Chapter Nineteen: Ryder
I arranged to have a car hauler meet me at the police department tow yard to pick up Bethany’s car. I found a scrap yard in Arlington that would haul it away for free and give me three hundred bucks for the wreck. Before the car went anywhere, however, I wanted to go through it and pull out anything personal Bethany left behind.
I went into the small office just inside the gate and handed the guy my ID. He had me sign a form, then gave me a sealed plastic bag containing Bethany’s purse, the $400 black Coach I had gotten her three Christmases ago. She was so fucking proud of the damn thing that she practically jumped my bones right there under the tree. At the time, I thought it was the best $400 I’d ever spent.
I set the purse on the counter and opened it up and rummaged my hand around inside. Her wallet was there, containing her driver’s license, credit cards, and thirty-six dollars in cash. I took out her driver’s license and stared at it for a moment. The photo was a couple of years old. In it, Bethany’s hair was longer. Her eyes were bright. She was smiling. She looked happy. I wondered if Cody would want me to keep it so he could have it someday. I stuck it back in the wallet and set it aside. There was the usual assortment of crap women keep in their purses: makeup, lip balm, hand lotion, Target receipts, tissues (new and used), but no cell phone.
“Okay, sir, just follow me,” the lot manager said as he came around the counter to lead the way. I followed him out of the office with the purse tucked under my arm, down a long row of cars, most towed in for parking violations and DUIs, he said. He chattered away as we walked, though I wasn’t paying much attention until he said, “We keep the wrecks back here. I gotta tell you, I’ve seen a lot of cars that hit trees in my time, but this one might be the worst. Almost like a freak accident, you know?”
I frowned as a feeling of dread washed over me. The realization that I was about to see the car Bethany died in hit me like a ton of bricks. I started sweating and a wave of nausea started bubbling up in my throat. I asked, “Why is it the worst you’ve ever seen?”
“See for yourself,” he said, stopping at what was left of Bethany’s charcoal gray Maxima. He spread out his hands like he was presenting me with a gift. “She must have been doing eighty or ninety when she went over the side of the road.” He demonstrated how the wreck happened with his greasy hands. “The embankment was pretty steep, so she was probably airborne for a few seconds. According to the wrecker driver who brought it in, she must’ve hit the tree twenty or thirty feet up from its trunk. And when the front end smashed into the tree, the force threw the top of the car up and forward into the tree, then it nose-dived straight down.”
I held my breath as I watched his hands go through the motions.
“When the driver got there, he said the car was on its nose, the roof leaning against the tree. See the mud and shit caking the front there. And that deep dent running all down the center of the roof?”
I nodded. I could taste vomit in the back of my throat.
“Was one hell of an impact, got it from the front and the top. Anyway, I’ll go let the car hauler in the gate and give you time to clean it out. Do you need a bag or something?”
“No, thanks, I’ll use the purse,” I said quietly, taking deep breaths, trying not to puke on my shoes. As he walked away, I mustered the courage to let my eyes go over the wreck fully for the first time. The front of the Maxima was smashed in nearly to the shattered windshield, the hood buckled, the fenders gone, the engine pushed partially back into the interior compartment. There was mud and grass and pine needles caked into every crease and dent. The roof was caved in at the center from the impact with the tree, a deep vee ran along the center from front to back. The sides were scraped and dented. The tires were all flat and hanging off the rims. There was a swipe of white on the driver’s side rear fender, probably from the car being dragged back up the embankment.
I could see the deflated airbag draped over the steering wheel. When I walked around to peer inside the broken driver’s side window, I saw that the white airbag was covered in dark brown blood. Bethany’s blood. I could actually see the imprint of her face in blood on the bag.
My stomach erupted into my throat. I had seen a lot of death and destruction in my time and none of it had ever made me the least bit nauseous. I was trained to deal with that shit. Men, women and children with arms and legs and heads blown off. Bodies riddled with bullet holes or hacked to death my machetes, crushed beneath tanks and trucks, body parts littered along the sides of the road like trash on a Texas highway.
None of it affected me, at least not after I got used to it. But this… this… I ran behind the car and clutched my knees and puked until there was nothing left to give.
* * *
The driver’s door had been pried open by the jaws-of-life. It was hanging precariously on the bent hinges. I grabbed it at the top and gave it a hard tug. I fell back as the door creaked open, metal scraping metal. I paused for a moment, unable to keep my eyes off the bloodied airbag. It was hot as fuck outside, even though the sky was rolling with rain clouds. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand and let out a long breath.
The car hauler driver was watching me now, frowning, tapping his watch. I held up a hand, took a deep breath, and leaned inside. Like the airbag, the front seat was covered in blood. The seatbelt was still buckled, caked in blood that had died dark brown. The straps had been cut in two at the shoulder harness and lap belt by the paramedics.
“Fuck,” I sighed, trying not to picture Bethany laying there, bleeding out with her neck broken, waiting for paramedics to make it down the steep embankment to rescue her. I wondered what the last thoughts were that went through her mind. Surely, she thought of Cody. Maybe she thought of me. She must have thought about the baby dying in her stomach and the man who put it there. I wondered if she even knew that she was pregnant. I wiped tears from my eyes and shook off the feeling that somehow this was all my fault.
I bent down and peered inside the car. A cloud of dusty heat rolled over my face. It reminded me of the “death clouds” that floated out of Humvees or tanks when you opened the door after it had been destroyed by a bomb. Hot, musty, stale air, wreaking of blood and shit and death. I waved it away, held my breath, and leaned inside.
There was nothing in the seat, so I leaned down and felt around the floorboard, being careful not to cut up my fingertips from the shards of broken glass. Lodged behind the gas pedal, thrown there during impact, was Bethany’s cell phone.
“Hey man, you about done?” the car hauler called as I pulled back from inside the car. “I need to get this thing out of here.”
“Yeah, one second,” I shot back. Cody’s car seat was still strapped in the back and looked none the worse for wear, but I didn’t bother pulling it out. Call me superstitious, but I didn’t want anything to do with this car or the stuff inside it. I had what I’d come for. I had everything I needed.
“All yours,” I said as I walked past the driver with the phone clutched in my hand.
“Don’t you want your check?” he asked, holding up an envelope that contained the check from the salvage yard.
I shook my head and kept going. “You keep it,” I said. “I have what I came for.”
* * *
I felt like I’d just survived a firefight with Al Qaida assholes by the time I climbed into the Range Rover and cranked up the air. I sat with the purse in my lap and my head on the rest, eyes closed, breathing deeply. My t-shirt stuck to me like a second skin. I was covered in an oily film of sweat and dust. I could feel sweat streaking down the sides of my face and neck. My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. I wrapped my fingers around the steering wheel and forced my pulse to slow down.
I picked up the cellphone and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. The screen was cracked, but I thought the battery might just be dead. It was an iPhone, just like mine. I plugged it into the car charger and held my breath as the phone booted up.
“Okay, Bethany,” I said. “Let’s see who you’ve been talking and texting with.”
It took less than thirty seconds for the mystery to unravel.
I recognized the phone number of the man she’d been fucking immediately. There were over a dozen calls back and forth on the day she died, dozens more in the days before that. The GPS tracker on the phone showed me the places where they had met. My house. A motel on the highway. A hotel in DC.
The text messages bragged about things they had done to one another.
I love the feel of your pussy on my cock…
I love having your cock in my mouth…
I love fucking you in the ass…
I love it when you fuck me from behind…
I tossed the phone in the passenger seat and picked up my own.
I didn’t have to dial the number to reach Bethany’s lover.
It was already in my phone. I’d called it dozens of times.
When he answered, I forced a smile to my face and said, “Hey, it’s me. Where are you right now? I have something you need to see. Okay. Stay there. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”