“No, he didn’t. He was unconscious. It was over very quickly.”
“Excuse me.” Cal got up and went out farther into the yard, breathing heavily.
“I know that’s upsetting,” Brenda said. “Once the boy passed, I started to help with you. I wasn’t even sure you would live. I’m glad you did.”
Jane found her voice: “The witness…Mr. Marcolin, who called the police and the ambulance? Did you talk to him?”
“I wouldn’t have. He would have spoken to the police. So I don’t understand why anyone would want to hurt me or my family now, I was just doing my job.” Her voice went jagged.
Jane lowered her voice. “There was no other sign of another witness.”
“No. I think once we all arrived, no one could have stayed hidden on the hillside. Wait. When we turned onto High Oaks, we were coming from the north, so we turned in at the entrance that was farthest from the crash. There’s a stop sign there, and another car was stopped. It pulled off as we pulled in. I remember it now.”
“What kind of car?”
She closed her eyes, willing to remember, and Jane wondered what that was like, to be able to summon any memory on demand. “I’m sorry. I don’t recall. You work so many accidents.”
“But this one, this one you remembered the orange phone, you have to think, Ms. Hobson, please, please. You’re brilliant. You can remember when I can’t.”
She concentrated, and with so much at stake—perhaps catching the arsonist who had nearly killed her child—Brenda Hobson’s eyes opened. “It was a truck. Black, tinted windows. Clean. Not like it got used for working a lot, you know. There was a streetlight and it gleamed on the black paint. I mean, it was dark, so I couldn’t describe it more, but I saw the gleam on it. Shiloh Rooke, the other paramedic, was driving the ambulance, so he was focused on the road and we were just trying to get there. But Shiloh, he said it was a beauty ride.”
A black truck. “And you saw no other cars?”
“No.”
“You mentioned Shiloh. That’s the other paramedic.”
“Shiloh Rooke.” She gave a little shiver. “And he’s crazy. Glad I’m not working with him anymore.”
“Crazy how?”
“Honey, don’t you go talk to him about any accidents. Stay away. He’s very bad news. Our bosses thought he might have been dealing prescription drugs. Every crew member had to keep an eye on him, but no one could ever prove anything.” She frowned. “If anyone burned down his house, Shiloh would hunt them down and set them on fire himself.”
Cal Hall returned to the table. “I’m sorry, I just needed a moment. What’s happening?”
“We’re leaving,” Jane said. “Ms. Hobson, thank you and I’m so sorry. I hope your son is all right.”
“This isn’t good-bye. I want answers. I want whoever did this to pay…”
“I’ll call the lead investigator on your case tomorrow,” Cal said. “Or my lawyer will. We’ll share our info.”
They walked outside.
“What else did she say?” Cal whispered. “I’m sorry, it was hard. I was there soon after the crash, Perri and I both were, and it was awful. I try my hardest not to think about it.”
“She remembered a black truck turning off High Oaks, but it might not mean anything. She said you couldn’t see the wreck from the road, with the headlights out.” She also told him about the other paramedic, and that Brenda had warned her away from him.
“If this is someone who hates me,” Jane said, “they’re just using words against me, but they are actually hurting someone like Brenda, who was an innocent bystander. Why? Why not come after me?”
“Maybe Brenda knows something she doesn’t even know she knows, and she’s a threat to this person. She mentioned the truck. I don’t remember a truck in the report.”
He was right. She didn’t remember one either.
“Let’s head back,” he said. They walked back to the Range Rover.
*
“I never encouraged David in his art.” Cal’s voice grew bitter. “I feel bad about that. I should have encouraged him more. But I wanted him to be like me. I wanted to build a venture-fund business where he could work with me side by side and then he could take over. It’s so old-fashioned. It was a mistake. I loved that he wanted to be an entrepreneur, like me, like your dad. I thought art wasn’t the right thing for him to study, but if he wanted to study computers, that would be fine, as long as he got an MBA afterward. You don’t want to just write code forever; you want to run companies.”
She wanted to say maybe you could have just let David be David. But now, it just sounded cruel. So she said nothing.
She texted her mom. Know it’s late, can I stay at the house tonight. I’ll be there in an hour or so. And the answer: Of course, please do.
She dozed the rest of the way home. It was odd to think she could sleep after the long day, but her brain wanted rest and took it.
Suddenly, rising from the mist of dream: headlights, bright in her eyes. Terror. Was she looking at a mirror or straight ahead? She needed to get away from those headlights. She knew it. Life or death. The headlights could not catch her. She opened her eyes and the image faded, like the afterimages of a light flashed in her face. She shivered.
“Are you OK?” Cal asked.
“Yes. I remembered something.”
He glanced at her. “What?” Surprise on his face.
“From the night of the crash. Another car. Behind us. Chasing us. I don’t know.”
Pieces of a puzzle that did not quite fit together. She thought of the jumble: the orange phone, the black truck, the headlights that she had to escape. Then her head and David’s head, close together on a summer porch, drawing teddy bears, her putting the words into the speech bubbles he drew, crayons scattered between them.
24
SO, PERRI THOUGHT, Liv Danger was a secret. A secret that only David and Jane knew.
But someone could say you knew, too, she realized. Someone could accuse you of being her. It’s your computer used to post her rantings. It’s your house with the notebook with the character sketches. She felt cold. Someone was framing her and that someone had to be:
Jane Norton. Who else would know?
It explained so much. If no one knew the character—hidden in a notebook—that only Jane and David had worked on, then Jane was Liv Danger. The amnesia was fake, or this memory had returned. And for some reason she had decided to use David’s creation as her camouflage.