Читать книгу Snow Signs - Jennifer Seet - Страница 14

Chapter Seven

The next day Claire spent most of her time fine-tuning the speech and getting ready for the retirement dinner. She checked outside earlier in the morning and was relieved to see that nothing new appeared in the snow, but she chose to leave the blood and shoeprints there in case she decided to call Jim Hoppes and have him take a look at it. She had not had the time to do that since then, but made a mental note to call him first thing the next morning, providing the mystery had not been resolved by then.

There has to be a logical explanation, she thought. I don’t want to discuss it with the guys tonight, even though they might be able to shed some light on the whole matter.

She grinned. They would tease me unmercifully if they knew how I was connecting it to the Libby Newman case.

No, best to keep it to myself, Claire decided.

But, she couldn’t help thinking about Libby. Such an innocent victim!

During the investigation, Libby’s friends and family painted a picture of a pretty, sweet young woman who was trying to do something with her life in spite of her deafness.

It sounded like she had a lot of the same characteristics as a young Claire Dungarven. She was ambitious, stubborn, determined to make the most out of her life.

When Libby finally found love, she embraced it with all her heart, giving in to the one weakness she possessed—her desire to be loved by another and have the kind of lifestyle she had always dreamt about. She wanted the husband, family, and home--everything women are groomed to expect from an early age.

Unfortunately that dream dissolved quickly, and it must have been heartbreaking for her to experience.

Some members in her family had a hunch that she wasn’t happy, even though her pride would have kept her from sharing it, and her lifelong habit of not sharing her innermost feelings with anyone could have played a role in her unwillingness to inform them.

“And that’s why I can’t get her out of my mind. She reminds me so much of myself.”

Tears started to form in Claire’s eyes but she quickly swiped them away. She thought back to Doug Walling, her first love and a fellow state trooper at the time.

She bowed her head in sadness when she remembered the night he was killed three years ago.

* * * * *

He had been issuing a speeding ticket out on the interstate. No one, except people in law enforcement maybe, could imagine how treacherous it would be to stand beside a car, checking license and insurance information. Police officers do it all the time, but it is particularly dangerous when out on the interstate.

As Doug stepped back from the speeder’s car and shone his flashlight on the papers in his hand, a truck came careening out of nowhere.

The driver hit Doug so hard that it threw his body up into the air, landing twenty feet away.

When Claire arrived, the paramedics told her there was nothing they could do; he was already gone. The driver who caused the accident never stopped. The speeder was in shock and couldn’t offer any help. Since it happened in the middle of the night, no witnesses were close enough to observe any distinguishing characteristics about the truck, just that it was a semi. And, unfortunately, Doug’s in-car video camera was not working at the time of the accident.

Officers did a thorough investigation of truckers in the area, but the driver was never found. If he had reported damage to his truck, no company reported it to the police.

Claire was so overcome with grief that she had to take a week off from work. No, to be honest, Marvin and George ordered me to take the week off!

She attended the funeral but it was one of the hardest things she ever had to do.

Doug’s parents were especially distraught. He was their youngest son and the only one to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Herb Walling had been a sheriff’s deputy in Jenson County, just south of Indianapolis, for twenty years.

The one positive outcome was that the Indiana state legislature put a new law into effect that made it mandatory for drivers on the interstate to move over into the middle lane when passing a site where an emergency vehicle was parked or a patrol officer had a car pulled over on the shoulder. Since then, the number of fatalities had decreased significantly.

“Too late to help Doug though.”

Claire thought back to all the regrets she felt after the tragedy.

He wanted the same things Libby Newman wanted—loving spouse, home, family—and neither had the opportunity to fulfill their dreams.

If I hadn’t been so selfish! Claire balled up her hand into a fist.

Adding sadly, but I knew what I wanted too, and it was my career.

During the investigation into Libby’s disappearance, Claire found herself going over the same information, same search areas, same interviews, just trying to find some piece of evidence that hadn’t stood out before, something that might lead her to the truth about what happened.

But, when Doug died, and after two years of following lead after lead that eventually led nowhere, she put Libby’s folder in the cold case file where it had languished ever since. She never forgot it, but she stopped thinking about it all the time…until now. Now it was coming back, consuming her life, almost to the extent that you might say it was haunting her.