The Accident (The President Series Book 1)
By Rose Carter and Robert Ireland
Copyright 2015 Rose Carter and Robert Ireland
Detective Ryan Cook looked down at the canyon and sighted a small drone flying over the rocky surface dotted with wild trees and desert plants. A portion of the dented roof of a car became visible among the green patch in the early morning sunlight and the drone hovered over it. Ryan stepped back. The dangerous hairpin curve had no guardrails. He walked away from the group of onlookers, trekkers and tourists who had been on their upward journey to Roosevelt Dam and reached the camper parked beside the mountain road, US highway 88. Inside the van, a young man was navigating the control unit of the drone which looked like a laptop. On the monitor screen, the crashed, mangled car resting on the canyon terrain appeared. The screen changed to show the broken windshield.
Ryan moved closer to the control unit to get clear view. A middle-aged guy sitting behind the wheel with blood on his head and face came on the screen. His lifeless eyes stared at the camera but the ring on his finger glittered in the sunlight. The drone circled around the silver Nissan Xterra and Ryan could see that no one else was in it. The drone lingered at the rear side of the car and he noted the license plate number. The scene changed to show the cactus and wild bushes beside the car as the drone flew up. It climbed further to cover a dog that crouched on the ground and howled, looking at the sky. The drone didn’t cover sounds. Ryan watched the dog. It was a well-groomed dog, a bloodhound and brown-coated. It could have travelled in the crashed car. Ryan longed to pat the dog, gently stroke its brown fur.
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Two hour later, Ryan sat in front of a beautiful young woman named Leslie Thomas in a room in a resort. Leslie agreed to talk to him, though she appeared as though she could break down again at any moment. Ryan thought women looked more beautiful when they were sad. From the license plate number, Ryan had found the owner of the Nissan Xterra was Matt Brown and he was a veterinary surgeon in Los Angeles. He and his wife Leslie were on a road trip; his neighbors provided the information to the Los Angeles police. In the meantime, the rescue team had brought up the Nissan Xterra and the bloodhound to the mountain road. From Matt’s cell phone, they got Leslie’s number and learned that she was staying in a resort near Superstition Mountain and gently broke the news to her.
Leslie blew her nose with a tissue and said, “Matt went away early in the morning with James to shoot the early morning beauty with his camera. I was damn tired and didn’t go with him. We checked in yesterday night only. I was a bit worried when Matt didn’t return for breakfast. We usually had it at nine o’clock and Matt was very health-conscious. I thought he was too involved with nature and I ordered breakfast for myself. When I finished it, I got a call from you.”
Leslie started to cry.
Ryan waited for a few seconds and asked, “Just a few questions, did you encounter any incident on your road trip, a fight with truck drivers or bandits?”
“Nothing of the sort, the trip was peaceful.”
“How often do you go on a road trip?”
“Once a year.”
“You work somewhere?”
“I assist Matt in administrating our clinic.”
“What could have caused the accident, in your opinion?”
“He might have been tired and lost control while maneuvering around the curve.”
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When Ryan came out of the resort, he got a call from Julia Bukowski, the secret agent who was on the security team of the President. As he would be visiting town next month, Julia didn’t want any assassin or terrorist to try any trick. She ordered that every minor incident happening in and around town should be reported to her.
“I read the report about the accident in Apache Trail. What’s your opinion? Did you smell any foul play?”
“Yet to arrive at the conclusion? Need more time?”
“What? I want fast results, Ryan. You have to change your small-town policeman attitude when the President’s life is involved. You have drones and all those modern technologies. Can’t you confirm an accident is an accident within two hours after you have visited the spot?”
“I have just started inquiring.”
“Come on, man. Be quick. You shouldn’t waste your time and energy on simple cases. If you’re a good policeman, you would have developed a gut feeling by now and would be able to tell things apart in seconds.”
Julia ended the call.
Ryan reached his car and contacted his assistant, Roberts, who said, “Yeah, I have checked the database and Matt came out clean, no records. But Leslie’s name is there. She witnessed a gangster woman getting slain by an assailant.”
“Tell me what exactly happened.”
“Six months earlier, Leslie went for a walk in her neighborhood at six o’clock in the morning. She was walking on the pavement and on the other side of the road a middle-aged man was walking a dog. They were walking more or less parallel on either side of the road. A lean woman was walking, facing the middle-aged guy. Suddenly, Leslie heard gunfire and the lean woman fell down, screaming. Leslie turned in time to see the back of a tall, lean man, who might have been hiding beside the tree near the pavement, running at high speed on the road. Leslie and the middle-aged man ran toward the fallen woman, who was writhing in agony. The middle-aged man, whose name was Johnson, called the police and the lean woman died on the way to the hospital. Later the police identified the woman as Ruby Blanc, who belonged to a gang called Red Fox. She had retired from prostitution, sold drugs now and then; hiding in dark alleys, she waylaid women and old men.”
“Have they caught the killer?”
“No, no news about the killer in the database; probably they are still investigating because who really cared about the dead ex-sex worker and a gang member?”