Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller)

by Joel Goldman

  “I saw her playing in that creek that runs through the area . . . I don’t know what to call it . . . There’s a sign that says Liberty Park.”

  The woman cocked her head at Alex, one eyebrow raised. “Uh-huh. What do you want with her?”

  Alex smiled, trying to keep their conversation casual and friendly, knowing the more questions she was asked, the fewer answers she would get to her own questions.

  “I just want to talk to her.”

  “About what?”

  “The other day, a woman’s body was found in the creek right where she was playing, and I thought maybe,” Alex said, holding up her palm, “and I know it’s probably a long shot—but maybe if that’s someplace she liked to play, if she was down there a lot, she might have seen somebody or something that would help me find out what happened.”

  The woman squinted at her. “You a cop?”

  Alex took a breath, shaking her head, knowing that this was the moment when things could go south. Most people didn’t like getting involved in anything outside their own lives, especially cops, courts, and crimes. It was a toss-up between whom they disliked more—the police who might one day arrest them or the lawyers who they suspected would get the guilty off on a technicality unless they happened to be the one who was guilty.

  “No, I’m a lawyer and I’m representing a man whose been charged with murdering that woman.”

  The woman crossed her arms over her chest, tightening her jaw. “Well, I don’t know nothing about no little girl or dead woman.”

  Alex studied her for a moment, the woman returning the stare. Alex broke eye contact first, digging her wallet out of her jeans and removing a business card.

  “If you happen to hear anything or run across that little girl, I’d appreciate it if you would give me a call,” she said, handing the card to the woman. “My client’s life could depend on it.”

  The woman reluctantly took the card without looking at it, her downturned mouth sour proof that she was unmoved by Alex’s appeal.

  “Sure,” the woman said.

  Alex drove away, watching the woman in her rearview mirror, the woman crumpling her business card and dropping it on the ground. Just as Alex rounded a curve, she saw the little girl dash out from behind the storage shed, running to the woman’s side, ducking behind the woman and out of Alex’s sight.

  She stopped in the middle of the street, debating whether to turn around. The woman was probably the child’s mother and had done what any mother would have done when a stranger tried to draw her daughter into a murder investigation. Confronting her now would only make the woman more protective, but Alex had to take that chance, because the longer she waited to talk to the girl, the more likely the mother was to make sure the girl told her nothing.

  Alex spun the wheel and drove back to the house, slamming her hand on the steering wheel when she saw the empty driveway. The woman, the girl, and the Impala were gone.

  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 sho
p 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.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  BUT ROSSI KNEW THERE was no such thing as an easy murder case. Some cases, like Jared Bell’s, came together faster than others, but calling them easy didn’t do justice to the victims or their families, whose pain and loss lasted forever. He called those cases quick closers, but he’d never call them easy.

  And there was nothing easy about Alex Stone. He could convince her that Robin Norris had been murdered, but she wouldn’t believe that the murderer might be after her as well, not if she heard it from him. And she definitely wouldn’t believe that he was trying to protect her. She wouldn’t trust him to tell her the right time without checking her watch. He couldn’t blame her, because he felt the same way about her. Protecting someone he wanted more than anything else to bring down was just the latest contradiction in a job filled with them.

  The day was starting to turn when Wheeler drove away, leaving the photographs with Rossi. A thin layer of gray cloud cover moving in from the north was chasing away the sun, the distant sky darkening behind it. The breeze kicked up, an advance party for the coming storm.

  Rossi studied the incoming front, betting he had time before it arrived to do what he had in mind. He called Alex. She answered on the third ring.

  “It’s Rossi,” he said.

  “I know. Ever hear of caller ID?”

  “Just making sure. Where are you?”

  “In my car on my way home. What do you want?”

  “I want you to meet me at the scene of Robin Norris’s accident.”

  Alex didn’t respond immediately, Rossi letting the silence take care of itself.

  “Why?” Alex said after a few moments.

  “I need you to see how it happened.”

  “Why?”

  Rossi hated answering, hated her having something on him, but there was no alternative. “Because I need your help.”

  “My help? You need my help.”

  He sighed. “Yes, Counselor. It pains me to say so, but yes, I need your help.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “We both know the answer to that question. Give me ten minutes with you at the scene and then you can decide whether I’m just bullshitting you.”

  Another pause.

  “Okay. I can do that. When?”

  “Now. I’m out here on Barry Road where it happened,” he said, giving her directions.

  “Can we do it next week? It’s Friday and I’ve had a long week and a longer day that isn’t over yet. I’m on my way home to clean up and go visit Robin’s family.”

  “You’ve got all weekend to make your condolence call. I need you out here now.”

  More silence.

  “You do, don’t you. I like that,” she said, picking up on the urgency in his voice. “Okay. I’m on my way.”

  Half an hour later, Alex pulled up behind Rossi’s car, joining him on the shoulder, not saying anything. He watched her study the scene, arms crossed against her chest, looking first at the road, following the tire marks, and then focusing on the damaged tree trunk. He watched Alex’s eyes well up, saw her clench her jaw as her face reddened and she wiped the tears away, taking a deep breath.

  “Is that the tree?”

  “Yeah. You can take a closer look if you want.”

  Alex sidestepped down the embankment, standing in front of the tree, first pressing her palms against the scarred bark, then leaning in, her forehead resting on the trunk, arms wrapped around it. After a moment, she stepped back, brushing her clothing and wiping her eyes again. She walked up the slope toward the road, ignoring Rossi’s offered
hand as she reached the shoulder.

  “So how did it happen?”

  Rossi walked her through it just as Wheeler had done for him, answering her questions, letting her sift through the photographs, waiting until she stacked them together and returned them to the envelope.

  “The tire mark, the damage to the rear bumper, and Robin’s speed all make a strong case that someone intentionally forced her off the road,” he said.

  “Maybe, but what you’ve got won’t hold up under a decent cross-examination, not without more. All you’ve got is evidence of an accident, not a crime. You’ve got nothing on the other car or the other driver or any motive.”

  “We’ll find the car and the driver and we’ll figure out the motive.”

  “Try to get it right this time,” Alex said.

  Rossi beat back his temptation to take the bait. “I’ll do that.”

  “So why did you drag me out here? I can’t help you fill in any of those blanks.”

  Passing cars flew by, trailing small plumes of road grit, drivers in a hurry to beat the storm and start their weekend. Rossi leaned against his car as a big-wheeled pickup thundered past, waiting until it had rounded the curve.

  “Let me ask you a question. Let’s suppose my theory is right but it’s you in the car. You’re driving like a bat out of hell because someone is chasing you out in the middle of nowhere. You’re scared shitless that you’re going to die. What would you do?”

  She cocked her head, furrowing her brow. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. Put yourself in Robin Norris’s shoes. What would you have done?”

  Alex sighed, thinking. “I’d lead the asshole to the nearest police station.”

  “Okay, but you’ve never been on this stretch of road in your life. You’ve got no idea where you are, let alone where you can find a police station. What then?”

  “I’d call 911, tell them what was happening, and ask them to send help in a hurry.”

  “That’s what I’d do too. That’s what anyone would do.”

  Alex’s eyes widened, her mouth dropping half-open. “But Robin didn’t do that.”