The Next Accident Read online

  Elizabeth had done right by her children. She told herself that often these days. She’d done right by her children.

  Even when she’d pulled the plug?

  At the age of forty-seven, Elizabeth Ann Quincy was a beautiful woman. Cultured, sophisticated, and lonely.

  This Monday evening she walked down South Street in Philadelphia, ignoring the laughing throngs of people who were enjoying the quirky mix of high-end boutiques and sex-toy shops. She bypassed three heavily tattooed teens, then sidestepped a long black limo. The horse-drawn carriages were out in full force tonight, adding the strong scent of horse manure to South Street’s already distinct odor of human sweat and deep-fried food.

  Bethie resolutely ignored the smell, while simultaneously refusing to make eye contact with any of her fellow Philadelphians. She just wanted to get back to her Society Hill town house, where she could retreat into a comforting shell of ecru-colored walls and silk-covered sofas. Another night alone with cable TV. Trying not to watch the phone. Trying not to wish too badly for it to ring.

  She jostled against the man unexpectedly. He was walking out of the gourmet grocery store just as she was passing and knocked her square in the shoulder. One moment she was striding forward. The next she was falling sideways.

  He grabbed her arm just before she hit the manure-splattered street.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Clumsy, clumsy me. Here you go. Up again. Right as rain. You are okay, aren’t you? I would hate to think I’d knocked the stuffing out of you.”

  Elizabeth shook her head in a daze. She started the obligatory I’m okay, then actually saw the man who’d collided with her, and felt the words die in her throat. His face . . . Strong European features with merry blue eyes, while a generous dollop of silver capped the dark hair at his temples. Older, forties or fifties, she would guess. Well-to-do. The fine linen shirt, unbuttoned enough to reveal the distinctive column of his throat and a light smattering of graying chest hairs. The well-tailored tan slacks, belted by Gucci and finished with Armani loafers. He looked . . . He was gorgeous.

  She was suddenly much more aware of his hand still on her arm. She started to babble. “I wasn’t looking . . . lost in my own little world . . . ran right into you. Not your fault, no apology necessary.”

  “Elizabeth! Elizabeth Quincy.”

  “What?” She peered up at him again, feeling even more flustered and not at all like herself. He was tall, very tall, broad shoulders, handsome. And an absolute stranger. She was sure of it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “Here I go again, making a mess of things. I know you, but you don’t me.”

  “I don’t know you,” Bethie told him honestly. Her gaze fell to his hand, still on her arm. He belatedly released her, and to her surprise, he blushed.

  “This is awkward now,” he stammered, obviously disconcerted and somehow all the more charming for it. “I don’t know quite what to say. Maybe I should never have mentioned your name, never brought it up. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I’ve seen you before, you see. Had you pointed out to me. Last month. In Virginia. At the hospital.”

  It took Elizabeth a moment to put those facts together. When she did, her whole body stilled. Her face paled. Her arms wrapped around her waist defensively. If he’d been at the hospital, had her pointed out . . . She thought she knew where this was going now, and something inside her felt ice cold. She closed her eyes. She swallowed thickly. She said, “Maybe, maybe you’d better tell me your name.”

  “Tristan. Tristan Shandling.”

  “And how do you know me, Mr. Shandling?”

  His answer was as she feared. He didn’t say a word. He simply pulled his finely woven shirt from the waistband of his slacks, and bared his right side to her.

  The scar wasn’t too big, just a few inches. It was still a raw, angry red, fresh out of surgery. Give it another month or two, however, and it would fade, the swelling would go down. It would become a fine white line on a broad, tanned torso.

  She reached out a trembling hand without ever realizing what she was doing, and touched the incision.

  A sharp gasp brought her back to reality. She blinked her eyes, then realized her hand was on a stranger’s stomach and he was still holding up his shirt for her and now people were stopping to stare.

  And she was crying. She hadn’t realized it, but there were tears on her cheeks.

  “Your daughter saved my life,” Tristan Shandling said quietly.

  Elizabeth Quincy broke down. She wrapped her arms around his waist; she pressed herself against the man who carried Mandy’s kidney. And she held him as tight as she’d ever held her daughter, held him as if finding him would bring Mandy back to her. A mother should never have to bury her own child. She had pulled the plug. Oh God, she had given permission and they had taken her baby from her. . . .

  Tristan Shandling’s arms went around her. In the middle of bustling South Street, he patted her shoulders awkwardly, then with more assurance. He let her cry against his chest and he said, “Shhhh, it’s all right. I’m here now, Bethie, and I’ll take care of you. I promise.”

  4

  Pearl District, Portland

  Rainie crawled out of bed at five A.M. Tuesday morning. To satisfy her masochistic streak for the day, she proceeded to run six miles in 90 percent humidity. Interestingly enough, she didn’t die.

  Upon returning home forty minutes later, she went straight into an ice cold shower where she wondered idly what Virginia would be like.

  She’d never left the state of Oregon. Every now and then, she’d thought of taking a trip to Seattle, but it never quite happened, so now at the age of thirty-two she was a complete neophyte to the broader United States. She wasn’t the only Oregonian like that either. Oregon was a big state. It offered beaches, mountains, deserts, lakes, upscale cities, and small frontier towns. You could gamble, windsurf, rock climb, ski, hike, sunbathe, shop, golf, sail, fish, race, white-water raft, and horseback ride, sometimes almost all at the same resort. So sure you could visit other states, but what would be the point?

  She toweled off, chose loose-fitting cotton clothes for the plane, then officially kicked off her new assignment by coughing up two thousand dollars for a last-minute flight across the country. The car rental agency had even more fun with her credit card. Thank God for AmEx.

  Her next issue was how to conduct business out of state. As a private investigator, she didn’t technically have jurisdictional boundaries. Most state agencies, however, required a local PI license number on all requests for information. Thus, if she wanted to pull DMV records, conduct a title search, anything in Virginia, she’d be out of luck. On the other hand, this was hardly a new problem in the business, and PIs had worked out a way around it.

  Rainie pulled out her Private Investigator Digest, located a PI in Virginia and gave the guy a call. Fifteen minutes later, after providing her Oregon license number for credibility and explaining her mission, Rainie had a pseudo-partner. She’d pass along her information requests to Virginian PI Phil de Beers, who’d pull the records in return for a nominal fee. The sixteen hundred dollars it had cost her to be licensed had now paid off.

  Rainie packed three days’ worth of clothes and, given her last case with Quincy, threw in her Glock. She headed out the door.

  Three hours later, airborne and finally relaxed enough to let go of the armrests, Rainie read the official report of Amanda Jane Quincy’s death.

  The first officer at the scene was a Virginia state trooper, responding to a call made from the cell phone of a passing trucker. The call was logged at 5:52 A.M., and the caller, who was very shaken, reported seeing a body along the side of the road. When he’d stopped, he found an older man whom he thought was dead, a small dog that was definitely dead, and deeper in the underbrush, a Ford Explorer crumpled against a telephone pole. Steam still poured out of the smashed hood. The caller said he’d tried to verbally rouse the driver without success. He didn’t attempt to touch or move h
er, however, as he thought that was a bad thing to do in a car accident—might cause further injury.

  The trucker was still at the scene when the state trooper arrived. He led the officer straight to the pedestrian, whom the state trooper agreed was DOA. They moved on to the Explorer, where the state trooper was able to force open the driver-side door and check the female motorist for a pulse. He found signs of life, which he passed along to dispatch, while the trucker, having finally seen the full extent of damage to the woman’s head, turned around and threw up.

  In the good news department, the report provided a great number of details, mostly thanks to the state trooper beating EMS to the scene. As Rainie knew from her own experience, no one ruined a crime scene faster than EMTs, except maybe firemen.

  She studied the Polaroids, as well as a small diagram indicating where the pedestrian and dog were found, and then the position of the vehicle against the utility pole. Records showed the vehicle to be a green 1994 Ford Explorer, registered to Amanda Jane Quincy, and purchased used three years earlier. It was a no-frills model, lacking automatic transmission, and more unfortunately for Mandy, a driver-side airbag.

  At the time of the crash, the driver was not wearing her seat belt. According to a note made by the trooper, it was found to be “nonoperative.” Rainie didn’t know what that meant and when she flipped through the pages, she didn’t find any follow-up notes.

  A designated auto-accident investigator had not been called, which disappointed her. In Oregon, the state police had a separate unit that specialized in analyzing and reconstructing motor vehicle accidents (MVAs). Either Virginia didn’t have one, or they didn’t feel it was necessary in this case. At least the trooper had run through the basics. No sign of skid marks going into the curve, indicating that the driver never made an attempt to brake. No signs of damage or paint on the rear or side of the Explorer, which would’ve signaled the involvement of another vehicle. No signs of other tire tracks or impressions at the scene.

  The trooper’s conclusion was blunt: Single-car accident, at-fault driver lost control of vehicle, check for drugs and alcohol.

  At the emergency room, the trooper got to add to his summary: Blood tests confirm blood alcohol level of .20. At-fault driver sustained massive head injury, not expected to live.

  The file contained no more notes. The at-fault driver had never regained consciousness to be presented with criminal charges. Over a year later, she’d died. Case closed.

  Rainie felt a chill.

  She put away the notes, though the photos remained in her hands. Pictures of that poor man, out walking his dog. Pictures of the poor fox terrier who hadn’t had a long enough leash. Pictures of the twisted front end of a massive vehicle, which had crumpled like paper upon impact.

  The EMTs had whisked Mandy to the emergency room, sparing everyone those images. The state trooper had captured the front windshield, however, including the shattered upper left quadrant, which bore a macabre mold of Amanda Quincy’s face.

  Quincy had studied these photos. Rainie wondered how long it had taken him to look away.

  She sighed. The report didn’t give her much hope. No evidence of any other vehicles involved. The lack of braking, which might bother an untrained investigator, was also consistent with DUI incidents. Also, no evidence of anyone else at the scene. The state trooper had written up a straightforward report, and at this juncture, Rainie had to agree.

  But there was the issue of how Mandy came to be drunk at five-thirty in the morning when her friends had seen her sober just three hours before. And there was the “nonoperative” seat belt that had turned what should have been a survivable crash into tragedy. Finally, there was the mystery man, the supposed love of Amanda Quincy’s life, whom no one had ever met.

  “Still not much of a case,” she murmured. But Quincy must be getting to her, because she no longer sounded convinced.

  Greenwich Village, New York City

  Kimberly August Quincy was having one of those spells again. She stood on the corner of Washington Square in the heart of New York University’s campus. The sun was shining brightly. The sky gleamed a vast, vast blue. The grass around the square’s signature arch was a deep, deep green. Residents strolled by, tidy in trendy suits and tiny John Lennon sunglasses. Summer students clad in ripped denim shorts and shrink-wrapped tank tops lay out on the green, ostensibly doing homework, but half of them sound asleep.

  A nice July afternoon. A safe, charming place, even by New York City standards.

  Kimberly was breathing too hard. Panting. She had a bag, once slung over her shoulder, now in a death grip in her hands. She had been on her way somewhere. She couldn’t remember where. Sweat poured down her face.

  A man in a business suit walked briskly down the sidewalk. He glanced casually at her, then came to a halt.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Go . . . away.”

  “Miss—”

  “Go away!”

  The man hurried away, shaking his head and no doubt sorry he’d tried to do a good deed in New York when everyone knew the city was full of nuts.

  Kimberly wasn’t nuts. Not yet at least. The logical part of her mind, which had taken enough psych classes to know, understood that. She was having an anxiety attack. Had been having them, in fact, for months now.

  She’d go days, even weeks, when everything was perfectly normal. She’d just wrapped up her junior year at NYU and with two summer courses, an internship with her criminology professor, and volunteer work at a homeless shelter, she had places to go and people to see. Out the door at six forty-five A.M. Rarely home before ten P.M. She liked things that way.

  And then . . .

  A strange sensation at first. A tingle running up her spine. A prickle at the nape of her neck. She’d find herself stopping abruptly, halfway down a street. Or whirling around sharply in the middle of a crowded subway. She’d look for . . . She didn’t know what she looked for. She’d just suffer the acute sensation that someone was watching. Someone she couldn’t see.

  Then it would go away as swiftly as it had come. Her pulse would calm, her breathing ease. She’d be fine again. For a few days, a few weeks, and then . . .

  It had been worse since the funeral. At times almost hourly, then she’d get two or three days to catch her breath before bam, she’d step onto the subway and the world would close in on her again.

  Logically she supposed it made sense. She’d lost her sister, was battling with her mother, and God knows what was going on with her father. She’d consulted Dr. Marcus Andrews, her criminology professor, and he’d assured her it was probably stress related.

  “Ease up a little,” he’d advised her. “Give yourself some time to rest. What you don’t accomplish at twenty-one, you can always accomplish at twenty-two.”

  They both knew she wouldn’t slow down, though. It wasn’t her style. As her mother loved to tell her, Kimberly was too much like her father. And in many ways that made the anxiety attacks even worse, because just like her dad, Kimberly had never been afraid of anything.

  She remembered being eight years old and going to some local fair with her father and her older sister. She and Mandy had been so excited. A whole afternoon alone with Daddy, plus cotton candy and rides. They could barely contain themselves.

  They’d gone on the Tilt-A-Whirl, and the spider, and the Ferris wheel. They’d eaten caramel apples, two bags of popcorn and washed it down with well-iced Coke. Then, positively buzzing with sugar and caffeine, they’d rounded up their dad to continue the adventure.

  Except their father wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. He was studying some man who stood off to the side by the kiddy rides. The man wore a long, grubby overcoat and Kimberly vividly remembered Mandy crinkling her nose and saying, “Oooh, what smells?”

  Their father gestured for them to be quiet. They took one look at the intent expression on his face and didn’t dare disobey.

  The strange man had a camera around his neck. A
s they all watched, he took picture after picture of little kids on the rides.

  “He’s a pedophile,” their father murmured. “This is how he starts. With photos, lots of photos of what he wants but can’t have. He’s still fighting it, or he’d have his own stash of porn by now and not be into fully dressed targets. He’s fighting it, but he’s losing the war. So he’s setting himself up to be a situational offender. Going places where there are lots of children. Then when he finally gives in to his depravity, he’ll tell himself it was their fault. The kids made him do it.”

  Standing beside Kimberly, Mandy faltered. She looked at the strange man, snapping away furiously, and her lower lip began to tremble.

  Their father continued, “If you ever see someone like him, girls, don’t be afraid to leave the area. Always trust your instincts. Head straight to the nearest security booth, or if you feel that’s too far away, duck in behind a woman walking with children. He’ll assume she’s your mother, too, and give up the chase.”

  “What are you going to do?” Kimberly asked him breathlessly.

  “I’m going to pass along his description to security. Then I’m going to come back here tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. If he’s still coming around, we’ll find an excuse to arrest him. That’ll at least give him pause.”

  “I want to go home!” Mandy wailed and started to cry.

  Kimberly looked at her older sister without comprehension. Then she turned back to her father, who was sighing at having set off good old Mandy again. Kimmy didn’t blame him. Mandy always got upset. Mandy always cried. But not Kimberly.

  She gazed up at her father proudly, and in September, when her new teacher asked each child what her parents did for a living, Kimberly declared that her daddy was Superman. The other kids teased her for months. She never did recant.

  Her father protected happy children from horrible strange men. Someday, she wanted to do that, too.