Nanowrimo 2016 - Prologue part 4
Prologue, part 1
Prologue, part 3
An Dannsa Sìth
Ro-ràdh : roinn a ceithir : Dùsgadh (Waking up)
Jace stumbled, fell forward, desperately twisting so he didn't land face first. He hit on his right side, arm up protecting his head and the pain was so bad he almost passed out.
A car zoomed past inches from his outstretched hand.
Yelping with surprise and fear, pushed himself up on hands and knees, flipped backward and crab-walked away from the edge, not stopping until he was well away from the gravel strewn verge.
There he sat. Only a few minutes. Just long enough to catch his breath. To let his racing heart slow down. Then he'd get up and ...
And what?
What came next? There was something ... something he was supposed to do. He was sure of it. But nothing came to mind.
People appeared before him, their voices a distant echo, asking questions he couldn't understand, that he couldn't find the energy to answer. He didn't raise his head. Didn't look up. Why should he, they'd just go away again.
He heard the banshee wail of emergency vehicles. More people. More questions. And then ... nothing.
~~*~~
He woke up in a hospital room, attached to machines and monitors. Dim, no lights in the room except for the red glow of LEDs. A bright bar of light from the hallway outside the open door overwhelmed the dim glow that escaped the edges of the blinded window. There was no one in the other bed, it was empty in the way that said he was the sole occupant.
His bladder had waken him. He started to roll over, and froze as every inch of his body warned him what a bad idea that was.
He ached. All over, some places more intensely than others, but it felt like he was one massive bruise. More specifically, though, his head throbbed so bad it would almost be a kindness to cut it off. His right arm and the ribs on his right side gave sharp pings that seemed somehow muted, as though they hurt more than he felt, like they were muffled in cotton, wrapped in wool.
For a few minutes, he couldn't remember why he hurt so bad, but then he remembered. The deer in the road, the car going over the edge, the hike up the mountain, the crazy hunter with his dogs. The girl.
At that point his thoughts stuttered to a stop.
The girl. The girl on the horse. The cars on the highway. Between the two there was nothing.
He lay there, running through the sequence of events in his mind, trying to pierce the veil. The accident, the hike, the party ... that was right, Buck had crashed his neighbour's New Years' party. Getting lost in the storm, the dogs, the weird costumed huntsman and then the girl flying in to his rescue. Reaching up to take her hand, to mount the horse behind her and ... the cars. The highway. As if ... as if there wasn't anything between.
Had he been drugged? Roofied? Wouldn't put it past some of Big Buck's pals to try that on some sorority girl but ... why would they roofy him? Not to mention the question of how.
Could the girl have done it? If he remembered correctly, a large dose of rohyphanol could destroy memory, even retroactively. Perhaps she thought he was one of Big Buck's frat brothers and maybe she was getting some revenge.
Come to think of it, that whole crazy hunter in costume schtick, that could have been some sort of put-on. Maybe they'd been filming it. Well, if they tried to use it to embarass Big Bucks frat house, they'd be the ones in for a surprise; those jerks would think it a great joke.
He felt a pang in his heart as the theory solidified around the facts, enclosing them. She'd had an honest face, he'd thought, but maybe that was just because she's just rescued him from imminent death. Or so he'd thought. She couldn't be all that great a person if she was party to dumping him so close to a busy street.
At this point all he wanted to do let the world go away again. Close his eyes, go to sleep and maybe when he woke up the world would make sense again. But his body wouldn't let him. When nature calls...
Groaning, he forced himself upright, made his way to the in-room toilet, though the IV rack gave him momentary pause while he sorted out that, firstly, it was attached to him and, secondly, how to maneuver with it.
Afterwards, washing his hands, he caught sight of his appearance in the mirror over the sink.
Bandaged nose, two black eyes; it must be broken after all. Another bandage down the side of his face. His right arm wasn't so whatever he'd done there, it wasn't broken. He moved the hospital johnny, taking further stock of his injuries.
His chest was strapped. He was one solid bruise all down the right side of his body and then various discrete bruises everywhere else.
He thought of Big Buck, the last he'd seen him, crashing the party in that big, fancy house, as blithely as he'd crashed the SUV. Not a care in the world. Odds were he hooked up with one of those rich society debutantes and woke up in a soft bed, cuddling some sweet little armful of delight. Not a scratch on his entitled, priviledged ass.
Well, okay, be fair, Jace allowed, remember the blood streaming down Buck's face. One scratch at least.
With bitter thoughts, Jace opened the lavatory door to find that someone had switched on the overhead lights. A nurse appeared from around the corner in the room, smiling one of those fake, professional grins that are supposed to inspire confidence in the bearer.
"I'm glad to see you back with us, Mr. Walker." Without asking, she proceeded to assist him back to bed, tucking him in, to a steady stream of babble. Not that Jace objected to the help, his legs felt like noodles and he wasn't sure he could have managed unaided. She showed him how to operate the bed controls, the location of the television remote and the 'needs assistance' button, opened the window blinds onto a grey and miserable day and then left, promising to return shortly with food.
As her brisk footfalls died away, Jace considered the television. He didn't watch much as a usual thing; between classes, assignments and work, he didn't have much free time and what he did have he preferred to spend reading. He should have asked for a newspaper he realized, too late, but he didn't want one so badly that he needed to call her back. So television it would have to be.
He had just finished coming to this conclusion when he was interrupted by a rapping on the door frame and the sound of someone calling his name. Two men entered. Men in suits. Looking official. The elder stepped forward, removing a wallet from his jacket breast pocket and flipping it open.
"Mr. Walker, I am Detective Chief Inspector Nettles of Fort Drummond CID." Fort Drummond was the biggest city in Westbow County. Inspector Nettles indicated his companion. "This is Detective Sergeant Carson. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Oh yeah. Of course. It's about the accident, isn't it? Look, I'm sorry I didn't get in touch with you all last night ... not, night before last, now, isn't it? I tried, honest. But I didn't have a signal and Buck's mobile ... well, he's pretty hard on them anyway and ..."
Inspector Nettles interrupted. "Would this be Charles Buckminster the fourth? The Senator's son?"
"Yeah, that's him. He prefers to be called Buck. He says 'who wants to be a fourth generation copy?' Anyway, his phone got broken in the crash so I figured ... We figured the closest working phone would be up at the lodge. It seemed smarter to head up that way than to follow the car down to the bottom, you know."
The two men exchanged glances.
"Just to be sure, you are talking about the accident that occurred New Year's Eve on ..." The Inspector paused, snapped his fingers as though trying to recall something. His sergeant flipped back through the pages of a notebook.
"Candlepin access road, sir. An automatic call was logged in to Roadside Assistance at six forty-five on the thirty-first of December."
"Yes, thank you, sergeant. Mr. Walker?"
Jace had lost track of the question. His head was pounding; the whole front of his face felt like it was throbbing, and something was off about the way the two detectives were acting but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Mr. Walker?" Inspector Nettles prompted again.
"I'm sorry, what was the question?"
The sergeant took a step forward. Loud and angry, he said, "The question is ... where is Charles Buckminster the fourth? What did you do with him?"
Jace stared at him, non-plussed.
"Buck? Last time I saw him, he was dancing with a girl at this party that we ... that he crashed. See, Buck said he knew a short-cut, straight up the mountain to the lodge. The road cuts back and forth, because of the slope of the ascent, you know, and ..."
The sergeant started forward again, the inspector waved him back and apologized, urging Jace to go on.
"Yeah, well, I guess Buck didn't know the way as well as he thought he did because he screwed up. Instead of reaching the lodge, we ended up at some neighbour's place. A real mansion. And there was this party going on. Fancy dress, masks and everything. Buck, being Buck, just waltzed right in, picked up a girl and started dancing and nobody said boo to him."
"Did someone say 'boo' to you?" the inspector asked.
"I didn't give them the opportunity," Jace said, somewhat bitter. "I wouldn't have felt right going in where everyone was celebrating. Not the way I was then. We'd just been in an accident. I was covered with blood ..."
"Like you were when you were admitted?" the sergeant asked.
Jace scoffed. "Well, yeah. It's not like I had a chance to change or shower, you know."
"Who's blood is it, Mr. Walker?" the inspector asked gently.
"Mine, of course. From my nose. I must have banged it on something when the car rolled off the road. Man, it was gushing out for the longest time. Buck had me hold a snowball to it, supposed to get it to stop. I'm suprised I didn't get frostbit."
"So none of the blood on you is from Mr. Buckminster?"
That gave Jace pause and he had to think about it. It was hard to think through the pain.
He noticed a covered pitcher on the side table, a cup with a straw beside it and asked for water. After a few sips, he felt a little better. The water seemed to clear a space in his head.
"You don't seem to want to answer, Mr. Walker," the inspector observed.
"It's not that. I just ... I don't think so. I mean, yeah, he was bleeding, but I don't think any of it got on me. He got this gash on his head from the accident; gobbets of blood for a while there. I thought he was dead when I first saw. Other than that ... he seemed pretty okay. Once he finished puking that is." He screwed his face up in disgust. "All over me. I was coated with it."
They exchanged another look.
"You're saying the vomit on your clothing is from Charles Buckminster the fourth?"
"Yeah. Most of it. I got a bit sick, too, what with being shaken up like that and then him spewing all over the inside of the car. You would have, too."
"Then you maintain that Charles Buckminster the fourth was with you just before you were found on the side of Strawbow Highway?"
Once again Jace was taken aback. "Well, yeah. That's what we're talking about. What happened two nights ago. On New Year's Eve."
The sergeant looked angry, started to say something but the inspector waved him to silence.
"There was a very strong smell of alcohol on you when you were brought in, Mr. Walker. Had you been drinking?"
Cautious, Jace answered, "I'd had a beer or two. Not much." He shrugged. "Most of that was Buck." Loyally, he added, "He wasn't as wasted as some of the other guys, though. They got into the hard stuff in his dad's liquor cabinet. Buck mostly stuck to beer."
"Only beer?"
This wasn't a question he wanted to answer. He looked toward the window. There were some big birds out there, wheeling around in the sky. Seagulls, which was strange. He'd never seen them this far inland before.
"Mr. Walker?"
Jace shrugged. "As far as I know," he hedged. He knew for a fact that some of Big Buck's friends were laying down lines and he suspected that Buck might have indulged, but he hadn't actually seen anyone taking any kind of drugs. Except for alcohol and marijuana.
"You say you saw Mr. Buckminster go into a neighbour's house on the night of the thirty-first. Is that the last you saw of him?"
Jace shrugged, puzzled. "Yeah, but when would I have seen him again?"
"The vomit on your clothes was fresh," Sergeant Carson snapped.
Jace gave him a puzzled, wary look.
"Anyway, like I said, Buck went in to join the party, I went around back to the servant's entrance. To ask if I could use the phone. But ... There was a sudden squall, total white out and ... and I got lost. Next thing I knew, some guy sicced his dogs on me and was going to shoot me with an arrow."
"An arrow?" the sergeant scoffed. "You expect us to believe that?"
"It's the truth. If it weren't for the girl ..." Jace stopped, remembering his speculations about the girl.
"Tell us about the girl, Mr. Walker," the inspector prompted.
"Well, it's like I said, I got lost and I guess I trespassed or something. This guy was out bow hunting, wearing some sort of aborigine outfit, I guess. With a pack of dogs. They cornered me, he showed up to finish me off except the girl showed up. Yelled at him." Reluctantly, despite himself, he had to grin. "Told him off pretty good from the sound of it. He cleared off and she offered to give me a ride out of there." He stopped speaking.
After a moment, Inspector Nettles prompted, "And did she?"
Jace didn't want to answer. He didn't want to think about what happened next. "I don't know. Next thing I knew, I was on the side of the highway with the cars whizzing past inches from my head. I don't know how I got there. I don't know why ... why she just left me there. I ... I don't know."
"So you have no memory of anything from the night of December thirty-first until you were found at three fifteen yesterday morning?"
Something about the way he said that set alarm bells ringing in Jace's head. Some verbal pitfall prepared to trap him, but Jace really couldn't see what it was or where it led. He checked through his memory of events.
The accident had happened just before seven pm. He didn't know how long they'd been out afterwards, sitting in the car, but they'd both been the next thing to unconscious. Climbing back up to the access road had taken a while; half an hour? More? Maybe more. So, say around eight.
It hadn't taken all that long to get to the neighbour's house, maybe eight thirty. So, it had probably been after nine when the girl had 'helped' him unconscious. He'd lost about six hours then, give or take.
"Yeah, that's right." He shrugged. "I don't remember anything from the moment the girl touched my hand until I was on the highway yesterday morning, three o'clock in the morning on the first. It's as if ..." He made a face, shaking his head. "It's as if there wasn't any transition. I was one place, then I was the other. But that's not possible."
Sergeant Carson exploded. "This is bullshit. I'm sorry, sir, but it's bullshit pure and simple. This punk knows where Buckminster is!" He turned to Jace, slamming his hand down on the mattress, causing the bed to shake and sending waves of pain through Jace's abused body.
"Where have you been the past six weeks? Where is Charles Buckminster the fourth? What have you done with him? Who's in this with you?"
Each question brought another fist slammed into the mattress, another wave of pain. Jace grabbed the control, held down the button calling for help, gritting his teeth against crying out.
His mind was racing. Six weeks? What was Buck into that they thought he was involved too? What was six weeks ago? Thanksgiving!
"I was with my family then," he gasped, forcing the words out past the agony. "Thanksgiving. You can call them, they'll tell you. I wasn't anywhere near Buck then. I don't know what he was up to."
The inspector forced the sergeant back just as a nurse came into the room, carrying a dinner tray and apologizing that she'd been so long. She stopped short at the sight before her; the two men, standing threateningly over her patient; Jace, crying, his face drawn with pain. Putting the tray down on the table, she demanded to know what was going on, interrupted the attempt on the part of the inspector to respond to ask Jace how much pain he was in, on a scale of one to ten, with one as the least and ten as the most. He chose ten and she promised to bring him something, walking past the two detectives with a scowl full of warning.
It wasn't until she was coming back in with the promised painkillers that he finally pinned down what was odd about the questions. They weren't asking about the accident at all, they were acting like he was a suspect. Like something bad had happened to Buck.
The nurse handed him the little cup containing the pills and the taller one of water, Jace held them both, not taking either, studying the detectives.
"What's going on here? What has Buck been up to? Where is he?" They stood stony-faced, watching, waiting, silent. Jace shook his head. "I'm not answering any more questions until you explain what you're doing here?"
"You can either answer our questions here, Mr. Walker, or back at the station. Your choice," the inspector said.
"I haven't done anything wrong."
Inspector Nettles sighed sadly. "Read him his rights, sergeant."
The nurse stepped up, interrupting and protesting. She couldn't exactly stop Sergeant Carson from reading Jace his rights, but she did call in the big guns of a hospital administrator to prevent them from hauling him away to jail.
They compromised, installing a uniformed officer outside his room to keep him from escaping. The sergeant would have cuffed him to the bed as well, but the inspector told him not to be a fool, Jace wasn't going anyplace.
One the officer was there, they left, promising to return. Jace asked the nurse to bring him a newspaper and finally settled down to eat his dinner ... lunch ... whatever. The smell was distracting, making him ravenous, and he realized that he hadn't eaten since lunch on the thirty-first, which led him to realize that he didn't know what time it was either. So he turned on the television, flipping channels until he found the news channel.
He removed the cover from the tray, lifted a forkload of food, looked up at the screen ... and froze.
The date was included with the time in the news feed on the bottom.
February fifteenth.
He lowered the fork carefully, pushed the table aside. His appetite had fled. The nurse returned with the paper, he took it and looked.
Portsmith Daily Herald, February fifteenth.
The paper fell from nerveless hands.
Jace stared unseeing at the wall below the television mount, paying no attention to the talking heads onscreen.
Six weeks. He hadn't lost six hours, he'd lost six weeks. No wonder that Sergeant Carson had been so disbelieving. He wouldn't have believed it either.
Six weeks.
Where the hell had he been since the New Year?
And where the hell was Buck?
Prologue, part 5
Prologue, part 3
An Dannsa Sìth
Ro-ràdh : roinn a ceithir : Dùsgadh (Waking up)
Jace stumbled, fell forward, desperately twisting so he didn't land face first. He hit on his right side, arm up protecting his head and the pain was so bad he almost passed out.
A car zoomed past inches from his outstretched hand.
Yelping with surprise and fear, pushed himself up on hands and knees, flipped backward and crab-walked away from the edge, not stopping until he was well away from the gravel strewn verge.
There he sat. Only a few minutes. Just long enough to catch his breath. To let his racing heart slow down. Then he'd get up and ...
And what?
What came next? There was something ... something he was supposed to do. He was sure of it. But nothing came to mind.
People appeared before him, their voices a distant echo, asking questions he couldn't understand, that he couldn't find the energy to answer. He didn't raise his head. Didn't look up. Why should he, they'd just go away again.
He heard the banshee wail of emergency vehicles. More people. More questions. And then ... nothing.
~~*~~
He woke up in a hospital room, attached to machines and monitors. Dim, no lights in the room except for the red glow of LEDs. A bright bar of light from the hallway outside the open door overwhelmed the dim glow that escaped the edges of the blinded window. There was no one in the other bed, it was empty in the way that said he was the sole occupant.
His bladder had waken him. He started to roll over, and froze as every inch of his body warned him what a bad idea that was.
He ached. All over, some places more intensely than others, but it felt like he was one massive bruise. More specifically, though, his head throbbed so bad it would almost be a kindness to cut it off. His right arm and the ribs on his right side gave sharp pings that seemed somehow muted, as though they hurt more than he felt, like they were muffled in cotton, wrapped in wool.
For a few minutes, he couldn't remember why he hurt so bad, but then he remembered. The deer in the road, the car going over the edge, the hike up the mountain, the crazy hunter with his dogs. The girl.
At that point his thoughts stuttered to a stop.
The girl. The girl on the horse. The cars on the highway. Between the two there was nothing.
He lay there, running through the sequence of events in his mind, trying to pierce the veil. The accident, the hike, the party ... that was right, Buck had crashed his neighbour's New Years' party. Getting lost in the storm, the dogs, the weird costumed huntsman and then the girl flying in to his rescue. Reaching up to take her hand, to mount the horse behind her and ... the cars. The highway. As if ... as if there wasn't anything between.
Had he been drugged? Roofied? Wouldn't put it past some of Big Buck's pals to try that on some sorority girl but ... why would they roofy him? Not to mention the question of how.
Could the girl have done it? If he remembered correctly, a large dose of rohyphanol could destroy memory, even retroactively. Perhaps she thought he was one of Big Buck's frat brothers and maybe she was getting some revenge.
Come to think of it, that whole crazy hunter in costume schtick, that could have been some sort of put-on. Maybe they'd been filming it. Well, if they tried to use it to embarass Big Bucks frat house, they'd be the ones in for a surprise; those jerks would think it a great joke.
He felt a pang in his heart as the theory solidified around the facts, enclosing them. She'd had an honest face, he'd thought, but maybe that was just because she's just rescued him from imminent death. Or so he'd thought. She couldn't be all that great a person if she was party to dumping him so close to a busy street.
At this point all he wanted to do let the world go away again. Close his eyes, go to sleep and maybe when he woke up the world would make sense again. But his body wouldn't let him. When nature calls...
Groaning, he forced himself upright, made his way to the in-room toilet, though the IV rack gave him momentary pause while he sorted out that, firstly, it was attached to him and, secondly, how to maneuver with it.
Afterwards, washing his hands, he caught sight of his appearance in the mirror over the sink.
Bandaged nose, two black eyes; it must be broken after all. Another bandage down the side of his face. His right arm wasn't so whatever he'd done there, it wasn't broken. He moved the hospital johnny, taking further stock of his injuries.
His chest was strapped. He was one solid bruise all down the right side of his body and then various discrete bruises everywhere else.
He thought of Big Buck, the last he'd seen him, crashing the party in that big, fancy house, as blithely as he'd crashed the SUV. Not a care in the world. Odds were he hooked up with one of those rich society debutantes and woke up in a soft bed, cuddling some sweet little armful of delight. Not a scratch on his entitled, priviledged ass.
Well, okay, be fair, Jace allowed, remember the blood streaming down Buck's face. One scratch at least.
With bitter thoughts, Jace opened the lavatory door to find that someone had switched on the overhead lights. A nurse appeared from around the corner in the room, smiling one of those fake, professional grins that are supposed to inspire confidence in the bearer.
"I'm glad to see you back with us, Mr. Walker." Without asking, she proceeded to assist him back to bed, tucking him in, to a steady stream of babble. Not that Jace objected to the help, his legs felt like noodles and he wasn't sure he could have managed unaided. She showed him how to operate the bed controls, the location of the television remote and the 'needs assistance' button, opened the window blinds onto a grey and miserable day and then left, promising to return shortly with food.
As her brisk footfalls died away, Jace considered the television. He didn't watch much as a usual thing; between classes, assignments and work, he didn't have much free time and what he did have he preferred to spend reading. He should have asked for a newspaper he realized, too late, but he didn't want one so badly that he needed to call her back. So television it would have to be.
He had just finished coming to this conclusion when he was interrupted by a rapping on the door frame and the sound of someone calling his name. Two men entered. Men in suits. Looking official. The elder stepped forward, removing a wallet from his jacket breast pocket and flipping it open.
"Mr. Walker, I am Detective Chief Inspector Nettles of Fort Drummond CID." Fort Drummond was the biggest city in Westbow County. Inspector Nettles indicated his companion. "This is Detective Sergeant Carson. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
"Oh yeah. Of course. It's about the accident, isn't it? Look, I'm sorry I didn't get in touch with you all last night ... not, night before last, now, isn't it? I tried, honest. But I didn't have a signal and Buck's mobile ... well, he's pretty hard on them anyway and ..."
Inspector Nettles interrupted. "Would this be Charles Buckminster the fourth? The Senator's son?"
"Yeah, that's him. He prefers to be called Buck. He says 'who wants to be a fourth generation copy?' Anyway, his phone got broken in the crash so I figured ... We figured the closest working phone would be up at the lodge. It seemed smarter to head up that way than to follow the car down to the bottom, you know."
The two men exchanged glances.
"Just to be sure, you are talking about the accident that occurred New Year's Eve on ..." The Inspector paused, snapped his fingers as though trying to recall something. His sergeant flipped back through the pages of a notebook.
"Candlepin access road, sir. An automatic call was logged in to Roadside Assistance at six forty-five on the thirty-first of December."
"Yes, thank you, sergeant. Mr. Walker?"
Jace had lost track of the question. His head was pounding; the whole front of his face felt like it was throbbing, and something was off about the way the two detectives were acting but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Mr. Walker?" Inspector Nettles prompted again.
"I'm sorry, what was the question?"
The sergeant took a step forward. Loud and angry, he said, "The question is ... where is Charles Buckminster the fourth? What did you do with him?"
Jace stared at him, non-plussed.
"Buck? Last time I saw him, he was dancing with a girl at this party that we ... that he crashed. See, Buck said he knew a short-cut, straight up the mountain to the lodge. The road cuts back and forth, because of the slope of the ascent, you know, and ..."
The sergeant started forward again, the inspector waved him back and apologized, urging Jace to go on.
"Yeah, well, I guess Buck didn't know the way as well as he thought he did because he screwed up. Instead of reaching the lodge, we ended up at some neighbour's place. A real mansion. And there was this party going on. Fancy dress, masks and everything. Buck, being Buck, just waltzed right in, picked up a girl and started dancing and nobody said boo to him."
"Did someone say 'boo' to you?" the inspector asked.
"I didn't give them the opportunity," Jace said, somewhat bitter. "I wouldn't have felt right going in where everyone was celebrating. Not the way I was then. We'd just been in an accident. I was covered with blood ..."
"Like you were when you were admitted?" the sergeant asked.
Jace scoffed. "Well, yeah. It's not like I had a chance to change or shower, you know."
"Who's blood is it, Mr. Walker?" the inspector asked gently.
"Mine, of course. From my nose. I must have banged it on something when the car rolled off the road. Man, it was gushing out for the longest time. Buck had me hold a snowball to it, supposed to get it to stop. I'm suprised I didn't get frostbit."
"So none of the blood on you is from Mr. Buckminster?"
That gave Jace pause and he had to think about it. It was hard to think through the pain.
He noticed a covered pitcher on the side table, a cup with a straw beside it and asked for water. After a few sips, he felt a little better. The water seemed to clear a space in his head.
"You don't seem to want to answer, Mr. Walker," the inspector observed.
"It's not that. I just ... I don't think so. I mean, yeah, he was bleeding, but I don't think any of it got on me. He got this gash on his head from the accident; gobbets of blood for a while there. I thought he was dead when I first saw. Other than that ... he seemed pretty okay. Once he finished puking that is." He screwed his face up in disgust. "All over me. I was coated with it."
They exchanged another look.
"You're saying the vomit on your clothing is from Charles Buckminster the fourth?"
"Yeah. Most of it. I got a bit sick, too, what with being shaken up like that and then him spewing all over the inside of the car. You would have, too."
"Then you maintain that Charles Buckminster the fourth was with you just before you were found on the side of Strawbow Highway?"
Once again Jace was taken aback. "Well, yeah. That's what we're talking about. What happened two nights ago. On New Year's Eve."
The sergeant looked angry, started to say something but the inspector waved him to silence.
"There was a very strong smell of alcohol on you when you were brought in, Mr. Walker. Had you been drinking?"
Cautious, Jace answered, "I'd had a beer or two. Not much." He shrugged. "Most of that was Buck." Loyally, he added, "He wasn't as wasted as some of the other guys, though. They got into the hard stuff in his dad's liquor cabinet. Buck mostly stuck to beer."
"Only beer?"
This wasn't a question he wanted to answer. He looked toward the window. There were some big birds out there, wheeling around in the sky. Seagulls, which was strange. He'd never seen them this far inland before.
"Mr. Walker?"
Jace shrugged. "As far as I know," he hedged. He knew for a fact that some of Big Buck's friends were laying down lines and he suspected that Buck might have indulged, but he hadn't actually seen anyone taking any kind of drugs. Except for alcohol and marijuana.
"You say you saw Mr. Buckminster go into a neighbour's house on the night of the thirty-first. Is that the last you saw of him?"
Jace shrugged, puzzled. "Yeah, but when would I have seen him again?"
"The vomit on your clothes was fresh," Sergeant Carson snapped.
Jace gave him a puzzled, wary look.
"Anyway, like I said, Buck went in to join the party, I went around back to the servant's entrance. To ask if I could use the phone. But ... There was a sudden squall, total white out and ... and I got lost. Next thing I knew, some guy sicced his dogs on me and was going to shoot me with an arrow."
"An arrow?" the sergeant scoffed. "You expect us to believe that?"
"It's the truth. If it weren't for the girl ..." Jace stopped, remembering his speculations about the girl.
"Tell us about the girl, Mr. Walker," the inspector prompted.
"Well, it's like I said, I got lost and I guess I trespassed or something. This guy was out bow hunting, wearing some sort of aborigine outfit, I guess. With a pack of dogs. They cornered me, he showed up to finish me off except the girl showed up. Yelled at him." Reluctantly, despite himself, he had to grin. "Told him off pretty good from the sound of it. He cleared off and she offered to give me a ride out of there." He stopped speaking.
After a moment, Inspector Nettles prompted, "And did she?"
Jace didn't want to answer. He didn't want to think about what happened next. "I don't know. Next thing I knew, I was on the side of the highway with the cars whizzing past inches from my head. I don't know how I got there. I don't know why ... why she just left me there. I ... I don't know."
"So you have no memory of anything from the night of December thirty-first until you were found at three fifteen yesterday morning?"
Something about the way he said that set alarm bells ringing in Jace's head. Some verbal pitfall prepared to trap him, but Jace really couldn't see what it was or where it led. He checked through his memory of events.
The accident had happened just before seven pm. He didn't know how long they'd been out afterwards, sitting in the car, but they'd both been the next thing to unconscious. Climbing back up to the access road had taken a while; half an hour? More? Maybe more. So, say around eight.
It hadn't taken all that long to get to the neighbour's house, maybe eight thirty. So, it had probably been after nine when the girl had 'helped' him unconscious. He'd lost about six hours then, give or take.
"Yeah, that's right." He shrugged. "I don't remember anything from the moment the girl touched my hand until I was on the highway yesterday morning, three o'clock in the morning on the first. It's as if ..." He made a face, shaking his head. "It's as if there wasn't any transition. I was one place, then I was the other. But that's not possible."
Sergeant Carson exploded. "This is bullshit. I'm sorry, sir, but it's bullshit pure and simple. This punk knows where Buckminster is!" He turned to Jace, slamming his hand down on the mattress, causing the bed to shake and sending waves of pain through Jace's abused body.
"Where have you been the past six weeks? Where is Charles Buckminster the fourth? What have you done with him? Who's in this with you?"
Each question brought another fist slammed into the mattress, another wave of pain. Jace grabbed the control, held down the button calling for help, gritting his teeth against crying out.
His mind was racing. Six weeks? What was Buck into that they thought he was involved too? What was six weeks ago? Thanksgiving!
"I was with my family then," he gasped, forcing the words out past the agony. "Thanksgiving. You can call them, they'll tell you. I wasn't anywhere near Buck then. I don't know what he was up to."
The inspector forced the sergeant back just as a nurse came into the room, carrying a dinner tray and apologizing that she'd been so long. She stopped short at the sight before her; the two men, standing threateningly over her patient; Jace, crying, his face drawn with pain. Putting the tray down on the table, she demanded to know what was going on, interrupted the attempt on the part of the inspector to respond to ask Jace how much pain he was in, on a scale of one to ten, with one as the least and ten as the most. He chose ten and she promised to bring him something, walking past the two detectives with a scowl full of warning.
It wasn't until she was coming back in with the promised painkillers that he finally pinned down what was odd about the questions. They weren't asking about the accident at all, they were acting like he was a suspect. Like something bad had happened to Buck.
The nurse handed him the little cup containing the pills and the taller one of water, Jace held them both, not taking either, studying the detectives.
"What's going on here? What has Buck been up to? Where is he?" They stood stony-faced, watching, waiting, silent. Jace shook his head. "I'm not answering any more questions until you explain what you're doing here?"
"You can either answer our questions here, Mr. Walker, or back at the station. Your choice," the inspector said.
"I haven't done anything wrong."
Inspector Nettles sighed sadly. "Read him his rights, sergeant."
The nurse stepped up, interrupting and protesting. She couldn't exactly stop Sergeant Carson from reading Jace his rights, but she did call in the big guns of a hospital administrator to prevent them from hauling him away to jail.
They compromised, installing a uniformed officer outside his room to keep him from escaping. The sergeant would have cuffed him to the bed as well, but the inspector told him not to be a fool, Jace wasn't going anyplace.
One the officer was there, they left, promising to return. Jace asked the nurse to bring him a newspaper and finally settled down to eat his dinner ... lunch ... whatever. The smell was distracting, making him ravenous, and he realized that he hadn't eaten since lunch on the thirty-first, which led him to realize that he didn't know what time it was either. So he turned on the television, flipping channels until he found the news channel.
He removed the cover from the tray, lifted a forkload of food, looked up at the screen ... and froze.
The date was included with the time in the news feed on the bottom.
February fifteenth.
He lowered the fork carefully, pushed the table aside. His appetite had fled. The nurse returned with the paper, he took it and looked.
Portsmith Daily Herald, February fifteenth.
The paper fell from nerveless hands.
Jace stared unseeing at the wall below the television mount, paying no attention to the talking heads onscreen.
Six weeks. He hadn't lost six hours, he'd lost six weeks. No wonder that Sergeant Carson had been so disbelieving. He wouldn't have believed it either.
Six weeks.
Where the hell had he been since the New Year?
And where the hell was Buck?
Prologue, part 5