touched it. I couldn't really shake it. My head ached and I was thirsty.
'Look,' I said. 'I don't really mind talking to you, and I'll answer all of your questions, but I'd like to see a doctor.' I swallowed. He looked at me, concerned, and I blurted out, 'I need to know if I'm ever going to walk again.'
'If what that fellow Arroway says is the truth,' Mercer said, 'You'll be able to get around in four to six weeks. You didn't break it again, Dennis. You severely strained it; that was what he said. It swelled up like a sausage. He also said you were lucky to get off so cheap.'
'What about Arnie?' I asked. 'Arnie Cunningham? Do you know - '
His eyes flickered.
'What is it?' I asked. 'What is it about Arnie?'
'Dennis,' he said, and then hesitated. 'I don't know if this is the time.'
'Please. Is Arnie . . . is he dead?'
Mercer sighed. 'Yes, he's dead. He and his mother had an accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, in the snow. If it was an accident.'
I tried to talk and couldn't. I motioned for the pitcher of water on the bedtable, thinking how dismal it was to be in a hospital room and know exactly where everything was. Mercer poured me a glass and put the straw with the elbow-bend in it. I drank, and it got a little bit better. My throat, that is. Nothing else seemed better at all.
'What do you mean, if it was an accident?'
Mercer said, 'It was Friday evening, and the snow just wasn't that heavy. The turnpike classification was two bare and wet, reduced visibility, use appropriate caution. We guess, from the force of impact, that they weren't doing much more than forty-five. The car veered across the median and struck a semi. It was Mrs Cunningham's Volvo wagon. It exploded.'
I closed my eyes. 'Regina?'
'Also DOA. For whatever it's worth, they probably didn't - '
' - suffer,' I finished. 'Bullshit. They suffered plenty.' I felt tears and choked them back. Mercer said nothing. 'All three of them,' I muttered. 'Oh Jesus Christ, all three.'
'The driver of the truck broke his arm. That was the worst of it for him. He said that there were three people in the car, Dennis.'
'Three!'
'Yes. And he said they appeared to be struggling.' Mercer looked at me frankly. 'We're going on the theory that they picked up a bad-news hitchhiker who escaped after the accident and before the troopers arrived.'
But that was ridiculous, if you knew Regina Cunningham, I thought. She would no more pick up a hitchhiker than she would wear slacks to a faculty tea. The things you did and those you never did were firmly set in Regina Cunningham's mind. As if in cement, you could say.
It had been LeBay. He couldn't be both places at once, that was the thing. And at the end, when he saw how things were going in Darnell's Garage, he had abandoned Christine and had tried to go back to Arnie. What had happened then was anyone's guess. But I thought then - and do now - that Arnie fought him . . . and earned at least a draw.
'Dead,' I said, and now the tears did come. I was too weak and low to stop them. I hadn't been able to keep him from getting killed, after all. Not the last time, not when it really mattered. Others, maybe, but not Arnie.
'Tell me what happened,' Mercer said. He put his book on the bedtable and leaned forward. 'Tell me everything you know, Dennis, from first to last.'
'What has Leigh said?' I asked. 'And how is she?'
'She spent Friday night here under observation, Mercer told me. 'She had a concussion and a scalp laceration that took a dozen stitches to close. No marks on her face. Lucky. She's a very pretty girl.'
'She's more than that,' I said. 'She's beautiful.'
'She won't say anything,' Mercer said, and a reluctant grin - of admiration, I think - slanted his face to the left. 'Not to me, not to her father. He is, shall we say, in a state of high pissoff about the whole thing. She says it's your business what to tell and when to tell.' He looked at me thoughtfully. 'Because, she says, you're the one who ended it.'
I didn't do such a great job,' I muttered. I was still trying to cope with the idea that Arnie could possibly be dead. It was impossible, wasn't it? We had