eyes were open and agonized.
Renner stopped pulling at her leg and put his arms around her waist, heaving back as hard as he could. There was an audible “plop” as her wedged foot pulled free.
The car was in motion now. One headlight still intact and burning swept up and across the sky like a pointing finger as the strain on the cable pulled the rear end down momentarily. Then as the underside, with a shriek of tortured metal, scraped across the last of the shale and rocked forward, Renner, holding Tamara pressed tightly against his own body, hurled himself backward and out the open door on the far side of the car just as the wrecked Cadillac nosed over the cliff and fell, pulling the tow truck with it. The heavy truck bounced and whipped at the end of the cable like a white toy truck on the end of a string.
With Angel Guitierrez still clutching the wheel.
Three
RENNER FELL on his back on shale, with Tamara partly on top him, his body cushioning her fall but with her bare legs flailing in space. A second fall of rock cascaded down the slope. Renner shielded Tamara’s head and face as best he could, at the same time trying to scramble back to safety and keep both of them from following the car and the truck.
Then Sheriff Prichard was pulling at them, widening their margin of safety. He was breathing so hard it was difficult for him to talk. “God damn,” he panted. “God damn. That was the bravest thing I ever saw.”
Renner didn’t feel brave. He wasn’t proud of himself. He felt sick. All he could see was Angel’s face as the truck had gone over the drop.
He wriggled out from under Tamara and knelt beside her. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was shallow. She’d either struck her head on something when they’d fallen or fainted. He had no way of telling which.
“How is she?” Prichard asked him.
“I don’t know,” Renner said.
A dozen or more men were scrambling down the slope now. Doctor Flanders hadn’t shown up but Father Sebastian had. The priest came over to where Renner was kneeling.
“How badly is the girl hurt?” the priest asked.
“I don’t know,” Renner said.
Sheriff Prichard got to his feet and called to one of the men still on the cliff to bring some blankets from the police car. When they arrived he spread one on the ground beside the girl. Then, after making certain her back wasn’t broken, he rolled her gently onto the blanket.
Renner continued to examine her. Nothing seemed to be broken. As far as he could tell the blood on her lower body wasn’t hers. It had probably splattered on her when the dead man had gone head first into the windshield.
Renner got to his feet and walked a few feet away and was sick. This was his fault. If he hadn’t been so damned determined to save his court none of it would have happened.
Sheriff Prichard covered the girl on the ground with the other blanket. He seemed to be willing her to hear him. “You’re all right now, Sissy,” he said. He might have been talking to his own ten-year-old daughter. “No one is going to hurt you. You just lie still and don’t worry until the doctor gets here.”
After he’d spread the blanket over the girl, Prichard walked over to the body of the man whom Renner had pulled out of the car. “Anybody recognize him?” he asked.
None of the men on the ledge did.
“The bastard,” Prichard said. “Of course I have no way of proving it and won’t have until the girl recovers consciousness. But the way I see this thing, he probably made a play for her at seventy or eighty miles an hour. And that’s when they went off the road. Judging from the skid marks, he must have been going that fast.”
Kelcey stopped trying to see through the blanket covering Tamara and asked if anyone had found out who she was.
Prichard said she had told Renner her name was Tamara Daranyi. Also that she had missed the local bus in Cove Springs and the dead man had offered her a ride.
Kelcey was definitely interested. “A girl hitchhiker, eh?”
“So it would seem.”
Kelcey rolled the name on his tongue. “Tamara Daranyi. That’s a hell of a name.”
Renner found and lighted a cigarette. “It’s Hungarian.”
Kelcey was slightly superior. “How would you know?”
Renner smoked in silence for a moment. Nothing had changed. He still had his court to think of and Kelcey was asking for it. It would all depend on whether Tamara was hurt and if so how badly. “Well, I’ll tell you, Kelcey,” he said finally. “It’s this way. She told us what we know about her in Hungarian. And it just so happens I understand the language. Probably because, as you reminded me earlier this evening, I’m a god-damn Hunkie celery farmer’s son.”
The ledge was becoming uncomfortably crowded as more and more people picked their way down the slope. Some of them kneeled around Father Sebastian to pray for Angel’s soul. Others came over to gawk at the blanket-covered figure on the ground.
The little brunette in the too-tight blue jeans laid her hand on Renner’s arm and asked earnestly, “Are you all right, Mr. Renner?”
Renner appreciated her concern. “Yeah. Sure. I’m fine.”
Sheriff Prichard had knelt beside the dead man and was going through his pockets. It was a messy job. About the only thing he hadn’t bled on was the contents of his wallet. The sheriff studied the dead man’s driver’s license. “The name John A. Baron mean anything to you, Kurt?”
“Faintly,” Renner said. “But I can’t place it.”
Prichard riffled through the thick sheaf of bills in the wallet. “Whoever he was, he was loaded.”
Two of the paisanos hadn’t stopped to pray. They’d climbed down the face of the cliff, picking toe and hand where they could. Now one of them was shouting.
Sheriff Prichard walked to the face of the drop and looked down. Carlos Aquililla had made it to the bottom and was standing on one of the battered doors of the tow truck. When he saw Prichard was looking the man raised his arms and crossed them in front of his face in a gesture of finality. His voice, whipped by the wind, was thin. “Muerte.”
Prichard took off his hat. “Poor devil.” He returned his hat to his head and turned to face his night deputy who was making his way down the slope. “Where’s Doc Flanders?”
Tom Healy was apologetic. “Stuck with an emergency operation out at the Beeson ranch. But when I talked to him on the phone Doc said if the man and the girl aren’t too badly hurt to be moved it will save a lot of time if you start in toward town with them.”
“The man will keep,” Prichard said, wryly. “And so will Angel Guitierrez. But we can start on in with the girl.”
Renner started to pull back the blanket so he could pick up Tamara and looked at Kelcey and stopped. “You, what’s your name?” he asked the little brunette.
The
