Tunnel Vision (2 page)

“What can I say, Underwood, it was a dull night and I’ve already used up my departmental quota of sleep. Is Ramirez at the scene?”

“Uh, I don’t know Ramirez, Detective. This is my first day.”

Brodie nodded as she surveyed the scene. Finally she turned her attention back to the officer. “Well, listen, another detective named Nicholls will be showing up in a little while. You can’t miss him. Blond, surfer-looking type. Tell him I’m here somewhere.”

“Yes, ma’am. Will do.”

She would have sworn the patrolman was going to salute as she struggled to look serious, hoping she hadn’t looked that innocent twenty-five years earlier when she began her first day as a patrol officer. She continued across the median and recognized an officer standing in the westbound lane. She pulled her car over, leaning partway out the window as she approached.

“Hey, Southard! Seen Ramirez?”

“That you, Brodie? What the hell you doin’ out here this late?”

“Not sure yet.”

“Ramirez should be somewhere down by the fire trucks.” He looked appreciatively at the Camaro. “Let me know when you’re ready to sell that baby,” he said.“Won’t be in your lifetime,” she replied with a smile.

Waving a hand at Southard, she let her vehicle roll closer to the scene before braking and turning off the ignition. Getting out of the car and stretching the kinks out of her thin five-ten frame, she reached into the back seat and retrieved her police jacket. By the time she arrived the area was well lit by emergency vehicles. She surveyed the ground leading to the still smoldering vehicle as she walked toward it. An ambulance was backed onto the grass near the site, and she finally spotted Patrol Officer Eduardo Ramirez interviewing a fireman near the rear of the ambulance. Ramirez was an experienced patrol officer who, in her opinion, should have been moved up to detective years ago. He was writing in a small notebook as she shoved her hands into her jeans’

pockets and sauntered up to the men.

“Ramirez.”

The stout Hispanic officer turned his head toward her and continued writing. “Just a sec, Lieutenant.”

She nodded and moved toward the burned car. Apparently the fire had spread into the heavy bushes and overgrown grasses surrounding the area, and three or four firemen were pulling at the underbrush with long poles, looking for potential hot spots. Ramirez joined her and looked around.

“Messy, huh,” he said.

“Yeah. So why’d you feel the need to drag my happy ass out of bed for a fucking traffic accident?

Even a messy one,” she asked as she lit a cigarette, flipped her lighter shut with a metallic click and took a deep drag.

“Didn’t look right somehow. Come on,” Ramirez motioned.

As Brodie followed him, Ramirez began to point out things around the vehicle.

“No plates, front or rear,” Ramirez said shining his flashlight on the plate holder below the vehicle trunk.

He moved to the front of the vehicle and stopped again. “What do you see?” he asked.

She walked around the front end of the car before answering. “Hood’s up and the engine appears to have been the source of the initial fire. Was there an explosion?”

“Yep, but not from the gas tank or the engine.”

She squatted down and looked at the front of the car. “What’s the scenario?”

“Driver speeds down the hill, loses control, vehicle leaves the road, strikes these trees, catches fire and explodes.”

“It doesn’t look like there’s much damage to the front end from the impact, certainly not enough to cause an explosion unless it’s a very touchy vehicle.”

“That’s what I thought. There’s barely a dent in the front end. And look over here, Brodie.”

Putting her hands on her knees, she pushed herself up slowly, grimacing as her knees crackled, and followed Ramirez.

“I didn’t notice this until the fire was out.”

Ramirez shined his flashlight on a semi-circular burned area a few feet from the car. “See how round this area is? Looks like someone was throwing something onto the fire. You know, keeping it going.”

“Sounds like a stretch to me, buddy.”

“There are footprints just outside the burned area.”

“Hell, Ramirez, there were a dozen people

wandering around in here putting the fire out.”

“But they all wear the rubber boots the Fire Department issues. Pretty distinctive tread. These are different.”

Brodie walked over to the circular area and ran the beam from her police flashlight around the edges of the burned grass. She squatted down again and adjusted her glasses to see the faint indentations in the grass and dirt.

“Anyone else been around here?” she asked

without looking back at Ramirez.

“Just me and the fireboys. The witness said he wasn’t on this side of the car.”

She stood up and turned around. “What witness?”

“Well, he’s not really a witness. He came up on the scene after the explosion. Some college kid comin’

home for spring break. Name’s Jeff Quincy.”

“You’ve already questioned him?”

“Just preliminary stuff. I told him to wait for you. He’s up by the highway, probably still shakin’. He was pretty spooked when I got here.”

“Cordon off this area until we can get a better look at it in the daylight. Good job, Ramirez.”

“Thanks, RB.”

“So when you moving to detectives? We’ll have a vacancy soon,” Brodie asked with a smile, already knowing the answer.

“Never.”

“And miss playing Sherlock Holmes?”

“I still do that and don’t have to wear no stinkin’

coat and tie. And I never get called out in the middle of the night unless it’s my shift.”

“So, where’s this semi-witness?” she asked. Ramirez pointed to an older-model Toyota parked on the shoulder of the highway. “I assigned a patrol officer to stay with him until you got here so he wouldn’t wander off.”

“Okay. Make sure you put everything you’ve noticed out here in your report. And that includes anything you think is suspicious. Thanks, Ramirez.”

ALMOST TWO HOURS had passed since he called 9-1-1 and his bladder was telling him he shouldn’t have Super-Sized that last soft drink. He glanced at his watch. It was nearly one-thirty. As he looked up again, he saw a thin middle-aged woman in jeans and a police windbreaker walking along the shoulder.

“You the one who called this in?” the woman asked as she strode toward him.

He nodded as he slid off the hood of the Toyota.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lieutenant Brodie,” she said casually, field stripping her cigarette and stuffing the remaining filter in the pocket of her jeans. “Cedar Springs PD.”

Glancing at the patrol officer, who looked bored, she said, “Thanks for keeping an eye on Mr. Quincy until I got here, officer. You can return to your patrol duties now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the officer nodded.

Returning her attention to the nervous-looking teenager, she leaned against the side of his car. “Why don’t you tell me what you saw?”

“I really didn’t see anything. I saw a flash ahead of me and after I came over the hill I saw there had been an accident and the car over there was on fire.”

“Is that when you called in the accident report?”

“No. I thought someone might have been thrown from the car, so I ran down there to check.”

“Did you find anyone?” she asked as she looked toward the vehicle.

Jeff shook his head. “No, I didn’t see anyone. At least not on this side of the car. Before I could look too closely, I smelled this...this...”

“Yeah, I get the picture.”

“Then I ran back and called for help. I guess nobody can help whoever was in there now, can they?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” she said. “Let me get an address and phone number for you in case we have more questions later. We’ll need you to come in tomorrow and make a statement, just for the record.”

She handed him a small notebook and he wrote down his name, his parent’s address and phone number.

Glancing at the notebook, she said, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Quincy. We’ll be in touch.”

“Um, how do you think it happened, Ms. Brodie?”

“Lieutenant,” she corrected him. “Hard to tell at night. Was he going very fast when he passed you?”

“He didn’t pass me. I never even saw his tail lights ahead of me.”

“You didn’t see his tail lights at any time?”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. No tail lights and no one passed me. I just saw the flash ahead of me.”

“It could have been a delayed explosion after the car hit the trees. We’ll know more when it’s light.”

As he began slowly pulling away, a half-smile crossed Brodie’s lips. Like others who happened upon an accident or some other tragedy, he seemed reluctant to leave. Hell, he’ll probably envision a career in law enforcement because of this, she thought. She began walking toward the wreckage again when another vehicle pulled off the road and came to a grinding stop near her, throwing up a small cloud of dust. Squinting into the headlights, she recognized the silhouette of her partner, Curtis Nicholls. He exited the car quickly and strode toward her, still adjusting his tie and finger-combing his thick blond hair.

“What’ve we got, RB?”

“Probably just a traffic accident. Fell asleep at the wheel or drunk. Hope it didn’t interrupt your evening,” she said.

“The lady was leaving anyway,” he said with a boyish grin.

Since Curtis Nicholls had joined the Cedar Springs PD and become her partner, Brodie had found him to be occasionally intolerant and a shameless womanizer. She couldn’t fault him for the

womanizing part, having been accused of the same thing herself a few times by women who had been in a position to know.

As they reached the vehicle, firemen at the scene were making their first attempt at pulling the driver’s side door open. Heat vapors drifted off the wet metal as the men worked cautiously to avoid making contact with the hot car. Brodie moved around the vehicle, jotting down notes in a worn black notebook she carried in the breast pocket of her jacket. From what little was left of the car it appeared to be an older model Mercedes Benz. As she pondered the age of the vehicle, a loud piercing scream of metal scraping against metal split the quiet. She winced as every filling in her mouth responded to the sound. The two detectives returned to the driver’s side of the vehicle as firemen were finally successful in prying the door open. Inside they saw the remains of what had once been a person, but were unable to determine whether it had been a man or a woman. To Brodie the head resembled pictures she had seen of desiccated Egyptian mummies after they had been unwrapped. The blackened cheeks were sunken in and the jaw had dropped. It seemed that the unrecognizable face was laughing at her and even though it presented a scene of horror, she was compellingly drawn to stare at the remains.

“When will you get the body out?” she asked a fireman standing nearby.

The fireman shook his head. “Probably have to wait for things to cool down a little more. Hell of a mess, ain’t it?”

“Yeah. Let us know when you can remove it. We’ll keep routing traffic and sightseers around the area until then.”

“It’ll probably be another hour or two.” Motioning toward the car with his chin, he added, “It won’t take the crispy critter there nearly as long to cool down as the vehicle itself. They may not be able to tow this heap away until after dawn.”

“When you get the body out transfer it to the Travis County Medical Examiner for autopsy.” Brodie turned to Nicholls and said. “We might be able to trace the car through DMV, but the driver might not be the owner.”

“I’ll check on the VIN after it cools down,”

Nicholls said. “At least it’s a starting place.”

“Let’s see where the vehicle left the road.”

Uniformed officers were still cordoning off the area as Brodie and Nicholls cast flashlight beams across the grass leading to the road. On the highway itself, they looked for skid marks, which might indicate speed and abrupt braking.

Nicholls shined his light up and down the road. “I don’t see a damn thing, RB. Looks like he didn’t bother to use the brakes. Maybe he fell asleep at the wheel and just left the road.”

“Could be,” she said. “Judging from the final position of the vehicle it’s a straight line from the road to where the vehicle struck the trees. There was minimal damage, at best, to the front end so there couldn’t have been much of an impact.”

“Did you notice that area back there?” Nicholls says, shining his light along the presumed path of the vehicle.

“Yeah. What do you make of that?”

“Well, the ground is pretty chopped up and dippy. If the car hit it doing any speed at all, it should have awakened a dead man. Maybe the driver had a heart attack or something.”

“The kid who called it in said no one passed him and swears he didn’t see any tail lights before he saw the explosion.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Might be a torch job. Ramirez was suspicious enough to call us in and he’s pretty thorough at working scenes. He pointed out an area near the vehicle where someone could have been standing, but it’s hard to tell much in the dark. We’ll have to wait until the ME hands down his ruling from atop Mount Sinai to determine if it’s an accident or not.”

Brodie rubbed her eyes and shined her flashlight on her wristwatch. Two forty-five. “Shit,” she muttered to herself.

“You look beat. Go home and get some rest.”

Nicholls looked back at the car. “The paperwork can wait a few hours and Charcoal Bill back there’s not going anywhere for a while.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You gonna stick around?”

“I’ll wait until they remove the remains and take the pictures. The crime scene boys can take care of the rest of it.”

SHE TRIED TO get back to sleep when she got home, but no matter how hard she concentrated on sleeping, it refused to come again. After two hours of tossing and turning, she gave up. Lighting a cigarette, she went into the kitchen, made a pot of coffee, and watched the hot, brown liquid trickle slowly into the waiting pot. As she turned to get a cup out of the dish drainer, she tripped over a furry, black heap lying on the floor near her feet.