Page 68 of The Sister's Curse

“We haven’t had much rain this summer,” Jasper said somberly. “The wreck wasn’t down very far.”

“What’s it look like?” I asked.

“About how you’d expect. Tons of front-end damage. Guy was strapped into the driver’s seat. I didn’t see any passengers.”

There was a sucking sound from the river, and something large seemed to twirl in the current. Over the hum of the winch, it was slowly dragged to land. It landed wheels down, and the metal of the crushed front end chewed at the flattened tires as the car was hauled up onto the gravel.

That car was expensive and unique. I wondered if it was something Lister had procured for him from the dealership.

Monica signaled for the tow driver to stop pulling the line in,and we approached the car. Water streamed from its crevices and the broken windshield. Monica reached for the driver’s-side door and opened it. Water splashed out in a wave.

The figure in the driver’s seat slumped. I approached, tongue glued to the roof of my mouth.

It was Sims. He was rubbery and dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, likely dead on impact. The whole interior of the car was coated in mud. His glasses were missing.

Wordlessly, we began taking pictures. I started at the car’s exterior, moving toward the interior. I clicked into business mode, moving methodically. I needed to document everything, especially if I was going to cover my own ass.

“Hey, look at this.” I pointed to Sims’s chest. The seat belt was partially cut, and bone glistened through tears in his shirt and skin.

“That’s a weird injury.” Monica bent to take a closer look. “I don’t think safety glass could have done that. Maybe some metal from the engine got ejected? It’s not like this car is the picture of current safety standards.”

“Maybe.” I looked at his left arm, the one closest to the broken driver’s-side window. That arm was completely shredded, as if he’d stuck it into a garbage disposal. His head wobbled on his neck and bowed forward, exposing thick gashes.

“That’s an awful lot of damage,” I muttered. I thought of the scratches on Mason and on Ross. My own leg ached.

“There’s suitcases in the trunk,” Monica observed. “Maybe he was headed out of town and had too much to drink.”

My phone beeped, so I knew someone in the sheriff’s office was playing with the new radio system. I picked it up. “Koray.”

“Hey, El-Tee. It’s Van Wert in Forensics. I’ve got some info for you about the Sumner house.”

“Hit me.”

“So, about that costume you found: we found a few exemplars of long dark hair, but without anyone to match those with, we can’t draw any strong conclusions.”

“Understood.” I was thinking about whether there was a way I could snag a piece of hair from Viv to compare.

“We got a lot of prints that you’d expect—family, friends, and people who worked there. And a whole bunch of unknowns that we don’t have in the system. Most of them are from women, so maybe cleaning crew?”

I chewed my lip. “How can you tell?”

“Ridge density is higher for women than men. We focused on the alarm panel, and got only prints from the husband, the wife, the maid, and the babysitter. Nobody else.”

“Okay. What about the back door?”

“Nothing unusual there. We found the child’s prints on the door handle, and that would have been within his reach. We also found the babysitter’s, but we don’t really have a way to determine whose are most recent.”

“Understood.”

“We did find something interesting on the bathroom windowsill, prints that had been there for a very long time. There was a coating of dust that made them fairly easy to process.”

“How long?” I asked.

“Can’t really tell. But I’m betting a long time, given who they belonged to.”

“Who?”

“Dana Carson, a missing person from twenty-five years ago. That was before my time, but I saw in the departmental records that her case remains unsolved.”