Page 28 of Silent Deception
“I think I need a notebook like that. I lived here until I was ten, and there are so many people here that I don’t remember, or who seem vaguely familiar.” It left her with a strange sense of disconnectedness.
“Don’t let it bother you. I was away for a long time, too, and this townhaschanged a great deal.”
He was one of the few people who’d been open and friendly to her since she’d come to town. She wished she didn’t need to bring up her family’s troubled past. “I...guess you were in town eighteen months ago, then. My father...”
His affable expression faded to one of regret. “My deputies and I were clear across the county at a six-vehicle pile-up on the interstate. By the time I arrived at the scene of your father’s accident, the ambulance had taken him to the hospital.”
“My father drove that road all his life. The weather was good, and that particular curve isn’t even sharp.” She felt her lower lip start to tremble and swallowed hard. “I just can’t understand how he could have veered off right there, in broad daylight.”
“Unfortunately, we see single-car accidents all the time. Someone is distracted or dozes off for an instant. Maybe a deer bounds across the road and they swerve. Sometimes it’s alcohol, though your dad was fine. One guy I know was startled by a low-flying wild turkey that cracked his windshield. He ended up in the river.”
“I don’t believe—” she hesitated, already seeing the doubt and resigned expectation in his eyes “—that my father’s death was an accident. Maybe someone forced my father off the road, or damaged his truck beforehand.”
“I understand. Believe me, we all want to second-guess these things a hundred different ways. We want a reason. Something—or someone to blame.”
“But how do you know forsure?”
“Once the wrecker got his truck up on the road, we checked it over. There was a lot of rollover damage, but the steering wheel and brakes seemed fine.”
“But you said the truck was damaged. Could there have been paint marks from another vehicle that rammed into its side? Marks you might’ve missed?” She saw the sympathy in his eyes. “I’d like to see the report.”
“There was an investigation, ma’am. There was no evidence of skid marks from another vehicle. No witnesses. Interviews of people who knew him well uncovered no enemies.” Wade swiveled his chair, stood and went to a bank of files along the wall. After thumbing through a number of tabbed folders, he withdrew one and brought it back to the desk. “I’m not sure if you want to see these. They aren’t of your father at the scene, but the damage to his truck was significant. And...I believe there was some blood.”
“Please.” She gingerly opened the file to find a slim stack of documents. Behind them was an envelope of photos. Time slowed to a crawl. She dreaded the evidence of her father’s death, yet needed, finally, to put her doubts to rest.
She dealt the four-by-six color photos out onto the desk, one by one. The crumpled front end of his Chevy truck. The twisted bed and tailgate revealing the crushing damage to the roof of the cab—as if a giant had slammed his foot on it. The sides of the vehicle were battered and muddy. Clumps of grass hung from the jagged spikes where the side view mirrors had been torn away. A narrow streak of bright crimson trailing down the side of the driver’s side door.
Sadness and nausea welled until they almost clogged her throat. “I—I didn’t realize,” she whispered as she sat back in her chair and rested her fingertips against her eyelids, concentrating on taking slow, even breaths.
She knew the truck well, because he’d driven it for decades. It had been a dented rust bucket from bumper to bumper even before the accident, a junker pieced together with different colors on each fender and a door painted primer-gray. Rust had already turned the quarter panels to fragile lace.
It was a truck that spoke of little success and even less hope for the future. Given its condition and preexisting dents, plus the mud and the grass and the damage from the accident itself, finding any sort of evidence would have been a sheer stroke of luck.
She felt a gentle touch on her shoulder and opened her eyes to find the sheriff offering her a glass of cold water. She accepted it and held it against her cheek until her stomach quit rolling and she didn’t feel quite so dizzy.
She managed a smile. “Thank you. I didn’t mean to doubt your investigation, but I needed to know.”
“I’m sorry about your loss, Ms. Cantrell. Death is hard, but death with no reason is even more difficult.”
“That isn’t quite what I meant.” She slid the photographs back into the envelope, closed the folder, and handed it back to him. “I now know that evidence at the scene would’ve been very difficult to gather, but I’m still not convinced his death was accidental. If I wanted to find that old truck, where would I look?”
He studied her for a moment. “I know it’s hard to let go of this, but—”
“I need to find it. Please.”
He blew out a deep breath. “Out behind Buddy’s Auto Shop. He keeps a lot of old vehicles and wrecks for parts. But it’s been eighteen months, ma’am. I expect that old truck was crushed and melted down by now. There wasn’t much left of it as it was.”
“I hope I can find something, because there’s not much left of my dad’s honor, either.”
* * * *
COACHING FOURTH-GRADEfootball had to be about as frustrating as trying to herd cats, but the little fellers were so serious, so determined, that Ryan could only lean against the hood of his truck and grin.
Few of them could hang on to the ball if it inadvertently landed in their hands. Some of them ran the wrong way or bent over to study things they found in the grass. The ones who did run the right way tended to trip and fall if they got up too much speed. Cody had missed a half-dozen catches.
The parents rimming the makeshift football field set up in the schoolyard were something to watch, too, but he didn’t like them nearly as much. Several impatient and angry fathers were yelling at their sons as if the world depended on the next haphazard play. Some of the moms were getting into it a little too much, as well.
If he were a dad, he’d becheering his son on.
