The Next Accident - Lisa Gardner [32]
Rainie waited. On the other end of the phone, the sound of Quincy’s breathing grew less ragged. She could feel him pulling himself back together, becoming once more the cool, composed federal agent he so prided himself on being. He needed his masks, she thought, just as she needed hers. It surprised her how much that realization hurt her.
For no good reason, she was thinking about the baby elephant again, his desperate run across the desert. Kicked down, getting back up. And still the jackals shredded him in the end.
“Do you think they’re connected?” she asked him shortly.
“What?”
“The phone calls. With Mandy’s accident. Seems rather interesting that you’ve no sooner hired someone to investigate Mandy’s death, than you’re getting a bunch of threatening calls.”
“I don’t know, Rainie. It could simply be opportunity. There are enough people out there who have nothing better to do than hate me. Maybe they heard about my daughter’s funeral and decided it was their chance to have some fun. We’ve had incidents in the past where someone has gotten an agent’s personal information. Nothing on this big of a scale, but then again, we’re now in the computer age.”
“I don’t like it,” Rainie said flatly. “Plus the fact that Sanchez evoked Mandy in the phone call . . . Seems a rather pointed message.”
“I . . . I don’t know.” Quincy sounded tired again. “I think they must be connected. Then I think I’m paranoid. Then I think I’m merely being diligent. I don’t . . . I’m not myself at the moment.”
Rainie fell silent. She kept thinking there was something comforting she should say. She had not grown up in a house big on comfort. Thirty-two years old. It was kind of funny all the things she didn’t know how to do.
“I spoke with the investigating officer,” she said, since like Quincy, business was what she handled best. “He did a good job at the scene. I couldn’t find anything he’d overlooked.”
“What about the seat belt?”
“The driver . . .” She stuttered immediately, shocked by her coldness at using that impersonal word.
Quincy didn’t say anything and the silence loomed huge this time, a giant black void between them. They couldn’t get this right, Rainie thought suddenly, desperately. Even when they were trying, they couldn’t get this right.
“Mandy reported the seat belt broken a month before the accident,” she tried again, her voice meek now, humbled by her mistake. “She made an appointment with the garage that serviced her vehicle, then canceled at the last minute.”
“She’d been driving without a working seat belt for a month?”
“It would appear so.”
“Why didn’t someone pull her over? I thought there were seat belt laws in this state!”
Rainie didn’t reply to his outburst. She knew he didn’t expect her to.
“What had happened to the seat belt?” he redirected his line of questioning. “How did it break?”
“We don’t know yet. Officer Amity is helping me locate the vehicle so I can examine it, but fourteen months later makes things difficult. Most likely the Explorer has already been broken down for parts at some salvage yard.”
“I want to know what happened to the seat belt.”
“I’ll find it, Quincy. You know I’ll find it.”
“And the man, the one she was supposedly seeing?”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I meet with Mary Olsen. Hopefully she can point me in his direction. I’ll also check in with Mandy’s local AA group. They probably know more about her personal life.”
“AA has policies about giving out information.”
“Then I’ll just have to turn on my charm again.”
“Rainie—”
“I’m on top of the case, Quincy. Things are beginning to happen and I know you need answers. I’ll get them.”
His silence was subdued now, a long soft spell where they both sat not too many miles apart and yet still too far away. She wondered if he was sitting in a darkened room. She wondered if he’d skipped dinner again, the way he’d probably skipped lunch before that and breakfast before that. She wondered how many hours he’d pace before finally falling in a restless, exhausted sleep. And then she wondered how they could