Free Murder in the Wind by John D. MacDonald Page A

angled toward the concrete on the left side. He tried to turn away from it and felt the dizzy sense of the cab tipping, the whole rig tipping. As it went over he knew all at once how he would handle that talk with Gloria, how he could make it come out all right for both of them. There wasn’t time to put it into the words of the mind, but he knew how it could be.
    The heavy cab smashed into the thick railing, burst through it, and pieces of concrete as big as bushel baskets fell into the river. By then the cab and trailer lay on the right side, sliding with a raw noise of ripping metal, sliding, wedging the big trailer from side to side, across the bridge, while the cab, having punched its hole, was nipped off by the continuing motion of the trailer and fell into the shallow river, making one further quarter turn as it fell, landing with the four heavy wheels in the air, then settling, sighing, suckling against the mud of the bottom, air bubbles bursting against the rain pocked surface. Only the front right tire was completely under water. The two rear tires were locked. The front left tire spun for a very short time, braked by the water that came to the hub cap.
     
    Dr. Dudley Stamm had never driven through such a heavy rain. He kept wondering if it would be wiser to pull over to the side of the road and wait it out. He would have done that had it been a thunder shower. But this rain seemed constant, interminable. He did not wish to spend untold hours along the side of the road, with the possibility of the soaked engine not starting again when the rain let up.
    “Ever see a rain like this, Myra?”
    “Never in my life, Dud. Never. Do you feel all right, dear?”
    “I feel fine. But if we can find anything along here, we better hole up.”
    “But how about the Sheridans?”
    “We can phone them. They’ll understand. If it’s raining as hard in St. Pete as it is here, they’ll damn well understand. Good Lord, it looks like the end of the world.”
    She studied the map. “There should be nice courts down by Crystal River and Homosassa Springs.”
    “How far?”
    “About thirty miles from here.”
    “An hour and a half at this rate.”
    “Are you getting too tired, dear?”
    “No. You keep asking me that and I keep telling you. If I get tired, I’ll let you know.”
    “You never do.”
    He did not know where the truck came from. He did not know it had been behind him. He saw a faint oncoming glint of lights in his rear view mirror and then it was upon him, roaring and steaming by, hurling solid water against his windshield. Dr. Stamm instinctively tromped on his brakes. He heard Myra give a little cry of alarm. “Maniac!” Dr. Stamm said fiercely. The wiper cleared the water and he saw it all, not clearly because it was obscured by the rain, a rain that would have made it difficult to see across the street clearly. The truck swung in. The trailer swung and slammed the bridge abutment on the right with a noise muted by the rain roar. The truck swerved and the cab burst through the bridge rail on the left side as the whole thing was tipping over. The cab fell from view and the trailer slid on, slid on its side, wheels toward them and came to a jarring stop as it wedged itself across the road from concrete rail to concrete rail, an immense obstacle. The top wheels, and there seemed to be many of them, kept spinning, hurling the rain from them, encircled by spray.
    Dr. Stamm came to a stop just short of the bridge. He opened the door and hurried across the road, hearing but paying no attention to Myra’s despairing cry behind him. He slithered down the muddy grassy bank and moved cautiously into the river. The water came up to his knees and then to mid-thigh. He paused and moved his wallet to his breast pocket. The next step brought him up to his waist. He looked at the upside down cab and mentally estimated the height of it and saw that it was in water that would be over his head. He was steeling himself to