Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“I started young, right out of high school,” Helm said, standing and extending his right hand. “Got my B.A. from George Mason by going to school days and working nights. It’s tough, but it can be done.”

“I suppose you’ve got your Ph.D. by now,” Pace said with a smile.

“Only a master’s in criminal investigation from Georgetown.”

“Maybe I should go sit at another table,” Pace suggested, and they laughed.

Pace felt good about his dinner companions. He’d fretted all the way to Reston about why he and Sally were having dinner with a dumb cop when they could have interviewed him over a beer somewhere in half an hour. But now he thought he was going to enjoy himself. They had drinks and made small talk, ordered dinner, and got to know each other. Slipping into the mood of the place, Pace let himself be talked into a traditional colonial peanut soup and Virginia ham with redeye gravy. Helm had something done with pork tenderloin, and Sally had blackened red snapper that would have to be classified as Cajun Colonial to qualify for the theme of the restaurant. But all the food was excellent. It wasn’t until the dishes were cleared for coffee that they got down to the business that brought them together.

“We need to set some ground rules first,” Helm suggested. “I don’t mind talking to you about the accident, but we’ll have to go off the record for most of the conversation. On the surface, this looks like a routine one-car fatality. But some of the evidence associated with the accident is very strange. When I put those facts together with an invitation to dinner at a very nice restaurant with two reporters from the Chronicle, including one of the top guns who would normally never cover a mere traffic fatality, it sets my perverse mind atwitter with wonderment. In short, if I’m going to tell you what I know, I want to know what you know.”

“I don’t think I ever knew a cop who used words like perverse,” Pace said.

“It’s a word I learned to describe reporters,” Helm said. “It fits you all.” He fiddled with his unused butter knife, making railroad tracks in the white tablecloth. “I should have told you before dinner what my ground rules are,” he said. “I’m not trying to job you for a meal. If you don’t want to share information, we’ll have coffee, I’ll pay my third of the bill, we’ll tell each other we were happy to have met, then go on our way.”

He looked at Sally. “I’m along for the ride,” she said with a shrug. “This is Steve’s gig. My editor conned him into sharing the action since the story happened on my turf. In return, I called you for dinner and made the reservation.”

Helm turned to Pace. “I’ll consider the information proprietary,” he said. “Nobody else is interested in this accident, but if that changes, what you tell me stays with me.”

Pace nodded reluctantly. He didn’t want to say he trusted the cop, that it was Sally he wasn’t sure of. But there was a kind of half-smile on her face, indicating she knew what was in his mind, and a sincerity in her eyes that promised trust fulfilled.

And so he told the story again. He told it without names but in intricate detail, and he enjoyed watching Sally’s big eyes grow wider in wonder. Helm’s expression didn’t change; the captain was too experienced to be surprised by anything. But a small twitch along his left jawline betrayed his intense concentration.

“I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it,” Helm said when Pace was done. “On a state level, you’re talking murder one and conspiracy to commit murder. On a federal level, you’re talking tampering with a federal investigation. A fistful of felonies.”

“But we’ve got nothing concrete,” Pace said. “Maybe the calls were hoaxes. One of my editors thinks my source is making this up, and I’m nuts to spend time chasing it. I don’t think so, but until we know who was in the car, we haven’t got enough to justify putting the cost of this dinner on expense account.”

“Getting the ID’s a matter of time,” Helm said. “Meanwhile, have you been briefed about the skid marks we found?”

“Sally’s editor passed it on to me,” Pace said. “You think the car was dragged.”

“That’s the only theory we could come up with,” Helm said. “And the evidence keeps growing. This afternoon, about twenty yards up from where the vehicle went off, we found a front bumper that would fit a car of the general size of the one that burned.”

“Uproad from the accident?”

“Let’s say the car was being dragged by the front bumper. The driver was trying to get away, so he turned the wheels hard to the right, putting more pressure on the bumper. When the pressure got too great, it ripped loose. With his front wheels turned hard to the right, the driver couldn’t regain control and stop the car from leaving the road.”

Pace rubbed a salt shaker back and forth between his palms.

“There are other possibilities,” he said.

“There are,” Helm said. “But they don’t hold up.”

Sally, who had been quiet through the conversation, looked from Pace to Helm and back again. “Maybe the victim fell asleep at the wheel, crept up on the guy in front of him, hit him and locked bumpers. When he tried to pull free, he ripped his bumper off. Or maybe he ripped the back bumper off the front car, and that’s what you found.”

“Won’t fly,” Helm said. “Think it through. First off, I’m certain the bumper we found belonged to the victim’s car. It looks a lot more like a front bumper than a rear bumper, it’s about the right size for a small car, not a larger truck, and the wreck was missing its front bumper. That all adds up. Second…” He paused, his brow lined in thought. “…if you fell asleep at the wheel and hit a car in front of you, you’d wake up.”

“And you’d brake hard to get loose,” Sally said, “maybe get dragged 200 yards, and maybe rip your bumper off.”

“And your skid marks would be in a straight line,” Helm followed. “Besides, the driver of the front car wouldn’t drag you that far before he stopped to see what hit him.”

“You’re assuming the guy in the rear car was the victim,” Sally said, getting into the mystery. “Suppose it was the other way around. Suppose the victim was in the lead car, and the guy who came up behind him was trying to force the lead car off the road. The attacker lost his front bumper, went off the road, and died.”

“You’d have to be a pretty stupid assassin to try to force a truck off the road by hitting it with a small car,” Helm said.

They were quiet for a moment. Then Helm looked up, surprised.

“But I’ll tell you what will work. We’re operating here on a theory that maybe the driver was killed on purpose, forced off the road, right?” The reporters nodded in unison. “If you were going to force somebody off the road, how would you do it?”

“Like they do in the movies,” Sally said. “I’d slam him from the side.” She blinked and did a double take as she realized exactly where Helm was taking them.

“Maybe that’s what happened,” he continued. “What if the truck rammed the victim’s car from the side, in front of the driver’s door, and the car’s front bumper got caught up in the frame of the other vehicle? The victim would have tried to get away by turning his wheels to the right.”

“That would explain the skid marks,” Sally said jubilantly. “That would explain the loose bumper your people found.” Her face grew sad. “That would explain murder.”

“It explains something else, too,” Pace said. “It explains why, somehow, we’ve got to convince the FAA to ground the entire Sexton fleet.”