Where There's Smoke полностью

O’Neil skipped the “Where” question. He already knew where the VW bus was; it was fifty feet down the embankment. He went on to the “Who,” phrasing his question somewhat differently than prescribed in the manual.

“Anybody in the bus?” he asked.

“There’s a guy behind the steering wheel,” the patrol­man said. “Or what’s left of him, anyway. I told the sergeant we were gonna need a meat wagon.”

“You didn’t touch him, did you?”

“No, sir,” the patrolman said. He seemed offended that such a question had even been asked.

“Find anything on the street up here?” O’Neil asked. This was a variation of the “What” question. He was try­ing to determine exactly what had happened to cause the bus to crash through the wooden barricade.

“Like what, sir?” the patrolman asked.

“Skid marks, broken glass.” Either of these might have indicated that a second vehicle had been involved in the accident; O’Neil was asking the right questions.

“I didn’t see none, sir.”

“Anyone witness the accident?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir. This area’s pretty dead at night.”

“Were mere any vehicles on the street?”

“No, sir, not a single car. There’s no parking allowed on the approach road, you know.”

“I meant was there any moving traffic?”

“No, sir, the street was deserted.”

“Okay, thanks,” O’Neil said. He knew he wasn’t going to get any valuable answers to the How or the Why sug­gested in the manual, and he didn’t want to waste further time. Instead, he walked to where the car had gone off the road and through the barricade. Skid marks are usually visible to the naked eye, even on a surface that isn’t wet or dusty, but there were no marks leading to the spot where the barricade had been breached. Nor were there any glass fragments on the road or on the muddy em­bankment beyond. Two of the sawhorses had been bro­ken, apparently by the weight of the bus as it rolled over them; tire tracks in the mud showed the direction the bus had taken in its downward plunge. We were studying these tracks when we heard the ambulance approaching. The sound of the siren apparently reminded O’Neil that he’d need a medical examiner at the scene. He walked over to the patrol car and asked the driver to radio a re­quest for one. He still didn’t know who the victim of die accident was, but he knew he had a dead man on his hands. I didn’t tell him that I already knew who was in that smoldering bus.

The interne and the ambulance attendants were an­noyed at having to wait around till the M.E. arrived. O’Neil sent one of the patrolmen out for coffee, in an at­tempt to mollify them. It took forty minutes for the assis­tant M.E. to arrive. The fire engines were gone by then. He half slid, half ran down the muddy embankment to where the bus lay on its side. The front end had hit a huge boulder, and part of the roof and one door had been de­molished in the resultant explosion. The subsequent fire had undoubtedly been intense; even the paint on the out­side of the bus had been partially scorched away. The rear end of the bus was a total wreck, the metal torn open and twisted into sharp black tendrils of steel.

A man sat behind the steering wheel. The assistant M.E. turned away at the stench of burned flesh and hair. He tied a handkerchief around his face, covering his nose. A police photographer was busy taking pictures. His flash bulbs kept popping into the night, lending a curiously cel­ebratory air to the macabre scene. When all the photos had been taken, the M.E. asked if it was all right to move the body out of the bus. O’Neil said it would be all right, and then asked the ambulance attendants and the interne to move it. They did so without comment, but it was plain to see they wished they were elsewhere. The M.E. put down his black satchel and got to work. O’Neil strolled over to me. We had been on the scene for an hour and a half already, but nobody yet knew who’d been inciner­ated inside that bus. Except me.

“What do you think?” O’Neil asked. His question sur­prised me. I hadn’t expected him to ask me for an opin­ion.

“What do you think?” I said. I had been told by two cops I respected that O’Neil was a good cop. So far, he had done nothing to disabuse their opinions.

“It bothers me that there’s no skid marks,” he said. “There should be skid marks, don’t you think? If the guy went off the road, there should be marks.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Also, did you notice those tracks in the mud? The car was pointed straight downhill. That’s unusual, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I mean, if the guy lost control and went off the road, it’s unlikely he Would’ve gone through the barricade at that angle.”

Coop walked over. “Danny,” he said, “the MJE.’s got some stuff you’ll want to tag,”

“Thanks, Captain,” O’Neil said, and walked back to the bus. Coop and I followed him.