Page 4 of Justice for Aleta

She nodded, then winced. “Yes. Barely. He was barely off the side of the road. Stalled out. Joshua said we had to stop. We hit his car. He told us to go on, that it was no big deal, but Joshua wanted to help. Joshua always wanted to help.” The last sentence came out almost as a mumble.

“But how did you get out of the car? Why were you on the side of the road?”

“Joshua said to take Jorie and stand away from the van. He said we wouldn’t be safe inside it. So we got out. I was holding Jorie, and Joshua was trying to help the man, and they were arguing. Joshua kept saying, ‘Let’s get your car started so you’re not stranded out here,’ and the man kept telling him to go away. And then the other car came.”

“The red car?”

“I don’t know. It hit the van, and the van slid sideways and hit me. And Jorie flew out of my arms and… Where’s Jorie? It’s time for him to nurse.”

“The doctor will talk to you about your son in a little while. So the baby flew out of your hands and?”

“When Joshua saw him, he jumped over the bridge railing to save him. I know Joshua saved him. He’d never let anything happen to Jorie. He didn’t even hesitate, not for a minute! He just jumped and… Where’s Jorie. It’s time for him to nurse. My breasts are… they hurt… need to nurse him…”

“I’m sorry. You’re going to have to leave,” the nurse responded.

“Please, just one more question. Please?” Jack asked.

The nurse frowned. “One more and then go.”

“Mrs.Culp? I need to ask you one more question. When you looked again, where was the dark car? The one with the man your husband was trying to help? Where did it go?”

The woman rolled her head back to face Jack. Her eyes opened wide and she looked straight into his. “It was gone. Just vanished. I never saw it again.” At that, her eyes closed and she let out a huge sigh.

“You have to go.Now,” the nurse hissed.

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” Jack and Danny stepped out into the passageway between all the glass cubicles and watched as the woman lay there, semi-conscious and trying to figure out where her family was. “Well, there’s our answer.”

Danny sighed. “Yeah, and that still isn’t an answer. We’ve got to find that car.”

But how to do that? It was gone without a trace.

Chapter 2

God,Jack hated holidays! Normally-intelligent people got drunk and got out on the highways. It drove him crazy, writing tickets to school teachers and ministers and lawyers, all the while listening to them whine about how they justcouldn’tget a ticket, because how would it look intheir position, and how were they going to explain that, and blah-blah-blah. He got tired of hearing them piss and moan. If he knew he wouldn’t get in trouble for it, he’d just yell at them, “If you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t have to worry about it!” But he knew that wouldn’t help.

When he hit the hay at well after two o’clock in the morning, he was glad he was off duty the next day. Pull an all-nighter on drunk duty, get a free pass for the next day. He’d take it.

The next morning when he woke, he was ridiculously hungry. There was a pancake place right down the street from his apartment outside Elizabethtown, so he threw on some jeans and a tee and headed that direction. It was the usual mess of individuals, people drinking their hangovers away with cups of coffee so strong they could be used to strip paint from a car. He ordered his usual?two eggs over easy, two pieces of toast, two pancakes, and two pieces of bacon?and was waiting for it when he heard the servers whispering.

“I know they like to hire handicapped people, but come on! She’s never washed a dish in her life. Probably had servants who did it.”

“I know! And why her? She’s so quiet. She’s never going to fit in here. I don’t get it.”

“Maybe they wanted somebody who’d do the work and not stand around and jaw,” a big woman he assumed was their supervisor said. “Get to work. You’ve got customers and dirty tables. Don’t worry about what she’s doing. If you were in her shoes, you’d be thankful to have a job here.”

Who the hell are they talking about?Jack wondered. Must’ve been somebody in the back. In seconds, his plate was delivered and he happily dove into it face-first.

By the time he finished, the two chatty servers were too busy to stand around and run anybody down, and he went to pay his ticket. Wandering past the table where he’d sat, he dropped a five dollar bill on its surface and just as he did, he looked up.

The door to the back opened and he saw the object of their scorn?a woman with a brace on her right leg. Something about her gave him pause, but just for a second. He didn’t know anybody who wore a brace.

But something about her bothered him all day long. He thought about it that evening, and the next morning, he went back to the pancake place. She seemed familiar to him.

And he thought he knew why.

* * *

“You’ve gota dishwasher back there, a woman in a brace, right?” Jack asked his server.

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