one you had to stop, no one you helped, no one else saw you at the school?”
Fox was checking that Mikesh had an alibi that would prove he had not run my brother off the road.
“Listen, I punched in at five o’clock and left work around one thirty. I talked to a guy in the dairy building about nine. On the way home I was watching the road closely and I saw some suspicious tracks in the snow bank. I stopped and found an accident and a victim that no other driver and no sheriff’s deputy discovered in what must have been several hours. If you don’t feel like thanking me for helping your office do its job, that’s fine. But don’t try to come up with a story that makes no sense—not to anyone who knows me.”
Mikesh was tired and angry.
“I just talked to the family and friends of a dead man,” the sheriff told him. “They’re distraught. They want some kind of answer about a fatal accident. I’m going to make sure we don’t overlook anything.”
Fox, in his regulation button-down shirt and his sport coat, talked a good line.
“You can understand why I want to make sure you had nothing to do with this, Arnie. You are telling me you did not pass the scene of the accident any time before you made that 9–1–1 call last night at 1:51?”
Mikesh quit talking. He shook his head.
“Do you have a clearer way of telling me and the recorder that, yes, you were nowhere near the scene before that time?”
Mikesh felt weary. “That’s right. I was nowhere near that scene between the time I clocked in and the time I drove that way home after my shift.”
“Even though you happened by a long time after the crash, you spoke with King. Remind me again if he told you anything about his accident.”
“Not really.” Mikesh wished he could find something of help, something that would put him a bit more on Fox’s side of that awful desk.
“That car flew a ways before it hit the ground. He was going a good speed when he left the road.”
“The tire marks did not indicate the deceased even tried to stop or slow down. And no evidence he had been drinking,” Fox said. “Drugs may be another question. We’ll let the State Patrol investigation and the coroner answer that. It’s a fatal accident. State Patrol is going to go over that car thoroughly. But did you see any sign of drugs? Did you remove anything from the scene?”
“The only thing I touched was the man himself, seeing if I could get a pulse, clear his wind passage, give him a lick of coffee when he asked for something to drink. Beyond that, there was not much I could do. He was wedged in pretty tight. It took a while, even with the hydraulic machinery, for your boys and the EMTs to get his body out. I could see I shouldn’t try to move him. I didn’t take anything. I just pushed my jacket in around him and waited for the ambulance. Within maybe twenty minutes of the time I got there, he was dead.”
“And that left, what? Maybe another twenty or thirty minutes before the emergency response arrived? What were you doing all that time?”
Mikesh tried not to pause, not to sound evasive, but he didn’t like his own answer. “I kept my hand against him. . . . . I was talking to him, not sure when it was he really died. I had my hand on his neck, checking for a pulse so I just kept it there. After pushing my jacket in there around him, it seemed like the one other thing I could do.”
Fox searched Mikesh’s face.
“The jacket you say you pushed around the victim, that is with his effects. We will have to keep it until the investigation is completed. There’s a lot of blood on it.”
Mikesh was quiet.
“So there’s nothing more you can tell me about why you were there, what you saw at the scene, or what you said?”
Mikesh said nothing.
“I see you are a man with a record, and I want to make sure the report for this incident is complete.”
Mikesh felt his blood pressure surge. “That record is for a high school prank.”
“Car theft is more than a prank.”
Fox had unearthed the one incident, from Mikesh’s careful life, which landed him in court for a criminal offense.
“A buddy and I hid the car of a guy who was just a little too fond of it.”
Mikesh was eighteen. The car was a Mustang, the owner Bill White. While his accomplice had gone with White into the house to watch the taped highlights of the 1985 football season where Bill had played fullback and his friend a left tackle, Mikesh drove the Mustang to the parking lot of the hair salon favored by the town’s oldest ladies and parked it there, underestimating the frenzy and the wrath of its owner once he found it gone. One night in jail and two levels of reduced charges later Mikesh paid his fine and spent his summer before university on probation, doing community service.
“There aren’t a lot of people in this county who have a vehicle theft on their record.”
“And not one who was charged for such a stupid reason.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that. A record is a record, and I’m just trying to get the report for this death complete and clear. A lot of people are interested in this man.”
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“Does your boss over at the community college know about your record, or the state employment people?”
“We’re talking about Calmar, Iowa. Anybody who has lived there more than fifteen minutes knows the story, including the color of shirt I was wearing when I walked away from the lot of the Twirl ‘n’ Curl and probably, for that matter, the brand of my underwear.”
“The last time I looked, your boss doesn’t live in Calmar.”
“What does that have to do with what happened in the fog last night?”
Fox paused. “Maybe nothing. I’ve got to get the facts, got to be sure I understand my sources.”
“Seegmiller said you are still investigating out at the scene.”
“We’re working with the state. You have to check everything out.” Paul Fox picked up a paper clip and tapped it on his blotter. “Make sure in the final report every t is crossed, every i dotted. That’s my plan, so you may need to come in again. You’ll probably need to talk to state investigators.”
The law enforcement center lot was gray with thinning fog as Mikesh, zipping up his Carhartt, walked across the asphalt. Unhappy that he seemed to be the careless driving suspect in a stranger’s death, and surprised at how deeply the sheriff seemed to be invested in proving his guilt, Mikesh hoped he was on his way home, but he was greeted by me, walking toward him from between the cars, offering my hand.
“Are you Arnold Mikesh?” I asked. “I’m Tom King, Joshua’s brother.”
Okay brother, sister reader. I have already told you I’m the brother of the dying man. What you don’t know is that I am not
