Night of Thunder

Detective Thelma Fielding, probably forty, was a strong woman with exceptionally large eyes, man-hands, what you’d call a big-boned woman. She wore blue jeans, tight to show off a body that was not beyond desire by any means-she had large breasts-and a polo shirt, black, with a badge over her left breast. A baseball cap carried the badge motif, but what told the world she was a professional law enforcement agent was the tricked-out.45 automatic worn in a Kydex speed holster on her hip. Behind it rode three mags, double stack. So the gun was probably a Para-Ordnance, not that Bob let her know he knew a Para from a Springfield from a Kimber from a Colt from a Nighthawk from a Wilson, and all the other 1911 models that were suddenly all the rage in self-defense and sporting circles. Next to the gun and the holster was her actual badge, wreathed in a leather badge holder, worn on the belt. On the other hip she wore her two-way, with a curly cord up to the mic pinned to her shirt collar. Oh, and the Para-Ord was carried cocked and locked, ready for speed work in less than a second’s notice.

“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?”