The Big Bite - By Charles Williams Page 0,3

believe he was killed in the wreck?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Why else?”

“Routine, Harlan. Any time a policy-holder dies violently, without witnesses right at the scene—”

“Bat sweat,” I said. “Five months after it happened, and you’re still poking around in it. Why?”

“We never close a case until we’re sure.”

“Well, look. He must have been alive when he passed me. I never heard of a corpse driving a car, even the way he was driving it. And when they took him out of it he was dead, with his head caved in. What, else do you want?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Suppose you tell me the whole thing again, the way you did at the hospital?”

“Sure,” I said. “You figure maybe I walked over and knocked his roof in while I was pinned down with a crushed leg under a four-thousand-pound convertible? I’ll admit I was a little put out about it—”

He shook his head. “The whole thing, as nearly as you can remember it.”

I sighed and lit another cigarette. “All right. It was just after dark. I was coming into town from that fishing cabin where I was camping, to see a movie. A mile or so after I got out on the pavement, from the dirt road coming out of the swamp, a car came up behind me, going very fast. I was doing fifty, so he must have been clipping it off around sixty-five. There was no other traffic on the road, nobody in sight at all, so he had all the room in the world to pass me and then pull back into the right-hand lane, but instead he cut right in across my left front fender and knocked me off into the ditch. The car rolled a couple of times with me on the floorboards, but on the last one I fell out—the top was down—and then it teetered on two wheels—and fell back on top of me. He crashed, too. Just as I was going up and over the first time—while I was diving for the bottom—I saw his headlights swing in a big circle like somebody waving a flashlight around with his arm. Not that I was particularly interested in what happened to the sad bastard at the moment, but it’s just one of those things that register on your mind in the middle of everything, for some reason. I don’t know how long it was before they got there with the wrecker and pulled the car off me, but it seemed like about two average lifetimes. I was out cold, at least part of the time.”

“But not all of it?”

“No.”

“And his car had come to rest against a culvert about a hundred yards ahead of you?”

“So they told me later.”

“Did you hear anything during the time you were conscious?”

“Such as what, for instance?”

“Cars going by, people talking, anybody moving—”

“No. Believe me, pal. I was never lonelier in my life.”

“Nothing at all? You didn’t hear anything?”

“Just night sounds. You know—frogs, things like that. And something dripping. I remember hoping it wasn’t gasoline.”

I could see the disappointment in his face. “That’s all?”

“That’s all I remem— No. Wait. Once I thought I heard him moaning or trying to call for help, from the other car.”

He made a little gesture with his hand, and something in his eyes told me that was what he’d been fishing for all the time. “You said the same thing before. You really think you heard him moan, or cry out?”

“I think so.”

“You can’t be any more positive than that?”

“You ever been knocked out?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Then you know how it is. It’s all fuzzy afterward, especially if you were in and out several times. You don’t know how much of it you might have dreamed.”

He nodded. “But there is a chance you did hear him? Remember, you’ve told me twice, just the same way.”

“Sure,” I said. “But what of it? What difference does it make if he did groan or something?”

“You see the pictures of his head?”

“I didn’t want to see any pictures of his head. I had pictures of my own.”

“I thought not,” he said. “I saw them. He didn’t make any noise, believe me.”

“Then I must have imagined it.”

He grunted. “Maybe.”

I got it then, but before I could say anything he abruptly changed the subject. “You ever meet his wife? Widow, I mean.”

“No.”

“She never did come to see you in the hospital?”

“No. Her lawyer, and the insurance joker. That’s all.”

He looked thoughtful. “Did that ever strike you as a