Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“Excuse me, ma’am.”

The woman had copper-red hair courtesy of a bad dye job and enough makeup for a drag queen, her glittering green eye shadow visible at a distance. She wore jeans that were too tight for the heft she carried and an even tighter shirt stretched over mountainous breasts subdivided by the strap of the purse slung between them.

“Yeah,” the woman said.

Alex got out of her car and crossed the yard to the driveway, glad that there was no dog in sight.

“I’m looking for a little girl, probably about ten. She’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt and has long blond hair.”

The woman blinked, glancing over her shoulder at the thicket of trees behind her. It was enough to make Alex think the woman not only knew the child but was also looking for her.

“She your kid?” the woman asked, the corners of her mouth twitching.

“No.”

“Relative of yours?”

“No.”

“You even know her name?”

“I don’t,” Alex said, not liking the way the conversation was going.

“What makes you think she lives around here?”

“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.

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.”