He pulled over to the side of the road, hitting the flashers. “Looking at the scene of the so-called accident,” he replied,turning off the engine and getting out of the car after making sure no one was coming. A glance back told me that the Sheriff’s car had pulled over a ways back, and it made me incredibly nervous that he was still there.
I jumped when Hart opened my door and looked down at me.
“You gonna come read this scene for me or sit on your ass?”
I blinked. “Oh. Um. Okay.” I got out of the car carefully, trying to avoid twisting my knee in the lumps of dirt and muddy grasses that made up the nonexistent shoulder of the road. “You want me to… what?”
Hart stood there in the rain, the water pulling strands of white hair down the sides of his fine-boned features. “Jesus fuck, Mays. Youarea crime scene tech still, yeah? You have accident investigation certification? And arson certification?”
“I mean. Yes to the first, and I’m working on the second, but Hart?—”
“So then do your shit, Mays. Look at this scene. Tell me what you see.”
I stared at him. “You?—”
“I want you to do your fucking job,” he replied, but despite the profanity, his tone was oddly gentle.
I blinked, then turned to look at the road, dark streaks of rubber burned into the asphalt by the skidding of tires as a car—mycar—had been pushed off the road, the swerving lines telling me that Elliot had tried to keep the FJ Cruiser under control. Scraps of plastic in red and white and blue and orange testified to the crunch of two cars as one hit the other, twisted fragments of metal, plastic, and paint ground down by the passage of other tires and washed out by the rain. Hart collected the fragments, dropping them into an empty baggie he’d pulled from somewhere.
I traced the path with Hart, pointing out the application of brakes, the turn of a wheel, the point when Elliot lost control andslipped over the edge, a tire track in mud and flattened grass and gravel leading to a scorch in the grass dark and wide enough for me to know that if Elliothadbeen in the car when it caught on fire, it would probably have taken DNA to identify him.
I shuddered, looking at the dark patch, and I felt Hart’s hand on my back. “He’s okay,” he reminded me, and I nodded.
“He said he shifted and slid out of the car, and that the deputy shot at the gas tank until it caught fire.”
Hart swore extensively before coming back to his questions. “Does that track with this?” he asked me.
I nodded. “No other reason for it to have caught fire,” I replied. “Not the way it came off the road.”
“Good to know,” Hart replied, his voice dark. “So this wasn’t an attempt to scare him—well, to scareyou.”
“No,” I replied, half-swallowing the word. Neither one of us said it out loud, but I heard it nonetheless—It was an attempt to kill you.
The Sheriff’sDepartment car followed us up past the Hills’ farm, but pulled a Y-turn rather than actually parking at my parents’ house. Hart and I got out and watched the tail lights disappear around a bend before both of us let out a heavy sigh of relief.
“Fuck that fucker,” was Hart’s comment. “Now, you don’t actually need to feed any animals, do you?”
“Actually,” I replied, hesitating because I really did want to see Elliot much more than I wanted to feed some goats and chickens, “I do.”
Hart’s eyebrow—just the one—rose. “Seriously?”
“Goats and chickens gotta eat,” I told him.
“What are you going todowith them?” he asked.
“Elliot wants them, actually,” I replied. “Well, the goats and some of the chickens. Ray’s going to take the rest.”
“Elliot… wants them?” Hart sounded incredulous.
“He does,” I confirmed, then bent and pulled the meowing backpack out of the passenger foot-well. “I—think we should drop Sassafras in the house first, though. I don’t want to carry her all the way down the mountain, and we can’t leave her in the car.” I swallowed. “And this will take us past the crime scene.”
Hart’s expression was a grimace, although in reaction to the goats, the cat, the crime scene, or something else, I wasn’t sure.
I skirted the stain on the porch, then carried the cat into the kitchen where I released her, then pulled out two bowls, filling one with water and the other with a can of cat food I’d also thrown into the bag.
Sassafras, previously very into the wet food, sat in the doorway to the hall and glared at me as I tucked the backpack into the hall closet, paranoia making me hide it between some boxes. A glance at the cat told me her ears were still partly back, and she hadn’t stopped eyeing me with suspicion. Apparently a car ride in a backpack was not a way to endear myself to her. But since she was pouting, I decided to go see if Hart needed any assistance.
I walked outside, finding him squatting beside the stain left on the deck by my mother’s blood.
