The Highway Kind(29)

Back at the bridge, he switched on the flashlight. The bright narrow beam leaped out, starkly lit the grass below. Torn-up earth down there. The bike had tumbled at least once before coming to rest in the trees.

He aimed the light toward it. It lay on its right side, the forks bent back and twisted, the front tire gone. The left saddlebag had been thrown open and its contents—clothes mostly—littered the grass. The air smelled of gasoline.

The moaning again. He picked his way carefully down the slope, shoes sinking in the damp earth. Playing the light along the edge of the canal, he followed the noise.

The biker lay on a wide flat stone below the bridge. He was on his left side, and there was blood on his face. Kirwan walked toward him, watching where he put his feet, not wanting to slip and fall.

The biker’s right boot was scraping uselessly against the stone. His left boot was missing, and the leg there was bent at a right angle away from his body. He’d dragged himself onto the rock, left a smear of dark blood and mud on the stone to mark his passage.

Kirwan shone the light in his face. The biker raised his right hand, let it fall. His left arm was trapped beneath him.

The gun. Watch for the gun.

He came closer. The biker was hyperventilating like a wounded animal, chest rising and falling. His left eye was swollen shut. He raised his arm again, weakly.

He doesn’t recognize me. Doesn’t know what happened.

Kirwan came closer, shone the light up and down the biker’s body, then around it. No gun.

“Help...help me.” The voice was a hoarse whisper. In the darkness, something splashed in the canal, swam away.

Kirwan squatted. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

The biker tried to shift onto his back, gasped.

“Remember me?” Kirwan said.

He turned the flashlight toward himself, holding it low so the biker could see his face. The good eye narrowed into a squint. He shook his head.

A big leather wallet was on the ground a few feet away, had come free from its chain. Kirwan tucked the flashlight in his armpit, picked up the wallet, unsnapped and opened it. In one pocket were three hundred-dollar bills and six twenties. In another was a laminated Georgia driver’s license with the biker’s picture. His name was Miles Hanson, and he was sixty-one years old.

Hanson coughed, and Kirwan looked back at him. The biker raised his head, spit a blot of blood onto the stone. “Keep it, man...it’s all yours. Just help me.” The voice still weak.

Kirwan closed the wallet, set it on a rock.

“Hurry up, man. I think I got something broken inside.”

“My cell phone’s in the car. I’ll call 911.”

He started up the slope, then stopped, looked back down. Hanson was watching him. He saw the glimmer of the diamond stud, remembered the grin, the middle finger, the chip in the windshield.

He went back down the slope, set the flashlight in the grass.

“What are you doing?” Hanson said.

Kirwan crouched, gripped the back of the man’s leather jacket with both hands. Hanson swatted at him with his good arm, but there was nothing behind it. Kirwan took a breath, straightened up so as not to pull a muscle, then jerked the jacket up, pushed, and tumbled Hanson face-first into the canal.

Kirwan couldn’t tell how deep the water was. Hanson splashed once, went under. He floundered there, got his head above the surface for a moment, gulped air, then went under again.

Kirwan found a stone the size of a basketball beside the canal, lifted it high, then dropped it into the water where he’d last seen Hanson’s head. Water spattered his pants.

He dusted off his hands, picked up the flashlight, and shone it down into the water. Hanson was a shadow just below the surface, not moving. A dark red cloud bloomed in the stagnant water, then dissipated.

He stood there for a while, watching to make sure there were no bubbles. Then he went back to where he’d dropped the wallet, took out the bills, and folded them into his shirt pocket. He kicked the wallet into the canal, then stepped out onto the flat rock, unzipped, and urinated into the water, a long stream that caught the light from the bridge, the pressure in his bladder finally easing.

When he was done, he zipped up, walked back to where the bike lay. It ticked as it cooled in the night air. Strewn on the grass were a pair of jeans, dark T-shirts, a sleeveless denim jacket. An insignia on the back read WHISKEY JOKERS DAYTONA BEACH above an embroidered patch of a diving eagle, claws out.

He reached into the open saddlebag, rooted deeper through more clothes. And there, at the bottom of the bag in a flat pancake holster, was the gun.

He drew it out, looked at it. At some point, maybe at the diner, Hanson must have holstered it in the saddlebag. But this gun was a revolver, and the one he’d seen had been an automatic. Or had it? Was this a second gun?

He went around to the other side of the bike, stepping over torn foliage. Using a pair of T-shirts to protect his hands, he took hold of the frame. It was still warm. He grunted, lifted, vines pulling at the ruined front end. The bike rose and then fell on its other side. The gasoline smell grew stronger.

He got the flashlight, opened the other saddlebag. More clothes, a full carton of cigarettes—Marlboro Reds—and a lidded cardboard box about half the size of a hardback book. No gun.

He opened the box, saw tissue paper. He peeled it back and in the middle was a cheap cloth doll—a cartoonish Mexican with a sombrero and poncho playing guitar, his floppy hands sewn to the cloth instrument.