reliable witnesses got there he was still under the wheel. He had four broken ribs to prove it. His skull had been crushed by some terrific blow, and the wound was a little to the rear and slightly to the right of the top of his head. So what did he hit it on? The dash? That was in his lap. Granted the top of the car was caved in until it was practically sitting on his haircut, but what he was hit with wasn’t flat—”
“Freaks happen all the time in bad wrecks. Nobody’s ever explained just how you can get knocked out of a pair of shoes that are laced up tight, but it’s been done.”
He nodded. “That’s right. But there were too many freaks in this one. For one thing, he wasn’t drunk. At least, not nearly as drunk as everybody thought. So the only other alternative theory is that he deliberately tried to kill you. And if the people he really meant to kill were still out there at the lake—” He stopped and gave me a cold grin. “That’s where you saw her, of course. Anyway, if they were still out there, which way would they have to go to get back to town?”
“Right past where we crashed,” I said.
He spread his hands. “You see?”
“What makes you so sure he wasn’t drunk?”
“I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t think he was that drunk. Nobody ever established it. No laboratory tests were made. Look at it this way. He was a prominent citizen; he was dead; there was a smell of alcohol about his body, and a pint bottle, about one-third full, in the glove compartment of the car—which didn’t break, incidentally, because the highway maps and papers in it cushioned the shock of the crash. But still the real reason he was assumed to be blotto, drunk was the fact that only a blotto drunk would have cut in like that. You see? They just reversed cause and effect, and didn’t even bother to look for any other explanation.”
“Why didn’t they make the lab tests?” I asked.
“To prove what? Liability for the accident? It was his, from start to finish. They told you that as soon as you came around. The skid marks and the positions of the cars proved that, and what you told them only confirmed it. And what’s the percentage in building a drunk-driving case against a dead man? You going to take him to court?”
“What about your outfit?”
“What difference did proof of drunkenness make to us? He was dead. We had to pay off on his life insurance, whether he was crocked or sober. By the time I got up there it would have been impossible, anyway. They'd already buried him. I was just making a routine investigation, until I began to see there could have been another reason for his driving you off the road. I backtracked down the, highway until I found the place he bought the bottle—”
“The same one? How do you know?”
He shrugged wearily. “Jesus. I don’t know. All that’s certain is that it was a pint, and that it was the same brand. Sure, he could have had three more in the meantime and thrown the bottles out. But in the insurance business you get in the habit of playing the percentages, and the percentages say that was the same bottle. He appeared to be sober when he bought it, and I doubt very much that two-thirds of it would have made him so drunk he couldn’t see something as big as a Buick convertible. Now, can we drop that for the moment?”
“Sure.” I said. “Go on.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied me thoughtfully. “I gather from the fact you’re here you might be interested in renegotiating your settlement with Mrs. Cannon?”
"Right," I said.
“It’ll be a little extra-legal, if you follow me.”
“So it’s extra-legal. It’s money. Did she collect the insurance?”
He nodded. “And she’s loaded, besides. Cannon left an estate that’ll add up to somewhere around three hundred thousand, after taxes. No other heirs.”
I leaned forward on the sofa. “All right. Go on.”
“Say a hundred grand. Split seventy-five,