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Barbara squinted into the white. “I have no idea…about anything anymore. Is Nathan Bell even Nathan Bell?”
“You think he’s this Mitch Roberts?”
“If so, why pose as Nathan Bell? What does he get out of it?”
“A house,” Tucker said. “And all the stuff inside. It looked like they were packing stuff up to sell, right?”
She thought about this. “So, Roberts killed Nathan and took his identity…for that old wreck of a house and some family silver?”
Tucker shrugged. “I’ve seen people killed for less.”
“And how does Jacob fit in?”
“Maybe he’s just dragged along for the ride.”
Can’t choose your parents, Barbara thought again.
“Let’s just hope we can find him in time,” she said.
“Yeah.”
Tucker didn’t ask “in time” for what. They both knew. The blood, all that blood.
The truck crawled onwards. Barbara wanted to ram her foot down on the accelerator, but she didn’t dare. The tires’ grip felt precarious, and the snow was settling on the windscreen faster than the wipers could shove it off. The truck’s headlights barely cut through the misty sheet of white in front.
Tucker suddenly leaned forward and pointed. “Up ahead. Look.”
Barbara squinted. His eyesight was better than hers, but now she could just make out a red shape ahead, off the road to their right. A truck, its back end in the air, bonnet smashed into a tree trunk.
“Dammit.”
She pulled the police truck over, stopped and stuck the hazards on. They climbed out and approached the truck. The brake lights glowed faintly. The back looked relatively unscathed. It was only when they reached the front of the vehicle that they could see the damage.
The impact had caused the entire hood to concertina, like a crumpled tin can. The windscreen was smashed out, blood smeared all over the jagged glass. Barbara peered inside. A mangled mess. The dash and steering wheel were rammed so hard into the seats that it was hard to see where one ended and the other began. More slick trails of dark red were smeared over what was left of the interior. But the cab was empty.
Barbara turned. “Let’s look around.”
They trudged through the snow. A short distance away, Barbara spotted something black half buried in the white. She walked up to it. A backpack. Must have got thrown out of the cab. She unbuckled it clumsily with her gloved hands. Stuffed inside was a bundle of men’s clothes. Nathan’s, she thought. So, he’d been in the truck. Where was he now?
It was several meters before they saw the body. That happened sometimes in a crash. No seatbelt. High impact. A body could fly a long way. Sometimes not all of it at the same time. The figure lay face down in the snow, limbs flung out in a star shape. But the angles were all wrong. The arms crooked, palms facing up, knees twisted the wrong way. Blood formed a halo around the head.
Barbara waded through the drifts toward the body, Tucker close behind. She knelt down. You weren’t supposed to move crash victims in case you caused more injuries, but Barbara could tell it was already too late here. She turned the body over.
Jacob. His head flopped sickeningly on his neck, which had been ripped open in a wide scarlet grin. His clothes were lacerated with broken glass, blood seeping from multiple wounds. His eyes stared blankly upward, snowflakes landing and melting on the delicate corneas.
“Damn!” Barbara cursed. Then she turned away and screamed into the storm. “Fuck and shit and screw your Gods to hell and back!”
She took a few deep breaths, the biting air scouring her throat.
“Feel better?” Tucker asked.
“No.”
“You couldn’t have done anything. It was an accident.”
She turned on him. “We were there. We were there in that damn house, and we knew something was wrong. We could have saved him.”
“You can’t save them all,” he said thickly.
