Читать книгу Hell's Roundabout - Benjamin Vance - Страница 8

It was good to see the sun of California again, even though he’d been gone only a short time. He was picked up at the airport by Deputy Don Gilbert and dropped off at the Sheriff’s Office. Since it was mid-day, he started on his report and trip expense records. The report took about an hour and the expense vouchers about twenty minutes. He checked with Les Gilbert’s office regarding any current findings and found they’d been successful in assembling a partial face from Mr. Davis, one of the victims. It fit the photos his daughter provided. Also some singed grey hair found impacted against a tree was consistent with an aged female. That was all the new information available. DNA results were not complete and after welcoming him back, Larry Englestein told him nothing else substantive had been found in the reassembled car parts.

However, Army wanted to see the evidence for himself, so after he finished his reports and had a short talk with the Sheriff, he went to the collection yard where the vehicle parts were waiting under blue tarps. They’d not been thoroughly washed yet, so he could smell the piles before he pulled the tarps back to check. Looking under the first tarp, it was obvious it had been a red Ford Mustang. He was awed at the utter destruction of the frame and plastic parts, but all four tires and wheels were present and accounted for. It gave him hope that he could compare treads on the second car with the photos he took of the tracks in New York.

He pulled back the second tarp and surprisingly no tires were evident. What was obvious; the plastic parts of the auto were melted and most had combined with what was left of the ruptured battery packs and few metal parts. It looked like one big pile of incompletely incinerated automotive trash, and it didn’t smell of rotted flesh, it just smelled of fire and … sulphur, ozone or hot sulphur springs. The implications actually made him shudder.

When he returned to the office he sought out Larry and asked him about the pile of rubble, “Larry, were there any tires in the remains of the second car; the Prius?”

“No siree, there weren’t even any rims left, Army. I can’t figure that one out unless someone took ‘em, and that was impossible unless someone took ‘em at the time they reported the collision.”

“Yeah, I need to talk to the person who reported the wreck. Do they live around here?”

“Hell, you know I don’t know. You’ll probably have to talk with Marlene and pull the 911 recording on that one, Army. I don’t think anyone’s questioned the person yet.”

“Okay, cool, I’ll get with Marlene. I got some photos of tire treads from a Prius in New York and it’d be nice to compare them with tires from the mess that used to be a Prius setting in the assembly yard.”

Somewhat guarded, Larry asked, “Did you catch that smell from that pile?”

“Oh yeah, it smells like sulphur, doesn’t it?”

“It smells to me like it went through hell and then blew up all over the road, or impacted the other car like a rocket. It gives me the creeps.”

“Based on the shit I heard and saw in New York, I really need to find those tires Larry. I’m going to talk to the person that reported it, and then I’m going to cover that area all the way to the hill.”

“What did you find in New York? Some good looking honey?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, and she’d be right up your alley; pretty, intelligent and an artist. Oh, yeah she’s single too.”

“Sounds great, you have her number?”

Army laughed and said, “Screw you Larry. No way would I give you her number. She’s a nice, unassuming person.”

The reporting individual turned out to be a Mrs. Renata Stein. She and her husband owned a summer cabin up the canyon road and she’d been winterizing it when she drove to town for a late meal and came upon the accident site. She and her husband were from Fresno and they were easy to find via her telephone number. Army called and Mrs. Stein answered.

He found Mr. Stein was a very occupied business owner in Fresno and had not been with Mrs. Stein on the cabin winterizing trip. Army initially found that difficult to accept, especially in winter, but who was he to judge. He asked Mrs. Stein many questions, recorded their conversation and only found one tidbit of information he didn’t know before the call. Mrs. Stein told him there was still some fire on the hill west of the accident site when she arrived. He asked again to be sure and she was definite. If there was still fire somewhere and it had just rained or snowed in the canyon, then it must have just happened when she came upon it.

Army decided he and Charley and whoever else wanted to volunteer were going to comb the entire hillside looking for clues. It would have to happen on a weekend and perhaps he could combine it with a fishing outing with Charley. In any case, he would need more helpers than just Charley. He checked with the other active deputies and found no one willing to sacrifice even an hour of their precious weekend. He called all seven of the reserve deputies and found two who would help, so two would have to be enough.

When Charley learned of the trip he was ecstatic. He’d get to do his two favorite things; fish and be an investigator, and it was only one day away. He inundated his father with questions Thursday evening and Army realized after a time that he could have made a mistake inviting Charley. If they did find something grisly in the area, would he be able to foresee any damage it might do to Charley psychologically, or would it actually be good for his son to see one of the dirtier realities of life?

The next day he decided to let the Sheriff in on what he planned to do over the weekend and why he planned to do it. He found that no one had briefed Andy Shepard on the condition of the second vehicle. When he told Andy he just looked at Army a moment and told Beth that he and Army were going to the assembly yard to check out the vehicle from the canyon explosion. They arrived in the Sheriff’s car and Army smelled the sulphur before they got through the gate. Of course since it was the Sheriff, two of the yard employees came rushing out to offer their help and to say hello. When the Sheriff told them what he wanted to see they were happy to uncover the mess; previously an automobile.

When Andy saw it, and after he took it all in, he said, “Holy Mother of God, Army! What happened to this vehicle? I’ve never seen anything like this. What’s that smell and where’re the tires and rims?”

“Well boss, the smell is like sulphur, and I’d like to know where the tires are too. This thing looks like it’s been through a burning shredder, but there should be something left of the tires and at least melted aluminum if no rims are evident. Combined with what I learned in New York, this thing gives me the jitters.”

“Yeah, I got your report, haven’t read it yet though, so let’s go somewhere we won’t be disturbed and why don’t you tell me what’s in and not-in … the report, and then give me your impressions.”

They went to a local restaurant and ordered coffee and sweet-rolls from an isolated table the Sheriff liked to frequent. He told the waitress not to seat anyone within earshot and settled with coffee and a small bear claw to listen. He allowed Army to relate the entire strange story of Mrs. Peterson, her Prius and the mine, and Army did it without totally giving away his true opinion of a woman named Chiara Logan. The Sheriff seemed speechless at first, but finally said the key phrase, “If the DNA comes back positive for Mrs. Lois Peterson we’re going to be in deep shit.”

Army agreed, and thought perhaps the Sheriff would bring in some of his legal assistance for a conference after the fact. When he told the Sheriff what he intended to do on Saturday, Andy thought for a moment and decided to pay the two deputies who were going to help with the search. He seemed to know intuitively what Army was looking for and Army thought perhaps the Sheriff understood more about the situation than he allowed during their conversation. In any case, Army felt better about the Sheriff’s response; at least for the time being.

He went to pick up Charley after school and saw Lucy was standing with him. When Army pulled up, Lucy grinned and waved. Of course Army asked if he could give her a lift and she accepted. By the time he dropped Lucy off she’d wheedled an invite to help with the area search the next day. No matter how bad Army made the search effort sound, she still wanted to go if her mother would allow it. That meant she would have to ask and then Sonora would have to call and … well maybe it didn’t sound so bad after all.

A beautiful, bright, cold Saturday morning in early winter found six determined people huddled around two County cars with warning lights on and engines idling for warmth. Well, perhaps Lucy wasn’t so determined, because she was told to escort her mother on their quest, and she would rather go with any one of the males, rather than be stuck with the only other female; she was that age. Army explained only that they were looking for body parts, car parts or anything inconsistent or strange. Each person was given six bright day-glo red stick-in flags to mark anything they found, and they were given strict orders not to pick anything up, they were to mark only, notify another person they’d found something and move on.

The hill was divided into six undefined strips and each person was asked to stay abreast and not get ahead of the group. Army took the bottom of the hill, then Charley, then Lucy, then Sonora and then the other two deputies. They had about a quarter mile to cover so it would take at least an hour to cover at a slow-to-moderate pace. They started at about 8:30 a.m. with flashlights and the first item was flagged at around 8:45. The deputy at the top of the hill passed on that an artifact had been flagged, and then three more were found between 8:45 and 9:00. The second deputy radioed Army and told him to look closely at the tops of the young pines stretching from the grassy park at the top of the hill to the bottom of the grove. Several of the tallest had the tops broken off and the tops were lying on the ground as if they had been cleaved by a helicopter blade. Army found nothing special during his walk, but at almost exactly 9:05 Lucy screamed and stood looking at the ground. Obviously, the sound beckoned Army, her mother and Charley.

Charley got there first and Army heard him say, “Eeewwww” or words to that effect. When he arrived at Lucy’s location she was holding her mouth and pointing to part of a burned human left hand. Her mother got there after Army looked at the hand and she said, “Oh shit” or words to that effect. Needless to say, Sonora and Lucy went to the SUV to wait on the rest. Charley and Army moved up to take their place and the four moved on slowly after two flags were left at the hand.

It took another five minutes for Will Sparks, the deputy walking at the highest elevation, to call the other two on his radio, “Gentlemen, you need to stop what you’re doing and come up to my position at the top, ASAP. You won’t believe me so you’ve got to see it for yourselves. Army couldn’t get there fast enough, and he heard the other two talking before he arrived through the fairly thick young pines. He and Charley arrived at the same time and as soon as the deputies saw them, they both pointed up the face of the moderate cliff. There, protruding from solid rock as if they were an avant-garde sculpture were the remains of two burned tires with rims and what appeared to be a melted plastic glob. The plastic glob had run down the face of the rocks as if posing for Salvador Dali.

They all took photos at their distance and from every angle, including telephoto. After enough was done to satisfy their immediate curiosity, they started scanning the rest of the hill. They saw three other items sticking out of the rock; items which could be taken for common old climbing gear, tree limbs or mining gear, all rusted or streaked like they’d been burned. They looked ages old, but photos were taken anyway. After the men were completely through examining, Will asked them to turn around and look down the hill over the tops of the pines. They had to climb up a bit higher on the cliff rubble to see well, but it was obvious something had sheared the tree tops off surgically level; something very sharp or something moving very, very fast.

After thirty minutes or so they moved back to their original places and continued the search, finding one more piece of what appeared to be plastic from an automobile. They then returned to the locations where they’d found the other artifacts, bagged them and documented the GPS coordinates of each. When they returned to the cruiser and SUV, the ladies were excited to see what else they’d found. Lucy had reverted to her normal self and Army thought it better not to show the burned piece of human hand to anyone else. He was sure Les Gilbert would be glad to get it though.

He thanked the other deputies and signed their time cards. After they dropped Sonora and Lucy off, Army found it was well past lunch time. He felt bad about forgetting a simple kindness and called Sonora and asked if she and Lucy would like to eat lunch with him and Charley. She accepted cordially and the two jumped back in the SUV and picked up the ladies. They dropped by the morgue to deposit their findings and then went on to eat.

After they arrived at the restaurant, ordered and Lucy and Charley went to play video games, Sonora asked what else they’d found after she and Lucy left the hill. Army actually drew a diagram of the bluff on the back of a place mat. She was aghast, and asked what kind of velocity it would take to imbed tires into a cliff like that. Army hung his head for a brief moment, then looked directly into the pretty lady’s questioning eyes and said, “They didn’t go into the hill Sonora … they came out of the hill.”

She looked at him like he’d mooned her, and then asked through an uncomfortable smile, “How … how does that happen? Am I missing something here?”

“You’re not missing any more than the rest of us Sonora. It seems impossible, but it happened. The tires are burned. If they’d hit the cliff like that, there would be burned rubber in an impact pattern all around the tires. There’s no impact pattern of any type and the plastic piece melted on … or out of the rock. I know it makes no sense, but the explosive accident may … sort-of ... make sense somehow.”

Sonora exhibited her logic skills with, “I thought the accident was like an explosion that went toward the hill, not away from it?”

“Good thinking Sonora. I only have a shaky fragment of an idea, but what if the Mustang was going toward the cliff at the same speed the Prius was supposedly … supposedly mind you, coming out of the cliff an instant later. It’d be an impact similar to a mid-air collision; almost nothing left. Also, since the mustang was mostly metal and heavier, perhaps some magnetic force created a North-South attracting situation for just a millisecond, like during a lightning strike and maybe the Prius’ batteries had something to do with it too, who knows what happened, or how, but no matter how one looks at it, it’s weird; it’s weird but it happened.”

He started to tell her more, including the Anderson story, but their food came and he went to get Charley and a reluctant Lucy. Their meal was good and the conversation from that point on was lighter. Army dropped the ladies off at 3:00 p.m. and he and Charley went to the office to see who was there and what other information had possibly been generated by any other agency regarding the terrible accident. However, there was no more information and the only person in the office was Gordon, a day dispatcher. Army checked his office messages, found one “call me please” from a Ms. Chiara Logan and proceeded home with his mind reeling.

One of the first things he did upon returning home was to call Chiara. Of course she didn’t answer, but he left a nice message and hoped for an early call back. Charley wanted to visit one of his buddies in the apartment complex so he let him go and got a cup of coffee and sat to think about the past hours. One of the first questions that ambled into his consciousness was the young stand of pines. Why were there smaller pines in that area anyway and why was the strip of young pines so pronounced? Perhaps they’d been legally logged, but why and when?

Maybe something else came out of that hill in the past and took down a line of trees with it; some mining equipment perhaps? The more he thought about it, the more preposterous it seemed, so he started to make notes. As a priority, he listed research on the number of wrecks at the intersection of canyon road and the state route, research on geology of the area and perhaps a trip to U.C. Davis to talk to someone in the geology department if there was such a thing ... or person.

On a whim, he went to the internet and looked up accidents in Bishop, California. Unfortunately, about all he found was blogger posts about suing the state or county for an accident that wasn’t the person’s fault, of course. He did find one about a mysterious accident 22 years earlier where a contractor claimed a car came out of nowhere and rammed his truck with such force it removed the rear of his vehicle. The other driver was killed in the fiery crash and could not be interrogated, but the strange part was that the car was registered in the Federal Republic of Germany, and no record of its importation was ever uncovered.

As he sat contemplating the right methodology for perusing the county’s historical records, his telephone rang and startled him. He thought it was Chiara calling back but when he looked at his caller ID, it listed Andy Shepard.

He answered with, “Sheriff?”

“Yeah Army it’s me. I was anxious to see what you guys found at the accident site today.”

“Oh … well, what didn’t we find, let me see … we found part of a burned human hand, several small parts of a vehicle; and two burned tires and some melted plastic sticking out of the damned cliff, Andy. They didn’t get stuck going in, they got stuck coming out. I know that sounds crazy, but I was just setting here at the kitchen table making notes about what kind of research I could do to rationalize the impossible.”

“You don’t have to rationalize it for me Army. There’ve been strange things going on up there for many years. The state was talked into putting in a roundabout after a state senator’s son was killed in a bizarre accident at the crossroad. He had a nice souped-up Chevy and about the biggest piece we found of it was the new rear end he had put under it. The serial number on it matched the one that was put in the kid’s car. It looked like the car was shot out of a cannon through the trees and just disintegrated on ‘em. There wasn’t much left of the kid or his girlfriend either.”

Army tentatively asked, “Is that why there’s a completely new stand of young pines up the slope rather than an old tree or two mixed in here and there?”

“Wish it were. One night about 15 … no 17 years ago I guess, not long after the senator’s son was killed, we got a call from Ned Stevens that a truck had lost a rock crusher and just left it in the road. Well it wasn’t left in the road; it was buried so deep in the macadam that we had to use a bulldozer to try to uncover it. We couldn’t get it out so we cut it off and left part of it in the damned basement rock under the road, Army. It’s still there. I guessed no one but me thought the ‘blow down’ of all the trees on the hill may have been anything but the result of a tornado.

“Tornado my ass; that huge piece of equipment came down that hill and buried itself in the rock like a flaming arrow. Oh, we had everybody on the force making claims that a tornado dropped the stuff there and some said it came out of an airplane, but I knew and I think a couple of other people knew it came out of that hill. I checked the hill myself; by myself. I saw some pieces of burned metal still sticking out and I knew, but I didn’t say it. I never have, and you shouldn’t say it either Army, at least to no one else. People will think you’re nuts.”

“Well, what about the guys who went with me? They saw what I saw and will be asking questions.”

“They won’t be asking questions Army. You’ll find everyone will think of some cockamamie reason that makes sense to them and they’ll rationalize it away. I knew you’d see what I saw. That’s why I encouraged your trip to New York. I think those lights have something to do with the phenomena and I want you to try to get to the bottom of it if you can. I can’t let you do research on county time, but if you need to make another trip to check out some explosives theory, you set it up. Are you with me?”

“I’m with you Sheriff, I’ll keep my mouth shut, but I have a question for you; do these accidents happen during storms?”

“Come to think of it, they probably do. Did you find out something about their relation to storms in New York?”

“Well if you want to believe a senile old Swede. He says when there’s lightning, things go away from a hill there. It’s around that mining area I told you about. Perhaps that’s the reason for the fire and the smell of ozone or sulphur.”

“Believe me, Army; people think its sulphur they smell on the car. Why do you think some of the guys called that place Hell’s Crossroads; now they call it Hell’s Roundabout? Just let ‘em think it and keep your opinions to yourself. Keep track of your research and keep your notes in a safe place, no matter how scientific they are. There’re always people around who’ll try to discredit you, to their benefit.”

“Damn Sheriff, I don’t know how to thank you. I was getting a little suspicious of my own sanity, you know. I’ll take your suggestions to heart.”

“Now you know how I’ve felt all these years. Take care, Army. See you Monday, hopefully not before.”