“I’m not a cop. I doubt I’d have much to add.”
“We’ll see.” He tucked his notepad back into his pocket and rolled to his feet. “You have an interesting way of finding things that don’t want to be found.”
Hideaway Road had comeby its name honestly—through dishonest people. Two hundred years ago, Mercy River wasn’t much more than a train station, trading post, and hotel with rooms by the hour. Hideaway Road back then was an elk migration trail used by Mercy River’s less savory citizens to hide out after relieving weary travelers of their valuables.
The road was paved now, but it could still be treacherous, particularly where it curved around the river. Yellow signs warned drivers to take the bend at thirty-five miles per hour. Three drivers in the last ten years had ignored that warning—twice with drunk drivers, and once with a showoff teenager—and with no guardrail to catch them, they went right over the edge. All three had died.
The county responded by putting up another sign.
Miguel’s truck was fifty feet down the embankment. He had gone rear first over the edge and collided with a tree, which had probably saved his life, even as it hadbroken his bones and left him with a concussion. The airbag had deployed, and the seatbelt had kept him from flying through the windshield.
“You can see from the tire tracks here that Miguel hit the brakes. The front tires locked up and the back tires kept spinning, sending him into a skid. Went tail first.” Sherwood pointed to the deep black marks in the gray asphalt.
“So he must have been going faster than thirty-five,” I noted.
“Most locals do. You take this road long enough, you tend to get comfortable with it. You’ll see.”
I had been in Mercy River for eight years now, but to people who had been here for two or three generations, I was still a newcomer.
“He was heading to the ranch?” I asked, ignoring his dig.
Sherwood nodded. “That’s what he told us.”
“It was dark. They start cooking at four-thirty, feeding the ranch hands first, then the lodge staff, then the guests. He drives in Monday mornings, stays the week at the bunkhouse, then drives back home to his folks’ house on Friday.” I rubbed my chin. “He said the bright light came out of nowhere?”
“That’s right.”
I considered. The drop-off to the river was on one side of the road, and the other side was a copse of trees that bordered pastureland. But standing here, whereMiguel’s truck left the road, I could see cars along the road beyond the bend. “Miguel should have seen the headlights coming.”
“Maybe he dozed off, and the headlights woke him up.” But I knew the sheriff doubted his own hypothesis, or he wouldn’t have brought me out here.
I frowned. What were we missing?Monday morning. “It was raining. Miguel wouldn’t have fallen asleep at the wheel. Not in a storm like that. He would have been paying attention.” I looked past the bend again. “Visibility would have been worse, though.”
“So, an accident.”
“Then why didn’t the other car stop? Why didn’t someone call for help?”
Sherwood shrugged. “Drunk. High. Scared. Asshole. Pick your motive, and I’ve seen it. You know as well as I do that there are all kinds of people in this world, and even good people make shitty choices from time to time.”
If Sherwood had known exactly how that statement applied to me, he wouldn’t be standing next to me now, debating the finer points of humanity as it applied to a crime scene. He’d arrest me.
I said nothing as I surveyed the stretch of road. “No skid marks from the other driver? He didn’t even try to brake?” Asshole.
Two short, dark marks caught my eye by the edge ofthe road. They couldn’t have been more than a yard in length. I squatted down to get a closer look.
Sherwood folded his arms. “I saw that, too. Probably from a different incident. The angle is all wrong for it to have been another driver coming around the bend.”
I turned my head, following the angle. If the vehicle that made this mark had kept going in a straight line, it would have gone straight into the oncoming lane at the top of the bend and then over the edge.
I looked the other way, toward the trees. The vehicle that left those marks would have come from there, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
But neither did the broken grass and weeds, in two sections six feet apart.
I straightened. “A vehicle was parked there under the trees. Can’t say for sure that it was there Monday morning, but it couldn’t have been too long ago.”
Sherwood came to stand next to me. His expression didn’t change as he stared at the faint marks with his hands on his hips. “Dammit,” he swore softly. “Someone was waiting for him. Someone who knew he’d be coming this way at this time.”
“That’s a big jump from some broken weeds.” But my gut was telling me the same thing. Someone had been waiting for him that stormy morning. This wasn’t an accident.
