“So I can’t make any sense of it, Detective. Can you tell me how you read it?”
“Would you want to sit in the squad car, Mr. Swagger. It’s hot here in August, and you look a mite peaked. Wouldn’t want you developing any health problems on top of everything else.”
My damned hair, Bob thought. Makes me seem 150.
“Ma’am, I’m fine, at least for a little while. I just see tracks engraved in the road, where I’m guessing my daughter’s bad boy skidded after he knocked her from the road at whatever speed he was going.”
“Sir, I should tell you what you’ve probably guessed by now. This time of year such a thing is hardly rare. These young boys git all het up on account of the big NASCAR race week at Bristol. They want to show off for each other. It can get out of hand fast.”
“Yes, ma’am. What I remember of young men reminds me such a thing is frequent.” But the young men he knew spent their aggression on jungle patrol, ready to give it all up for something this batch couldn’t fathom called “duty.”
“The theory is,” Deputy Thelma continued, “some kid decided to put a scare into the lone gal and buzzed her. Evidently she didn’t scare, so he wasn’t satisfied, so the game turned rough. He kind of lost his mind and banged her too hard and knocked her into the trees. Then he panicked, saw what he had done, and got the hell out of there. She was damned lucky she had a cellphone and called 911 before she passed out, and that we got her in less than an hour. Otherwise, she may have lain there for a week before help came.”
Bob examined the skid marks and could make no sense of them. He wanted to believe, yes, that’s all it is. It had nothing to do with him, it was the random drift of the universe, a bad news connection between a hopped-up junior in a pickup and his few-years-older daughter, all earnest desire and commitment. The cross-hatched skidmarks were all that remained of the accident because the highway emergency vehicles and tow trucks that pulled her car out of the gully messed up the shoulder bad.
“You see, the thicker tires are his; you can tell where he skidded, then peeled out to catch up to her. She veered off the road a bit, lost some traction. He hit her right to left, then came around the other side and hit her left to right. That’s what we see here. She went off right up there, down that slope, which ain’t by no means the worst slope of the road, and somehow avoided hitting the trees head-on. It’s all in the tracks.”
He felt briefly overwhelmed.
“Is there any, you know, scientific clues that might help you figure it all out and lead to a guilty party? On the TV, there’s all this crime scene stuff, makes you think it’s just a matter of shining some magic light on something.”
“Yes sir. Well, let me say that many folks have a wrong idea how detective work goes,” Detective Thelma said. “It’s the television. We shine the magic light and take something back to the lab and blow it up a thousand times and it tells us who to arrest. Not true now, never was. We do have some scientific evidence, if you call it that. I have sent both the tire tracks imprint and a paint sample I scraped off your daughter’s door to the state police crime lab in Knoxville. In a few days, I’ll hear back, and I’ll get a make and model of tire and a make and model of car, the latter based on the color. Amazing how much auto paint can tell you. Then I can circularize all the auto body shops around the three states, see if anybody brought in a vehicle for damage repair in those colors. I can then ask local jurisdictions to check on the tires, and if we get a match or two, we might be in business. If the tires are any way unique, I can contact tire outlets.”
“What are the odds?”
“Not good. Lots of folks here don’t repair their dents and dings or they do it themselves. Or if the car was stolen, maybe he’ll just dump it and forget about it, that’s something these thrill drivers do. Anyhow, that’s what the book says. Now I work a different way.”
“I’m hoping you’ll tell me.”
“I’m no genius but I have a sound appreciation of human nature. I collect snitches. What I do is, when I bust a kid on meth or grass or assault, I pull him aside and I say, ‘Look I can go forward or you can cooperate with me and this can go away, you get a fresh start and maybe you ain’t as dumb as you look.’ ‘What you mean?’ he says. ‘I mean,’ I say, ‘what do you know, what can you give me, what things you heard, where’d you buy the stuff, who’s moving the shit, this sort of thing.’ He listens, sees where his best interests lie, and opens up. I take notes. Clear up a lot of cases that way. Who broke into the Piggly Wiggly. Who stole seventy-six dollars and fifty-three cents from the Pizza Hut. How Junior Bridger afforded his new Camaro with a 344 under the hood. Other things I hear about it factor in: Why homecoming queen Sue Ellen Ramsey dumped quarterback Vince Tagetti for seeming no-’count Cleon Jackson. The answer is that Cleon’s cousin Franklin just got into the meth business big time, and suddenly the dough is rolling in. Cleon delivers to folks all over town, he’s now got a Lexus SUV, and Sue Ellen has always loved the Lexus line. That sort of thing. That’s how crime works in a rural zone of hills and hollows and small towns and big football and bad methamphetamine addictions and very peculiar behaviors. And the kids, the snitches, they take to it. Finally, for some of ’em, they got somebody to listen to them. So right now I have my snitches working full time. And somebody’ll talk. Too much beer in Smokey’s one night, he’ll talk. He’ll brag on it, how he bopped the Volvo and it felt good. The story’ll get around, it’ll get to one of my kids, and he’ll let me know, and I’ll get a name. Then I’ll bring ’em in and sweat ’em and they’ll roll over and we’ll have a case. It may take a little while, but that kind of police work is worth all the CSI bullshit in the world.”
“That makes good sense to me,” he said. “I can see you know your profession. May I call you now and again for some kind of update?”
“Why, sure, Mr. Swagger.”
“But I have to ask you one other thing,” he said. “I also know that in the real world, you’re dealing with a workplace. I know how workplaces are. You got a boss who wants progress. Soon enough, there’ll be other, bigger, fancier criminal situations and he’ll want his number one investigator on them. My daughter’s situation goes on the back burner. That’s not your choice, it’s not my choice, that’s just the way it is, right? Now, especially with this big race coming up, with all the parties, all the drinking, with your department most likely pitching in on the security arrangements for an event that attracts a quarter of a million people, I am not exactly confident that you’ll have enough time to devote to this. Not your fault. I ain’t criticizing you. I’m just saying, that’s what happens.”
“I won’t let that happen, Mr. Swagger. I will work this thing out for you.”
“And then there’s Sheriff—” he could tell, since she hadn’t mentioned by name the recently famous hero of the meth wars, Sheriff Reed Wells, of the helicopter-borne drug raid and the highest conviction rate in Tennessee, that she didn’t care for his high-handed, possibly self-aggrandizing way—“he wants cases that git his name in the paper. He wants the big raid, the splash. He doesn’t want slow, careful, patient development of sources.”
“You do know a thing or two about the real world, sir.”
“Just a bit. Anyhow, I may hire a private investigator or a lawyer with investigative skills, if that’s all right with you. Or I may do some poking around myself.”
“Sir, there are some fine private investigators in Knoxville and some fine ex-police attorneys who know the system. Yes, that would be your right, and I understand your concern. I would strongly recommend against any poking around on your own. It can be tough out here, and unless you’re a seasoned investigator, you can make things murkier, not clearer, and get yourself in a heap of trouble at the same time. These young men, they can be tough and merciless. I’ve seen killings, beating victims, all sorts of unpleasantness. I’d hate to find you victim of something like that, because you went to the wrong bar and asked the wrong questions.”
“We
ll, that’s sound advice. Okay, I’ll stay away and try not to get my old bones beaten to pulp and get you another case.”
“Then you and I are on the same page, Mr. Swagger. Now I’ve got to get back into town—”
Suddenly there was a squawk of electronic noise, harsh and indecipherable, and Detective Thelma switched a button on the microphone-receiver pinned near her collar and leaned into it.
“Ten-nine, here,” she said.
She listened to what Bob heard as a gibberish of squawks, now and then cut by a recognizable number. Then she pushed Send and said, “I roger and will proceed on my Ten-Forty.”
She looked over at him.
“Well, we have some strange boy in these parts who likes to burn trucks. Don’t know why but this is the fifth one in the past two months. I’ve got to get over there fast, Mr. Swagger, and run the crime scene investigation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I will be in touch.”
She smiled, jogged off to her car, hit the gumball and the siren, and fired off.
Bob went back to the hospital and sat around for a couple of hours. He met some more of Nikki’s reporter friends and picked up on how much she was loved and respected and how angry everyone was. He told them about Thelma and was gratified to learn she had a fine reputation, had been to a number of FBI schools, had a few big cases, and was something of a local character. She’d been a raving beauty once; who knew she’d turn up as a cop and become the three-time Tennessee state ladies’ USPSA champion, which, he now realized, was why she carried the fancy automatic in the speed holster. He also was invited to dinner and turned down the invites, being too tired and depressed for much more comfort. About ten he kissed his daughter’s still cheek, and headed back to her apartment. There he called Julie and reported in on his findings.
“We’ll be there tomorrow.”
“No, please. Just give it a few more days. I just don’t know. I like this detective and she wouldn’t steer me wrong but I still have a queasy feeling.”
“Is someone following you?”
“No. And if they were, I sure made it easy on them. So no, no, there’s no sign it’s some old mess of mine, I agree.”
“Then it’s clear for us to come?”
“I got one more trick to play out. Then I’ll call you.”
It was stupid, he knew. But the tracks made no sense to him. He went to his laptop, turned it on, and called up good old Google. He typed in “Aerial photography, Knoxville, Tennessee.”
FOUR
If he blinked, he could have sold himself on the illusion he was back in Vietnam, at some forward operating base, where the helicopter was the only way in or out, and the helicopter the order of the day: taking men to and from battle, hauling out the wounded, laying on solid suppressive fire where needed. He was back in a war zone of engines somehow, and although the sandbags were missing, the perimeter security wasn’t, and the whole wide area was separated into bays so that each powerful machine was isolated from the others, and its crew and shop worked as one. No, not Vietnam, but big, powerful machines just the same. The noise of them was gigantic, a physical presence demanding ear protection, so powerfully did the vibrations fill the air and set everything buzzing to the rhythm of their firing. Everyone running about had something to do with engines, all smeared with grease, all filthy in that happy way of men who love what they’re doing and don’t care what it looks like.
Meanwhile, a secondary fact of life was the stench of high-test fuel, which lingered everywhere, just as palpable in its way as the grinding roar of the engines. If you wanted to continue the Vietnam game further, you could: Like the aviators of that long-ago, so-vanished time and place, the drivers were the aristocrats here. Thin young men in their specialized suits, sexy, and it seemed that everybody wanted their attention or merely to be in their presence.
Of course it wasn’t FOB Maria, north of Danang, somewhere in Indian country, RVN, circa ’65–’73. It was the pits, that is, the center of the track, at the Bristol Motor Speedway, Bristol, Tennessee, and what towered above wasn’t mountains full of Victor Charlie, but the enveloping cup of the speedway itself, a near vertical wall of seats for one hundred fifty thousand or so fans. The seats were largely empty, but a few die-hards sat and watched or took notes or worked with stop watches.
Bob was in the pit next to a vehicle that was just as purpose-built as any Huey or Cobra gunship. It was called “USMC 44,” a Dodge Charger in the new, blurry digital camouflage just like the boys wore outside Baghdad, with the globe and anchor emblazoned king-size on hood, roof, and doors. Mechanics and submechanics leaped around, each, seemingly, with a special job to do, as they struggled to bring it to some kind of mechanical perfection. They worked in puddles of oil and fuel, and tracks crisscrossed the concrete as in Vietnam, the tracks of running men, the tracks of rolling, smooth, wide tires, and a myriad of smaller-scaled tracks for various wheeled devices that serviced the big machine. The USMC 44 carried a special-built V8 Hemi engine so brawny it was bursting to get out, rode on four smooth, wide tires instantly changeable, and devoured some poison brew of chemically adjusted fuel. Like any tool, it sported no softness for comfort, but was a hard, serious bucket of bolts meant for one thing only, and that was to zoom full-bore around a mile track five hundred times, spitting clouds of exhaust. It had all the gizmos: the spoiler on the rear to keep it from going airborne, the shocks made of Kryptonite or some other wonder steel, the four-inch ground clearance, all engineered to make USMC 44 go like hell. Inside it was like a hard devotional place, also lacking any softness for comfort, with one seat bolted in, the doors bolted shut, netting everywhere.
He stood there, on the outside of the ruckus, feeling like a tourist. But this is where he had been told to be, and this was the time, and the various obstacles to his penetration of the most intimate secret places of NASCAR had fallen when he gave his name, almost as if he were important.
It was the good old USMC retired NCO network in action. Bob had gotten a batch of pictures taken by Dewey’s Aviation Inc. out of Knoxville, and what he saw was mainly skidmarks down ten miles of descending road on Iron Mountain, and some skell in some kind of fast mover closing in upon and trying to kill his daughter. It was, even from the air, nonsense and gibberish to Bob. But he had friends, and he called the son of a friend, who was a lieutenant colonel in personnel at Henderson Hall, or HQ, and asked if the colonel could come up with some ex-marine who’d know a lot about car behavior, accidents, skidmarks, that sort of thing. Turned out, no, he didn’t, but he had something better. Someone who was fresh off the marine PIO at HQ where he’d been a part of the team that had worked with a big New York ad agency to recruit a NASCAR driver to run the USMC emblem on his car the upcoming season. Not for charity, because there was no charity anywhere in NASCAR these days. It was all marketing, done for the money. But still, the fellow, his people, his team, they all got it, and they loved running under the globe and anchor. In fact, he was still in the running for the Sprint Cup and he’d be right there at Bristol that very weekend. Calls were made, things were agreed to, and though the USMC-Chrysler team was working 24/7, there was no problem if Bob got there at eleven today, as qualifying didn’t start till tomorrow and they were still tuning.
So now Bob was standing, when a scrawny youngster in jeans and a baseball cap came up to him, smiled, shook his hand, and bid him to follow. No words were exchanged, because the noise was so loud, and Bob followed the boy through the hustle and bustle, dodging a rolling tire someone was wheeling toward the car itself, its top half—Bob wanted to call it a fuselage—visible over a wall. He ducked and bobbed and then found himself inside a trailer home that was way nice, like a hotel suite, clearly set up as some kind of relaxation area. When the door was sealed Bob popped out his ear plugs, as did the boy, and Bob introduced himself.
“Gunnery sergeant, eh? You were some kind of cowboy hero in that war all that time ago, is that right?”
“It was mostly squirming aro
und, hoping not to get shot, was all,” Bob said.
“Well, I’m Matt MacReady.” Bob was stunned to see that this kid was the man he’d come to see, the actual driver himself, fourth in NASCAR standings, a real comer, had a shot at winning a few nights down the road and a shot at the big cup. So young. Freckly even, with a thatch of red hair. But then the chopper aviators were all young, and if you put a helmet on them and a bird under them, they’d go into hell to get the mission done. So he warned himself against holding the boy’s youth against him.
“Pleased to meet you. Congratulations on your fine racing career. Sorry I didn’t recognize you.”
“Being recognized is overrated, Gunny, let me tell you. And most of the folks who do just want something from you, from a signature to an investment. They all seem to have fancy haircuts, too. Don’t trust a man with a fancy haircut, all smoothed up like cake frosting, you know. Hell, I just drive cars around in a circle, don’t even get to go nowhere! I end up right where I started, what’s the goddamn point!”
Bob smiled at the joke and the boy tried another one. “If this don’t work out, I guess I’ll head back to the gas station.”
“Son, from the looks of it, it’s working out swell.”
The boy grinned, pleased to have impressed a genuine hero.