Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(3)

A second motorist lingered nearby, the old guy who’d found the woman and placed the initial call. He was keeping away from the action but acknowledged Officer Reynes with a short nod, clearly prepared to make a statement or sign on the dotted line or do whatever it was you did to officially end your part of something you never wanted to be involved with in the first place.

Officer Reynes returned the nod, already thinking this was pretty straightforward. One drunk driver, about to be hauled away by the EMTs. One smashed-up car, soon to be towed by the next available wrecker. That would be that.

At which point, the rain-soaked, mud-covered, blood-spattered woman got a hand on the first Velcro restraint, yanked it back with an ominous rasp, then sat bolt upright and declared wildly: “Vero! I can’t find her. She’s just a little girl. Help. Please, someone, God. Help!”

Which is how Sergeant Wyatt Foster of the North Country Sheriff’s Criminal Investigations Division came to be standing roadside shortly after 7 A.M., pavement finally drying out, but now covered by every available law enforcement unit between Concord and Canada. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration, but not by much, he thought.

Wyatt exited his vehicle, wincing against the raw bite of a late fall morning only just now lightening up. It had been pouring solid for days, enough to spur flash-flood warnings while encouraging the random construction of arks. Good news was that the weather was finally drying out. Bad news was that the strong storm, which had continued through most of the night, had probably obliterated most of the useful evidence that might have helped them find a missing girl.

Dogs, he thought. This was a job beyond mere men; they needed canines.

He spotted one of his detectives, Kevin Santos, standing fifty feet ahead, peering over the edge of the road. Kevin had on his thickest field coat, even though it wasn’t winter yet, with one hand jammed deep into a pocket, the other clutching a large white Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Wyatt walked on over.

“Any chance you have two of those?” He gestured to the coffee.

Kevin arched a brow. Younger than Wyatt by ten years, he possessed a nearly encyclopedic memory that had earned him the nickname the Brain. Now he once more proved his powers of greatness.

“Bought four. Situation like this, you can never have too much coffee.”

He gestured to his vehicle, where, sure enough, a cardboard cup holder rested on the front hood, holding three remaining cups of java. Wyatt didn’t ask twice.

“Catch me up?” he said, after the second sip had started warming his blood.

Kevin pointed ahead, or really down, as the edge of the road gave way to a fairly significant ravine. Not a lot of trees, but shrubs, downed logs, rocks and other general woodsiness that finally, one hundred, two hundred feet down, seemed to give way to what was usually a babbling brook, but this morning, by virtue of Mother Nature’s bounty, was a rushing stream.

Right in front of the brook/stream, Wyatt could just make out the rear end of a dark SUV, hitched up at a funny angle, rear cargo door flung open.

“Audi Q5,” Kevin supplied.

Wyatt arched a brow, suitably impressed. Luxury car, new to the market. Told him a lot of things right there, none of which he particularly cared for. In the old days, you could count on your DWIs to be drunk old men or stupid teenage kids. Now most under-the-influences seemed to be well-to-do soccer moms as high as kites on various prescription medications and deep in denial. In other words, not the kind to go down without a fight.

“Vehicle appears to have exited the road right about here,” Kevin said, gesturing to the ground with his coffee-cup hand.

Wyatt looked down. Sure enough, right where the pavement surrendered to muddy earth, tire tracks became clearly visible, battered by the rain but deep enough to hold their own.

“Seems like a pretty straight shot down,” Wyatt murmured, eyeing the Q5’s final resting place.

“Working theory is that she missed the curve.”

This time, Kevin gestured down the road, where the pavement bent to the left, while the Audi had definitely gone right. “Must have already been drifting,” Wyatt said, eyeing the angle of the roadway behind him, then once more checking ahead. “Otherwise, car should’ve made it farther along before going off.”

“Might’ve already been asleep. Passed out. That sort of thing. Todd knows his DWIs.”

Wyatt nodded. Officer Todd Reynes was an experienced patrolman who’d spent time on the DARE task force. He had a nose for drunks, could spot ’em driving from miles away, he liked to say. He was also a helluva hockey player. Two useful skills in the mountains of New Hampshire.

“Todd said he’d never smelled anyone in such a state. She must’ve had an open container in the vehicle that shattered on impact, because her clothes were drenched in whiskey.”

“Whiskey?”

“Actually, turned out to be scotch—Glenlivet. Eighteen-year-old single malt. The good stuff. But I’m cheating—already saw the remains of the bottle.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes. “So our driver drinks a little scotch, pours on even more scotch and misses the corner. Maybe too drunk to see it. Maybe already passed out. Either way, goes sailing off into the night.”

“Sounds about right.” The Technical Accident Reconstruction team would sort it out, of course. They’d shoot the scene with a Total Station, which worked much like the surveyor’s tool used by road crews, mapping angles, trajectories, point A and point B. Then the computer would spit out a complete guide to what, where, why and how. For example, an unconscious driver would’ve gone off the edge at low rpms, or even no rpms—foot off the accelerator. Whereas a woman driving erratically, fishtailing here, overbraking there, would leave other evidence behind. Both Wyatt and Kevin were qualified TAR team members. Had done it before. Would do it again.