GirlNextDoor (12 page)

The firemen all seemed to be hovering beside the
semitrailer, just in front of the back axle. At first Krulak thought they were
studying the damage on the SUV, which annoyed him—free the victims first, gawk
later. Then he moved closer and saw something shiny and blue.

There was another car involved. It was some kind of sports
car, two-door, metallic blue, and it was all the way under the trailer. The top
of the car had sheared off at the bottom of the windshield. The people in that
car were very likely dead. And gruesomely dead at that.

He broke into a sprint. He felt Nolan at his shoulder, and
it warmed the ice in his heart just a little.
If I’m about to see a
decapitated person—or several of them—I want him beside me.

The nearest fireman said, “Shit, man.”

As he stopped beside the trailer, John heard yelling. It
wasn’t the firemen. “What the hell?”

“Two, trapped,” Garcia said quickly. “We’re getting the
Jaws.”

John crouched and clambered under the truck. Up close, the
wreck looked even worse. The bottom of the trailer had scraped the paint off
the hood and crushed down about three inches of the passenger compartment.
Whoever was in there must be flat on the front seat, with almost no room to
move.

But at least he still had his head attached.

“Hey,” John called loudly. “Hey, we’re going to get you out.
Try to stay calm.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” a man answered. “We’re crammed
up in here like sardines. How calm do you want me to be?”

“What’s your name?” Nolan asked. He slipped behind the car
and approached the passenger side.

“What?”

“What’s your name?” Nolan repeated. “Who’s in there with
you?”

“Smith,” the man answered. “Doug Smith. Shelly’s with me.”

John tugged at the door, though he knew the firemen would
have tried that already. “Okay, Doug,” he said. “We’re getting the Jaws of
Life, and we’ll get you out of there. Try to stay still.”

“You think I got any fucking room to move around?” Smith
snapped back.

Krulak grinned to himself. He didn’t mind the abuse. It
meant that his patient was still alive, still conscious, still had a good
airway. “Say anything you want,” he murmured to himself, “just keep talking.”

“How about Shelly?” Nolan called. “Is she okay?”

“Shit, I don’t know. She was in the backseat. She’s all
pinned back there. I can’t even turn around to see her.”

“Shelly?” Nolan called. “Shelly, can you hear me?”

“She’s not going to fucking answer you,” Smith complained.
“Shelly. Hey, Shelly. Speak up, girl.”

There was no answer.

The fire crew came back with the Jaws. “Which side?” Waldron
asked.

“Doug,” John called, “which way is your head pointed?”

“What?”

“Is your head closer to me, or to the passenger side?”

“What the fuck difference does that make? Just get me out of
here.”

“My side,” Nolan said.

The fire crew moved around the car to the other side. John
backed out to the road and stood up straight. “I need the cart and a
backboard,” he said. A couple firemen went to get it.

“Hey,” the truck driver said. “Hey, um, are they okay?”

John turned and looked him up and down. No blood anywhere.
His color was a little ashen, sweat beaded on his forehead. “He’s swearing like
a sailor,” he said.

“That’s good?”

“It’s great,” John assured him. “You should really sit down
and let someone look you over.”

“Yeah, I will. In a minute. I was thinking, you want me to
drop the stand?”

“The what?”

The truck driver turned and gestured toward the front of the
trailer. “The landing legs. I can drop ’em and crank the whole thing up. It
won’t be much, but it’ll give you maybe a foot of clearance.”

“Might be a plan.” John stuck his head back under the truck.
“Hey, Chief? Chief!”

“What?”

“Driver says he can drop the legs, give us a little
clearance at the top of the car.”

Waldron came around the car and out from under the trailer.
He looked where Krulak pointed, shook his head. “What if it collapses?”

“I’ll leave the cab where it is,” the truck driver said. “It
comes down, you’re right back where you are now.”

The chief considered for a long moment. John knew what he
was thinking. The trailer could come down on a rescuer and take off an arm or a
hand. Or a head. But they needed that little bit of extra clearance. “All
right,” he finally said. “But nobody goes over the top of that car. Nobody.”

“Got it.”

He left to tell the rest of the crew what they were doing.
John crept back under the truck. “Doug. Doug, you still with me?”

“Man, you are just a fucking genius, aren’t you? Where the
hell would I go?”

John grinned. He loved this guy, sight unseen. “We’re going
to jack the truck up a little bit.”

“Thought you were getting the Jaws of Life. What, you afraid
they’ll fuck up the paint job?”

“We’ll still use them. This will just give us some room to
work. But listen to me, Doug. There won’t be enough room for you to climb over
the top, okay? I don’t want you to try. The trailer could come down and crush
you.”

There was no answer.

“Doug?” John asked firmly, “do you understand me?”

“Yeah, I got you.” The victim sounded resigned. “You’re just
a ray of fucking sunshine, aren’t you?”

“Just sit tight. We’ll get you out.”

“All right,” Waldron shouted. “Everybody out from under.”

“He doesn’t mean me, does he?” Doug asked wearily.

“I’ll be right back,” Krulak promised.

“Yeah, yeah.”

John retreated again to the safety of the road. He glanced
around. The police had blocked off the lanes on either side of the wreck with
squad cars, so traffic had to use the shoulder on the far left to get around.
They had set flares farther out. Traffic wasn’t heavy at this hour—rush hour
was over—but squeezing three lanes into one, and then everybody slowing way
down to have a look was backing it up fast. There would be fender-benders
before the wreck was cleared. Griffin and Hensley had the driver out of the
black SUV and on the cart. His face was bloody, but he was moving his arms and
legs. His airbags had probably saved his life.

Nolan was on the other side of the trailer with Waldron and
some of the others. One of the cops was walking with the truck driver up to the
front of the trailer. Still needed to check him out, Krulak noted. He sighed
and looked back toward the decapitated sports car. He was probably going to be
too busy in a minute.

The driver began to crank the long handle and the trailer
creaked in protest. If the frame was cracked in the crash, John realized, the
whole thing could buckle and collapse onto the car again. He didn’t think Doug
and Shelly would be lucky enough to survive twice. He held his breath as the
trailer began to move slowly. The metal continued to creak in protest, but
nothing broke.

Yet.

There was a pause. John looked toward the truck driver. He
had stepped away from the handle and was rubbing his left biceps. Probably
bruised from the shoulder belt, John thought. The cop with him stepped in to
turn the crank.

John bent and looked under the trailer. There was an inch of
space between the bottom of the trailer and the top of the car. Then two
inches, then three. “Hang in there, Doug,” he called.

“Fuck you!” Doug yelled back.

In the gap, John saw something moving in the backseat. It
looked like a blonde. “Shelly, stay where you are!” he warned. “We’ll have you
out in a minute, just stay put.”

“The dumb bitch never listens,” Doug shouted.

From the far side, John heard Nolan say, “Shelly, honey, you
have to keep your head down. Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there, but you
need to stay calm.”

There was eight inches of clearance, then ten, then twelve.

Then there was an inhuman yelp.

“Shelly,” Doug bellowed, “damn it, stay down!”

The yelp repeated, louder and longer, like a terrified
animal in pain…

“Damn,” John said under his breath. “Doug! Is Shelly a dog?”

“Fucking genius, of
course
she’s a dog!”

Shelly stuck her head between the trailer and the top of the
car. She was on the far side, Nolan’s side, and from behind she still looked
like a blonde woman. John moved under the trailer again, carefully staying
beneath the level of the car. Of course, if the trailer folded, it would drop
and crush the car and then crush him too. He tried not to think about that.
“Shelly, good girl, stay. Shelly, stay!”

Closer, he could see that she was some kind of long-haired
breed, large, with gold fur. Maybe a retriever. She continued to yelp and howl
as if she were being tortured. She had her head clear of the car, and got one
front paw out.

He heard Nolan again, much closer. “All right, Shelly, it’s
all right, girl. It’s all right.”

“Nolan, keep your head down.”

“I know.”

Shelly got her other paw out and tried to scramble over the
top of the door. She stopped howling for an instant then she got her whole
front end out. Then she stopped, hanging by her belly over the car’s frame, and
howled again with frightening urgency.

Across the wreckage, John saw Nolan move closer, heard his
voice murmuring to the dog.

“Doug, can you see what’s going on?”

“She’s stuck on something. I think she’d tangled in the
seatbelt.”

“Can you reach her?”

“Hell no, I can’t reach her.”

“I got her,” Nolan said.

John saw the dog lurch forward as his partner pulled on her.
Her howls became weaker. She was hanging by her abdomen, running out of air.
She moved about three inches closer to freedom, then got stuck again.

“Leave her,” John said. “We’ll get her when we get the door
open.”

“She won’t survive,” Nolan answered. “She’s getting crushed
by her own weight.”

“Nolan, don’t…”

It was too late. He’d known it would be. Nolan stood up—as
far as he could under the trailer—and snaked his arm over the top of the car.
The dog wriggled and yelped frantically.

“Nolan, get down! If this trailer falls you’re going to lose
an arm.”
Or your head,
John thought.
It will crush your head like a
grape.

“Almost got her.”

“Damn it!” John had a horrific vision of himself cradling
Nolan’s bloody body in his arms, dragging him from beneath this trailer and
knowing there was nothing he could do…it hurt so much he couldn’t breathe.
“Nolan!”

“Got her!”

Nolan pulled his arm back and ducked down below the level of
the car again. Shelly squirmed free and ran off, her tail so far between her
legs it was tucked against her belly. She didn’t seem to be hurt.

“Somebody grab that dog!” John yelled.

“Got her,” Waldron called. He added, “Damn it, Crane, get
out here so I can kick your ass.”

“Busy right now, Chief,” Nolan called back.

His voice sounded just a little shaky.

“Great, you saved my dog,” Doug called. “Now get me the fuck
out of here.”

“Oh shut up,” Krulak snapped. “We’re working on it.” He
crept around to the driver’s door and yanked on it. It didn’t budge.
Yeah,
we saved your dog, you ungrateful bastard. My partner could have lost his arm,
could have died here, and you don’t even give a fuck.
He tugged on the door
again.
Asshole. I don’t care that you’re stuck and scared. You’re still an
ungrateful asshole.
He yanked on the door a third time, with all the force
of his anger behind him.

The door creaked open six inches. He scooted closer and
looked at Doug’s feet and ankles. The man was, as expected, flat on the seat,
with his head toward the passenger door. John reached through and touched his
leg. “Doug? I’m right here.”

“Fuck, man. Don’t leave me, okay?”

For the first time he sounded scared. John’s anger vanished.
He squeezed Doug’s ankle. “I’m right here,” he repeated. “I’m not going
anywhere.”

He left his hand where it was, turned and yelled over his
shoulder for the Jaws.

* * * * *

It took much longer than John expected to get Doug out of
his car. The driver’s side door opened the rest of the way with ease. Doug’s
arm, however, had slipped between the seat and the seat back and was firmly
pinned there. They couldn’t get enough traction or space to free him. Finally
they got two crow bars and managed to clear just enough space to pull his arm
out.

The arm was scraped raw on both sides, and Doug’s forearm
was broken. When they finally got him out, he complained that his right
shoulder, knee and ankle hurt.

All things considered, John thought, Doug was lucky as hell.

One of the police officers got a bungee cord out of his
cruiser and walked Shelly along the shoulder until she calmed down. She didn’t
seem to be hurt at all.

The second squad had transported the driver of the black
SUV. Hensley didn’t think he had any serious injuries.

When Griffin finally got the semi driver to sit down, he
didn’t have any obvious injuries, but his blood pressure was through the roof.
They sent him in to the ER in an ambulance.

They got Doug on a backboard, in a neck brace, and got him
stabilized. He stopped swearing long enough to ask about his dog. After that he
cursed a blue streak. John didn’t mind a bit. He and Nolan rolled the cart to
the back of the squad and loaded him. Emma Hensley climbed in to ride with him.
Griffin went to gather up the rest of their gear.

The cops called in tow trucks to start clearing the wreck.
The firemen stood by in case of fire, but they were relaxed, calm.

The traffic, one of the cops reported, was backed up for ten
miles. Even with the injured removed, the lookey-loos didn’t speed up any.

John rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms over his head.
It had been a long, hard day. Crawling around under the trailer had just been
the icing on the cake in terms of exhausting his body. But they’d done good
work. Everybody got out alive.