Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

There were no headlights in either direction. I ran back to the convertible and squeezed in beside Edie again, drove the car onto the highway, and backed down the road several hundred yards. Switching on the headlights, I gunned the motor. The car rolled smooth. I hit thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour — and I was on the bridge. I swung the front door wide, whipped the steering wheel to the right and bailed out. The last thing I remembered was the crash as the convertible ripped through the bridge railing and plunged into the river.

I wasn’t sure how long I was out. When I came around, all I knew was that I was flat on my face on the concrete. I rolled over and sat up. My hands burned smartly. My knees were cut open and there was a gash on my head just below my hairline. Blood dribbled down into my left eye, blinding me.

I finally got to my feet and staggered over to the hole in the bridge railing. It was too dark to see anything down below, but the bubbling sound coming up to me was loud. I turned then and that’s when I saw the figure of the man walking across the bridge toward me.

“Hey, mister,” the figure said, “were you in—”

That was all I heard. I ran as fast as I could off of the bridge, went down through a ditch and over a fence into a field.

One hundred yards into the field I stopped running and turned toward town. It was slow going, but it was the only way. I couldn’t risk being seen, and I had to get to my apartment before daylight.

I walked at a steady pace, vaulting the fences as I came to them. The highway was to my left and I kept it in sight. I hadn’t covered too much ground when I saw the winking red light winging along the highway. I stopped and watched it until it was out of sight. If that was the highway patrol or an ambulance heading for the bridge, it meant somebody had already found the convertible.

The first red-gray streaks of dawn edged the horizon, when I hit the city limits. I followed the alleys to my apartment. I cleaned up. Much as I felt like it, I couldn’t chance going to bed. It was imperative I be on schedule all day. So I sat in a deep chair in the front room and chain-smoked cigarettes until the paper boy arrived.

It was all there, right on page one.

A girl, identified as Edie Jackson, 18, of New Orleans, had apparently driven her car off of the river bridge ten miles north of town. The county sheriff tentatively had identified her convertible as the car that had struck and killed a Crawford man on Sunday evening. The paint on the car matched the particles found on the victim’s clothing.

I read the rest of the story fast.

Miss Jackson, a freshman student at Crawford College, was found strapped in a safety belt when sheriff’s officers pulled the car from the river. She was dead.

The sheriff speculated that the girl may have become depressed after fleeing from the Sunday night accident scene and committed suicide.

However, an air of mystery surrounded the discovery of the car in the river.

Harold Stribling, an itinerant, was asleep under the river bridge when the car plunged off about eight forty-five last night. Stribling said he ran up to the highway to secure aid as soon as he realized what had happened.

On the highway, he claims to have seen a man who ran from the scene when he called to him. Stribling then went to a nearby farm house and called the sheriff’s office.

Stribling told authorities he would not be able to positively identify the man, but...

I couldn’t read any more.

I had a full schedule of classes that day. They were pure hell. I managed to get through the morning sessions; then shortly after one o’clock that afternoon a man walked into the gymnasium. I watched him with some apprehension as he talked to a student, and then the student pointed to me. The man came toward me.

“You’re Matt Lane?” he said.

“Yes,” I said huskily.

He showed me a badge. “You’ll have to come downtown with me, Mr. Lane.”

I’d never been inside a police station before...

Now the soft-talking cop named Malone was standing in front of me, smoking a cigarette.

“Let’s start all over again, Lane,” he said. “Did you know this Jackson girl?”

I got a grip on myself. “If you mean the girl,” I said, “who drove her car off of the river bridge last night, no, I didn’t know her.”

“How come you know she drove her car off the bridge?”

“I read about it in the paper this morning.”

“She was a freshman student at the college.”

“I teach physical education and coach. There are no girls in my classes.”

“You’re positive then that you didn’t know the Jackson girl?”

“Positive.”

He sucked in a deep breath and looked at one of the other cops. “Play it, Simpson.”

The cop pushed away from a wall and walked toward a record player. I leveled my eyes on him. What the hell was going on? The cop snapped a switch and the next voice I heard was Edie’s!

Then my own!

I couldn’t move. I tried to swallow. It was a frame!

I was being framed by someone who was dead!

The cop snapped the switch, cutting off the recorder.