Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

“That’s what we’re good at…wasting time,” I said. “It won’t hurt, and it’ll give Tom Pasquale something to do.”

“Why him?” Holman asked.

“For one thing, it’ll do his ego good,” I said. “He’ll enjoy playing secret agent man after spending a night at the hospital listening to Wesley Crocker snore. For another thing, I don’t want to spare one of the deputies. We don’t have enough manpower to go around as it is. And third, if Pasquale does the stakeout, the village will eat his overtime, not us.”

Holman grinned. “By all means, then.”

I glanced at my watch. “Give Pasquale a call at the hospital and fill him in. Tell him to use his own car, and to be discreet. If Vanessa slips out, we don’t want to interfere in any way. We just want to know where she goes and who she sees.”

Estelle nodded and left to telephone the good news to Thomas Pasquale. I chauffeured mama and daughter home, and when I opened the door for them to alight at their trailer, I said, “Are you sure you don’t have anything you want to tell us?” Vanessa didn’t bother to glance my way. She trudged up the steps to the trailer, opened the front door, and disappeared inside.

I handed one of my cards to Mrs. Davila. “Call me if you think of anything.” She accepted the card, but my hopes didn’t soar.

Dawn was beginning to streak the sky when I pulled into the graveled driveway of the county maintenance yard. I saw Estelle’s unmarked car parked over by our secure garage and I pulled 310 in beside it. The lights were ablaze inside, and I opened the heavy galvanized steel door.

The remains of Dennis Wilton’s truck sat in the middle of the floor. I walked slowly around it until I reached Estelle, who was sitting on a shop stool off to one side. I thrust my hands in my pockets and stood silently beside her, gazing at the remains.

The truck had hit the rock outcropping so hard that the frame had folded at the spot where cab and bed met, forced downward far enough that the truck actually rested on the two back tires and the bent frame members rather than all four wheels.

I walked around in front and cocked my head. “If it had hit center on, both kids would be dead now, air bag or no,” I said. The left half of the truck’s front, although bent and twisted by the forces tearing at the passenger side, had missed the rock. Incongruous with the rest of the mangled mess, the left headlight and parking light were in perfect condition.

“What year was this thing?” I asked.

“Nineteen ninety-five,” Estelle said. “Just over sixteen thousand miles on the odometer.”

“And the driver said that he dozed off?”

“That’s what he claims.”

“And the House kid must have been asleep. Otherwise he would have had time to make a grab at the steering wheel,” I said. “The bus driver would have seen them swerve. If they traveled more than a hundred feet on the shoulder, and even ripped out a fence, either one of the occupants would have had plenty of time to make a frantic wrench at the wheel.”

“That’s why I ordered the blood test, sir. It’s routine for the autopsy, but I want the driver’s, too.”

“That’s what you wanted to show me?” I said.

“Well, no.” She pushed herself up, moving like she had a crick in her back.

“You need to go home,” I said.

“In a few minutes. Let me show you a couple of things. Then we can both brood on them for a while.”

She walked around the truck and pulled the driver’s-side door open slightly more than it already was. The deflated air bag hung from the core of the steering wheel.

“The bag functioned perfectly, and the driver was wearing his shoulder harness,” Estelle said. “That, combined with most of the force of the impact being on the far side of the truck, accounts for his relatively minor injuries.”

“And there was no air bag on the other side.”

“No, sir. And worse than that, the passenger’s seatbelt wasn’t buckled.”

I leaned against the cab of the truck and squinted at the interior. The dashboard had collapsed back so far that the section including the glove compartment was buried in the fabric of the seat, crushed backward by the heavy V-8 engine as it crashed off its mounts. When the firewall folded backward, the cab of the truck had ovalized, with the roof folding upward.

There wasn’t much blood inside. Ryan House had been fired through the windshield during the first microseconds of the impact, taking out part of the roof framework with him.

“He had his belt on,” I said, and pointed. The belt was indeed deployed, tangled in part of the dashboard so that the retract mechanism couldn’t reel it in.

“But it wasn’t buckled, sir.”

I turned to look at Estelle and she lifted an eyebrow a fraction. “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Did the buckle fail?” I slid into what remained of the driver’s seat and pulled the passenger-side belt free from the twisted steel and plastic. The shiny chrome buckle insert was undamaged. The slots stamped through the metal for the locking lug were clean and unmarred.

Estelle reached out and pointed at the edges of the larger cutout with her index finger. “If the buckle had been securely latched, and then torn from the locking clasp, we would expect to see some marking on the metal. There would have to be some distortion if that happened. If the belt itself gave way, we’d see obvious evidence of tearing or stretching of the fabric.”

“Yes, we would,” I said. I pulled the belt toward the center and inserted the buckle into the lock. It snapped into place with a crisp, definite “click.” I yanked on it, knowing full well that I could never exert the kind of forces generated by a crash. “It feels normal enough to me,” I said. “But who’s to tell? Actually, the way these things are made, I’m not sure that buckle failure is even possible if the thing snaps in place properly.”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Estelle said. “I’ve never seen one fail that was properly latched…at least not on newer vehicles. The forces just aren’t there. It’s not like a jet plane crashing into the side of a mountain at six hundred miles an hour.”

“And even in airplane crashes, it’s not uncommon for investigators to find victims still strapped in their seats, hundreds of yards from the plane. The seat tears out of the floor, but the belt doesn’t fail.” I shook my head. “No, the most likely answer is that the thing wasn’t latched properly,” I said. “Ryan House wasn’t paying attention and didn’t push it in far enough.”

“That’s the most likely explanation.”

She beckoned me out of the truck. “It just seems to me that there are several possibilities. But all things being equal, the explanation you gave is the most likely. Having the buckle itself fail just isn’t in the numbers, sir. The belt was not fastened properly and came loose at the critical moment of impact. That’s probably what happened.”

I recognized that particular tone of voice, and I turned to frown at Estelle. “You still don’t sound convinced.”

“Well,” she said, “there is a third possibility. Maybe it was fastened properly and was then unlatched.”

“Like maybe Ryan House had dropped something on the floor and was in the process of unbuckling when the accident happened. He never had the time to jam the buckle back in, even if he had thought to do so.”

Estelle nodded. “I’ve done that myself on occasion.”

“I can imagine that maybe House had something in his hands-like a cup of coffee or something-and managed to spill it. He leans forward to get away from it and unbuckles his belt so he can squirm away from the mess.”

“That’s the most likely scenario. But it doesn’t make sense with the way the accident happened. If they were awake and alert, they might let the truck drift off the pavement and onto the shoulder, but not for so long, and certainly not straight as an arrow through a fence without any attempt at correction. After all, the most common pickup truck accident is running off the shoulder, over-correcting, and then flipping. The occupant gets pitched out and crushed by the truck as it rolls. That sure isn’t what happened here.”