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More rain hitting the windshield. Again he sees flashing green and steps on the gas to get past the intersection. And again, a thin female figure in white materializes from the predawn haze.
As in a hundred nights before, he hears the squeal of brakes, gasps from impotence to change anything, turns the steering wheel to the right, stalls from the sound of impact and … wakes up.
Cyril ran his hand over his face. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
“God, when will this end?” Five years have already passed!
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He remembered everything down to the
smallest detail: how his friends offered to take a
taxi after the party, how he dismissed the advice and got behind the wheel, accelerated the car to a decent speed, how he tried to slip through a flashing yellow, spitting on rain and poor visibility. He remembered the squeal of brakes, the puny figure in white frozen in the road. Turned the steering wheel too late. Prayed not to get caught. Hooked. The hysterical, horrified scream of a woman rang in her ears as the car began skidding. Then a side kick into a tree. The airbag rapaciously slammed into the body, and the spray of the broken side glass burst into the cabin. He remembered how the point of a broken branch would rip open the skin. He remembered the fear and the pain, the salty taste of blood in his mouth… and the darkness that had come to his rescue on that damned
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April morning.
Cyril suffered in the accident not too much, escaped with bruises and scratches. Most of the scratches, unfortunately, fell on the face. Luckily the eye survived. Father, Alexander
Demyanovich Trubachev, made sure that his son stayed in the hospital for some time. Picked
the right people. As a result, the mention of
the amount of alcohol contained in the blood
disappeared from Kirill’s medical record, and data on the ratio of the length of the braking distance and the speed of the car evaporated from the accident reports.
up
Considerable funds migrated from the accounts of Trubachev Sr. to the fund for helping the hospital and law enforcement officers. As a result, it turned out that the absolutely sober
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Kirill Trubachev was driving home calmly, and mitigating circumstances in the form of rain and darkness did not allow him to see Marina Rykova rushing through a red light. The woman did not look not only at the color of the traffic light, but also at the roadway. Therefore, she and only she – is the culprit of the accident, the broken car, Cyril’s injuries and … her own death.
Everything would be fine if it were not for the witness – the husband of the downed woman. Dear police major, although retired for personal reasons, Artyom Vitalyevich Rykov. Rykov furiously claimed that he saw how fast Kirill’s Mercedes was speeding. He knocked
on the thresholds of the local police station, demanded the immediate release of his wife’s body, called for justice.
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Maybe Rykov would have been able to achieve something, but a couple of days later, during the investigation, a very interesting detail was revealed. The autopsy results are in. It turned out that the impact on the car did not lead to death, but only accelerated it. The woman was severely beaten. The face remained intact, but there were traces of wounds on the arms and shoulders. The abdomen and lower back were covered with bruises of varying degrees of healing. It turned out that at the time of the accident, the woman was already suffering from massive internal bleeding due to severe injuries to the right kidney and spleen. It is not clear how she even managed to run to the road. The woman did not just rush to the red light – she tried to escape from the tormentor.
Major Rykov was accused of causing grievous
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bodily harm to his wife. And the investigation went in a completely different direction. Cyril was no longer interested.
A meticulous investigator interviewed neighbors and acquaintances of the victim. All as one insisted that she was a quiet woman, subordinate to her husband in everything, that they did not hear any noise from the apartment of the Rykovs. They said that Artyom Rykov is a respectable, polite, albeit extremely uncommunicative person. No one really could tell anything about his wife. The investigator picked up the documents from the local polyclinic. It turned out that Marina Rykova was an extremely clumsy person. In the previous year alone, she broke her right arm twice, her shoulder was adjusted, and she was treated for a concussion. But all the entries were only for
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the previous year. She didn’t go to the doctors anymore. However, the available information was more than enough to understand what was happening.
When searching the Rykovs‘ apartment, the investigator drew attention to the well–made soundproofing. However, nothing else was found. The apartment was sparkling clean and unbearably smelled of bleach. Not surprisingly, Artyom Rykov had enough time to prepare for the police visit.
The trial of the major lasted almost a year. All this time, he did not stop spitting bile in the direction of the Trubachev family. He accused Cyril of killing his beloved wife. Tried to give interviews to newspapers. To no avail. Alexander Trubachev easily tracked all Rykov’s
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contacts with the press, as a result of which several brisk journalists became, unlike their colleagues, richer.
After a grueling trial, Rykov was given eight years in prison without the right to parole.
Kirill thought for a long time about how everything would have turned out if he had been sober then and noticed a running woman. Perhaps he would have stopped and asked what happened. Called an ambulance. Maybe it could be saved. However… no, I wouldn’t. Let her pass and go home. Either way, she would have died anyway. Cyril did not feel guilty for putting an end to the fate of Marina Rykova. But he was insanely angry that Artyom Rykov considered Kirill the killer, but he himself mocked his wife with impunity for years. Over time, Cyril’s anger
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subsided. And only periodic nightmares and strange messages that he received on each anniversary of the accident reminded of the
