Porsche. He swept the light’s beam over the front of the high-performance sports car. The car was heavily damaged in the crash and the front had taken the brunt of it. The molded body had been badly distorted by repeated impacts as it sledded down the steep embankment. He moved in close and squatted when he looked at the front cowling and the shattered passenger-side headlight assembly.
He could feel Fairbanks behind him looking over his shoulder as he worked.
“If there were no witnesses, how did anybody know he’d gone over the side?” Clewiston asked.
“Somebody down below,” Fairbanks answered. “There are houses down there. Lucky this guy didn’t end up in somebody’s living room. I’ve seen that before.”
So had Clewiston. He stood up and walked to the edge and looked down. His light cut into the darkness of the brush. He saw the exposed pulp of the acacia trees and other brush the car had torn through.
He returned to the car. The driver’s door was sprung and Clewiston could see the pry marks left by the jaws used to extricate the driver. He pulled it open and leaned in with his light. There was a lot of blood on the wheel, dashboard, and center console. The driver’s seat was wet with blood and urine.
The key was still in the ignition and turned to the on position. The dashboard lights were still on. Clewiston leaned farther in and checked the mileage. The car had only 1,142 miles on the odometer.
Satisfied with his initial survey of the wreck, he went back to his equipment. He put the clipboard under his arm and picked up the measuring wheel. Fairbanks came over once again.
“Anything?” he asked.
“Not yet, Sergeant. I’m just starting.”
He began sweeping the light over the roadway. He picked up the skid marks and used the wheel to measure the distance of each one. There were four distinct skid marks, left as all four tires of the Porsche tried unsuccessfully to grip the asphalt. When he worked his way back to the starting point, he found scuff marks in a classic slalom pattern. They had been left on the asphalt when the car had turned sharply one way and then the other before going into the braking skid.
He wrote the measurements down on the clipboard. He then pointed the light into the brush on either side of the roadway where the scuff marks began. He knew the event had begun here, and he was looking for indications of cause.
He noticed that there was a small opening in the brush. A narrow pathway that continued on the other side of the road. It was a crossing. He stepped over and put the beam down on the brush and soil. After a few moments he went across the street and studied the path on the other side.
Satisfied with his site survey, he went back to the patrol car and opened his laptop. While it was booting up, Fairbanks came over once again.
“So, how’s it look?”
“I have to run the numbers.”
“Those skids look pretty long to me. The guy must’ve been flying.”
“You’d be surprised. Other things factor in. Brake efficiency, surface and surface conditions—you see the mist moving in right now? Was it like this two hours ago when the guy went over the side?”
“Been like this since I got here. But the fire guys were here first. I’ll get one up here.”
Clewiston nodded. Fairbanks pulled his rover and told someone to send the first responders up to the crash site. He then looked back at Clewiston.
“On the way.”
“Thanks. Does anybody know what this guy was doing up here?”
“Driving home, we assume. His house was in Coldwater and he was going home.”
“From where?”
“That we don’t know.”
“Anybody make notification yet?”
“Not yet. We figure next of kin is the wife he’s divorcing. But we’re not sure where to find her. I sent a car to his house but there’s no answer. We’ve got somebody at Parker Center trying to run her down—probably through her lawyer. There’s also grown children from his first marriage. They’re working on that, too.”
Two firefighters walked up and introduced themselves as Robards and Lopez. Clewiston questioned them on the weather and road conditions at the time they responded to the accident call. Both firefighters described the mist as heavy at the time. They were specific about this because they said the mist hindered their ability to find the place where the vehicle had crashed through the brush and down the embankment.
“If we hadn’t seen the skid marks, we would have driven right by,” Lopez said.
Clewiston thanked them and turned back to his computer. He had everything he needed now. He opened the Accident Reconstruction Technologies program and went directly to the speed and distance calculator. He referred to his clipboard for the numbers he would need. He felt Fairbanks come up next to him.
“Computer, huh? That gives you all the answers?”
“Some of them.”
“Whatever happened to experience and trusting hunches and gut instincts?”
It wasn’t a question that was waiting for an answer. Clewiston added the lengths of the four skid marks he had measured and then divided by four, coming up with an average skid length of sixty-four feet. He entered the number into the calculator template.
“You said the vehicle is only two months old?” he asked Fairbanks.
“According to the registration. It’s a lease he picked up in January. I guess he filed for divorce and went out and picked up the sports car to help him get back in the game.”
Clewiston ignored the comment and typed 1.0 into a box marked B.E. on the template.
“What’s that?” Fairbanks asked.
“Braking efficiency. One-oh is the highest efficiency. Things could change if somebody wants to take the brakes off the car and test them. But for now I am going with high efficiency because the vehicle is new and there’s only twelve hundred miles on it.”
“Sounds right to me.”
Lastly, Clewiston typed 9.0 into the box marked C.F. This was the subjective part. He explained what he was doing to Fairbanks before the sergeant had to ask.
“This is coefficient of friction,” he said. “It basically means surface conditions. Mulholland Drive is asphalt base, which is generally a high coefficient. And this stretch here was repaved about nine months ago—again that leads to a high coefficient. But I’m knocking it down a point because of the moisture. That mist comes in and puts down a layer of moisture that mixes with the road oil and makes the asphalt slippery. The oil is heavier in new asphalt.”
“I get it.”
“Good. It’s called trusting your gut instinct, Sergeant.”
Fairbanks nodded. He had been properly rebuked.
Clewiston clicked the enter button and the calculator came up with a projected speed based on the relationship between skid length, brake efficiency, and the surface conditions. It said the Porsche had been traveling at 41.569 miles per hour when it went into the skid.
“You’re kidding me,” Fairbanks said while looking at the screen. “The guy was barely speeding. How can that be?”
“Follow me, Sergeant,” Clewiston said.
Clewiston left the computer and the rest of his equipment except for the flashlight. He led Fairbanks back to the point in the road where he had found the slalom scuffs and the originating point of the skid marks.
“Okay,” he said. “The event started here. We have a single-car accident. No alcohol known to be involved. No real speed involved. A car built for this sort of road and driving is involved. What went wrong?”
“Exactly.”
Clewiston put the light down on the scuff marks.
“Okay, you’ve got alternating scuff marks here before he goes into the skid.”
“Okay.”
“You have the tire cords indicating he jerked the wheel right initially and then jerked it left, trying to straighten it out. We call it a SAM—a slalom avoidance maneuver.”
“A SAM. Okay.”
