Perfect Victim, The (23 page)

''This is a beautiful country, but the weather's unpredictable as hell," the sheriff began. "Unfortunately, we have our share of accidents. I investigated this one myself." He pointed to the file. ''There are a couple of photos of the vehicle in there. If my memory serves me, I believe the car skidded on a patch of ice. Happened sometime between midnight and two A.M. The driver lost control. Vehicle went off
the road and down a ravine. Rolled a ways before it came to rest against a
t
ree big enough to stop it
.
"

Randall glanced at the
sheriff
.
"Was there an explosion or fire?"

"Small engine fire, but it was out by the time we got
t
here."

"
What time was that?"

"Next morning. First light, a bicyclist called our office."

"Was the vehi
c
le recovered?"

The sheriff shook his head
.
"No way
.
Two of my deputies and I had to rappel down just to recover the bodies."

A shiver trembled through Addison at the mention of her parents' bodies. She hated thinking of
them in such ghastly terms.

"What were the causes of death?" Randall asked.

"Trauma. Autopsy reports are there, too
.
" The sheriff rose from his desk and reached for the file. "Let me make you a copy of this
.
You folks can take it with you." He lumbered over to a desktop copier that groaned out two copies of each report
.

Randall sent a concerned look to Addison. "Are you all right?"

"I just wan
t
to get this over with." She'd made it over the first hurdle. She wondered how many more she would have to leap be
f
ore the day was over
.

The sher
i
ff handed
t
he stapled copies to Randall. "If you have any more questions or need any more information about this accident, feel free to give me a call."

"We
'
ll do that
.
"

Ten minutes later
,
Addison and Randall were back in his Jeep heading south on Highway 9 toward Hoosier Pass. In the half hour they'd spent with Sheriff White, the afternoon sky had gone from a crisp, flawless blue to charcoal gray. Ominous clouds billowed like smoke on the western horizon.

Addison pored over the accident report, trying to make sense of the handwriting and abbreviations
.
"This report lists
icy road conditions and excessive speed as the cause."

Randall glanced over at her.

"My father was a cautious driver," she said. "He didn't speed. Not on a mountain road at night, especially if the roads were icy."

''The roads weren't icy that night. The report says they hit an icy patch."

Frustrated, she looked down at the report. Her eyes skimmed down to the bottom of the page where the sheriff had written a short summary, including another theory that the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

"This isn't right," she said. ''There's no way my father fell asleep at the wheel."

"How do you know?"

"For one thing, my mother could talk a hundred miles an hour. She never stopped talking, especially if she had my father captive in the car." The memory made her smile. "Besides, I served coffee after dinner that night. Haitian Bleu, if my memory serves me. My father loved the dark grinds and drank it by the gallon. The man had enough caffeine in his system to keep the city of Denver awake for a week."

"The report says it was late, Addison. Well after midnight."

"My father was a night bird. He was retired and liked to stay up late and sleep late. I'm telling you he wasn't tired when he left my apartment."

"Are you sure he was driving?"

"My mother was blind as a bat at night. She never drove after dark."

For the first time since they'd left the sheriff's office, Randall gave her his full attention. "All the more reason to take a look at the vehicle."

Until now, she'd assumed he was only interested in seeing the scene of the accident, not the vehicle itself. ''The car rolled over two hundred feet." She glanced through the passenger window, realizing how physically grueling a trek into a ravine would be. "How are we going to reach it?"

The look he gave her wasn't friendly
.
"Don't take this personally, Ace, but you're not going with me. You're going
to keep that cute little butt of yours in the truck and make sure I make it back in one piece."

The reference to her backside annoyed her, but not nearly as much as him telling her she wasn't going with him into the ravine. "Don't take this personally, tough guy, but I'll damn well go into the ravine with you if I feel it
'
s necessary and I just happen to feel it
'
s necessary."

"Dammit, Addison, I'm not k
i
dding around." He pointed toward the horizon. “There
'
s a front coming in, and I don't want to be here when it dumps two feet of snow
.
It's great for skiers
,
but hell on drivers
."

She'd been
too preoccupied to notice the line of steel gray clouds building in the west
.
"I
'
m fully aware of the weather
,
but I don
'
t see what it has to do with me taking a look at my parents’ car."

"If that ravine's as rugged as I think it is, it's going to take me a while to rappel down
.
I don't need you slowing me down
.
I want to get in and out as quickly and as safely as possible
.
Then we
'
ve got to get down this mountain before heavy weather sets in
.
By the looks of those clouds, I'd say we have another couple of hours of decent driving left
.
"

She hated it when he made more sense
t
han she did. Granted, she was no rock climber
,
but it was going to be difficult to si
t
back and let him go into that ravine alone.

She was about to concede when he suddenly slowed the Jeep and pulled onto the narrow shoulder
.
To her right
,
Addison saw nothing but the tops of aspens and clear mountain air. She'd never been afraid of heights, but the sight of the drop sent a shiver through her
.

"What m
i
le marker does it say on the report?" he asked
.

She paged through the report and found the mile marker number circled. "Forty feet south of mile marker thirty-five."

"This is
i
t
.
"
Not giving her time to protest, he swung open the door and stepped out of the Jeep.
"
Stay put
.
"

She shot him the best go-to-hell look she could muster
.

He grinned and slammed the door.

Too restless to sit in the truck, Addison got out and walked to the rear of the Jeep. "I'm-going with you."

Randall removed a nylon rappelling harness, a coil of rope, and a pair of worn leather gloves from the bed. A small disposable camera hung around his neck. But he didn't look like a tourist. He looked fit and determined and very capable.

"Shouldn't take me any longer than forty-five minutes to rappel down, take a few pictures, then climb back up." His eyes swept down to hers, looking as dark and dangerous as the approaching storm. "Wait in the truck."

The wind had kicked up to a cutting speed, whistling through the treetops, accentuating the quiet and the fact that they were totally alone. "I've every right to go--"

"Forget it, Ace. The terrain's too rough." He started for the ravine.

He looked like a seasoned rock climber in his faded Levi's, cleated hiking boots, and parka. Addison watched him loop the rope around the base of an aspen, clip it onto his safety harness, .and test it with a yank. She couldn't help but notice his well-muscled thighs or the way the harness accentuated his male attributes. With a cavalier wave, he started into the ravine.

Addison waited until he was out of sight before venturing off the shoulder. While she stood shivering in the bitter wind, she noticed a path cut into the trees. Easing closer to the edge of the ravine, she saw the broken trunks and realized the sapling aspen and pine had been clipped close to the ground ten months earlier when her parents' Lincoln had plummeted over the edge.

She tried not to imagine the terror they must have felt in the seconds, before their deaths. Had the roll into the ravine killed them? she wondered. Or had they suffered with broken bodies and the brutal elements? Had they died together? Or had one of them been forced to watch the other in the throes of death? They were excruciating questions. Questions that
left her heart raw and a new bitterness in the pit of her stomach. Suddenly Addison knew she couldn't sit in the truck and do nothing
.
As painful as the thought was, she wanted to see the car. She wanted
to touch it
.
And she
desperately needed to know if her parents had been murdered.

Shivering, she edged closer to the drop-off and looked
into the ravine
.
"Fox, you're insane
,
" she said, grasping the nylon rope. Mimicking Randall
'
s form, she began an awkward descent down the steep
incline.

She'd only traveled a dozen feet when she realized her mittens hadn't been designed to stand up against the rough surface of a braided nylon rope. By the time she'd traveled fifty feet, a hole had worn into the palm and the rope bit into her skin with the
.
fervor of a hungry rat
.
By the time she'd traveled a hundred feet, she realized how foolish it had been for her to attempt the climb.

"Admit it, Fox," she said to herself through clenched teeth, "the Neanderthal was right
.
" A branch from a sapling scraped against her face hard enough to open the skin and yank the muffs from her ears.