Crash & Burn

by Lisa Gardner

  “Gonna top off,” he says.

  He turns off the road, eases in front of a pump.

  “Hungry?” Kevin asks me. “Want a snack or anything?”

  Then, when I hesitate:

  “Come on. Let’s see if they have anything good inside.”

  They’re testing me, I realize. Just how many places did I stop that night? And will I vomit at all of them?

  I climb down from the SUV, leaving my quilt only reluctantly. Wyatt goes to work with the gas pump. I follow Kevin into the gas station, wincing once at the bright lights, wishing I had my hat.

  Inside is nothing special. I don’t puke or grab my head and scream in agony. Instead, I follow Kevin up and down snack aisles. He settles on Pringles; I go with a pack of gum.

  Up front, the bearded guy manning the register glances at me, studies Kevin, no doubt recognizing a county cop, then takes Kevin’s money without comment. Sitting on the countertop is a hunting magazine. As we leave, he picks it back up and resumes reading.

  “Did I pass?” I ask Kevin as we return to the vehicle. Wyatt is already waiting for us, the SUV having obviously not needed that much gas.

  “Nothing familiar?” Kevin presses. “Lights, smell, beer stains all over the floor?”

  “I’ve never stopped here,” I tell him with certainty.

  “Then where’d you go? Wednesday night. You purchased the bottle of scotch around ten P.M., from that store, eighteen miles back. You don’t drive off the road for another seven hours. So where’d you go, Nicky? What did you do for all that time?”

  Wyatt has joined us. He pins me with a matching stare. But I don’t have anything to offer either detective. I open my mouth. I close my mouth.

  “I have no idea,” I say at last.

  “Who’d you meet?” Wyatt asks.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Lover? Private investigator? Why so many secrets, Nicky? If you and Thomas are leading such a charmed life, why all the subterfuge?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  Wyatt shakes his head. “You’re sure you’ve never been here before?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But the liquor store . . .”

  “I stopped there.”

  “Then what, Nicky? Where’d you go?”

  I still can’t answer.

  Finally, Wyatt gives up. He says, “Let’s drive.”

  We pile once more into the car.

  * * *

  VERO IS LEARNING to fly. I think of her. Can nearly feel her sitting in the SUV next to me. Vero is learning to fly. Because by the time she’s six, she already understands this isn’t the life she wants to live; this isn’t the place she wants to be.

  So she dashes around the cramped family room, childish hopes giving her wings.

  The woman will take her to the park. There, she’ll take a seat on a nearby bench. And then, because she’s exhausted, beaten down, or maybe because she had two shots of cheap whiskey for breakfast, she’ll fall asleep. She’ll never see the other girl who appears in the park. Who joins Vero on the swings.

  This girl is fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. She’s dressed today to look like any other kid on the playground. Maybe an older sister, or a babysitter, entertaining her charges.

  She strikes up a conversation with Vero. You like coming to the park? Me, too. What’s your favorite thing to do, game to play? Do you like dolls? I have two dolls. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll grab them from the back of the car.

  Vero is learning to fly.

  But it won’t help her in the end. She’s no match for a strung-out girl, ordered to return with fresh meat or else. She doesn’t expect the light-haired woman who suddenly appears, plunges a needle in her arm.

  Vero never screams. She doesn’t run.

  She stands there. A lonely six-year-old girl who just wanted to play with dolls.

  Then she’s gone.

  Later the woman will rouse herself from the park bench. She will scream. She will run. She will tear that park apart, trying to find the child who was her only reason to live. Police will come. Locals will rally. Dogs will search.

  But by then, Vero will already be too far away, headed to a tower bedroom and a life of ruffled dresses and bleeding rosebushes.

  She will cry. In the beginning, morning, noon and night. She will plead for her mom. She will beg to return to that terrible little apartment. She will fly off the bed, crash into walls. None of it will help her.

  One day, Vero won’t cry anymore. She’ll sit at her table, sip teacups full of spiked punch and do exactly as she is told to do.

  But inside, deep, deep inside . . .

  Vero still longs to fly. And she hasn’t completely given up dreams of flight just yet.

  * * *

  THE SUV SLOWS. The SUV pulls over.

  Wyatt says, “We’re here.”

  Kevin comes around to open my door.

  The night is dark, cold and thick all around us.

  I take one moment to inhale deeply. Then I feel myself die, all over again.

  Vero wants to fly, I think.

  And suddenly, I’m terrified of what will happen next.

  Chapter 19

  I THINK SHE’S taken one too many hits to the head,” Kevin murmured to Wyatt. They were out of the SUV, watching Nicky walk agitated circles at the edge of the road. She was mumbling something under her breath. It sounded like Vero wants to fly . . .

  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 fucking 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.

  She’d killed Vero? Had to kill her, she’d said. Shouldn’t have been in the park that day.

  Except last Wyatt had known, Vero was the post-concussive version of an imaginary friend.

  He was beginning to get a bad feeling about this evening, from Nicky’s strong reaction to the liquor store, to now this escapade. Seemed to him, her brain might be even more scrambled than she and her husband realized. But he was also beginning to wonder if somewhere in that wreckage of gray matter, new and important information was finally coming to light.

  I thought Vero didn’t exist.

  Then why does my husband have her picture?

  Why indeed.

  Having seen Nicky’s encounter with the bush, Wyatt knew enough to cut around it. Which allowed him to gain several more footsteps. This close, he could hear Nicky’s ragged breathing, choking sobs. A woman on the edge.

  Had she really killed a little girl in the park? Nicole Frank, with no known criminal record, had murdered a child sometime between 10 P.M. Wednesday and 5 A.M. Thursday, then transported her body all the way out here?

  But as soon as he thought it, Wyatt knew that couldn’t be the case. The searchers would have found it. The dog would’ve hit on the scent. No way Nicky had a child’s corpse in the back of her Audi. So what, then?

  Nicky hit another tangle of bushes. She slowed. Tried left, then right. Just before she could make her choice, Wyatt launched a flying tackle.

  “Hate this damn ravine,” he grunted as they both went down hard.

  “You don’t understand, you don’t understand. I have to save her.”

  Kevin came crashing over, barely stopping himself before he tumbled over their fallen forms. He planted his feet for balance, then helped pull Wyatt to standing. Next they got Nicky up, positioning her between them, each of them holding an arm. They were all out of breath. And, Wyatt was surprised to see, a mere thirty feet from the accident site.

  “Stop,” Wyatt ordered, keeping his attention on Nicky.

  Kevin looked at him curiously, Nicky more blearily.

  “No talking, no running, no crying.”

  Nicky sniffled.

  “You’re injured, hell, three accidents in six months and now you’re tearing down steep embankments and fleeing from police officers, which just earned you yet another knock on the skull. Stop. Breathe. Focus.”

  Nicky took a deeper breath, though her chest was still heaving, and a hiccupping sound came from her throat.

  “Now: Walk with us.”

  Kevin followed as Wyatt led them the rest of the way to the former scene of the Audi’s last flight. Why not, if she wanted to get here so damn badly. The car was gone, of course. Now all that remained were twisted bits of plastic and metal, shreds of rubber from the tires and glass. Dozens of feet of brilliant shards, twinkling in the moonlight. And maybe it was just his imagination, but he thought the stench of scotch still laced the air.

  Nicky stared at the sea of glass, mesmerized. While her breathing continued to slow, and the manic glaze finally left her face.

  “Tell us about the park,” Wyatt demanded.

  She glanced at him, appearing genuinely puzzled. “What park?”

  Ah yes, composed Nicky versus crazed Nicky. One clammed up; the other couldn’t stop talking. The question was, which of them was actually telling them the truth? Or, perhaps more accurately, which one of them was living in the present? Because Wyatt was growing suspicious that one of the mixed-up elements in Nicole Frank’s head was time line. Today, yesterday and a long time ago were playing out with equal intensity. Meaning maybe it wasn’t so much what she was talking about, but when she was talking about that mattered.

  “What do you see when you stand here?” he asked now.

  She shook her head lightly. “It should be raining.”

  “Like it was Wednesday night.”

  “The rain was pouring down. Inside my car. On my cheeks, soaking my clothes. I could smell the rain, the mud, dug-up dirt.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I had to get out of the car. I had to find Vero.”

  “When did she go missing?”

  A pause. Aha, Wyatt thought, now they were getting somewhere.

  “Vero is six years old,” Nicky whispers. “Then she’s gone. It’s a terrible thing, Sergeant, when a child disappears.”

  “When did this happen, Nicky? Last year? Five years ago? When you were young?”

  “A long time ago.”

  Bingo, Wyatt thought. And abruptly, he felt goose bumps. A detective on a precipice. This had started with an auto accident. But he suspected it was about to get much, much worse.

  “Nicole,” he prodded gently, “I want you to take a moment. Focus. Think. Do you know what happened to six-year-old Vero?”

  “Vero wants to fly,” she murmured. “And then, one night she did.”

  * * *

  HE GAVE HER a few minutes. Watched as
Nicky’s breathing continued to ease, her face regained some color, her eyes some focus. Relax, Wyatt thought. Let it all go. He wanted his witness to slow down, absorb, process. Then they’d talk.

  Beside him, Kevin thrust his hands in his pockets and practiced his patience. Kevin was the Brain, absolutely the guy you wanted for stats or technical questions. But Wyatt was their resident people person. That’s what made him a good cop.

  “Nicky,” he spoke up finally. “I want you to go back to Wednesday night. You’re at home. Your head hurts. You’re resting on the couch. Your phone rings.”

  “I have to leave,” she says immediately.

  Wyatt and Kevin nodded, having heard this part before. Kevin gestured to a fallen tree. They moved over, had Nicky take a seat. As comfortable as one could get in a muddy ravine, Wyatt figured. Anything to keep the suspect talking.

  “You step outside. It smells like rain,” Wyatt continued levelly. He tried to remember her phrase. “It smells like dug-up dirt.”

  Scent was one of the biggest triggers of memory, and in Nicky’s own words, Wednesday night had smelled like a grave.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “You feel the rain on your face.”

  “I hurry to get in my car. I don’t want to get too wet.”

  “Where is Thomas?”

  “Out back, working.”

  “Do you tell him where you’re going?”

  “No. He didn’t want me to start asking questions. It was so long ago, he keeps telling me. Isn’t our life good enough? Can’t we just be happy? But of course, it’s November.”

  “What happens in November?” Wyatt asked curiously.

  “It’s the saddest month of the year.”

  Wyatt and Kevin exchanged glances. While Wyatt was doing the talking, Kevin was doing the note taking. And no doubt already formulating search criteria. For example, any six-year-old girls that went missing and/or were murdered in the month of November. Question was, going back how many years?

  Wyatt took a shot in the dark: “So you contacted Northledge Investigations with your questions. To help you learn what happened . . . in November, so many years ago.”