‘What’s happened?’ demanded Parnell. From where he stood he could see Rebecca’s bench space. She wasn’t at it.
‘Rebecca,’ said Johnson. ‘There’s been an accident.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said the female officer. ‘It’s bad. As bad as it gets. She’s dead.’
Everyone in the room, except Newton, looked sharply at Helen Montgomery, critical at the bluntness. She stared back at them, shrugging, unrepentant. Parnell waited – wanting – to feel something. But didn’t. All the cliches snowed in, like it had to be a mistake and it wasn’t true and what were they talking about, but he didn’t utter any of them, either. He said: ‘Tell me.’
Peter Bellamy pedantically took out a notebook, although he didn’t seem to need its reminders. ‘Seems she was going through Rock Creek Park a little too fast in the dark. Overshot a right-hander, went over the edge into a canyon. Took a while this morning before anyone realized the barrier had been busted: the car wasn’t visible from the road. So, it took us even longer to find the vehicle, under a rock overhang.’
‘What…?’ started Parnell but the forthright Helen Montgomery stopped him.
‘The autopsy’s going on now. There wasn’t a lot in her purse but there was the Dubette ID. We’re looking for next of kin. An address, in fact…’ She nodded towards Johnson. ‘From Hank we understood…’
‘There’s an uncle, runs a restaurant in Georgetown… Italian… Her parents are dead… Rebecca had a house in Bethesda… Do you go through Rock Creek Park to get to Bethesda…?’
Instead of answering, Bellamy said: ‘Were you with Ms Lang yesterday?’
Parnell nodded, trying to get himself – his thoughts – into some sort of comprehensible sequence, some sort of order. He didn’t think it was necessary to talk about crab fests and salt glue and Rebecca moving in. Of positive commitments. No one else’s business. Only theirs, his and Rebecca’s. ‘She took me up to Chesapeake. We ate crab
… It was…’ He stopped himself from saying fun, realizing that he was talking about crab fests and he wasn’t thinking straight. Rebecca had driven away… crashed… why hadn’t she stayed? Why hadn’t he gone back with her? Wouldn’t have happened if he’d gone back with her. Looked after her. Looked after her instead of staying by himself, thinking of himself.
‘We need to ask you something, Mr Parnell,’ said the woman. ‘You been drinking, you and Ms Lang?’
Parnell wished they’d stop being politically correct or whatever it was, and pronouncing Ms as ‘Miz’, which sounded like a nickname. ‘We had just one pitcher of beer. I drank most of it, because she was driving. Rebecca wasn’t drunk.’
‘You didn’t stop, on the way back?’
‘At my apartment… we got dirty, eating the crabs. Washed up there
…’ Parnell was suddenly caught by Dwight Newton’s stillness. The man didn’t appear to have moved since he’d come into the office, the usual twitching hands clasped tightly in his lap.
‘You do… get dirty,’ said Johnson, as if there were a need for confirmation.
‘You have a drink back at your apartment?’ persisted Helen Montgomery.
‘No.’
‘So, the day ended early?’ questioned Bellamy. ‘How early would you say, Mr Parnell?’
‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Parnell, emptily. ‘Eight-ish, nine-ish. I don’t know.’
‘The car clock’s busted at eight fifty,’ said Bellamy.
‘Like I said, eight-ish, nine-ish,’ said Parnell, numbly
‘You have an argument, Mr Parnell?’ demanded the woman, hard-voiced.
‘No!’ protested Parnell. ‘Why ask me that?’
‘Where she crashed. It’s a bad spot. Lots of warnings to slow down. Be careful. To have gone through the barrier… over the barrier
… like she did, she was going a lot too fast…’
‘Speedo’s broke, too,’ came in Bellamy. ‘Stuck at sixty-five. That’s an illegal speed in Rock Creek Park.’
‘Rebecca didn’t drive fast,’ insisted Parnell, defensively. ‘She didn’t drive fast and she wasn’t drunk and we hadn’t had a fight.’ Hadn’t had a fight echoed in his mind. But it hadn’t been an easy day. The contradiction came at once. Yes, it had. Ended good, at least. They’d decided to live together, for Christ’s sake! She was happy, going home to pack. Could that have been it, the opposite of what they were thinking? Going home too quickly, to pack?
‘So, she was a good driver?’ persisted the woman.
‘Very good.’
‘What about seat belts?’
‘What about seat belts?’ echoed Parnell.
‘She wasn’t wearing hers,’ said Bellamy, flatly.
‘No!’ refused Parnell. ‘She always wore a seat belt. It was a routine. Always. That’s how her parents died, not wearing their seat belts.’
‘She wasn’t wearing one last night,’ said Bellamy, just as insistent. ‘It might have helped if she had been.’
‘You sure things were OK between you?’ asked Helen Montgomery.
‘Couldn’t have been better…’ Why not, he thought. ‘We decided yesterday to move in together.’
The admission deflated some of the woman’s belligerence but not by a lot. ‘I’m not trying to be offensive,’ she began.
‘Maybe not trying hard enough,’ said Parnell, angrily.
Helen Montgomery ignored the outburst. ‘Did Ms Lang have other friends?’
Ms cut into his head like a buzz saw. ‘What’s that question mean?’
‘Other men friends? Boyfriends?’
Parnell bit back the instinctive rejection. He didn’t know, he conceded. She’d never introduced him to anyone else, male or female. Or talked about anyone else, until yesterday, the walk-away lover who’d made her pregnant. And he didn’t know who he was. ‘What’s the point of that question?’
‘What car do you drive?’ avoided Bellamy, once more.
‘A Toyota. Why?’
‘What colour?’ demanded the woman.
‘You answer my question first,’ said Parnell, still angrily.
‘No,’ she refused. ‘You answer mine.’
‘Grey. Now, why?’
The two police officers looked at one another. The woman smiled. The man may have nodded, Parnell wasn’t sure. The man said: ‘The barrier Ms Lang went into… and over. It’s white. Fluorescent, to reflect light, like these things do. The offside of Ms Lang’s car is all stove in… we found a lot of another car’s paint. It’s grey…’
A cohesive thought wouldn’t form. The impressions, his reactions, were jumbled, one or two words at a time. ‘You think… you mean… there was another car…?’
‘We need to understand a lot of things, Mr Parnell. A lot – too much – we haven’t worked out at the moment.’
‘Wait!’ demanded Parnell, raising both hands towards the tightly packed group. ‘You believe Rebecca crashed into another car – got thrown over the edge of a ravine…?’
‘Maybe forced over the edge,’ said Helen Montgomery.
‘Or sideswiped,’ added Bellamy.
‘But didn’t stop?’ stumbled Parnell.
‘Why do you think she was going so fast?’ said the woman. ‘How about trying to get away from someone? In too much of a hurry even to fasten up her seat belt?’
‘Maybe,’ accepted Parnell, ‘But she would have definitely fastened her seat belt.’
‘You sure you didn’t have a fight?’ demanded the woman.
‘We decided yesterday to move in together!’ protested Parnell.
‘You said,’ nodded Bellamy.
‘You actually think I drove Rebecca off the road! I loved her, for Christ’s sake! We were…’
‘… going to live together,’ finished Helen Montgomery, flatly. ‘Tell us some more about last night. Rebecca left around eight-ish, nine-ish?’
Parnell was holding himself rigidly under control, hands and arms stiff beside him, exasperated and impotent. Tightly he said: ‘Rebecca left, like I said. I sat around, thinking. We’d already decided we didn’t want anything to eat. I didn’t want a drink, either. I went through some papers I’d taken home – work things. Research. Then I went to bed.’
‘You’d decided that day to live together?’ pressed the woman.
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t celebrate?’
‘We were going to, tonight. At her uncle’s restaurant. It was going to be a surprise.’