“10-52, Eagle Eye?” asked the female dispatcher.
“Negative, dispatch. 10-79.”
“Oh. Uh, copy, Eagle Eye.”
Savannah’s heart sank. It felt like it had just hit the dirty, dusty floor. She whirled to face Dirk and saw that he had the same stricken expression on his face that she was sure she was wearing on hers.
“No,” she whispered.
“It’s not. Not necessarily,” Dirk said, stepping closer to her and putting his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t go there, Van. You don’t know.”
But she did know. Deep in her soul.
“Do you have another vehicle to rent?” she asked Larry.
He hemmed and hawed a moment, then said, “Not as nice as the Chevy.”
“What do you have?” Dirk demanded. “Speak up, man.”
“An oldie. It’s a 1984 Bronco. She’s rusty and looks awful, but she’ll get you where you wanna go.”
“That old nasty thing I saw out front when we pulled up?” Dirk asked. “The green one with the purple fender and yellow driver’s door?”
“That’s the one.”
Dirk was already pulling out his wallet. “How much for the day?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t ever rented it out, and—”
Slapping two twenties on the counter, Dirk said, “Gimme the keys, dude. Now!”
When Larry hesitated, Dirk added, “Unless you want me to just commandeer it in the name of the law.”
Savannah held her breath. She knew that Dirk had no authority to do such a thing in Alaska. It might even be iffy in California, since he wouldn’t be using the vehicle to pursue a fleeing felon.
But Dirk had never let little technicalities like that get in his way when he was riled up.
“Okay. Okay.” Larry pulled a large ring of keys off his belt and thumbed through it until he found the right one. As he peeled it off the ring, he said, “I’m doing you a big favor here. If it happens to be my pretty red car that’s wrecked up there, you let me know as soon as you can, okay?”
“Sure.” Dirk grabbed the key from him, and he and Savannah rushed to the door.
She paused a moment before leaving and turned back to Larry, who was fondling his twenties. “Which way to Copper Creek Road and that glacier?” she asked.
“Out the driveway, turn right. Half a mile down to the road. Turn right again. The glacier’s about four miles down.”
“Thanks.” She sailed out the door with Dirk.
It wasn’t until they were in the old Bronco and hurtling down the bumpy road that she said, “Eagle Eye refused an ambulance.”
“I know, honey.”
“And a 10-79.”
“I heard.”
“Send a coroner. That’s as bad as it gets.”
Dirk said nothing. He just nodded.
“It’s her.” Tears filled Savannah’s eyes and squeezed her throat until she could scarcely breathe.
Dirk reached over, grabbed her thigh, and gave it a shake. “You don’t know that, babe. It ain’t her till it’s her.”
“I do know. It’s her.”
Chapter 13
Long before Savannah caught sight of the crashed vehicle, she smelled the horrible, acrid odor of it and saw the black cloud of smoke staining the otherwise perfect blue sky.
Neither she nor Dirk had spoken since their initial conversation when they had left Larry’s.
The silence inside the Bronco was deafening.
“Probably around this next corner,” she heard Dirk mumble to himself as he guided the rented jalopy around a tight curve in the two-lane road.
Savannah tried to steal herself for what she would see. But if she had learned anything, it was that some sights were just too terrible. No amount of armor could protect the heart from such soul-scarring visions.
Once seen, they would always be remembered.
In the course of her career she had seen things that still caused her to wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with tears streaming down her face.
Instinctively, she knew that within moments she would be adding one more to her ever-lengthening list of nightmares.
No sooner had Dirk rounded the curve than they saw it. There, at the bottom of a long, steep hill, sat the wreckage of a red vehicle.
Or what was left of one.
She could tell that it was a Chevrolet HHR, but only barely.
Having apparently missed the sharp left turn at the bottom of the incline, the SUV had left the road and crashed into the thick forest of old-growth evergreens.
Nearby sat an old fire engine and one patrol car with an Alaska State Trooper insignia on the side. Three firemen and two troopers were milling about, peering at the wreckage.
“Not much of a turnout,” Dirk remarked. “I guess that’s what you get in the way of response from a town that’s less than a mile long.”
Savannah couldn’t reply for the lump in her throat that felt like it was choking her. Her eyes burned, and it wasn’t from the smoke in the air or the awful stench.
As they drew close to the wreck, she could see that the front end of the vehicle was completely destroyed, having been virtually cut in half by the trunk of the large fir tree it had struck, head on.
What she could see of the exterior of the car was badly scorched by what must have been a terribly hot fire. There was little left of the exterior paint to indicate that the vehicle had once been red.
Only the last two letters of the license plate were visible: “BB”
Deep in Savannah’s brain, the part reserved for thinking nonsensical things at the most inappropriate times, she wondered why she was surprised to see those letters, those telltale letters that further confirmed her worst fears.
The moment Dirk stopped the car, she jumped out and ran toward the wreckage. But before she reached the car, one of the troopers approached her, his hand raised.
“Hey! Stop right there, ma’am. Don’t come any closer.”
She ignored him and tried to get around him.
He reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “I told you to stop, lady!” he said, tightening his grip. “You don’t want to go over there. Believe me.”
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t understand. I know them,” Savannah told him.
“All the more reason why you shouldn’t,” the trooper replied, his tone softened, his face registering sympathy and compassion. “Believe me, there’s nothing you or anybody else can do for them right now.”
Dirk walked up and gently, but firmly, put his hand over the trooper’s hand and pulled it off Savannah’s arm. “I’ve got this now,” Dirk told him. “Thanks.”
With an understanding nod, the young man released her.
Dirk showed him his badge and read the trooper’s name tag. “Corporal Riggs, I’m Detective Sergeant Dirk Coulter. This is my wife, Savannah. We have reason to believe some people we know are in that vehicle, and we’d like to confirm their identities.”
Riggs cast a doubtful glance over his shoulder at the wreck. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not going to be able to identify those folks. The only way you’ll get a positive ID on them is with dental records.”
“That bad, huh?” Dirk said.
“Very, very bad, sir.”
Savannah stood there, listening to their exchanges, saying nothing. She was waiting. Waiting for another part of her brain, one that was normally dormant during day-to-day life, to come to the fore. It was the purely intellectual, logical, non-emotional, and professional part that dealt with death. The mystery, the horror, the complexity of it.
Few people had seen as many dead bodies as she had, and for that, she envied them. Death was an alien entity to most folks. The occasional wake and funeral, the grief of missing a loved one, mourning the loss of their beloved presence . . . that was what the average person knew about the Grim Reaper.
But Savannah had seen his work firsthand, before the hospitals an
d undertakers had a chance to sanitize it. She knew all too well the brutality with which he sometimes harvested his victims.
“We have to see them,” she said softly.
Corporal Riggs leaned closer to her. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
“I have to see her,” she said more loudly. She looked directly into his eyes and added, “It doesn’t matter how bad they are. My husband and I are trained crime scene investigators. We were charged with protecting the author, Natasha Van Cleef, and we have every reason to believe that she and her husband, at least their bodies, are in that car.”
In a moment of unexpected familiarity and intimacy, even for her, she laid her hand on the young trooper’s cheek and gave it an almost affectionate pat. “I know you’re trying to spare me, darlin’, to keep me from seeing what you just saw yourself and wish you hadn’t. But you can’t protect me. Not this time. We’re going to do at least a preliminary investigation of this scene. Let’s just say that if you try to stop us, it’s not going to be worth your while.”
Riggs seemed to know that he had met his match, because he reached up, took her hand from his face, and patted it. Then he moved aside and allowed them both to pass.
As they neared the vehicle, the horrific stench grew stronger and stronger with every step, and for a moment, Savannah thought she would surely vomit. But she fought the urge with all her might. The last thing she needed was to be sick in front of these male cops and firemen. Though she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that they’d done the same thing when they’d first arrived.
Most vehicle fires produced a dreadful odor, and the SUV was no exception. Burning rubber, electrical wires, petroleum products, not to mention scorched carpet and upholstery, combined into a toxic mix of fumes that human lungs were loath to breathe.
Savannah also resisted her body’s demand that she pull her shirt collar over her nose and mouth. This wasn’t the time or the place to appear delicate.
“Good God,” she heard her husband say behind her. “Anybody got an extra couple of masks they aren’t using? This stinks bad enough to gag a skunk.”
It was only then that she realized the firemen were wearing full face respirators. Even the second trooper, who was bent over, looking into the vehicle, had a white, industrial-grade dust mask over the lower half of his face.
But before anyone could supply them with masks, Savannah moved around to the passenger’s side of the car and looked through the broken window.
In an instant, all concerns about the nauseating stench and toxic fumes left her mind.
The interior of the vehicle was like a muddy, macabre collage of grays, blacks, and dingy whites. It was hard to discern any of the ruined forms and name them for what they once had been.
But after a few moments, Savannah’s addled brain was able to make sense of the horror she was seeing.
Once seen, she wished for the impossible. That it could be unseen.
Two human bodies, genders indeterminable, sat in the front seats amid the incinerated rubble. Little remained of the living creatures they had once been. Charred far beyond recognition, they were little more than ash and blackened bones.
She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. The sight held her mind and heart hostage. Only vaguely was she aware of Dirk standing at her right shoulder, his hand on her back.
“Is it them?” His voice sounded far away, as though he was standing at the opposite end of the long, dark tunnel.
“I don’t know,” she heard herself whisper. “Can’t tell. They’re mostly . . . they’re almost completely . . .”
She thought of the vibrant woman who had sat in her backyard under the wisteria arbor, drinking lemonade. Frightened as she was that day, Natasha Van Cleef had courageously announced that no one would keep her from fulfilling her duties to her adoring public.
Unfortunately, she had been wrong. The person who had penned those threatening notes had done exactly what they said they would do.
Natasha Van Cleef had, indeed, died a terrible death.
Savannah thought of the author sitting at her dressing table, trying to twist her thick silver curls into some semblance of a formal updo with hands that were trembling.
Her fans expected it, and she was determined she would meet their expectations.
Now those gleaming curls were gone. The brave, vital woman, who had written so many books and given so many people hours and hours of pleasure, was gone.
Savannah knew that the author would be mourned by thousands and thousands of people who had never met her but, because of her writing, felt they knew her well.
“Hello, I’m Sergeant Bodin,” the older trooper said as he walked around the back of the car to join them. He removed his mask and added, “Corporal Riggs says you knew these people.”
“I knew her well,” Savannah answered immediately, and she meant it.
After all, she was one of Natasha’s readers and, like all writers and readers, their hearts had touched on some level. The intimacy of that contact was something understood only by authors, who spilled the very essence of themselves onto paper, and their readers, who absorbed their words deep into their own souls.
“Are you sure it’s her?” Sergeant Bodin asked.
Savannah forced herself to look into the car again, specifically at the left wrist of the body sitting in the passenger seat.
There it was. The charm bracelet.
It was badly burned, like everything around it, and the miniature books were indistinguishable one from the other. But it was a highly distinctive piece of jewelry.
“I’m certain,” she said sadly. “It’s Natasha Van Cleef.”
“Hey, I’ve heard of her,” the sergeant said. “My wife reads her books all the time.”
“We suspect the driver is her husband,” Dirk told the trooper. “His name is Colin Van Cleef. They were both aboard the Arctic Queen. They came ashore this morning and rented this car from a place called Larry’s Rent-All.”
“Yes, I know Larry well,” Bodin replied. “You two, you’re from the ship, also?”
Dirk nodded. “We were hired to provide extra protection for the Van Cleefs on the cruise.”
“Why did they think they’d need extra protection?”
“She received several death threats,” Savannah replied.
No one said anything for several long moments. Savannah didn’t need to ask what the trooper was thinking. The same thing that she was, no doubt. That she had done a lousy job of protecting these people, who had just lost their lives in one of the most grisly ways imaginable.
“They left the ship without telling us,” she heard herself saying in a voice that sounded weak and defensive, even to her own ears. “We were told to leave them alone in their suite until noon. How were we supposed to know they were out here doing”—she waved an arm, indicating the carnage in front of them—“doing this?”
The trooper gave her a look that was far more sympathetic than accusatory. “Before you go feeling too guilty, ma’am, let me say that I’m pretty sure this wasn’t foul play. As awful as it may look because of the fire, we have accidents right here on this curve fairly frequently.”
He turned and pointed up to the top of the hill. “People come roaring down this incline all the time. Especially tourists who don’t know the road. When they get to the bottom here with this tight curve, they spin out and hit a tree. These are old-growth trees, and they don’t give one little bit. We lost a whole family here two years ago, a wreck that was a lot like this one. I think that’s what happened to your friends.”
Savannah wanted desperately to believe him.
She left him and Dirk and walked behind the car where the firemen were gathering up their hoses and extinguishers. Squatting, she studied the pavement, searching for any sign of tire marks. Surely, someone approaching a tight curve at a high speed would have realized their error at some point and applied their brakes.
She saw none.
As she walked back to the ca
r, she forced herself to breathe the foul air more deeply and attempt to discern its components. Yes, there was the scorched rubber and the particularly terrible stench of burnt flesh. But there was another smell. Not as strong, but equally distinct.
She returned to Dirk and the trooper and told them, “There’re no skid marks on the pavement, and I smell gasoline.”
The trooper shrugged. “Not surprising. It’s a car wreck. Probably a broken fuel line somewhere.”
Savannah shook her head. “No. It’s too strong for just a broken fuel line.”
“Then maybe the gas tank ruptured.”
She gave him a doubtful look. “When was the last time you saw a gas tank rupture in an accident? It happens, but very rarely. Those things are built like army tanks now.”
The younger trooper, Riggs, had joined them. “What are you saying? You think somebody used an incendiary liquid? Are you suggesting this was arson?”
“No,” Savannah told him. “I wish that’s all it was. I’m suggesting it’s far more than just simple arson. It’s cold-blooded murder.”
Chapter 14
Sitting in their rented Bronco, Savannah and Dirk watched as the burned-out SUV was loaded onto a flatbed truck.
“That’s pretty bad,” Savannah said, “when the coroner doesn’t even take the bodies out before the vehicle’s moved.”
“They couldn’t help it, Van.” He patted her hand. “Those bodies are, well, you know, really fragile. I doubt they’re coming out of the car intact, and that’s not something you’d want to do out here in the road.”
“I know, I know.” She could feel the sting of tears in her eyes, or maybe it was a reaction to the fumes from the still-smoldering vehicle. She figured it was probably both.
“What do you think of that coroner?” he asked.
Savannah watched as the tall, thin man with graying hair, wearing a dark suit, climbed into an old station wagon and drove away. “At least they called him ‘Doctor.’ That was a relief. I was afraid in a town this small the coroner might be the village dogcatcher. Maybe he’s a real, honest to goodness medical examiner. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
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