Chapter 8
HOW GOES THE battle?” Tessa asked.
On the other end of the phone, Wyatt contemplated his girlfriend’s lighthearted question and promptly sighed heavily. “Long morning,” he admitted. “Long, strange morning. But the good news is, I think we should get a puppy.”
“What?”
He could already picture her, sitting up straighter, blue eyes blinking in bewilderment.
“A cute yellow Lab,” Wyatt continued. “One that will wag its tail and cover you with kisses every time you come home. That would be perfect.”
“Perfect for whom? Dogs have to be fed, you know. As well as taken outside, exercised regularly. And Sophie and I are never home.”
“Mrs. Ennis would help.”
“Mrs. Ennis is seventy years old—”
“And still the toughest broad I know. In fact, if things don’t work out between us, I might just set my cap for her.”
He could practically feel Tessa rolling her eyes. Which was exactly what he needed. A break from the pressure of a case that might not even be a case. And yet he was sure it was a case. At least a motor vehicle accident.
“So why a puppy?” Tessa was asking him.
“Because a puppy makes everything better. Just ask Sophie.”
“Low blow.”
“Of course, I reserve the right to present the puppy. We both know I need the brownie points.”
“You’ve been giving this some thought,” Tessa said.
“Spent the morning with a search dog,” Wyatt volunteered. “Which might have gone better if we’d been searching for a real person, versus some brain-damaged woman’s mental delusion.” He couldn’t help himself; he sighed again.
“Day going that well?”
“Yeah, which means, sadly, I’ll never make dinner. Now that we’ve eliminated the ghosts, we have a real crime scene to analyze and auto accident to reconstruct.”
“Catch me up; what do you know thus far?”
Over the phone, Wyatt could hear Tessa shifting her position, most likely getting more comfortable in her black leather desk chair. She wasn’t just asking a question; she was interested in the answer. Which was one of the things Wyatt liked best about dating a fellow investigator. Tessa didn’t just inquire about his day; she was more than happy to review it with him. And sometimes, as the saying went, two heads were better than one.
Sitting in his county cruiser, waiting for the state police to arrive with the electronic data retrieval box, Wyatt took her up on her offer.
“Single MVA, off road, possible aggravated DWI.”
“Blood alcohol level?”
“Well, first complicating factor. Driver smelled like a distillery. According to hospital records, however, her blood alcohol level was only .06—”
“That doesn’t meet the threshold for DWI.”
“Ah, but the patient suffers from something called post-concussive syndrome. Has taken one too many blows to the head over the past six months. According to the doctor, for a person suffering from a TBI, even a little alcohol can go a long way. So I’m not willing to dismiss it just yet. We could potentially make the argument that for a driver with this condition, .06 is sufficiently impaired.”
Wyatt had given the matter a lot of thought, mostly because it was his thought to give. Given the unique laws of New Hampshire, county cops had the power to prosecute all misdemeanor cases. Meaning Wyatt didn’t just build a case; he got to present it, too. Factoring in the driver’s injuries, this crash could end up being a felony DWI, in which case the county attorney would take over, but Wyatt would still be responsible for the arraignment bail hearing and probable cause hearing. He liked to joke he was half cop, half lawyer. Though given the way the legal system worked these days, you had to be more like 90 percent lawyer just to survive.
“Interesting,” Tessa was saying now. “So you have an unimpaired, impaired driver.”
“It’s possible. Now, booze in question came from an eighteen-year-old bottle of scotch—”
“Expensive.”
“Please, you should see the car. Guys traced the purchase of the bottle to a liquor store ten miles from the accident scene, purchased on a credit card. We’re going through security footage now to see if we have actual film of her making the purchase. But so far, not bad for a morning’s work.”
“And yet you’re bothered by . . . ,” Tessa pushed.
“Liquor store closed at eleven. Accident happened around five A.M. So what was the driver doing between those hours? Because if she was sitting around drinking, her blood alcohol level should obliterate .06.”
“Friend, associate, to help her out?”
“Possible.”
“Husband?”
“Claims he was occupied in a work shed. Apparently hadn’t even realized his concussed wife was missing.”
“No card for him on Valentine’s Day. Where’d the car go off? Busy area? Plenty of shops, restaurants, bars, to keep your driver entertained?”
“Nada. I’ve counted two gas stations between the liquor store and scene of the crash; that’s it. So again, what was she up to for six hours?”
“Maybe . . .” He could hear Tessa thinking about it. “Maybe she wasn’t doing anything. Maybe she was just . . . hanging out. Trying to collect her thoughts. When I was patrolling, you’d be amazed how many parked cars I came across in the middle of the night, occupied by lonely souls. If your driver is concussed, suffering from a TBI, maybe she’s confused, too. Another lost soul looking for the light.”
“So she buys a bottle of scotch. Drowns her sorrows . . .”
“Sips her sorrows. Only .06.”
“Then hits the road. Searching for a little girl who doesn’t exist.”
“Little girl?” Tessa’s voice picked up.
Wyatt winced. He hadn’t intended to mention that part. “When the first officer arrived at the scene, the woman claimed she couldn’t find her daughter, Vero. Only her husband of twenty-two years claims there are no kids. Not now, not ever.”
“So she’s delusional?”
“Apparently, her brain has been compromised by multiple TBIs. She fell down the stairs doing laundry, then another fall outside, then, of course, the car accident. Long story short, her memory is shot, and she has ongoing problems with headaches, light sensitivity, and extreme mood swings.”
“With all due respect, forgetting things isn’t the same as making things up.”
“What do you mean?” Wyatt asked.
“Did you confirm with the doctors that this woman is indeed delusional?”
“Physicians don’t talk. HIPAA and all that. What we know we got from the husband.”
“Please. Wouldn’t be the first time the husband was the last to know.”
“But they obviously don’t have a child—”
“And yet she’s looking. I mean, even if she’s delusional, why that delusion? Of all the short circuits running through her head, why this one? I’d check the odometer, too. Because maybe that’s what she was doing for the six hours. Driving around searching for her lost girl.”
“Who doesn’t exist,” Wyatt repeated.
“And yet is clearly important to her. First time she’s done this?”
Wyatt hesitated. “Didn’t think to ask that question.”
“Friends, support system?”
“New to the area.”
“Job?”
“Self-employed. Husband and wife work together making props for Hollywood.”
“Meaning her only family, only contact, is her husband.” Tessa’s voice picked up. “The one telling you they don’t have kids. The one reporting his wife has had three ‘accidents’ in six months.”
Wyatt got her point. Same thought had crossed his mind, too. And in a cop’s world, where there was paranoia, there was often probable cause.
“You suspect domestic violence. Which, I have to say, is what worries me, too.” Wyatt thought again of the bruise that had discolored Thomas Frank’s jaw. From an impaired wife, lashing out in agitation? Or from a terrified woman acting in self-defense?
“Fits the profile,” Tessa was saying, “not to mention a man who beats his wife . . .”
“Might also beat his kids. Leading to what, the death of a girl who doesn’t exist? Let’s not get completely lost in the land of wild conjecture. I already spent the morning, not to mention significant county and state resources, on a wild-goose chase. At this point, my boss, the sheriff, would appreciate a lot more facts and a lot less fiction.”
“Have you even talked to the woman—”
“All in good time.”
“You haven’t interviewed the driver?” Tessa sounded dumbfounded.
“She’d just been sedated! Woman’s having medical issues, thought we covered that.”
“So you haven’t even questioned her directly—”
“First thing tomorrow. Doc says she needs more time to recover. Which gives us the rest of today to get our ducks in a row: Single-car accident. Lone driver. Possible aggravated DWI.”
He could feel Tessa rolling her eyes at him again. Crazy part was, her daughter rolled them exactly the same way.
“Fine. I’ll play by your county-cop rules,” she granted him. “So looking at just the accident . . . If your driver’s blood alcohol level was only .06, why’d she crash?”
“Inclement weather. Impairment from her brain injury combined with said blood alcohol level. Either way, she went off the edge of a steep road; car flew down an embankment.”
“Went off or drove off?”
“Waiting for the state police to help us with that one; we need the info from the vehicle’s electronic data recorder.”
“Suicide?”
“She had her seat belt on, which is one vote in the no column. Then again, open bottle of scotch could be taken as a vote in the yes department. However, and probably most interesting, after the accident, the driver clawed her way up a two-hundred-foot ravine in the pouring rain to flag down help.”
“Certainly sounds like a woman with a will to live,” Tessa commented.
“Except.” Wyatt couldn’t help himself. He paused uncomfortably. “She didn’t seem to think she needed help for herself. Instead, she begged for assistance to help find her missing girl. She pleaded for Vero.”
“The little girl who doesn’t exist?”
“Yeah. That one.”
“Some delusion,” Tessa said knowingly.
“Don’t you have a lunch to attend?” Wyatt asked her irritably. “You know, with your favorite detective, D. D. Warren.”
“The one and only.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Luck? Please, I need more like heavy armor.”
Which made Wyatt roll his eyes at her, before ending the call.
* * *
THE STATE POLICE were good guys. In New Hampshire, all members of law enforcement attended the same training academy, from city to county to Fish and Game. Kept everyone on the same page and helped build bridges in an area long on mountains and short on people. Especially north of Concord, where law enforcement resources were particularly scarce, the various agencies relied upon one another for backup. And not just for manpower, but also for equipment. Contrary to those TV cop shows where crime labs looked like space stations and SWAT teams started out with a hundred grand in equipment per officer, real-world policing required more cooperation . . . and at times, sheer inventiveness. Wyatt had run undercover drug stings with surveillance equipment that had been pieced together from three different towns. Sometimes it felt less like policing and more like passing a collection plate.
Now Wyatt approached Jean Huntoon, who’d arrived with the state’s data retrieval computer. The two had met twice before. They shook hands, made the obligatory comments on the weather, then hoofed it down to the crash site. Huntoon was a slender five six and cycled hundred-mile races in her free time. She also hadn’t hiked in and out of the ravine half a dozen times, Wyatt thought resentfully, as the younger officer beat him to the vehicle.
“Sad ending for a beautiful car,” Huntoon observed.
“Apparently even crossovers weren’t meant to fly.”
“Distributed front-end damage. Took it right on the nose.” Huntoon looked back up the way they came. “Must have left the road up top, sailed right down. No other vehicles involved?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Brake marks?”
“Nope.”
Huntoon arched a delicate brow. “Never a good sign. All right, you got questions. Let me get some answers.”
Huntoon hefted her computer onto a relative flat spot near the frame of the shattered windshield, got out some cables, and went to work.
There were a couple of ways to conduct a vehicle autopsy. One was to dismantle the car in the field and ship away entire parts, doors, seats, the little black box, to the state’s labs. As it was a county case, someone like Wyatt would follow his evidence to the labs, overseeing every step of analysis and data retrieval.
But Wyatt was feeling a pressure he couldn’t completely explain with this one. Maybe because the case had gotten off to such a rough start, dozens of officers tied up in a wild-goose chase. Now he felt as if the investigation had gotten away from them and he needed to rein it back in, define the parameters of exactly who, what, when, where, why and how.
He needed the accident to present factually as just an accident. Run-of-the-mill. Nothing new to be seen here. Then he and his team could settle in, get it done.
Hence he’d called Jean Huntoon to meet him out in the field to retrieve the Audi’s electronic data, rather than waiting another day to handle it in the lab.
Bad news about hooking up to the vehicle directly; Huntoon had to work around the shards of broken glass and bloodstained dash. An experienced officer, she whistled cheerfully as she rigged the cables from the car’s electronic data recorder to her computer. She played with this, fiddled with that, then stood back to let her equipment do its thing.
An hour before, Kevin and a couple guys from the TAR team had wrapped up mapping the scene with the Total Station. Add that data to the info from the vehicle’s EDR and Wyatt was hoping they’d have a nice, neat blueprint of single-car accident 101.
“Nice prints,” Huntoon observed now, gesturing to a pair of bloody handprints on the front dash.
Wyatt nodded. It was true. Vehicles were notoriously tricky to fingerprint. Too much overlay and not enough viable surface. His personal favorite was to print the inside lid of the glove compartment box. Steering wheels, doors, gear shift, mostly yielded garbage. But the inside lid of the glove compartment . . . nice, smooth plastic. Generally accessed only a few times by a few people. He’d scored some lovely incriminating prints from the glove box in his time. Things cops were proud of.
“Blood testing?” Huntoon was asking, indicating the gory mess smearing the driver’s side door.
“Gonna let you guys do the honors. Whole door will ship out later tonight. Probably tear out big chunks of the dash as well. Less dilution that way.”
Huntoon nodded in agreement. Taking a blood sample involved swabbing it with sterile water, which in turn diluted it. In this day and age of modern forensics, a good cop didn’t just find evidence; he protected it.
“Female driver?” Huntoon asked.
“Yep.”
Huntoon gestured through the shattered windshield to the driver’s seat. “Seat setup looks similar to mine, about right for an average-size woman.”
Wyatt crossed behind the vehicle so he was standing outside the driver’s side door. Huntoon was right about the seat position, and now was as good a time as any to consider the rest of the driver-side setup.
“Seat belt is spooled, so I’m assuming it was on,” he said. “Mirrors . . .”
Mirrors were hard to tell. Ideally you needed to sit in the driver’s seat, but given the amount of broken glass, let alone that neither door would open, that was impossible. Wyatt eyeballed it now, would return to it later when they’d removed the doors.
He bent this way, crooked his head that way. “Appear to make sense.”
Huntoon joined him in the juxtapositioning-the-mirrors game. “Nothing looks off to me.”
Her machine beeped. She crossed back over to consult the screen.
Wyatt finished up his brief assessment. “So seat setup, mirror placement, all consistent with female driver five four to five six. Nothing yet to indicate anyone else in the vehicle. In fact, we have a search dog who would swear the driver was the lone occupant. And now you’re going to tell me . . . ?”
“Stability control was deactivated.”
“What?” Wyatt drew up short. Of all the things he’d thought Huntoon was going to read off her data collector, that wasn’t it.
“This model has stability control. You know, to help the vehicle autocorrect if the driver goes into a skid, takes a corner too hot, that kind of thing. The vehicle’s computer senses the potential threat and will take over braking and/or deceleration on its own. Except in this vehicle, where the stability control had been shut off.”
“Manual override button?” Wyatt asked, as that was his memory with these high-end cars. They gaveth, but the driver could taketh away. Again, according to his memory, because God knows he’d never get to experience such vehicles on his salary, some drivers preferred an edgier experience. They wanted to push the limits of the car’s high-end capabilities without the computer’s self-preservation instinct kicking in.
“Exactly.” Huntoon looked at him. “Your female an adrenaline junkie?”
“I have no idea.”
“Vehicle was traveling at approximately thirty to thirty-five miles an hour,” Huntoon read off next. “But get this: no rpms.”
Wyatt stared at the officer. “Engine was in idle.”
“Gear shift’s in neutral.” Huntoon nodded her head toward the shifter, which they could both see in the front. Wyatt had observed its position earlier; he’d simply assumed the driver herself had knocked the vehicle out of gear.
“How does a car achieve thirty-five miles an hour while in neutral?” Wyatt asked in confusion.
“Gotta be some hill,” Huntoon said, looking at the road above them.
“Yeah. Or some push.”
Huntoon glanced up again, her dark eyes considering. “That would do it. Still thinking accident?”
Wyatt said simply. “Ah, shit.”