For Hire, Messenger of God

A slow smile spread across Robert Crosley’s face as he lowered his binoculars. The cherry-red Cadillac approached the off ramp much too fast, as usual, and swung onto the exit at twice the posted limit of 45 km/h. This was Exit 6 off Highway 103 and led to the small but affluent beach community of Hubbards, home of Cadillac owner and driver Matthew Lane. Caddy owners, especially rich ones, thought laws were for other people, lesser people. In reality there existed two sets of laws. Those of man, which money could help you circumvent and those of God, which play out for everybody in equal measure. Matthew Lane had the money to get around man’s rules and did so as often as he felt it necessary. Today’s lesson for Mr. Lane presented the very basic rigidity of God’s laws. Two tons of steel, rubber and leather traveling over 100 mph, or 160 km/h as they now called it, could not negotiate a ninety degree turn and remain upright. Lesson two would deal with skulls and windshields, rib cages and steering wheels. Mr. Lane felt no obligation to obey man’s law regarding seat belts, either. He was no child. He would make his own decisions regarding safety. He actively decided against strapping himself into his car seat like a helpless baby. How convenient for Crosley. Some days, Crosley mused, his job was just too easy. He leaned against a phone booth about a quarter mile from the interchange and waited. The early evening sun shone over his left shoulder and reflected off the windshield of the approaching car causing Crosley to squint into the Slimline field glasses. A slight, sea breeze blew in his face from the nearby Atlantic Ocean, just enough to keep the mosquitoes and black flies at bay. The ramp looped down to a blacktop, secondary road. The reduced speed requirement was to prepare you for the stop sign where the road and the ramp intersected. Large chunks of jagged granite left over from the explosions that carved this road out of the wilderness canyoned the roadway. A few skinny maple trees struggled to live amongst the boulders. Route 3 lay about 100 yards to the left of the exit. Lane’s grip tightened on the steering wheel as the car swayed, recovered and continued to speed around the partial clover leaf. The brake lights flashed a couple of times approaching the intersection and then the car leapt towards Highway 3 leaving a trail of black rubber from the smoking Michelins as all of its 460 horsepower was called into play. No metric-measured Cadillac for Mr. Lane, but instead one powered by a gas-guzzling 500 cubic-inch machine that even now inhaled its last few breaths of overpriced, overtaxed gasoline vapor as it roared towards its final destiny a mere 300 feet down the road. The loud thrum of the engine combined with the howling of the tires sent a flock of small gray and white birds into a sudden burst of flight. Further in the woods, a mother deer and her two fawns stopped their grazing on the newly sprouted ferns, raised their heads, looked in the direction of the intruding sound and then bounded deeper into the forest away from human distractions. As Crosley watched the drama unfold, he became aware of another car at the periphery of his vision. Its route, the opposite of the Cadillac, came from Route 3 towards Highway 103. The binoculars swung in a short arc centering the newcomer in its circle of vision. “Damn,” he said out loud. The outburst reflected no concern about the other car’s occupants. Their life or death meant nothing to him, but rather expressed his desire to see his carefully laid plans carried out unaltered. He realized other cars could be on the road at supper time on a Wednesday evening, even this far from the city. He just hoped that no one else would be involved. He wanted all the publicity to be concentrated on his intended victim. Granted, it would take someone pretty prominent to upstage the death of Matthew Lane from the lead of every newscast in the province and indeed in the global community as well. Crosley focused the glasses on the other car encroaching on his stage, a mid-sized, plain, almost utilitarian, black Ford carrying two people, a man and a woman sitting close together like teenage lovers. If fate selected this day to send this couple to their great reward, what did he care? Some people believed and believed with all their heart that everyone had a time to die and nothing could change that time. Crosley knew otherwise. He had chosen not only the time, but the place and the method for several people to meet their maker. Perhaps this made him a messenger from God in the eyes of these fatalists. He should have some business cards printed—Robert Crosley, Messenger of God. This thought caused him to give a brief, short laugh as events raced to a deadly conclusion before his eyes. To him, it all seemed to be unfolding in slow motion. The driver of the Ford noticed the oncoming Cadillac as soon as he swung onto the secondary approach. The Cadillac driver grasped the steering wheel with one hand, the other hand flapped around in the air in a wild, frantic motion like a pendulum gone amuck. The car veered from one side of the road to the other, as the steering hand performed the opposite action to the swinging arm, at the same time accelerating faster and faster as it continued down the road towards him. Two black snakes of burned rubber piled up like a stretched out curl on the road behind it. The Caddy driver’s eyes shone like two toonies and were just as big. They darted all over the inside of the car with a savage but fearful look. The Ford driver would later describe it in his report as pure panic. In the Ford, the driver’s eyes were just the opposite—steady and calm. He looked away from the sure death heading his way, picked a spot on the side of the road and at the last possible second maneuvered out of harm’s way by mere inches. His tires dropped over the shoulder into the loose gravel sending an arc of stones into the air as the car slewed and then climbed back onto the pavement. The car skidded to a halt. All this happened before the female passenger could warn: “Watch out for that car.” Her voice lowered at the end of the statement as she realized her companion had already handled the situation in the time it took her to call out the warning. “Crazy son of a bitch,” the driver of the Ford said. Now that the personal danger was past he could feel the cold sweat running down his face and back even though the temperature was still a sweltering 28 degrees Celsius. “Jesus, that was close,” he said. “Did you see that, Stell?” The question was rhetorical. Already he could hear the increased roar of the Caddy’s engine as the back wheels were thrust into the air, trying to pass the stopped front end of the car, the screeching of bending metal as said front end wrapped itself around a power pole and the shattering of glass as Lane’s head crushed against the solid surface of the windshield. Then, gravity took over and the back wheels slammed into the ground again, regained traction, dug in sending a spray of gravel flying into the air and pushing the monster Caddy into the pole so hard that the racing engine was suddenly sharing the passenger compartment with what was left of Mr. Matthew Lane, filling the space vacated by his departing soul and various body parts. The soul made its exit from the physical body as Lane’s skull crashed into the windshield shattering the frontal lobe. This sent razor sharp splintered pieces of bone into his brain like pins into a pin cushion and caused instant death. A millisecond later his ribs were crushed into the padded steering wheel of the big car. The padding failed in its intended purpose. The force was much too great. As the pieces of the skull pierced the brain, pieces of the ribs were letting the air out of his lungs and the blood out of his heart. But this had no effect.