Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(32)

But I also feel trapped.

And just for a second, I want to hit him.

I get my chin up. “We don’t have pets; we don’t have friends; we move all the time.”

“Your requirement, not mine. September 2, 1993. We leave New Orleans. You need to go away, you say. No explanation. You need a new name, you say. No explanation. I should try out a new name, too. Neither of us mentions all the times you wake up screaming in the middle of the night. Neither of us talks about your increasing skittishness, constantly locking doors, checking over your shoulder, breaking out into a cold sweat. You needed to go, so we did. You needed to try on a new identity, so we did. For you, Nicky, I spent the next two years changing out cities and inventing new names on nearly a weekly basis until the worst of the panic left and you finally settled in as my wife. Because that was how much I loved you. Do you remember?”

Loved, I think, noting the past tense.

But he is still bearing down on me, still waiting for an answer. Do I remember, do I remember, do I remember? The moment when this one man agreed to go anywhere, be anyone, for me? The moment I begged this one man to go, and he agreed to follow?

The smell of beignets. The taste of powdered sugar. Thomas, younger, but just as somber, just as intent.

I look at him now. I see him now.

And I whisper, “Yes.”





Chapter 13




ALL RIGHT. LET’S figure this out.”

Eleven A.M., the morning raw and gray, Kevin and Wyatt returned to the scene of the accident. The Audi Q5 had finally been removed. It had taken tow ropes, a pulley system and a great deal of swearing on the part of the state police, but they’d gotten the job done.

Now just the tangle of matted bushes, snapped twigs and dislodged boulders remained to show the vehicle’s careening path down the ravine. And of course, the tracks embedded in the mud next to the road. This is where Kevin and Wyatt now stood. Looking down to where it had gone, preparing to head back from whence it had come.

“We know Nicky’s credit card was used to purchase the bottle of scotch ten miles from here, around ten P.M. Wednesday night.”

“True,” Kevin agreed.

“But we have no eyewitness accounts that place her at the store.”

“Clerk claims it was too busy to remember one woman in particular.”

“And their security system turned out to be compromised.”

“When you rerecord over and over again on ancient discs, errors are bound to happen.”

“Meaning we know her or someone affiliated with her got the scotch.”

“E.g., the husband,” Kevin filled in.

“Just don’t love that man,” Wyatt said. “Three concussions seems less like accidents and more like a pattern to me. But the question remains, if the scotch was purchased around ten, then what?”

“He took the bottle home, liquored up his wife,” Kevin offered.

“Once she appears drunk enough . . . which turns out to be a lower threshold than the legal system dictates, but again, given her multiple concussions . . .”

“He probably assumed she was legally intoxicated.”

“He loads her into her car,” Wyatt continued.

“Drives her out to the middle of nowhere.”

“Or maybe to exactly somewhere,” Wyatt corrects. “To a spot with the proper grade of descent, ending in a sharp enough angle to the left, while being isolated enough from passing traffic; he can get out of the car, place his wife in the driver’s seat, then bump the gear into neutral and let gravity take over. Not just any stretch of road would do the trick. This would take some scoping out, preplanning.”

He and Kevin had now hoofed it to the top of the hill. From here, the forty-degree grade looked startlingly steep, especially given the yellow caution sign at the bottom, alerting motorists to the upcoming turn. Accidents on this stretch of road on a rainy night probably happened regularly enough. Meaning with just a little extra effort . . .

“I think he’d have to push the car,” Kevin said. “To get the kind of acceleration it would require to fly off the edge . . .”

Wyatt gazed down, conceded his detective’s point. “So Thomas positions his wife behind the wheel, puts on her seat belt then knocks the car into neutral. He’d have to move quick: No doubt the Audi is already starting to roll forward as he slams the door. Then he takes three quick steps back, adds his weight to the forward momentum.”

The two detectives pantomimed the deed. “Could definitely be done,” Kevin said.

“We should try to print the exterior rear of the vehicle,” Wyatt added, studying his open hands, poised instinctively to push.

“Plus the husband’s clothes, jacket,” Kevin said. “This time of year, cars aren’t very clean, especially in a storm. Might have gotten debris, mud, all over him.”

“How do you know the car will roll down in a straight line?” Wyatt asked. He studied the hill again, the way the road appeared to travel straight at first glance, except, upon further inspection, had a slight bend to the left, let alone a sloping grade to the right for runoff.

“Could try to tie something to the wheel to keep it straight,” Kevin said.

“We didn’t recover anything at the scene. Rope, scarf. As our dog handler pointed out, there weren’t any personal items in the car at all.”