How many fictional murder victims and mystery novels does it take to change a tire?

C.E. Grundler

There's a very strange story behind the very strange picture shown above, taken at 2 A.M. on the side of the New York Thruway, miles from anywhere. After all, it's not every day you get the chance to bump off the same person both fictionally and in real life, in nearly the same way, no less. And it's not every day you find a new and unexpected use for your books, one you never, in your wildest, most twisted fiction-writing dreams would have ever imagined. But all these things and more happened the other night, for real.

I suppose I should back up to last summer, when one of my husband's co-workers, who I'd never met firsthand, read and apparently enjoyed Last Exit. My husband reported back to me, "Danny asked if you could kill him off in your next book." I was amused; Danny wanted me use his full name for one of the victims. I only needed to know whether he wanted to die quick and sudden early on, or play a more key role, one where he'd ultimately wind up slowly tortured and then die a messy death. He opted for the torture and messy death, and that's precisely what he got… on paper at least.

Well, the other night my husband's office had their annual holiday party. I hadn't gone; I was far too involved with polishing up No Wake Zone to send off to my editor, and around 10 at night I got the call that my husband planned to give two of his less sober friends a lift home. He'd been up since 4 A.M., and his friends lived up in the sticks far north of us, which equaled another two hours round trip. I worried he might be too tired. I suggested, being that they'd pass close by our house, they stop off and I'd drive the rest of the way. I got an hour's sleep before they arrived and we all climbed into my little diesel Jetta.

I love driving, and my favorite time to be at the wheel is in those early A.M. hours, when the road is all but empty and it's just me, the headlights, the hum of the tires on the asphalt – and someone I've 'killed' in the back seat. Much to my amusement, Danny was one of the fellows needing a ride, and I assured him he'd met a highly unpleasant end beneath a heavy load – the key word here would be 'squish.' So we're cruising along at a healthy clip, all laughing away – and the rear tire blows out. I ease off the throttle and downshift my way to the shoulder. A daylight inspection would later a tiny shard of metal had punctured the tire, but at that moment we're on the side of the Thruway, flashers blinking, as my husband and Danny, still laughing away, set up the jack. "Relax," they assured me. "We've got this." The car's rising smoothly, nearly there, we have a full size spare. We'll be rolling again soon enough. And they were – rolling on the ground with laughter. Apparently, something about this situation – or their lack of sobriety – was highly amusing.

This is where it gets strange. I don't know whether it was the angle of the shoulder or they had put the jack on a bit of loose gravel, or whether, quite simply, you should never let somewhat intoxicated men operate anything mechanical, but one minute the car was lifted nearly all the way and the next it was back down on the rim, with the jack wedged securely at an odd angle between the frame and the ground. No one came to any harm; they were clear of the car and had been laughing so hard they didn't even realize what happened. At that point I decided they needed closer supervision – while I'd crushed Danny to death in my writing, I wanted to avoid doing it in reality. But we had another problem; retrieving the jack. And apparently they build Volkswagens heavier than they used to, that or we were all getting old, because I distinctly remember me and some friends picking up my mom's Rabbit and relocating it as a prank when I was younger. One inch was all we needed, but the car remained firmly on the ground. My husband suggested if we could drive the flat tire up on some sort of ramp we could free the jack; a ramp I improvised by stacking several copies of the only thing I had in the back of the car – my book. And it worked.

So there you have it. That's how, with the aid of one fictional murder victim and four copies of Last Exit (now complete with tire tracks) we changed the tire on one Volkswagen at 2 A.M.  Seriously, you can't make this stuff up!

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