Chasing The Dead

Chapter Twenty-Three

Hank Rossi slowed his car as he approached the scene of Robin Norris’s fatal accident on Northwest Barry Road, pulling off onto the westbound shoulder and parking behind Charlie Wheeler’s car. Getting out, he surveyed the scene.

It was a rural area, with only a few homes in the vicinity, none of them close to the accident scene or one another. Barry Road ran generally east and west, though from where he stood, it curved to the south before straightening back to the west. The ground dropped off from his side of the road at a severe angle, sloping down to a grove of trees, one of which was scarred from the impact of Robin’s car. Wheeler was standing in front of the tree, running his hand across the damaged trunk.

“Careful you don’t get a splinter, Mayor,” Rossi said.

Wheeler hobbled up the slope, slowed by his bad leg, rubbing his thigh when he reached the road. “About time you got here.”

Rossi pointed to the tree. “Is that the smoking gun that’s going to make our case?”

“More like the last dot in a long string of dots that we’re going to connect.”

Rossi rubbed the back of his neck, craning his head to loosen his muscles. “Okay. So where’s dot number one?”

“Follow me. Not much traffic for a Friday afternoon, but pay attention anyway. I don’t want to spend my weekend filling out reports explaining how you got run over.” They waited for a break in traffic before walking to the painted yellow line dividing the two lanes. “You see that curved tire mark that starts in the westbound lane in the middle of the curve?”

“Yeah.”

Wheeler turned toward the south edge of the road. “That tire mark goes all the way across the eastbound lane to the point at which the victim’s car left the road.”

“That’s a big skid mark. What’s it mean other than she was going too fast?”

“I’ll get to her speed in a minute. And don’t call it a skid mark. It’s either a yaw mark or a spin mark. A yaw mark is caused when a driver makes an abrupt steering maneuver to avoid an object in the roadway or to stay on the road when entering a curve too fast. But a spin mark is caused when one vehicle impacts another.”

“So how do you know whether it was a yaw mark or a spin mark?”

“The easiest way to tell is if there’s also a dark scuff mark at the point of impact.”

Rossi studied the westbound lane. “I don’t see anything like that.”

“Me either.”

“So we’re missing a dot. What does that leave us with besides her speed? How fast was she going, anyway?”

“I can’t calculate her speed without knowing whether that’s a yaw mark or a spin mark. The equations are different.”

“Are you telling me you don’t know how fast she was going?”

Wheeler looked at him, pursing his lips and shaking his head like a disappointed parent. “Did I say that?”

“Then you do know.”

“Damn right I know.”

“But you aren’t going to tell me yet, are you? You’re going to make me sit through your introductory class in accident reconstruction, aren’t you?”

Wheeler smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Yes, I am. And there will be a test. Now, let’s get back to my classroom,” he said, leading Rossi to his car.

He pulled an envelope filled with photographs from the front seat, thumbing through them until he found the ones he wanted, then spreading them out one at a time on the hood of his car.

“The victim was driving a Honda Accord. The driver’s side collided with the tree. You can see how badly damaged the car was in these photographs. The Accord does really well in crash tests, including side impacts, but the force of this impact was just too much. It shoved the driver’s side of the car all the way to the midpoint of the cabin. Robin Norris took a direct hit. The blow to her head was enough to kill her, and if it hadn’t, the internal injuries would have done the job.”

Rossi winced. “Christ Almighty.”

Wheeler laid out three more photographs. “These show damage to the rear bumper,” he said, pointing with a pen. “The right rear corner of the bumper has several scrapes and scruffs with a horizontal orientation. We found dark blue paint in those scuff marks that matches the paint color used on Missouri license plates. And there’s a hole in the bumper about twelve inches from the ground with rough edges that are consistent with tearing.”

Rossi picked up one of the photographs. “It looks like there’s a scrape extending from the hole to the right side of the car.”

“Go to the head of the class. All of that is consistent with a rear-end collision.”

“Except for one thing. The photographs don’t tell you when the rear-end collision happened. Somebody could have hit her in a parking lot six months ago.”

“As a matter of fact, someone did hit her in a parking lot, but it wasn’t six months ago. It was three weeks ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“I checked with her kids. They told me and I’ve got a copy of the invoice from the body shop that put on a brand-new bumper. She got the car back last week.”

“Damn, Mayor. Someone did knock her off the road.”

Wheeler grinned. “Which makes that tire mark a spin mark and explains why the collision was to the side of the car. Someone hit her and she spun out, pinwheeled down the embankment, and smacked into the tree.”

“What was she doing out here anyway? Didn’t one of her kids tell you that she never went north of the river unless she was going to the airport?”

“It was her oldest,” Wheeler said, consulting his note. “Name is Donny.”

“So is this where you tell me how fast she was going?”

Wheeler put the photographs back in the envelope and turned toward the road. “She came around that curve doing seventy-five in a forty-five. Whoever hit her couldn’t have timed it better. He got her at the exact point in the road when the impact would make her spin out of control.”

“That’s way too fast for anybody to take that curve. I’ll give you that,” Rossi said, “but it still could have been an accident. Could have been some kid hot-rodding and he came up on her and couldn’t slow down in time.”

“Maybe, but she would have seen him coming and probably would have pulled over to let him go by instead of trying to outrun in him on an unfamiliar dark stretch of road. But she was already doing seventy-five in a forty-five, and for my money, there’s only one reason she would have been doing that. Someone was chasing her.”

Rossi nodded. “Yeah. And she was running for her life.”

They leaned against Wheeler’s car, staring at the road, catching the draft from the few passing cars, each breaking the case down from his own perspective. Wheeler was imagining the accident, seeing the vehicles and the road: speed, force of impact, and the coefficient of friction adding up to murder.

Rossi saw the drivers. The killer was faceless for now, height, weight, and gender to be determined. Robin Norris was easier to see, her eyes wide, pupils dilated with fear, her mouth open as she gasped, not believing what was happening. He saw her knuckles whiten as she gripped the wheel, jamming her foot on the gas pedal, her head snapping back at the first impact, screaming and clenching her eyes at the end. But before that final moment, in the midst of her panic, he saw Robin grab her cell phone and punch in Alex Stone’s number.

“I don’t get it,” Rossi said, breaking their silence.

“Get what? The initial impact? Because that’s not a problem once we find the other vehicle. The damage to the front bumper will match up to the rear bumper on the victim’s car like a jigsaw puzzle.”

“Not that. Why did Robin call Alex Stone? If she was going to call anyone, she should have called 911 for help. How was Stone supposed to help her?”

“You’re right. That doesn’t make sense,” Wheeler said.

Rossi tugged at his chin. “Unless she wasn’t calling Stone to ask for her help.”

“Then why the hell else would she have called her? To tell her who was about to kill her?”

“Maybe, but she could have told that to the 911 dispatcher.”

“Then why the call?”

Rossi looked at him. “To warn her. Warn her that whoever was after her was going to come after Stone next.”

Wheeler thought for a moment, nodding. “I’ll buy that, especially if the victim figured there was no time for 911 to send help.”

“Don’t call her the victim. Her name was Robin Norris. She had kids, a job, and a life.”

Wheeler laughed. “What happened to my asshole ex-partner who never called a victim anything but a vic? Did he grow a heart?”

“Yeah, but let’s make it our secret.”

“So now what?”

Rossi shrugged. “We go by the numbers. If I’m right, Robin knew her killer and knew there was a connection with Alex Stone. So we start by asking Alex who that might be and, just in case she doesn’t know or doesn’t want to share with us, we build a list of people who tie them together.”

“And then we ask them who would have wanted to kill Robin and wants to kill Alex.”

“Exactly.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Wheeler asked.

“You find the car that hit Robin’s car and I keep my eye on Alex until someone tries to kill her.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. And you thought accident reconstruction was easy,” Rossi said.