Obstruction of Justice by Perri O'Shaughnessy Page B

poured him another from the stainless steel, praising the shaker’s convenience and apologizing for its aesthetic failures. "I’ve read your statements from the accident," he said finally, promising himself not to drink another lick. He had work to do.
    "I must have told the story a dozen times. Collier talked to me personally three times. I think he felt I was his last link to his wife. I felt so bad for him."
    "He’s not over it," Paul said.
    "Maybe he never will be," she said, slipping an olive into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. "Which would be very sad. Some people love only once. If you lose the one you love, you lose everything, your future as well as your present. You don’t recover."
    "Just bear with me. Try to remember what you can."
    She nodded. "Too bad I was the witness. I have no interest in cars. I can’t tell a Chevy from a Toyota. I don’t notice most people, either. All I knew was that there was only one shadow in there. I was about two hundred feet away, and I couldn’t pick up any details."
    "You were shopping at the Raley’s?"
    "Yes. I picked up a few things. I guess I came out just after she did. The parking lot is huge—well, you’ve probably seen it, it’s really for the whole shopping center. I spotted her heading for the far end of the lot, almost at the street. Nobody else was parked that far out."
    "But her car was parked there?"
    "I found out later it was her car parked under a tree in the last lane before the street. I saw it at the time, but it hardly registered. All I really noticed was her."
    "You told Collier you noticed her because of her dress."
    "Yes. The wind had come up a little and it was getting cooler, but she was wearing just a silk dress, a tangerine color, clingy, very full in the skirt, old-fashioned. A shirtwaist, I think it’s called. The color caught my eye, so I watched her. Color is my thing."
    "How close was she to her car when she was hit?"
    "Very close. She was carrying a grocery bag in her left arm. Maybe that made it hard for her to see the car coming at her."
    "When did you first see the car?"
    "I don’t know. All of a sudden, there was this car coming down the lane from the left." Kim pushed her chair back and rested her eyes on her cactus garden. "I heard a muffled thump. I saw it hit her at the same time. I saw her from the back, the car approaching from her left. She went up and over the hood. She hit the windshield. She never made a sound. The car had slowed down to a stop by then. She began to slide, and she slid off the car onto the ground just to the side of the car, while I stood rooted there like a tree. Then I heard the engine rev up. And the asshole took off straight ahead, curled out of the lot at the first exit to the right, and took off into the traffic past the movie theater. "
    "So you saw the whole thing."
    "Apparently I’m the only one who saw anything. Anyway, I ran after the car, yelling, but in my hurry, I twisted my ankle and I had to stop. Then I limped over to the girl to see if she was still alive. It was horrible. She was bleeding a lot. I suppose she was dying. Her dress was torn and spattered. I got down there and held her head. I had so much blood on me by the time the ambulance came they thought I was hit too."
    "Did she say anything?"
    "No, no. She didn’t really seem to be there, as though her soul had fled at the impact."
    Paul said, "Her death seems to have had a lasting effect on you."
    "Oh yes, it did. To see another human being so hurt and not be able to help is ... indelible. I don’t take the newspaper, Paul. I don’t watch TV. The suffering out there is too overwhelming. I try to stay in balance. I suppose you could call me an avoider. I stay home and paint my pictures."
    He was touched by her earnestness and her obvious emotional reaction to the story she told. As the shade drifted across the patio, and the martinis did their work, he felt his attraction to her growing. Her lack of makeup could have made her