Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(4)
But that was not this morning’s task. This morning they, not to mention the dozens of other local, county and state uniformed officers, were swarming the cold, muddy scene with one goal in mind: find a missing girl.
“So,” Wyatt spoke up briskly, “assuming the vehicle vacated the road here, and shot through the air to land on the ground there . . .”
“First patrol officers started searching within fifty feet of the vehicle. We’re now backtracking all the way up the ravine to the road, obviously. Terrain is steep, but not too dense, and yet, as you can see . . .”
Their view from this vantage point was nearly bird’s-eye. Granted, a few hours ago, in the middle of the night, in the midst of a storm, it would’ve been one dark mess. But now—Wyatt glanced at his watch—at 7:25 A.M., with dawn breaking and a damp gray daylight filling the muddy, shrubby space . . .
They could visually scan a significant part of the ravine without ever taking a step. And everywhere Wyatt looked . . . he saw nothing but mud.
“Dogs,” he said.
Kevin smiled. “Already called them.”
They stepped off the road and headed down into the muck.
“What do we know about the girl?” Wyatt asked as they trudged their way down to the wreck. Mud was still very soft, making footing difficult. He kept his eyes focused on the terrain, partly to keep from breaking his neck and partly to keep from destroying anything that might be useful. His coffee sloshed out of the small hole in the top of the cup and ran down the side of his hand. Sad waste of an essential beverage.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean nothing? How’s that even possible?”
“Driver was out of her mind. Alcohol, injuries, God only knows. Todd says she went from stony-faced shock to near hysteria in a span of seconds. EMTs finally strapped her down and carted her away before she hurt anyone.”
“But she mentioned a daughter?”
“Vero. She couldn’t find her. She’s just a little girl. Please help.”
Wyatt frowned, not liking this. “Approximate age?”
“Didn’t find a car seat or booster in the rear seat of the vehicle. Neither was the passenger side airbag deployed in the front. Put that together, and we’re talking about a kid too old for safety seats, but too young to call shotgun.”
“So probably between the ages of nine and thirteen. One of those so-called tweens.”
“You’d know more about that than me, my friend.”
Wyatt rolled his eyes, didn’t take the bait. “Blood trail?” he asked.
“Please. Inside of the vehicle looks like a slaughterhouse. Female driver suffered a number of lacerations, before the accident, afterward, who knows. But by the time she untangled herself from the wreckage, then crawled through shattered glass to the rear of the vehicle . . . It’s a miracle she had enough strength left to hike back up the ravine, let alone flag down a passing motorist—”
“Hike back up the ravine?” Wyatt stopped walking.
Kevin did as well. Both of them cast looks to the roadway, now very high above them. “How else would she have been found?” Kevin asked in a reasonable voice. “Nobody was going to notice a car smashed into a ravine in the middle of the night. Hell, you and I could barely see the vehicle in daylight, peering directly down at it.”
“Shit,” Wyatt said quietly, because . . . Well, because. He was an able-bodied man, reasonably physically fit, he liked to think, and not just due to being a cop, but because his other passion was carpentry and there was nothing like a few hours with a hammer every week to keep the bis and tris solid. But even with all that, he was finding descending the ravine, fighting his way through sucking mud while combating dense, prickling bushes, hard enough. He couldn’t imagine coming up all that distance, let alone in the pouring rain, let alone after having just survived what was obviously a serious accident.
“She flagged down a man by the name of Daniel Ledo,” Kevin said now. “Guy said she never spoke a word. He’s a vet, spent some time in Korea. According to him, she looked shell-shocked, as in the literal definition of the word. Didn’t really snap to it until the EMTs were loading her up. Then she spotted Todd, and boom, she’s off and running about this girl, Vero, she couldn’t find Vero, we gotta help Vero.”
“She couldn’t find Vero, seems to imply she’d been looking.”
“Sure,” Kevin said.
“Plowing her way through the mud and muck. It’s why she tore herself out of the car. Why she made it up to the road. Because she was trying to find help for her missing child.”
“Fair enough.”
“And we . . . ?”
“Still got nothing. Two hours of solid searching later by over a dozen uniformed patrol officers, not to mention our even more qualified friends from Fish and Game. I got here thirty minutes before you, Wyatt. Guys were already on site, on task. Started with a search grid of fifty feet out from the wreckage. Are now working a five-mile radius. I have no issues with our search efforts thus far.”
Wyatt understood what his detective was trying to say. A body thrown from the vehicle should’ve been easy to recover. A scared girl hunkered down for the night, waiting for help, should’ve responded to the coaxing calls. Which left them with . . .
Wyatt gazed around him at the tangle of underbrush an injured, disoriented kid could roam for hours. He looked ahead of him, to the former brook, now fast-flowing stream, that could carry away an unconscious form.