Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

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 shop 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.

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?”