Crash & Burn (3 page)

Best way to work an accident was backward, as in, start with the end point—the wreck—and work in reverse to pinpoint the cause—the braking that never happened or the fishtail that led to swerving into the guardrail. In this case, the vehicle appeared to have landed at a forty-five-degree angle, taking it on the nose, so to speak, with resulting distributed front-end damage: crumpled hood, shattered front and side windows, and other damage consistent with a massive front-end impact.

He didn't see signs of paint chipping or scraping on the sides, implying the Audi had not rolled down the embankment through the tangle of bushes, but had rather sailed over them. Enough speed, then, for a nose dive off the proverbial cliff. Straight angle, at least by his dead reckoning; graphing it with the Total Station would certainly tell them more. But the vehicle appeared to have left the road at their coffee-drinking point above, then flew briefly through the air before it returned abruptly to earth, slamming nose first into the muck.

First question: Why had the vehicle left the road? Driver error, especially given the driver's apparent state of intoxication? Or something else? Second question: At what speed and what rpm? In other words, had she sailed over the edge, pedal to the metal, a woman on a mission, or had the vehicle drifted into the abyss, passed-out driver waking up only to attempt too little too late?

Good news for Wyatt. All these modern computers with wheels were equipped with electronic data recorders that captured a car's last moments much like an airplane's little black box. The county sheriff's department wasn't considered cool enough to have their
own data retriever, but the state would download the car's data onto their computer and bada-bing, bada-boom, they'd have many of their questions answered.

For now, Wyatt kept himself focused on the matter at hand. A missing child, female, approximately nine to thirteen years of age.

Footprints currently surrounded the wreckage, but given the quantity and size, Wyatt already guessed they came from the first responders, on the hunt for a child, rather than the occupants of the vehicle, exiting through the front passenger's side door. Just to be thorough, Wyatt pulled on a latex glove, stepped forward, and gave the passenger's door an experimental tug. Sure enough. Stuck tight. He tested the rear passenger's side door, found it compromised as well, the force of impact having warped the frame too much for the doors to function.

Which left him with the open rear hatch. He headed that way, inspecting the ground for more prints. Mostly, he just saw boot imprints, consistent with what most law enforcement officers wore.

“They inspect the ground first?” he asked Kevin. “Todd, any of the first responders? Check for footprints?”

“Todd said he swung his flashlight around. Couldn't see a thing, given the conditions. But even without footprints, he figured the driver must've exited the Audi out the back; it's the only working door.”

“So assuming the child's conscious, she'd have to have gone out this way, too,” Wyatt filled in. “I wonder . . . Mom the driver probably felt the crash had just happened, right? She regained consciousness, looked for her kid, panicked when she couldn't find her, then began her heroic journey for help. But maybe, factoring in the alcohol, the force of front-end impact . . . Maybe Mom was knocked out for a bit. Maybe, in fact, she didn't regain consciousness until fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes
after
the wreck. During which time,
her daughter tried to rouse her, panicked at not getting any response and set out on her own.”

Kevin didn't have an answer. It was all hypothetical, after all, and the Brain preferred stats.

“Cell phone?” Wyatt asked.

That Kevin could handle: “Recovered one from beneath the dash, registered in the driver's name. That's it.”

Wyatt considered the implications. “Do you know any kids who don't have cell phones?” he asked Kevin.

“Me? You're assuming I know kids.”

“Your nieces, nephews . . .”

“Sure, they all have iPods, smartphones, whatever. Generally speaking, it's in our own best interest to keep some kind of electronic device in their hands. Otherwise they might talk to us.”

“So assuming our kid is a nine- to thirteen-year-old girl, it's probable she also has a phone, in which case . . .” He tried to think of how to best put it into words. “Why not use it? Why not simply stay inside the car, where at least it's relatively dry, and call for help, for herself, for her mom, instead of heading out into a storm? We have a cell signal?”

Kevin nodded. “Driver's phone shows the service provider to be Verizon. Same as me, and I have four bars.”

“So it's not that she couldn't call. But maybe . . .”

He was trying to think it through, put himself in a scared girl's shoes. Kids could be resourceful, tougher than you thought. He knew that from both professional and personal experience.

“Poor girl's adrenal system had to have been screaming fight or flight,” Kevin offered up. “Maybe she chose flight.”

“Or maybe she's hurt, too. Hit her head, disoriented.” Frankly the possibilities were endless. Which made him uncomfortable. He couldn't help but picture Sophie, nine years old, already been through hell and back, with her thousand-yard stare. In this
situation, what would she have done? Given her reputation, probably retrieved her mom from the front seat and dragged her up the muddy ravine with her bare hands. She was that kind of kid.

And she didn't hate him. She just didn't smile at him. Or talk to him. Or acknowledge his existence in any meaningful manner. But that was okay. The battle was still early and he had many more tricks up his sleeve. Maybe.

“Let's follow up on a possible cell phone,” Wyatt said. “Contact the driver's service provider, see if there's any other names attached to the calling plan, you know, like a family plan or something. Because if she has a phone . . .”

“We can track it,” Kevin filled in.

“And where there's a cell phone . . .”

“There's a teenage kid attached to it.”

“Exactly.”

Happy to have finally offered up something useful, Wyatt continued with his cursory inspection of the wreck. He passed around to the driver's side door, where the spiderwebbed glass had shattered out, onto the ground. Maybe hit by the driver's elbow from the inside. Or pounded out by her fist as she desperately sought escape.

He peered inside. As was consistent with most front-end collisions, the dashboard had been compromised, the steering column shoved into the driver's seat. He could make out a tangle of unspooled seat belt, which would indicate the driver had been wearing one at the time of impact, then removed it in order to make her escape. Must've been tricky for the driver to extricate herself from such a mess, he thought. Especially given her own likely injuries—foot or ankle fractures from stomping the brakes in a futile attempt not to go sailing into the abyss, knee damage from the collapsing front dash, or even bruising to the stomach, ribs, shoulders, from the seat belt. He'd seen drivers burn their hands on the deploying
airbags, break their thumbs on the steering wheel, crush their sternums against the steering column.

And this crash had been a hard one. He could tell by one more distinct clue: blood. Lots of it. Staining the steering wheel, smeared across the dash, printing the back of the light-silver seat, the top of the door. The driver had been bleeding, probably lacerated in several areas given the large shards of broken clear glass—the scotch bottle—and smaller tinted pebbles from the shattered safety windows. He could make out entire bloody handprints where she'd obviously sought leverage, grabbing the dash, the edge of the seat, something, trying to haul herself out.

He wondered if she'd been unconscious for the bulk of the crash. Passed out driving one moment. Woke up wrecked the next. Or had it been worse than that? Had she regained consciousness just as her vehicle went airborne? Screamed? Tried frantically to apply her brakes? Or reached back reflexively for her daughter, as if at this late date, she could somehow undo the terrible mistake she'd obviously made?

Wyatt couldn't decide. Maybe he respected the driver's efforts to drag herself out of the wreckage and crawl back to the road in order to seek help for her child. But then again, wasn't that kind of like respecting the arsonist for escaping the burning building?

He frowned, his gaze falling on the gear shift, which sat in neutral, instead of drive as you'd expect. He glanced over his shoulder at Kevin.

“Anyone been inside the car?”

“No.”

“Turn off the engine?”

“Nah, must've stalled out. I don't know. Todd was first one on the scene. Once he heard about the kid, that's been our focus.”

Wyatt nodded; protecting life always took precedent. “Gear's in neutral,” he commented.

Kevin's turn to think. “Shifter might've been bumped? Lots of things bang around during impact. Loose objects, purses, elbows. Or maybe the driver, while trying to wriggle herself free, knocked it into neutral.”

“Maybe.” Wyatt straightened, not completely satisfied, but now was not the time. Later, after the vehicle had been towed from the site, when entire doors and whole seats had been meticulously removed and sent to the state's lab for testing, then they'd get down to it. The position of the driver's seat. The mirrors. Imprint from right hand here; imprint from left hand there. Not to mention the Total Station analysis as well as the stats recovered from the electronic data recorder. An accident like this wasn't reconstructed in a matter of hours, but in a matter of days, if not weeks.

But they would do it. Thoroughly. Meticulously. So the whole world could know what a Glenlivet-swilling mother had done to herself and her child one dark and stormy night.

As if on cue, Wyatt heard barking from above. Canine unit had arrived.

He straightened, stepping away from the vehicle, glancing at his watch instead.

Eight twenty-two
A.M.
Approximately three hours and fifteen minutes after first callout, they had an accident still to investigate and, more important, a child yet to find.

In the end, he decided, all paths led in the same direction. Back up the muddy ravine, to the silver ribbon of road, where this tragedy had first started and where the search dog now waited.

He and Kevin started climbing.

L
OOK AT ME
,
Mommy! Look! I can fly.”

She runs away from me, arms stuck straight out from her sides, rosebud mouth supplying the appropriate airplane noises. I admire her long dark hair bouncing behind her, as her little legs chug around the tiny space.

I wonder if I'd been this energetic when I'd been her age. Or this brave as she leaps over one obstacle, weaves expertly around the next.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I already know the answer to this question and it's better off left alone.

Enjoy this moment. Four-year-old Vero, learning to fly.

She giggles, revving up now, gaining momentum. And the sound of her joy lifts the weight off my own chest. She turns a corner, around the ragged brown sofa—stuffing coming up through a tear, someone should fix that, should I have fixed that?—and I can see her face, chubby cheeks flushed pink, gray eyes bright beneath thick lashes, as she zeroes in on her target and heads straight for me.

“Mommy! I can fly, I can fly, I can fly.”

I love you, I think. But I don't say it. The words don't come out. I stand there, bracing for impact as she barrels toward me.

Slow down. Take it easy. It's almost as if I know what's going to happen next.

At the last second, her tiny foot catches the leg of the coffee table, and for a moment, she is genuinely airborne, body stretched out, hands and feet grappling in empty space.

Vero's eyes, widening.

Her mouth, forming a perfect startled O.

“Mommy!” she yells.

Shhh, I try to whisper. Don't make a sound. Don't let him hear you.

She lands hard. Thump. Crack.

Then the screaming begins in earnest.

Shhh, I try to whisper again.

As those gray eyes well with tears, bear into mine.

A man's shout from the bedroom of the apartment. Followed by footsteps, heavy and ominous.

“Mommy, I can fly,” Vero says, and she's no longer crying. She is providing a statement of fact.

I know, I want to tell her. I understand.

I wish I could reach out, touch her hair, stroke her cheek.

Instead, I close my eyes, because somewhere in the back of my mind, I know what's going to happen next.

*   *   *

I
WAKE
UP
to machines beeping. Bright lights, strong enough to hurt my eyes. I wince reflexively, turning my head away, then immediately wish that I hadn't, as fresh pain explodes in my forehead.

I'm in a hospital bed. Lying straight on my back, hands tucked to my sides by scratchy white sheets topped by a thin blue blanket. I examine the metal bed rails framing each side of the bed, then the wires sprouting from an attachment on my finger leading to all
kinds of monitors. My mouth is dry, my throat parched. I would moan but don't feel like making the effort.

I hurt . . . everywhere. Head to toe, knees to elbows. My first thought is that I must've fallen from a twenty-story building and broken every bone on impact. My second thought is, why did they bother to put me back together again? If I finally got the courage up to jump, couldn't the rest of them leave well enough alone?

Then I see him, head slumped forward in the chair next to the foot of my bed.

My heart constricts. I think: I love you.

My head explodes. I think: Get the fuck away from me!

Then: What the hell is his name again?

The man's face is weathered, heavily lined with worry and stress even in sleep. But it gives him a lived-in look that is far from unattractive. Closer to early forties than late thirties, dark hair shot through with liberal streaks of gray, body still lean after all these years. I like that body; I know that with certainty.

And yet, I don't want him to wake up. Mostly, I wish he'd never found me here.

“Mommy, I can fly,”
Vero whispers in the back of my mind.

I think of that old pilots' joke: It's not the flying that's the hard part; it's the landing.

The man opens his eyes.

It comes as no surprise to me that they are brown and somber and deep.

“Nicky?” he whispers, arms already springing out, body on high alert.

“Vero?” I croak. “Please . . . Where is Vero?”

The man doesn't speak. His body collapses back, my first words having already taken the fight out of him. He places a hand over his eyes, maybe so I won't see the answers lurking there.

Then this man I love, this man I hate—what the
hell
is his name?—whispers heavily, “Oh, honey. Not again.”