Smoke and Mirrors

74

Jacob’s Cadillac had left the road, shot straight across a cotton field for fifty yards, and ended up nose-deep into a tree. Brad left the road and drove to the scene, cutting the siren when he stopped, but leaving his blue lights flashing. As Winter climbed out, the cold wind was like a slap in his face.

The car’s front end was bent around the tree’s trunk, like a man in the water holding on to a pier leg for dear life. The front windshield looked like a blanket made from thousands of beads. Jacob lay in the dead leaves twenty feet in front of the car in his sock feet.

“He’s dead,” Winter said as they walked up on the body.

Brad whistled. “He was still doing a good fifty when he hit the tree. Looks like he never even braked. Didn’t have his seat belt on. Wasn’t for his clothes, I wouldn’t recognize him.”

Winter stared down at the body. Half of Jacob’s head was smashed and pushed against his shoulder. His brains were out, leaving an open and empty white bowl connected to his neck. Winter figured they were both thinking the same thing: Cornered and desperate, Jacob Gardner had taken a coward’s way out of his wreck of a life.

While Brad called for the coroner and a backup unit, Winter went to the driver’s side and looked into the Caddy. The driver’s side window glass was scattered in the interior, but the passenger’s side window was intact, and splattered with blood and bits of brain matter. And the blood droplets each formed lightning bolts, as if Jacob’s blood had already been running down the surfaces when the sudden impact had caused a violent change of direction.

“It wasn’t suicide,” Winter said. “Somebody shot him in the head.”

In the distance a siren announced a cruiser approaching from the plantation.

A cloud passed between the wreck and the sun, and the birds scattered in the woods chirped like gossips.