Chapter 20
Caleb
M: Family dinner on Wednesday? It's been way too long, Dad.
This isn't the first I've heard about it. Ruby mentioned something about it on Saturday when she came home from having breakfast with Molly. I love having my kids around, especially now that they've both moved out and have lives that don't involve me all the time.
C: Yes, I'll be there. Maybe it'll be warm enough we can grill.
M: Dad. We grill regardless of how cold it is. I think we've grilled in the snow.
C: So true. Love you Moll.
M: Love you, too.
Today has been a slow Monday, which is scary, because slow days mean that anything can happen at any time. I'm riding along the backroads of Laurel Springs, and haven't seen anything worth my attention yet, but at the next pull off, I see a Laurel Springs Fish & Wildlife truck.
They're parked, so I park next to them, happily surprised when I see it's my son and Dakota.
"Hey," I greet them, after I roll down my window. "How's it going?"
They share a look, and I wonder what in the world they're hiding from me. I don't get a chance to ask, because two cars go screaming past us at a high rate of speed. "Holy shit!"
"Go on, Dad. We'll follow," Levi says as he flips his lights and sirens.
I do the same, and head out on the main road, letting dispatch know that both agencies are giving chase.
"Dispatch." My eyes stay locked on the two vehicles as I accelerate, watching them weave and push against each other on the road like they have no concept of what's around the next bend or who else might be on it.
"I'm in pursuit of two vehicles, currently traveling at approximately ninety miles per hour on Route 9 heading toward Laurel Springs city limits.
I have a Laurel Springs Fish and Wildlife unit in pursuit behind me. "
"Copy that, Caleb. Can you get us a description?"
"Two sedans. One dark blue, one silver. Both Florida plates.
" I'm close enough now to get the numbers and I read them off, keeping my voice even the way you learn to do when you've been in this long enough to know that panic doesn't make the car go faster or the situation go safer. "Run those for me."
There's a pause on the other end, and in the rearview I can see Levi and Dakota's lights flashing. They’re keeping pace, staying back a responsible distance, and I’m proud of the way my son is driving.
"Caleb, both vehicles are coming back as reported stolen out of Pensacola. Stolen approximately thirty-six hours ago."
Thirty-six hours puts them well north of the Florida line, and there are only a handful of reasons someone in a stolen car takes a route through small-town Alabama instead of the interstate.
"Dispatch, I've got a strong feeling we're looking at a narcotics situation.
These vehicles didn't come this route by accident. "
"Understood. You want us to notify the narcotics unit?"
"Yes, and get someone on standby at the city line.
" I watch the blue car cut hard around a slower-moving truck ahead of us, the silver one right behind it, and both of them running side by side now, which means they're taking up the full road and anything coming the other direction isn't going to have anywhere to go.
"They are currently blocking both lanes.
I need to know what's ahead of me on this road. "
I glance in the mirror again. Levi and Dakota are still there, and seeing my son's lights in the rearview sends a cold chill down my spine that I push away, because I don't have room for it right now.
He's trained for this the same as I am, and worrying about him in the middle of a pursuit will get both of us hurt.
I know that. Knowing it and feeling it are different things, and I've been balancing that difference since the day he graduated the academy.
"Dispatch, if these cars hit the city limits at this speed we've got a serious problem. There's a school zone two miles inside the city limits and I don't know what time dismissal is today. I know they were leaving early one day this week."
"Caleb, we’re on the phone with the school now, looking to hold dismissal if we need to."
"Good." My hands are steady on the wheel and I keep my foot down, because the moment I let distance build up between us and those cars I lose the ability to communicate their location accurately, and right now accuracy is the difference between us catching them and getting away. "How far out are Nick and Ryan?"
"Both Officers Kepler are approximately two miles ahead of your current position setting up spike strips. They're asking for confirmation on placement."
"Tell them the blue car is in front, the silver is drafting it.
The blue car is more aggressive, I'd put money on the driver being the one calling the shots.
" I watch them take a curve too fast and the silver car fishtails hard before correcting, and my stomach tightens.
"Tell Nick and Ryan to set up just past the Highway 29 intersection.
There's enough straight there for them to see the strips and for me to get clear. "
"Copy that."
I take a second to breathe, because this might be the last time I can before whatever this is, ends. Twenty years of law enforcement gives you a sense for these things that you can't teach in a classroom, a kind of low-level reading of situations that you just know may not end well.
I look in the mirror again.
Levi and Dakota are right there.
There's a look on my son's face that I can see even at this distance and this speed, focused in the way he gets when he's locked in, and Dakota's in the passenger seat with his radio in his hand.
I think about what Ruby said on Saturday when she came home from breakfast, about Molly, and how she had something to tell me, about the dinner on Wednesday.
About the look on her face when she said there were some things she wanted us all to talk about as a family.
I filed that away at the time without much thought, because Ruby has a way of warning me about things without causing me to panic, and I've learned over twenty years of marriage that she usually knows what she's doing. But there’s something about Dakota's face in my rearview right now, and I think I'm starting to understand why he and Levi shared that look when I pulled up.
I'll deal with that on Wednesday. Right now I've got two stolen cars between me and the city limits and a school dismissal window that makes my blood pressure do things it shouldn't.
"Dispatch, ETA to the Highway 29 intersection?"
"Approximately forty-five seconds at your current speed, Caleb."
"Tell Nick and Ryan to be ready." I can see the intersection ahead, the tree line breaking where the roads cross, and I can see the faint flash of emergency lights off to the right where they've positioned. "Tell them…"
I don't finish the sentence, because we hit the S-curve before the intersection and the blue car goes into it way too fast, and I watch it happen in fucking slow motion.
Hoping like hell I can do something to stop it before it happens.
The blue sedan loses the back end on entry, overcorrects, and instead of spinning out onto the shoulder it goes sideways across both lanes.
The silver car behind it has nowhere to go and clips the rear quarter panel, and both of them are suddenly in a roll of metal and smoke across the road.
I have maybe a second to make a decision.
If I hit the brakes, I stop fast, but Levi and Dakota are behind me and they are moving at the same speed I am and the reaction time required to avoid rear-ending me does not exist at ninety miles an hour on a two-lane road.
I don't hit the brakes.
I yank the wheel right and take the ditch.
The SUV drops off the road shoulder faster than I expect and the world tilts hard and there's the sound of the undercarriage hitting the grade and the airbags deploying and I have a single, clear thought in the fraction of a second before the oak tree at the bottom of the ditch comes up to meet me, which is that I hope to God Levi and Dakota got clear of those cars, and that Ruby knows how much I love her, and that I should have told Molly a long time ago that she could date whoever the hell she wanted because life is short and it goes fast and the people you love should know it while you're still around to say so.
Then there's a sound of crashing that’s so loud it hurts my ears.
And then there's nothing at all.
I don't know how long the nothing lasts.
It could be seconds. It could be longer.
The first thing that comes back to me is sound, which is the wrong order for things to come back in, and it arrives before anything else does — voices, the crackle of a radio, what might be my name being said somewhere above me.
The second thing is pain, which starts general and then gets specific very quickly, settling in my chest and my left arm and the side of my face where something connected at some point, and I have been in law enforcement long enough to do a quick inventory of whether pain means something serious or just means I had a bad day, and this one is sitting right on the line between those two things in a way I’m not positive about yet.
The third thing that comes back is Levi's voice, and it's close, and it's doing the thing it does when he's scared but is managing it, the controlled urgency that tells me he's keeping himself together because he has to.
"Dad. Hey. Stay with me."
I try to say I'm with you, but what comes out is something less coherent than that, and the effort of it tells me everything about the state of my ribs. I don’t like any of it.
"Don't try to talk," he says. "EMS is two minutes out. Just stay still."
I'm not going anywhere, I think, and I'm not sure if I say it out loud or not, because the darkness is pulling again at the edges of everything,, softer this time, less like a crash and more like sleep, and the last thing I'm aware of before it takes me again is the warmth of my son's hand on my arm and the distant sound of more sirens coming down the road, and I think, distantly, that on Wednesday I'm going to tell that boy I'm proud of him, and I'm going to shake Dakota Keller's hand, and I'm going to let my daughter be happy.
The darkness closes in, and I let it.