“I called him the other day. He said to get a Sig and said he always uses Green Top in Hanover.”
“He’s in North Carolina,” I said.
“I don’t know where he was. I called his pager and he called me back.”
“I have guns. Why didn’t you ask me?”
“I want my own and I’m old enough now.” She could not keep her eyes open much longer.
I found her doctor on the floor and caught up with him for a moment before I left. He was very young and talked to me as if I were a worried aunt or mother who did not know the difference between a kidney and a spleen. When he rather abruptly explained to me that a concussion was basically a bruised brain resulting from a severe blow, I did not say a word or change the expression on my face. He blushed when a medical student, who happened to be one of my advisees, passed us in the hall and greeted me by name.
I left the hospital and went to my office, where I had not been for more than a week. My desk looked rather much as I feared it would, and I spent the next few hours trying to clear it while I tried to track down the state police officer who worked Lucy’s accident. I left a message, then called Gloria Loving at Vital Records.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“I can’t believe I’m getting to talk to you twice in one week. Are you across the street again?”
“I am.” I couldn’t help but smile.
“No luck so far, Kay,” she said.
“We haven’t found any record in California of a Mary Jo Steiner who died of SIDS. We’re trying to code the death several other ways. Is it possible you could get a date and place of death?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
I thought of calling Denesa Steiner and ended up just staring at the phone.
I was about to do it when State Police Officer Reed, whom I had been trying to reach, returned my call.
“I wonder if you could fax me your report,” I said to him.
“Actually, Hanover’s got a lot of that.”
“I thought the accident occurred on Ninety-five,” I said, for the interstate was state police jurisdiction, no matter the locale.
“Officer Sinclair rolled up just as I did, so he gave me a hand. When the tags came back to you, I thought it was important to check that out.” Oddly, it had not crossed my mind before this moment that tags coming back to me would have created quite a stir.
“What is Officer Sinclair’s first name?” I asked.
“His initials are A. D.” I believe. ”
I was very fortunate that Officer Andrew D. Sinclair was in his office when I called him next. He told me Lucy was involved in a single-car accident that occurred while she was driving at a high rate of speed southbound on Ninety-five just north of the Henrico County line.
“How high a rate of speed?” I asked him.
“Seventy miles per hour.”
“What about skid marks?”
“We found one thirty-two feet long where it appears she tapped her brakes and then went off the road.”
“Why would she tap her brakes?”
“She was traveling at a high rate of speed and under the influence, ma’am. Could be she drifted off to sleep and suddenly was on somebody’s bumper.”
“Officer Sinclair, you need a skid mark of three hundred and twenty-nine feet to calculate that someone was driving seventy miles an hour. You have a thirty-two-foot skid mark here. I don’t see how you can possibly calculate that she was driving seventy miles an hour.”
“The speed limit on that stretch is sixty-five” was all he had to say.
“What was her blood alcohol?”
“Point one-two.”
“I wonder if you could fax me your diagrams and report as soon as possible and tell me where my car was towed.”
“It’s at Covey’s Texaco in Hanover. Off Route One. It’s totaled, ma’am. If you can give me your fax number, I’ll get you those reports right away.”
I had them within the hour, and by using an overlay to interpret the codes I determined that Sinclair basically assumed Lucy was drunk and fell asleep at the wheel. When she suddenly awoke and tapped her brakes, she went into a skid, lost control of the car, left the pavement, and over corrected This resulted in her jerking back onto the road and flipping across two lanes of traffic before crashing upside down into a tree.