett said. "That car's got a California plate. They was probably eatin at a lot of roadside stands, you know. Maybe they got a poison hamburger. It happens."
The ambulance pulled in and skirted the wrecked Chevy to stop between it and the station door. The red light on top made crazy sweeping circles. It was full dark now.
"Gimme your hand and I'll pull you up outta there!" the man on the floor cried suddenly, and then was silent.
"Food poisoning," Vic said. "Yeah, that could be. I hope so, because - "
"Because what?" Hank asked.
"Because otherwise it might be something catching." Vic looked at them with troubled eyes. "I seen cholera back in 1958, down near Nogales, and it looked something like this."
Three men came in, wheeling a stretcher. "Hap," one of them said. "You're lucky you didn't get your scraggy ass blown to kingdom come. This guy, huh?"
They broke apart to let them through - Billy Verecker, Monty Sullivan, Carlos Ortega, men they all knew.
"There's two folks in that car," Hap said, drawing Monty aside. "Woman and a little girl. Both dead."
"Holy crow! You sure?"
"Yeah. This guy, he don't know. You going to take him to Braintree?"
"I guess." Monty looked at him, bewildered. "What do I do with the two in the car? I don't know how to handle this, Hap."
"Stu can call the State Patrol. You mind if I ride in with you?"
"Hell no."
They got the man onto the stretcher, and while they ran him out, Hap went over to Stu. "I'm gonna ride into Braintree with that guy. Would you call the State Patrol?"
"Sure."
"And Mary, too. Call and tell her what happened."
"Okay."
Hap trotted out to the ambulance and climbed in. Billy Verecker shut the doors behind him and then called the other two. They had been staring into the wrecked Chevy with dread fascination.
A few moments later the ambulance pulled out, siren warbling, red domelight pulsing blood-shadows across the gas station's tarmac. Stu went to the phone and put a quarter in.
The man from the Chevy died twenty miles from the hospital. He drew one final bubbling gasp, let it out, hitched in a smaller one, and just quit.
Hap got the man's wallet out of his hip pocket and looked at it. There were seventeen dollars in cash. A California driver's license identified him as Charles D. Campion. There was an army card, and pictures of his wife and daughter encased in plastic. Hap didn't want to look at the pictures.
He stuffed the wallet back into the dead man's pocket and told Carlos to turn off the siren. It was ten after nine.
BOOK I CAPTAIN TRIPS Chapter 2
There was a long rock pier running out into the Atlantic Ocean from the Ogunquit, Maine, town beach. Today it reminded her of an accusatory gray finger, and when Frannie Goldsmith parked her car in the public lot, she could see Jess sitting out at the end of it, just a silhouette in the afternoon sunlight. Gulls wheeled and cried above him, a New England portrait drawn in real life, and she doubted if any gull would dare spoil it by dropping a splat of white doodoo on Jess Rider's immaculate blue chambray workshirt. After all, he was a practicing poet.
She knew it was Jess because his ten-speed was bolted to the iron railing that ran behind the parking attendant's building. Gus, a balding, paunchy town fixture, was coming out to meet her. The fee for visitors was a dollar a car, but he knew Frannie lived in town without bothering to look at the RESIDENT sticker on the corner of her Volvo's windshield. Fran came here a lot.
Sure I do, Fran thought. In fact, I got pregnant right down there on the beach, just about twelve feet above the high tide line. Dear Lump: You were conceived on the scenic coast of Maine, twelve feet above the high tide line and twenty yards east of the seawall. X marks the spot.
Gus raised his hand toward her, making a peace sign.
"Your fella's out on the end of the pier, Miss Goldsmith."