THAT EVENING ANDY STOOD off Laguna Canyon Road snapping pictures of the convertible and the huge tree. Convertible crushed like a stepped-on beer can. Tree trunk with just a gouge where the little car had accordioned into it, then sloughed off.
Based on early measurements and a witness who said that the Triumph driver never used his brakes, a CHP officer estimated the impact speed at almost one hundred miles an hour.
Andy had been less than five miles away, headed for the family home in Tustin, when the call came over the police band radio in his Corvair.
It wasn’t until he brandished his press pass and eased closer to the body that he recognized the driver. Two sheriff’s deputies were lowering him from the car to the stretcher. It looked to Andy as if every bone in Howard Langton’s once magnificent body had been mashed to dust. Langton was flimsy and doll-like, only his clothes seeming to hold him together. He wore the same varsity jacket he’d worn to the jail the day before and in Andy’s picture on the front page of the Journal that morning. Yellow leather arms drenched red now. An almost empty quart of vodka clinked into the dirt after him.
“I caused this,” said Andy.
“Out of the way, Becker.”
“I caused this.”
“Right. Out of the way.”
Andy watched them carry Langton past him and slide him into the coroner’s van. Wind howling in the eucalyptus. A big red branch ripped away and crashed through the flashing silver leaves. Police radios crackled with news of fresh disaster elsewhere and scores of cars idled in the traffic jam. All eyes bolted to the catastrophe.
Andy found a place down by the lagoon. Sat down on the trunk of a fallen willow and cried.