“Yes.” I feel numb, but I know my role. I understand. “I’m the witness. I saw it happen.”
Susan removes a phone from her pocket. “Where were you going?” she says. Running lines.
“A grief-counseling support group. At St. Frederick’s. It was supposed to start at nine.”
“You pulled over to make sure you got the address right?”
“Yes.”
“Then you see this crazy man, running into the middle of the street.”
“I . . . I saw him . . . walk right in front of your truck.” My gaze travels up the length of the streetlight, the security camera at the top. What did it capture? A woman on her phone. A man hurrying into the middle of a two-way street then stopping abruptly. A truck driving through an intersection on a dark quiet night. A woman rushing out of the driver’s side, doing everything she can to help . . .
“I wasn’t even speeding,” Susan says. “Speed limit is forty-five. I was going forty-four.”
I look at his face. He had mouthed a word, just as the truck made contact with his body. A name, I think. His mouth is still open from the end of it. Claire.
He killed a woman’s daughter and got away with it. This is what needed to happen.
Just like Shawger and Kimball and Blanchard and Krakowski. He was no better than they were. He was no more human.
Susan dials 911, and when the operator answers, her voice goes an octave higher. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. I think I killed him. Help me. Help me, please. Please let him be alive.”
I can hear the operator’s voice through the phone, asking the woman who exactly she killed.
“I don’t know. He just . . . Oh my God.” She starts to wheeze. “I . . . I have asthma.”
“It’s okay, ma’am. Take a moment. Now tell us your location.”
She grabs an inhaler from her coat pocket and puffs on it audibly. “I’m on . . . on Woodlawn Ave. . . . in front of Beth Shalom Cemetery. He just . . . He ran out in front of my car. I can’t believe this. Hurry, please!”
“Can he speak?”
“No.”
“Is he breathing?”
“I don’t know!”
“We are on the way.”
“Okay . . . Okay . . .”
“Is there anybody there with you?”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. I . . . A woman. She’s still here. She saw the whole thing happen.” She bursts into sobs, then glances up at me. Her eyes are flat gray dimes.
DR. DUVAL IS dead. The paramedics know that instantly. As we wait for the police, they turn their attention to Susan, who tells them haltingly that her name is Vicky, but can’t seem to get out much more. “I . . . I think she’s in shock,” I tell them as Vicky starts to shiver. One of them grabs a blanket from the ambulance and wraps it tightly around her shoulders, talking to her in measured tones. “Can you breathe all right?” he says as two cop cars arrive, sirens blaring.
She nods, twirling the inhaler between trembling fingers.
“I’m Officer Dunne,” says the cop from the second car—a young guy with a powerful build and a military-style haircut. He’s speaking to me.
“Hello.”
“You saw all this happen, ma’am?”
“Yes.”
He leads me away from the scene to where his squad car is parked, and asks me questions. I recite to him the words from the script I was given—about the grief-counseling group at St. Frederick’s Church on Peach Tree Street. How my car’s GPS had confused me and I’d gotten lost and stopped to get my bearings. I add in a bit about how I was programming the Peach Tree Street address into my phone when the man had rushed into the street etcetera, etcetera. Through it all, he scribbles on his notepad and nods at me with sympathy and understanding. He takes my driver’s license and looks at it.