By M.D. Smith
Betty lay awake next to her husband, George, because their only child, Emily, should have been home no later than 1:30 a.m. from her New Year’s Eve babysitting job. It was almost 2:30.
With her exceptionally keen hearing, she heard the ‘tick, tick’ of the second hand on their bedside battery clock. The fireworks had died down hours ago, but now she heard the mournful bark of a hound dog and gradually a car engine growing louder in the cold, still night air. Her heart pumped harder.
That must be Emily. What could have kept her?
As hoped, the engine sound grew louder, then stopped. She expected to hear the door chime ding as Emily entered with her key, the door close, and then the computer alarm voice would announce, “Armed to stay,” and her daughter would lock up.
More seconds ticked and with her sensitive hearing, Betty thought she heard two voices whispering. She stilled her breathing to listen and, with wide eyes, stared at the ceiling shadows cast by the tiny night light.
It might as well have been a fire alarm when the ‘ding-dong’ of the doorbell cut through the stillness like an explosion.
Oh, no.
“George!” she shouted as she snapped to a sitting position and shook her sleeping husband. “Get up. Someone’s at the door, and Emily’s overdue.”
He grumbled for a second, then looked at her. “What did you say?”
“Hurry, the doorbell just rang, and Emily’s got a key. Something’s wrong.”
The pair grabbed their robes on either side of the queen-size bed and headed downstairs, flicking on lights as they went, Betty in the lead. They saw parts of two figures under the porch light through the sheer curtains on the glass panels on either side of the door. She unlocked and eased it open with her husband behind, his hand on her shoulder. There stood a male and female police officer with somber looks on their faces.
The calm air still smelled like sulfur from the earlier fireworks, and a cloud of mist came from the officer’s mouth as he spoke in the frigid air.
“Are you Mr. and Mrs. George Bartley, with a daughter named Emily Ann Bartley living here?”
Hearing this from a uniform caused Betty’s knees to weaken, and she put her arm around her husband for stability. George nodded at the officer. “Yes. Has something happened?”
“I’m afraid so. She’s been involved in a serious three-car accident on the 55 Freeway.” Their grim expressions indicated more.
George’s voice quivered. “How is she?”
“I’m afraid she didn’t make it, sir. She died instantly in the high-speed collision.”
“No—no, it can’t be,” Betty screamed at the top of her voice, putting her free hand over her mouth and nose. “Not my only baby girl.”
If someone had hit George on the side of his head with a brick, he wouldn’t have been more stunned or gasping without words. Betty sobbed and collapsed on the floor.
They learned that as Emily drove home from her babysitting late-night job, a new Ford 150 supercharged truck was going over a hundred miles an hour on the wrong side of the divided highway and hit another car head-on occupied by a middle-aged couple, and sent it airborne into Emily’s car just behind it, crushing the roof and the girl underneath it. The combined impact speed totaled at least 160 miles an hour.
Overcome with grief, Betty and George drove to the scene of the accident a mile from their house. The authorities would not let them approach the taped off area near their daughter’s car, but they witnessed the nearly demolished vehicles. Investigators scurried everywhere, taking pictures and recording details, until the rescue workers using the ‘jaws of life’ could pry Emily’s car roof enough to remove her mangled body. The woman passenger in the other car pronounced dead also, but her husband survived and taken by ambulance to the hospital in critical condition.
The next day, the Bartleys angrily discovered the pickup driver, seventeen-year-old Jimmy Johnston, with multiple DUIs, all dismissed, belonged to a wealthy owner of several automobile dealerships in the town. A bartender refused him alcohol, and he left the club at 1:10 a.m. Police found a shattered bottle of vodka in his truck—probably still drinking until the high-speed collision at 1:35 a.m. He had a gash on his forehead, found unconscious, and taken to the hospital.
Jimmy went home four days later, instead of jail. The DA said because of the pending severe charges, and they’d need to have a grand jury convene before they would arrest him and proceed. This nonsense angered Betty and George. They’d lost their only child to a drunk driver who killed two. That’s murder in this state, but he walked free.
Meanwhile, they attended their child’s closed-casket funeral, burial, and wake—no daughter’s future college graduation, wedding, or grandchildren—ever.
Two years passed with no arrest. Gossip circulated that the Johnstons’ money and lawyers from New York caused multiple delays, even after the grand jury decided to prosecute.
Betty couldn’t work, lost 45 pounds, lived primarily on tranquilizers and anti-depressants, rarely left the house, and because of her misery with only one topic she’d talk about, her friends stopped calling.
George, trying to handle his own quiet grief, moved into the spare bedroom, lost his job, and his savings running low. His couple of beers on weekends before the accident became multiple bottles of Jack Daniels weekly. The couple frequently argued about minor things until they quit talking and merely existed.
Another year and George’s failing liver caused him to slow his drinking, and over a sack dinner one night, he whispered under his breath to himself. “Damn, our home’s in foreclosure, our daughter’s dead, our lives are basically over, and the murderer is free and enjoying his. It’s not right. I wish someone would help me kill that son-of-a-bitch?”
Betty, across the table staring at her hamburger, looked up. “I heard that, and nothing could make me happier. I’m all in,” she said.
* * *
M.D. Smith lives in Huntsville, AL, and has written over 150 non-fiction short stories for Old Huntsville Magazine in the past eighteen years and over 300 short fiction stories in the past seven years. Nationally published in Good Old Days and Reminisce print magazines, Like Sunshine After Rain short story anthology, and digitally in Frontier Times, Flash Fiction Magazine, 101words.org, Bewilderingstories.com, and more. He’s published three romance novels and three flash fiction collections. His hobby is Ham Radio and talking to the world on voice and digital modes. Website: https://mdsmithiv.com/