Page 129 of Maddy's Justice

“Lexus sedan. Looks pretty new,” Clarice said.

“What do you mean, maybe? And again, why are we here?” Childs asked.

“Marty,” Paul said to one of the locals. “Tell him.”

“A jogger out for a run this morning spotted the car. He called us and I was first on the scene.

“I went down to the car and no one was in it. Must have gone over the side last night in the rain.”

“No skid marks,” Paul said.

“I looked inside and no driver. The airbag probably saved her life.”

“Her? You ran the plates?” Childs asked.

“Yep,” the officer said looking at his notes. “Melanie Stewart. Has a Deephaven address.

“There’s some blood but not much. Mostly on the airbag.”

“Probably punched her in the face. May have bloodied her nose or even broken it,” Paul said.

“Okay, so she’s not hurt too bad,” Childs said.

“We sent a car to her house. We’re waiting to hear from them. We’re checking hospitals, but so far, no luck.”

“Why are we…”

“There are, what appear to be, a half a dozen bullet holes on the driver’s side of the car,” the local cop said.

“Clarice…” Childs started to say.

“I’ll call for them,” she quietly said then took several steps away.

“Dammit,” Childs said. “You should’ve left the car down there. This is a crime scene.”

“We didn’t find the bullet holes at first. The tow truck guys did. By then, we figured we might as well bring it up.”

“With the rain and everything, all of the tramping around…” Paul started to say.

“We wouldn’t have found anything, anyway,” Childs said. “Okay. Any footsteps up the hill? The size of a woman’s?”

“No, the rain,” the local cop said.

“Okay, get the car up here. I’ll check the holes to see if they are from a gun. The car stays here until the crime scene people say otherwise.”

Childs, his partner, and the state trooper were at the car when it reached the top. All three checked the five very obvious bullet holes in the driver’s side.

“They’re bullet holes, all right,” Clarice was the first to announce.

“Pretty poor shooting,” the trooper said. “Although,” he continued as Clarice and he stood up straight and took a step back while Childs still examined the holes, “if he was chasing her to shoot her or force her off the road, not easy to shoot straight while doing that.”

“She got lucky with this one,” Childs said pointing to a hole. It was in between the driver’s side window and the back-passenger side window of the four-door Lexus.

“Three or four inches to the left and she’d still be in the car,” Clarice said.

“You’re right,” Childs said to no one in particular while looking through the hole where the driver’s side window used to be. “Not much blood. The airbag punched her in the face and gave her a bloody nose.”

“If that’s all she got out of this, this woman needs to start buying lottery tickets,” Clarice said.

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