The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [20]
“I have some questions regarding an MVA homicide,” she started off. “You worked the case about a year ago.”
No response.
“The case is closed now—driver died at the hospital, but I’m clarifying some of the details for the family.”
Officer Amity said, “I gotta go on patrol now.”
“Great. I’ll go with you.”
“No, ma’am. Civilians can’t accompany officers on patrol. Too much liability.”
“I won’t sue.”
“Ma’am—”
“Officer. Look, I flew all the way here from Portland, Oregon, to get answers to my questions. The sooner you start talking, the sooner we can both move on with our lives.”
Officer Amity scowled. Given his size, the look really worked for him. Rainie figured the minute he stepped out of his patrol car, most perps dropped obediently to the pavement and held out their wrists for the bracelets. As a woman, she’d never had his advantage. She’d had to wrestle most of her hostiles to the ground. The thing about that, however, was it meant she’d built her career by always being ready for a fight.
Officer Amity was still working the scowl. She folded her arms. Waited. Waited. Big Boy caved with a sigh.
“Let me check in with dispatch,” he said. “Then I’ll meet you at my desk.”
Rainie nodded. Not being a dummy, she followed him to dispatch—police stations had back doors. Five minutes later, they sat across from each other at a beat-up desk, both armed with hot cups of coffee, and got into it.
“April twenty-eight,” Rainie said. “Last year. Single-car accident. SUV versus man walking a dog versus a telephone pole. The SUV got the man and dog. The telephone pole got the SUV. Kind of like an obscene version of rock, paper, scissors.”
“Female driver?”
“Yep, Amanda Jane Quincy. The accident put her in a coma. Last month, her family pulled the plug. I have a copy of the police report right here.”
Officer Amity closed his eyes. “Her father’s the fed, right?”
“There you go.”
“I should have known,” he muttered, and sighed again, a rumbling sound deep in his chest. He opened his desk, drew out a spiral notebook bearing last year’s date, and began flipping through the pages.
Rainie waited for him to refresh his memory with his personal notations, then plunged in. “You were the only officer at the scene?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“Everybody was pretty much dead. There’s not a whole lot police officers can do about that.”
“The driver wasn’t dead. Plus, you have at least one fatality and preliminary signs that the driver was operating a vehicle while impaired. In Oregon, that’s already the makings of neg homicide if not manslaughter. Surely that’s worth calling out a traffic investigation team.”
Officer Amity shook his head. “Ma’am, with all due respect, the driver wasn’t wearing a seat belt. She’d hit the rim of the windshield and lost half her brain. While she might not have been DOA, even I could tell it was only a matter of time. Now I don’t know how it is in Oregon, but in Virginia it doesn’t do us any good to build the case when we got no one left alive to charge with the crime.”
Rainie eyed him shrewdly. She said two words. “Budget cuts.”
Amity’s eyes widened in surprise. He nodded slowly, studying her with fresh interest. In most states, the minute an accident involves a fatality, particularly a pedestrian fatality, an accident investigation team will be called out regardless of the condition of the driver. But in the wonderful world of policing, accident investigation teams were the first to feel the sting of budget cuts, even though police officers spent the majority of their time dealing with MVAs and not homicides. Apparently, society couldn’t stand the thought of death by stranger, but demise by automobile was okay. Merely the cost of living in the modern age.
“Tell me about the seat belt.” Rainie switched gears.
“She wasn’t wearing one.”
“In the report, it says the strap was ‘nonoperative.’ What does that mean?”
Amity frowned, scratched his head, and flipped through his notes. “When I was