Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(51)

Kevin had a point. Their suspected felony DWI driver was currently falling a little low on the sanity spectrum. Most likely, Wyatt should have driven her straight home from the liquor store. Yet, they had learned something:

“Got a hold of Jean while we were driving here,” he informed Kevin now. “Had her check the Franks’ credit cards for the last time Nicole fueled up her Audi. We got lucky: appears she hit a gas station Wednesday morning.”

“Within twenty-four hours of the accident.”

“Exactly. Now, I wrote down the trip odometer on the Audi while at the scene of the crash. It read two hundred and five miles. Assuming she reset the odometer when she fueled up, the way a lot of folks do to monitor their gas mileage . . .”

“She drove over two hundred miles between fueling up Wednesday morning and plunging off the road Thursday, five A.M.”

“Yeah. Wanna guess the number of miles from her house to the liquor store to here?”

Kevin glanced at Wyatt. “I’m going with eighty.”

“Damn, you are the Brain. Answer is eighty-three.”

Kevin frowned. Nicky’s circles were starting to widen out. A sign she was less manic? Or about to bolt on them?

“That leaves a hundred and twenty-two miles unaccounted for,” Kevin said.

“Give or take. Now, maybe she drove around all day Wednesday—”

“Doubt it. Husband implied he didn’t like her driving, given the head injury. I thought his story was that she spent the day resting at home.”

“In which case . . . ,” Wyatt prodded.

“She logged the miles Wednesday night. Meaning she didn’t drive a direct route, from house to liquor store to here.”

“I think we can all agree she was at that state liquor store but didn’t stop at the gas station up the road.”

“We could return to the liquor store,” Kevin suggested. “We lost focus with her getting sick, maybe left too soon. Instead, we pick back up in the parking lot. This time, we put her in the front seat with you and start driving; see if any landmarks trigger any memories, help her resurrect the route she drove that night.”

They both glanced at Nicole, who’d made it to the edge of the road. She’d stopped walking. Now she appeared to inhale deeply. Wyatt did the same, in case he was missing something. He smelled wet leaves, churned-up earth, decaying grass. The scent of fall, he thought, hiking through woods, raking up leaves, bedding down less winter-hardy plants.

But apparently, Nicky had a different association. “Smells from the grave,” she informed them, her pale, patched-up face nearly glowing in the dark. “You can’t leave. That’s the problem. Even if you age out, grow ugly, waste down to nothing, it doesn’t matter. You can’t leave; you just move lower down the food chain.”

“Leave where, Nicky?”

“It’s a lifetime plan,” she continued, as if Wyatt hadn’t spoken. “Only way out is to die. But Vero wants to fly. You understand, don’t you? You believe me?”

“Understand what, Nicole?”

“Why I had to kill her. She never should’ve gone to the park that day. Want to play with dolls, little girl? I f*cking hate dolls!”

“Nicole.” Wyatt took a slow step forward, the edge in her voice starting to worry him, not to mention the glassy sheen in her eyes. “Why don’t you take a deep breath, then start from the beginning. Take us back to the park. Which park are you talking about? What happened there?”

“Vero is learning to fly,” Nicky whispered.

“I thought Vero didn’t exist,” Kevin spoke up.

“Then why does my husband have her picture?”

Wyatt was still processing that bit of information as Nicole Frank turned away from them.

Then flung herself down the ravine into the darkness below.


* * *



WYATT HATED THIS damn hillside. The slippery, sliding descent, with mud that not only oozed over the soles of his boots but splattered up around his legs. Let alone the hidden rocks, random twigs, prickly bushes, just waiting to trip up a man and send him flying.

He didn’t even have a flashlight on him. No, that would’ve been too smart, too prepared. And if there was one thing Wyatt was learning, chasing a barely seen woman through a barely lit half-moon night, it was that dealing with a thrice-concussed woman was a lot like dealing with the mentally ill. Maybe she was all there. But maybe she wasn’t. Either way, he should’ve started this night prepared for anything. Including vomit, midnight confessions and possible murder charges.

Kevin had caught up to him. The detective was breathing hard, stumbling awkwardly as his foot slid out on a patch of wet grass.

“Head right,” Wyatt ordered. “I think she’s going for the crash site. We can cut her off.”

Kevin grunted his agreement; then both men went back to focusing on their footing. Even though the rain had finally ended yesterday, the ground remained saturated from the weeks of precipitation before that. One of the rainiest falls on record, Kevin had announced the other morning.

Wyatt hated this damn ravine.

He caught sight of Nicky’s form again. She appeared to be veering around one of the prickly bushes. Briefly, her hair tangled. She jerked the strands free, kept on trucking. Wherever she was going, she was determined to get there.