Текст книги "Crash & Burn"

Автор книги: Lisa Gardner

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

ALSO BY LISA GARDNER

NOVELS

The Perfect Husband

The Other Daughter

The Third Victim

The Next Accident

The Survivors Club

The Killing Hour

Alone

Gone

Hide

Say Goodbye

The Neighbor

Live to Tell

Love You More

Catch Me

Touch & Go

Fear Nothing

SHORT WORKS

The 7th Month

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Gardner, Inc.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

DUTTON—EST. 1852 and DUTTON are registered trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gardner, Lisa.

Crash & burn / Lisa Gardner.

pages ; cm

ISBN 978-0-698-18617-0

1. Police—Massachusetts—Boston—Fiction. 2. Traffic accident victims—Fiction. 3. Boston (Mass.)—Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Crash and burn.

PS3557.A7132C73 2015

813'.54—dc23

2014035338

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

Contents

Also by LISA GARDNER

Title page

Copyright page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

About the Author

Chapter 1

I DIED ONCE.

I remember now, as much as I am capable of remembering anything, the sensation of pain, burning and sharp, followed by fatigue, crushing and deep. I’d wanted to lie down; I recall that clearly. I’d needed to be done with it. But I hadn’t. I’d fought the pain, the fatigue, the fucking white light. I’d clawed my way back to the land of the living.

Because of Vero. She needed me.

What have you done?

I am weightless now. I understand, absently, this is not a good thing. Cars shouldn’t be weightless. A luxury SUV was never intended to fly. And I smell something sharp and astringent. Alcohol. More specifically, whiskey. Glenlivet. Always prided myself on drinking the good stuff.

What have you done?

I want to cry out. As long as I’m sailing through the air, about to die for the second time, I should at least be able to scream. But no sound comes from my throat.

Instead, I stare through the plunging windshield, out into the pitch-black night, and I notice, of all things, that it’s raining.

Like that night. Before . . .

What have you done?

It is not so bad to fly. The feeling is pleasant, even exhilarating. The limits of gravity defied, the pressure of earthbound life left far behind. I should lift my arms, spread them wide and embrace the second death looming before me.

Vero.

Beautiful little Vero.

And then . . .

Gravity takes its revenge. My car is weightless no more as it reconnects savagely with the earth. A shuddering crash. An echoing boom. My body, once in flight, now tossed like a rag doll against steering wheel, dashboard, gear shift. The sound of glass cracking. My face shattering.

Pain, burning and sharp. Followed by fatigue, crushing and deep. I want to lie down. I need to be done with it.

Vero, I think.

And then: Oh my God, what have I done?

My face is wet. I lick my lips, tasting water, salt, blood. Slowly, I lift my head, only for my temple to explode in agony. I wince, tucking my chin reflexively against my chest, then rest my aching forehead against hard plastic. The steering wheel of my car, I realize, is now crushed against my chest, while my leg is twisted at a nearly impossible angle, my knee wedged somewhere under the crumpled dash. I have fallen, I think, and I can’t get up.

I hear a sound. Laughter. Or maybe it’s keening. It’s a strange sound. High-pitched, continuous and not entirely sane.

It’s coming from me.

More wet. The rain has found its way inside my vehicle. Or I have found a way outside. I’m not sure. Whiskey. The stench of alcohol is so strong it makes me want to vomit. Soaked into my shirt, I realize. Then, my gaze still struggling to take in my surroundings, I spy glass fragments scattered around me; the remains of a bottle.

I should move. Get out. Call someone. Do something.

My head hurts so damn much, and instead of velvet black sky, I see bursting white lights exploding across my field of vision.

Vero.

One word. It rises to the front of my mind. Grounding me. Guiding me. Urging me forward. Vero, Vero, Vero.

I move. Laboriously, the keening sound replaced by a soul-wrenching scream as I attempt to extricate myself from the driver’s seat. My vehicle appears to have landed on its front end, the dash nearly crushed against me. I’m not upright, but tilted forward, as if my Audi, once it broke its nose, couldn’t regain its balance. It means I have to work doubly hard to unpin myself from the accordionized space between my seat and the steering wheel and collapsed dash.

Airbag. The excess mass wraps around my arms, tangles up my hands, and I curse it. Back to screaming and fighting and ranting gibberish, but the senseless rage spikes my adrenaline until at least the crushing fatigue is gone, and now there is only pain, an endless, terrible pain I already understand I can’t afford to contemplate, as I finally wiggle my way sideways from between the driver’s seat and the dash. I collapse, panting heavily, onto the center console. Legs work. Arms, too.

Head’s on fire.

Vero.

Smoke. Do I smell smoke? I suffer an immediate bolt of panic. Smoke, screams, fire. Smoke, screams, fire.

Vero, Vero, Vero.

Run!

No. I catch myself. No smoke. That was the first time. How many times can a woman die? I’m not sure. It’s a blur in my head, from the smell of wet earth to the heat of flames. All separate and yet together. I am dying. I am dead. No, I am merely dying. No, wait, I am dead. The first time, the second time, the third?

I can’t sort it out.

Only one thing matters, has ever mattered. Vero. I must save Vero.

Backseat. I twist myself around. I hit first my left knee, then my right, and scream again. Fuck it. Don’t care. Backseat. I have to get to the backseat.

I fumble around in the dark, licking rain and mud from my lips as other impressions start to register. The windshield is shattered, but also the moonroof, hence the inside rain. My once gorgeous, relatively new and luxurious Audi Q5 crossover SUV has been shortened by at least a foot, if not two, the front end sustaining the worst of the impact and the front doors most likely too warped to open. But the back appears to be relatively intact.

“Vero, Vero, Vero.”

I realize for the first time I am wearing gloves. Or used to be wearing gloves. The glass has shredded them into large bloody flaps that hinder my movements. I wrestle the first one off, then the second, then jam them self-consciously in my pants pocket. Can’t toss them on the floor. That would be littering and I treat my car better than that. Used to treat my car better than that?

My head hurts so damn much. I want to curl up in a ball and sleep and sleep and sleep.

But I don’t. I can’t. Vero.

Forcing myself to move once more, I rummage right, then left, fingers fumbling in the dark. But I find nothing. No one. I search and search, first the backseat, then, more shakily, the floor. But no small body magically appears.

What if . . . She could’ve been thrown, tossed from the airborne vehicle. The car had tried to fly, and maybe so had Vero.

Mommy, look at me. I’m an airplane.

What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?

I must get out of the vehicle. Nothing else matters. Out there, something in the dark, the rain, the mud. Vero. I must save her.

I drag myself by the elbows from the front of my crumpled car to the back. Then, a sharp turn for the rear passenger’s door. But it won’t open. I yank the handle, smearing blood. I shove against the door. Cry, beg and plead, but nothing. It won’t give. The damage, the child’s safety lock. Shit!

One other exit. The way back, rear cargo hatch. Moving again, painfully slow as the pain in my head turns to nausea in my stomach, and I know I’m going to vomit, but I don’t care. I have to get out of this car. I have to find Vero.

The puke, when it comes, is a thin liquid spew that smells of expensive single malt and a long night’s regret.

I drag myself through the heinous puddle and keep going. First lucky break: The collision has jarred the rear hatch open.

I push it the rest of the way up. Then, when crawling proves too much for my bruised—broken?—ribs, I drag myself out with my arms and belly flop onto the ground. Mud, soft and oozing, eases my fall. I roll over, panting from the pain, the force of my exertions, the hopelessness of my situation.

Rain, rain, go away, please come back some other day.

Mommy, look at me, I’m an airplane.

I’m tired again. Fatigue, crushing and deep. I could just lie here. Help will come. Someone who saw the accident, heard the crash. Another motorist passing by. Or maybe someone will miss me. Someone who cares.

An image of a man’s face pops into my mind but is gone before I can catch it.

“Vero,” I whisper. To the falling rain, the oozing mud, the starless night.

The smell of smoke, I think idly. The heat of fire. No, that was the first time. Focus, dammit. Focus!

I roll back over and begin my journey.

The road appears to be high above me. There is mud, grass, scraggly bushes and sharp rocks between it and me. I hear distant sounds, cars whizzing above me, like exotic birds, and I realize, as I belly crawl forward inch by inch, that the vehicles are too far away. They are up; I am down. They will never see me. They will never stop and help me find Vero.

Another inch, two, three, four. Gasping as I hit a rock. Cursing as I tangle in a bush. My trembling fingers reaching forward, searching, searching, searching. While my head screams in agony and I pause, time after time, to retch pathetic little spits of bile.

Vero.

And then: Oh, Nicky, what have you done?

I hear that keening noise again, but I don’t stop. I don’t want to realize that the distressed animal making all those sounds is actually me.

I don’t know how long I wriggle myself up through the slipping, sliding mud. I know by the time I crest the hill, I’m covered head to toe in black ooze, and far from disturbing me, it amuses me. It’s fitting, I think. I look as I ought to look.

Like a woman who’s crawled from the grave.

Lights. Twin pinpricks, looming closer. I get up on my hands and knees now. Have to, if the passing motorist is to see me. And it’s okay, because my ribs don’t hurt anymore. My body has gone numb, the screaming in my head having overloaded all circuits and left everything else curiously blank.

Maybe I’m already dead. Maybe this is what the dead look like, as I get one foot beneath me and, slowly but surely, rise to standing.

A screech of brakes. The oncoming car, fishtailing briefly as the driver overapplies the brakes in the wet conditions. Then, miraculously, it stops, right before my raised hand and pale, rain-streaked face.

“Holy—” An elderly man, clearly shaken, is briefly illuminated by the interior light as he opens the driver’s side door. He steps out uncertainly, rises to standing. “Ma’am, are you all right?”

I don’t say a word.

“Is it an accident? Where’s your car? Ma’am, you want me to dial nine-one-one?”

I don’t say a word.

I just think: Vero.

And suddenly, I remember. I remember everything. An enormous explosion of light, terror and rage. A shooting pain not only through my head but through my heart. And in that instant, I recall exactly who I am. The monster from underneath the bed.

Across from me, as if sensing my thoughts, the old man recoils, takes a small step back.

“Um . . . just stay there, ma’am. Just . . . I’ll, um, I’ll phone for help.”

The man disappears back inside the dimly lit interior of his car. I don’t say anything. I stand in the rain, swaying on my feet.

I think, one last time: Vero.

Then the moment is gone, the memory passed.

And I am no one at all, just a woman twice returned from the dead.

Chapter 2

THE CALL CAME in shortly after 5 A.M.: single MVA, off the road, unknown injuries. Given that the town in question didn’t have a nighttime duty officer—welcome to the wilds of New Hampshire—county patrol was dispatched to handle the situation. That officer, Todd Reynes, arrived fifteen minutes later—again, welcome to the wilds of New Hampshire, or more accurately, long, windy back roads that never lead directly from here to there—just as the EMTs were struggling to strap a single muddy, bloody woman onto a backboard. The driver, he was told, had definitely suffered extensive injuries and reeked of enough alcohol to make standing next to her a risk for a contact high.

A second motorist lingered nearby, the old guy who’d found the woman and placed the initial call. He was keeping away from the action but acknowledged Officer Reynes with a short nod, clearly prepared to make a statement or sign on the dotted line or do whatever it was you did to officially end your part of something you never wanted to be involved with in the first place.

Officer Reynes returned the nod, already thinking this was pretty straightforward. One drunk driver, about to be hauled away by the EMTs. One smashed-up car, soon to be towed by the next available wrecker. That would be that.

At which point, the rain-soaked, mud-covered, blood-spattered woman got a hand on the first Velcro restraint, yanked it back with an ominous rasp, then sat bolt upright and declared wildly: “Vero! I can’t find her. She’s just a little girl. Help. Please, someone, God. Help!”

Which is how Sergeant Wyatt Foster of the North Country Sheriff’s Criminal Investigations Division came to be standing roadside shortly after 7 A.M., pavement finally drying out, but now covered by every available law enforcement unit between Concord and Canada. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration, but not by much, he thought.

Wyatt exited his vehicle, wincing against the raw bite of a late fall morning only just now lightening up. It had been pouring solid for days, enough to spur flash-flood warnings while encouraging the random construction of arks. Good news was that the weather was finally drying out. Bad news was that the strong storm, which had continued through most of the night, had probably obliterated most of the useful evidence that might have helped them find a missing girl.

Dogs, he thought. This was a job beyond mere men; they needed canines.

He spotted one of his detectives, Kevin Santos, standing fifty feet ahead, peering over the edge of the road. Kevin had on his thickest field coat, even though it wasn’t winter yet, with one hand jammed deep into a pocket, the other clutching a large white Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Wyatt walked on over.

“Any chance you have two of those?” He gestured to the coffee.

Kevin arched a brow. Younger than Wyatt by ten years, he possessed a nearly encyclopedic memory that had earned him the nickname the Brain. Now he once more proved his powers of greatness.

“Bought four. Situation like this, you can never have too much coffee.”

He gestured to his vehicle, where, sure enough, a cardboard cup holder rested on the front hood, holding three remaining cups of java. Wyatt didn’t ask twice.

“Catch me up?” he said, after the second sip had started warming his blood.

Kevin pointed ahead, or really down, as the edge of the road gave way to a fairly significant ravine. Not a lot of trees, but shrubs, downed logs, rocks and other general woodsiness that finally, one hundred, two hundred feet down, seemed to give way to what was usually a babbling brook, but this morning, by virtue of Mother Nature’s bounty, was a rushing stream.

Right in front of the brook/stream, Wyatt could just make out the rear end of a dark SUV, hitched up at a funny angle, rear cargo door flung open.

“Audi Q5,” Kevin supplied.

Wyatt arched a brow, suitably impressed. Luxury car, new to the market. Told him a lot of things right there, none of which he particularly cared for. In the old days, you could count on your DWIs to be drunk old men or stupid teenage kids. Now most under-the-influences seemed to be well-to-do soccer moms as high as kites on various prescription medications and deep in denial. In other words, not the kind to go down without a fight.

“Vehicle appears to have exited the road right about here,” Kevin said, gesturing to the ground with his coffee-cup hand.

Wyatt looked down. Sure enough, right where the pavement surrendered to muddy earth, tire tracks became clearly visible, battered by the rain but deep enough to hold their own.

“Seems like a pretty straight shot down,” Wyatt murmured, eyeing the Q5’s final resting place.

“Working theory is that she missed the curve.”

This time, Kevin gestured down the road, where the pavement bent to the left, while the Audi had definitely gone right. “Must have already been drifting,” Wyatt said, eyeing the angle of the roadway behind him, then once more checking ahead. “Otherwise, car should’ve made it farther along before going off.”

“Might’ve already been asleep. Passed out. That sort of thing. Todd knows his DWIs.”

Wyatt nodded. Officer Todd Reynes was an experienced patrolman who’d spent time on the DARE task force. He had a nose for drunks, could spot ’em driving from miles away, he liked to say. He was also a helluva hockey player. Two useful skills in the mountains of New Hampshire.

“Todd said he’d never smelled anyone in such a state. She must’ve had an open container in the vehicle that shattered on impact, because her clothes were drenched in whiskey.”

“Whiskey?”

“Actually, turned out to be scotch—Glenlivet. Eighteen-year-old single malt. The good stuff. But I’m cheating—already saw the remains of the bottle.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “So our driver drinks a little scotch, pours on even more scotch and misses the corner. Maybe too drunk to see it. Maybe already passed out. Either way, goes sailing off into the night.”

“Sounds about right.” The Technical Accident Reconstruction team would sort it out, of course. They’d shoot the scene with a Total Station, which worked much like the surveyor’s tool used by road crews, mapping angles, trajectories, point A and point B. Then the computer would spit out a complete guide to what, where, why and how. For example, an unconscious driver would’ve gone off the edge at low rpms, or even no rpms—foot off the accelerator. Whereas a woman driving erratically, fishtailing here, overbraking there, would leave other evidence behind. Both Wyatt and Kevin were qualified TAR team members. Had done it before. Would do it again.

But that was not this morning’s task. This morning they, not to mention the dozens of other local, county and state uniformed officers, were swarming the cold, muddy scene with one goal in mind: find a missing girl.

“So,” Wyatt spoke up briskly, “assuming the vehicle vacated the road here, and shot through the air to land on the ground there . . .”

“First patrol officers started searching within fifty feet of the vehicle. We’re now backtracking all the way up the ravine to the road, obviously. Terrain is steep, but not too dense, and yet, as you can see . . .”

Their view from this vantage point was nearly bird’s-eye. Granted, a few hours ago, in the middle of the night, in the midst of a storm, it would’ve been one dark mess. But now—Wyatt glanced at his watch—at 7:25 A.M., with dawn breaking and a damp gray daylight filling the muddy, shrubby space . . .

They could visually scan a significant part of the ravine without ever taking a step. And everywhere Wyatt looked . . . he saw nothing but mud.

“Dogs,” he said.

Kevin smiled. “Already called them.”

They stepped off the road and headed down into the muck.

“What do we know about the girl?” Wyatt asked as they trudged their way down to the wreck. Mud was still very soft, making footing difficult. He kept his eyes focused on the terrain, partly to keep from breaking his neck and partly to keep from destroying anything that might be useful. His coffee sloshed out of the small hole in the top of the cup and ran down the side of his hand. Sad waste of an essential beverage.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing? How’s that even possible?”

“Driver was out of her mind. Alcohol, injuries, God only knows. Todd says she went from stony-faced shock to near hysteria in a span of seconds. EMTs finally strapped her down and carted her away before she hurt anyone.”

“But she mentioned a daughter?”

“Vero. She couldn’t find her. She’s just a little girl. Please help.”

Wyatt frowned, not liking this. “Approximate age?”

“Didn’t find a car seat or booster in the rear seat of the vehicle. Neither was the passenger side airbag deployed in the front. Put that together, and we’re talking about a kid too old for safety seats, but too young to call shotgun.”

“So probably between the ages of nine and thirteen. One of those so-called tweens.”

“You’d know more about that than me, my friend.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes, didn’t take the bait. “Blood trail?” he asked.

“Please. Inside of the vehicle looks like a slaughterhouse. Female driver suffered a number of lacerations, before the accident, afterward, who knows. But by the time she untangled herself from the wreckage, then crawled through shattered glass to the rear of the vehicle . . . It’s a miracle she had enough strength left to hike back up the ravine, let alone flag down a passing motorist—”

“Hike back up the ravine?” Wyatt stopped walking.

Kevin did as well. Both of them cast looks to the roadway, now very high above them. “How else would she have been found?” Kevin asked in a reasonable voice. “Nobody was going to notice a car smashed into a ravine in the middle of the night. Hell, you and I could barely see the vehicle in daylight, peering directly down at it.”

“Shit,” Wyatt said quietly, because . . . Well, because. He was an able-bodied man, reasonably physically fit, he liked to think, and not just due to being a cop, but because his other passion was carpentry and there was nothing like a few hours with a hammer every week to keep the bis and tris solid. But even with all that, he was finding descending the ravine, fighting his way through sucking mud while combating dense, prickling bushes, hard enough. He couldn’t imagine coming up all that distance, let alone in the pouring rain, let alone after having just survived what was obviously a serious accident.

“She flagged down a man by the name of Daniel Ledo,” Kevin said now. “Guy said she never spoke a word. He’s a vet, spent some time in Korea. According to him, she looked shell-shocked, as in the literal definition of the word. Didn’t really snap to it until the EMTs were loading her up. Then she spotted Todd, and boom, she’s off and running about this girl, Vero, she couldn’t find Vero, we gotta help Vero.”

“She couldn’t find Vero, seems to imply she’d been looking.”

“Sure,” Kevin said.

“Plowing her way through the mud and muck. It’s why she tore herself out of the car. Why she made it up to the road. Because she was trying to find help for her missing child.”

“Fair enough.”

“And we . . . ?”

“Still got nothing. Two hours of solid searching later by over a dozen uniformed patrol officers, not to mention our even more qualified friends from Fish and Game. I got here thirty minutes before you, Wyatt. Guys were already on site, on task. Started with a search grid of fifty feet out from the wreckage. Are now working a five-mile radius. I have no issues with our search efforts thus far.”

Wyatt understood what his detective was trying to say. A body thrown from the vehicle should’ve been easy to recover. A scared girl hunkered down for the night, waiting for help, should’ve responded to the coaxing calls. Which left them with . . .

Wyatt gazed around him at the tangle of underbrush an injured, disoriented kid could roam for hours. He looked ahead of him, to the former brook, now fast-flowing stream, that could carry away an unconscious form.

“Dogs,” he said again.

They moved on to the car.

The Audi Q5 premium SUV should’ve been a thing of beauty. Charcoal-gray exterior paint with equal parts black and silver sheen. A two-tone interior, boasting silver-gray leather seats, jet-black inlays and chrome accents. One of those vehicles designed to haul groceries, half of a soccer team plus the family dog, and look damned good doing it.

Now it sat, ass cocked up, front end buried deep into the muddy earth, rear cargo door ajar. It looked like a sleek urban missile that had misfired into the woods of New Hampshire and was now stuck there.

“Twenty-inch titanium-finish wheels,” Kevin muttered, voice half awe, half longing. “Sport steering wheel. Eight-speed tiptronic automatic transmission. This is the 3.0 edition; means it has the six-liter engine that can go from zero to sixty in under six seconds. All that power and you can bring along your golf clubs, too!”

Wyatt didn’t share Kevin’s love for automobiles or statistics. “But does it have all-wheel drive?” was all he wanted to know.

“Standard issue for all Audis.”

“Stability control? Antilock brakes? Anything else that should’ve helped a driver navigate a rainy night?”

“Sure. Not to mention xenon headlights, LED taillight technology and about half a dozen airbags.”

“Meaning the vehicle should’ve been able to handle the conditions? A dark and stormy night?”

“Unless there was some kind of unexpected mechanical or computer error . . . absolutely.”

Wyatt grunted, not surprised. Cars these days were less a box for transport, more a computer on wheels. And a fancy-looking Audi like this . . .

Hell, the car had about a dozen different built-in controls designed for its own self-protection, let alone the safety of its driver. So, for it to have ended up in this condition . . .

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.”