Sheriff Martin switched out the bright light over his scarred desk. Whitaker walked to the door, and the Sheriff followed him out, pulled the door shut, and they went together down the silent hallway of the otherwise deserted courthouse.
Whitaker pushed one of the big double outside doors open, and stopped abruptly, cocking his head to one side and gazing westward toward the towering peak of Lookout Mountain, against the base of which the town was nestled.
“Someone coming hell-bent down the old road,” he muttered. “Twice as fast as it’s safe to take those horseshoe curves.”
The Sheriff listened with him a moment, and nodded. “Some crazy kids from the university,” he surmised. “We’ll have some broken necks up there one of these nights.”
“There it comes down the last stretch,” Whitaker pointed out. “Sixty miles an hour.”
They started down the broad steps together, both officers listening to the roaring motor as it rushed toward the village at breakneck speed, both of them momentarily expecting a nasty accident.
“He’s swinging up this way!” the Sheriff exclaimed as they reached the sidewalk. “Might be trouble. Let’s wait a minute and see.”
He stopped and got a sack of flaked tobacco and brown cigarette papers from the pocket of his tan corduroy shirt.
He was fashioning a cigarette when the car swung around a corner a block away and its headlights silhouetted the two men.
Brakes screamed and the big black coupe lurched to a stop in front of them. A door was flung open and a man jumped out excitedly. “That you, Sheriff? There’s been an accident up on Lookout Mountain. A car went over the cliff and killed the driver.”
The speaker was Nate Morris, a rugged young man who had a small ranch on Table Mountain and who lived in Sandhill during the winter months.
Martin asked, “You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Yes. I went down a drop of 200 feet to the car — at the foot of the third horseshoe curve. That place they call Inspiration Point. He’s pinned under the car, dead.”
“Get a wrecker and some men to help you,” Martin directed his deputy, “and get the Coroner out here.” Turning to Nate Morris, he asked the young man, “Do you want to drive me back up there and tell me more about it on the way?”
“Sally’s with me. My wife.” Morris indicated his coupe, and for the first time the Sheriff noticed a white-faced girl huddled in the front seat. “It’s been a terrible shock to her and I’d like to take her home before I go back.”
The Sheriff nodded briefly. “You saw it happen, eh?”
“Not exactly. We stopped there at the Point to park for a little while and watch the moon come up over Denver. We heard a radio playing very faintly as we sat there.” Morris shivered and glanced at his wife.
“It was ghastly. We couldn’t tell where the music was coming from. We were alone up there. Then I noticed a couple of those big guard rocks along the edge weren’t in place. I got out and investigated with my flashlight and saw the tracks where a car had gone over. Then I realized the music was coming from an automobile in the bottom of the canyon. Sally stayed in the car while I went down to investigate. Then I came to town as fast as I could.”
“We heard you,” Martin told him dryly. “Lucky you’re not at the bottom of a canyon, too. Go ahead and take your wife home and then come back.”
Deputy Whitaker had already hurried off to get a wrecker and the Coroner. Sheriff Martin went around the corner to his parked car, got in and headed up the narrow twisting road that climbed sharply up the mountainside directly above Sandhill.
In its time, the Lookout Mountain road had been a marvel of engineering, with its steep grades and sharp curves, a portion of the main highway west from Denver over the Rockies. In later years it has been superseded by a wide, smooth highway following the gentle gradient of Mount Vernon Canyon a few miles south of Sandhill. Now the road was used only by local residents, sight-seeing tourists, or occasional night-roaming couples who found it a safe place for necking parties.
The Sheriff stopped his car 100 feet below the wide shelf on the edge of the cliff known locally as Inspiration Point. He turned the machine crosswise to block the highway, to prevent the wrecker or any other car from getting past to spoil the tracks at the scene of the accident. He got out a big focusing flashlight, stepped off the side of the road and circled down the mountain toward the canyon floor.
He felt a tingling in his spine when he heard the muted sound of music through the night silence. The moon had risen, casting an eerie light over the mountainside. The radio in the wrecked car was tuned to Station KFEL in Denver, and the orchestra was playing Don’t Ever Leave Me.
His flashlight showed a light sedan turned up on its side in the bottom of the canyon ahead. The body of a man was pinned under the lower, right-hand side of the car. The upper part of his body protruded through the open window of the right door, with the steel top of the sedan crushing his chest. He had a nasty head wound and there was a pool of blood on the ground. He was a young man and his lips were crimsoned with a woman’s lipstick.
The car radio continued to play softly while Martin flashed his light inside the wrecked car. There was a smear of blood on the instrument board where he could have received the head wound. The key was in the ignition and it was turned on. The headlight switch was also on, though all the lights were out.
Other cars were roaring up the road from Sandhill. They were halted by the Sheriffs parked car, and Whitaker’s voice floated down to him. “Where are you, John?”
Martin flashed his light up the hillside. “Send the Coroner down here if he’s with you. Don’t let anybody go up to the Point until we look it over. I’m coming up now.”
His flashlight clearly showed the course the automobile had taken as it plunged straight down, indicating that it had turned end over end in the course of its journey.
The Sheriff was puffing strenuously by the time he reached the top. Whitaker was there ahead of him, flashing his light around the unpaved parkway that had been smoothed outside the arc of pavement.
“This gravel doesn’t show up tracks very well, but there’s no sign of skidding or anything like that,” he announced. “Looks like the car was driven straight over the edge.”
Martin flashed his light on the heavy granite boulders, set about three feet apart in a curve on the very edge of the precipice to act as a guard wall. There was a gap where two of the boulders were missing.
“A light car couldn’t possibly knock two of those boulders out of place,” he protested. He went to the edge and knelt down with his light, carefully examined the two places where the dislodged rocks had been.
“They were pried up and pushed over the edge to make a gap,” he surmised, pointing out marks in the hard ground such as might be made by a crowbar or similar tool.
“The outer edge was dug away first,” Whitaker agreed, “so it didn’t take much leverage to put them over.” He straightened up and looked at the Sheriff grimly. “Looks like an intentional accident. Fellow pried the boulders out and then drove over.”
Martin shrugged and switched off his light. “Looks that way. We’ll have to find the tool he did it with. Might as well bring the wrecker up now and let a cable down. I’ll go back down and see if the Coroner is through.”
Coroner F. J. Fulgreen and Assistant County Attorney Albright were examining the wrecked car and the body when the Sheriff went back. The radio was still sending soft music out into the night, and the Coroner reached inside the car and switched it off with an exclamation of annoyance.