BLIND TRIAL, Brian Deer [top 10 motivational books .txt] 📗

“You can’t do it ma’am. You’ll kill yourself. It’s crazy.” He leaped into the seat and slammed the door.

Hoffman shouted, “Trudy, get real.”

She pushed the shift to R.

Brake off, gas down. Then a thump.

“Jesus Christ. You’ve hit Doctorjee. Oh brother. Oh man. You’ve hit him. He’s behind. He’s behind.”

She’d forgotten about him, waddling through the dark. He wouldn’t be hurt bad, more’s the pity.

“Trudy, quit this now,” Hoffman yelled. “Trudy, listen. Ben, throw the key out.”

“You dare.”

Ben reached for his seatbelt and fastened the clasp.

“We gotta talk,” Hoffman shouted. “All of us. Please.”

Shift to D. Brake off. Gas on. Steer right.

The Sentra jumped forward toward Talmage Road, then left, across the railroad, right, and right, down the ramp onto 101 South.

ALL THREE mirrors showed nothing but blackness. The mirrors, however, were wrong. She’d lurched from the ramp into the outside lane and car after car, SUV after caravan, bore down in a flood of dipped headlights. They swung right, then left, past the slow-moving Nissan, in a stabbing yellow flight of turn signals.

“Is anything there, Ben? On the right? On the right? Now tell me when it’s clear, when it’s clear.”

“I’ll tell you when it’s clear, if you promise to pull over.”

“Alright, I promise. Very well.”

“I’ll drive.”

“Very well.”

“Not now. Not now. Not now.”

As he yelled, she heard the growl and saw the high, wide beams of a chromium-plated Mack eighteen-wheeler. It steamed out of the darkness, its horn a single blast as it surged alongside the white sedan. One yellow sidelight, then another, and another, as the trailer whined past, glinting silver.

“Okay now. Go now. Go now. Clear to go.”

She nudged the wheel right. What a fuss.

“Let her roll onto the shoulder, ma’am. This is excellent. Like, okay. Found a place to stop here. Am I right?”

The car shuddered on a rumble strip and shook from a passing van. Peacefully, it rolled to a halt.

He clicked his belt. “Hey, that was random.”

Door open. Interior light. Chime.

THE SKY was now cloudless, the half-moon crisp, embedded in a canopy of black. The brightest stars sharpened against the smear of the Milky Way. A light wind breezed from the west. Looking up, Ben tripped on a chunk of shredded tire. He kicked it as Doc Mayr changed seats.

One hundred miles to go. He wasn’t sure he could make it. He wasn’t sure he could make one hundred yards.

He slumped into the driver’s seat and clamped up the belt as the vaccine chief adjusted her pillows. He studied the mirrors, then stamped on the gas: 40… 50… 60… 65. Then he flicked on the radio and scanned the rural airwaves: lite rock, progressive country, Christian talk.

He settled for a station rocking to Green on Red. “So, what we doing? Calling the cops now, or what?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking… Let me think here a minute.”

“I’m feeling pretty wasted.”

“You’re wasted?”

“Not sure I could take a police station tonight.”

He reached for his Samsung. Fuck, Hoffman snatched it. That asshole threw it somewhere near the liquor store.

Green on Red gave way to Elton John. Ben switched to Iron Maiden and REM. He lowered the volume to match the car’s four cylinders, now pounding out a sleep-inducing hum. The window behind him was open half an inch and the night air hissed white noise.

Doc Mayr shuffled, tilted her seat, and turned her face away into a pillow.

Here and there, the road twisted, or narrowed to two lanes. His eyelids felt heavy. Fucking heavy. He watched the yellow line and breathed slow and deliberate until, eventually, the glow of Santa Rosa colored the sky like a nightlight on a bedroom wall.

He reached to an air vent and twisted it toward him. It breezed like a Windy City keyhole. He unleashed a yawn and shook his head.

He so needed to sleep.

But not yet.

And now he heard whispers: whispers from the window. Tense, hissing whispers. Time to sleep. But the whispers continued and might break into shouts. They might follow him into his dreams. What his brain needed was a cold shower to wake him, while all his body craved was warmth.

He edged the seat forward and sat stiffly over the wheel. The smart thing now would be to stop. The biggest risk was no longer from Hoffman, in pursuit, but of peacefully cruising through a bubbling warm mist into some black ditch of death that lay beyond.

Then—shit—he snapped alert behind an unlit Volvo rig, drifting between lanes like himself. He blinked, shook his head, and punched the horn.

Doc Mayr released a grunt and rubbed her eyes.

“Sorry. I wake you?”

“That’s okay.”

He opened the driver’s window and rotated his shoulder blades. His back hurt as bad as his head. He turned off the radio, shut all the windows, and the sounds of the freeway dimmed.

“Ma’am, can I ask you something? It’s nothing like important.”

She coughed and grappled with her seat.

“It’s just something people say. It’s like a saying kind of thing.”

“We need to stop for cigarettes. Ask me then.”

“It’s only that saying, you know, ‘Like father, like son.’ Just wondered if you figured that’s true.”

Forty-seven

TRUDY MAYR sat on a Motel 6 bed and studied Ben Louviere’s face. She squeezed his nose. “Hard to tell, it’s so swelled. Go down and get yourself some ice.” She released her grip, pressed her palms to his cheeks, then tapped his eye-sockets and teeth. “You see my finger? You follow my finger.”

His eyes slid left, then right.

They’d been lucky on a Friday to find a vacancy in Petaluma, forty miles north of the Golden Gate. The Quality Inn, Double Tree, and Best Western were all full, but Motel 6 had a late cancellation. The room—233—had twin beds and a bathroom, TV, side chair, and little else. The window was draped with a coarse blue curtain that ballooned in an aircon draft.

She’d wanted to continue to the Hyatt right away, but Ben was falling asleep at the wheel. More than once she was frightened by the bump-bump-bump of Botts’ Dots under the