by Lisa Gardner
“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.”
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 endle
ss. 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.