Surely Mom and I were caught in some sort of a dream from which we’d soon awaken. The downed tree, the toppled chimney, and now the partially hidden man under a pile of bricks seemed like last night’s nightmares merging with reality. I knelt beside my mother.
“Yes, we need to get him out and we’ll have to have some help to do that, but I really don’t think there’s anything a doctor could do for him.”
The upper half of the body lay hidden under the broken chimney. There was no way two women could lift that pile of bricks.
Surprisingly, the cell phone in my pocket worked and my numb fingers punched in 911. Even more surprisingly, after only two rings, a gravelly voice answered. Roy Peel, Mom’s neighbor who owned all kinds of farm equipment, was manning the phone.
“Roy, we’ve got an emergency here. Our chimney fell on somebody; I don’t know who, and we can’t move the bricks and stuff off him. We need an ambulance and probably we need Grant, too. Hurry, please.”
“Right. Help is on the way, Darcy, but it may take a while for the sheriff to get there. That quake might have downed some trees across the road.”
Mom looked up at me as I ended the phone conversation. “Darcy, go check in the house. I’ll stay here beside this poor soul. I couldn’t make it inside anyway; my legs are too shaky.”
My legs weren’t in the best working order either and my hand, as I patted her shoulder, shook like the oak leaves above us. “I’ll hurry, Mom.”
I dreaded what I might find inside. Another dead body? Had the house been damaged to the point that it would topple over on us? Astonishingly, except for minor damage, everything in the house seemed to be okay and no one else, alive or dead, was in sight. Some small glasses in the china cabinet lay in shards on the floor and the big Monet print of spring violets that had hung in the dining room for years lay face down on the table. The quake had tumbled cans of food onto the floor but these things were the only visible damages. Possible structural harm to the interior walls, plumbing, and heating, would have to wait for a more experienced eye than mine.
I ran back to the yard. Mom still sat beside the pile of bricks and mortar. My nerves were jumping so that I could not sit still so I began picking up and tossing broken bricks and glass out of the path leading to the front gate.
“I hear them coming,” Mom said. A distant wail grew closer. The ambulance stopped in front of the gate, its siren moaning into silence. Two EMTs hopped out and hurried toward my mother and the body. They looked at the debris covering the victim. Ted Everett, one of the attendants, turned toward me. “More help is on the way. There’s a lot of junk on this poor devil. You got any idea who he might be?”
Mom and I both shook our heads.
A county truck equipped with a winch and two burly men screeched to a halt behind the ambulance. The taller man shook his head. “Terrible thing. Here, Joe, back right up to the fence and lower that cable. We’ll have him uncovered in no time.”
“Not that it’ll do much good,” Joe muttered.
In less than three minutes, the cable was lowered, the huge hook latched onto the largest chunk of mortar, and the powerful winch motor whirred. Just as the slab was about to be raised, a white Ford Ranger pulled in behind the tow truck. Grant and Jim Clendon sprang out.
Grant took in the scene and turned to me. “Was this person a visitor? Somebody who was coming or going? Or did you even know he was anywhere around?
I shook my head. “We had no idea, Grant. We just found him after the quake.” I felt my stomach clench.
“Are you and Miss Flora okay?”
“Yes, Grant, but that man . . . .”
He gave my shoulder a brief pat and watched as the cable slowly lifted the chunk of our chimney off the person on the ground.
I turned my back on the scene and covered my face with my hands. Thankfully, Mom had moved to the corner of the yard and faced away from that prone figure. She had no desire to see what lay under the debris and neither did I.
Grant spoke gently. “I’m sorry to ask this, Darcy, and I am pretty sure about who he is, but I want you to look at this fellow and tell me whether you know him.”
He kept his arm around my shoulders as he led me up to the poor man on the ground. I took a deep breath and looked. His head had been turned to the right when the chimney fell and now his face was toward me. His hair was dark, his nose was long, and there was a scar just above his left eyebrow. There was no doubt I had seen this man before—in a courtroom in Dallas, during a trial in which I had provided photographic evidence. Was he the noise I had heard last night? Had he been in our yard all night or had he left, scared away by my gun and come back this morning? I would probably never know. It looked like he had been out for revenge. There was one thing I did know: the sad story that began in Dallas had ended here with Rusty Lang dead at my feet, a lethal-looking rifle beside him.