Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [6]
“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 sure about this because the mist had 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 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 got 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