“So, how’z it look?”
“I have to run the numbers.”
“Those skids look pretty long to me. The guy must’ve been flying.”
“You’d be surprised. Other things factor in. Brake efficiency, surface, and surface conditions — you see the mist moving in right now? Was it like this two hours ago when the guy went over the side?”
“Been like this since I got here. But the fire guys were here first. I’ll get one up here.”
Clewiston nodded. Fairbanks pulled his rover and told someone to send the first responders up to the crash site. He then looked back at Clewiston.
“On the way.”
“Thanks. Does anybody know what this guy was doing up here?”
“Driving home, we assume. His house was in Coldwater and he was going home.”
“From where?”
“That we don’t know.”
“Anybody make notification yet?”
“Not yet. We figure next of kin is the wife he’s divorcing. But we’re not sure where to find her. I sent a car to his house but there’s no answer. We’ve got somebody at Parker Center trying to run her down — probably through her lawyer. There’s also grown children from his first marriage. They’re working on that too.”
Two firefighters walked up and introduced themselves as Robards and Lopez. Clewiston questioned them on the weather and road conditions at the time they responded to the accident call. Both firefighters described the mist as heavy at the time. They were sure about this because the mist had hindered their ability to find the place where the vehicle had crashed through the brush and down the embankment.
“If we hadn’t seen the skid marks, we would have driven right by,” Lopez said.
Clewiston thanked them and turned back to his computer. He had everything he needed now. He opened the Accident Reconstruction Technologies program and went directly to the speed and distance calculator. He referred to his clipboard for the numbers he would need. He felt Fairbanks come up next to him.
“Computer, huh? That gives you all the answers?”
“Some of them.”
“Whatever happened to experience and trusting hunches and gut instincts?”
It wasn’t a question that was waiting for an answer. Clewiston added the lengths of the four skid marks he had measured and then divided by four, coming up with an average length of sixty-four feet. He entered the number into the calculator template.
“You said the vehicle is only two months old?” he asked Fairbanks.
“According to the registration. It’s a lease he picked up in January. I guess he filed for divorce and went out and got the sports car to help him get back in the game.”
Clewiston ignored the comment and typed 1.0 into a box marked B.E. on the template.
“What’s that?” Fairbanks asked.
“Braking efficiency. One-oh is the highest efficiency. Things could change if somebody wants to take the brakes off the car and test them. But for now I am going with high efficiency because the vehicle is new and there’s only twelve hundred miles on it.”
“Sounds right to me.”
Lastly, Clewiston typed 9.0 into the box marked C.F. This was the subjective part. He explained what he was doing to Fairbanks before the sergeant had to ask.
“This is coefficient of friction,” he said. “It basically means surface conditions. Mulholland Drive is asphalt base, which is generally a high coefficient. And this stretch here was repaved about nine months ago — again, that leads to a high coefficient. But I’m knocking it down a point because of the moisture. That mist comes in and puts down a layer of moisture that mixes with the road oil and makes the asphalt slippery. The oil is heavier in new asphalt.”
“I get it.”
“Good. It’s called trusting your gut instinct, sergeant.”
Fairbanks nodded. He had been properly rebuked.
Clewiston clicked the enter button and the calculator came up with a projected speed based on the relationship between skid length, brake efficiency, and the surface conditions. It said the Porsche had been traveling at 41.569 miles per hour when it went into the skid.
“You’re kidding me,” Fairbanks said while looking at the screen. “The guy was barely speeding. How can that be?”
“Follow me, sergeant,” Clewiston said.
Clewiston left the computer and the rest of his equipment, except for the flashlight. He led Fairbanks back to the point in the road where he had found the slalom scuffs and the originating point of the skid marks.
“Okay,” he said. “The event started here. We have a single car accident. No alcohol known to be involved. No real speed involved. A car built for this sort of road is involved. What went wrong?”
“Exactly.”
Clewiston put the light down on the scuff marks.
“Okay, you’ve got alternating scuff marks here before he goes into the skid.”
“Okay.”
“You have the tire cords indicating he jerked the wheel right initially and then jerked it left trying to straighten it out. We call it a SAM — a slalom avoidance maneuver.”
“A SAM. Okay.”
“He turned to avoid an impact of some kind, then over-corrected. He then panicked and did what most people do. He hit the brakes.”
“Got it.”
“The wheels locked up and he went into a skid. There was nothing he could do at that point. He had no control because the instinct is to press harder on the brakes, to push that pedal through the floor.”
“And the brakes were what were taking away control.”
“Exactly. He went over the side. The question is why. Why did he jerk the wheel in the first place? What preceded the event?”
“Another car?”
Clewiston nodded. “Could be. But no one stopped. No one called it in.”
“Maybe...” Fairbanks spread his hands. He was drawing a blank.
“Take a look here,” Clewiston said.
He walked Fairbanks over to the side of the road. He put the light on the pathway into the brush, drawing the sergeant’s eyes back across Mulholland to the pathway on the opposite side. Fairbanks looked at him and then back at the path.
“What are you thinking?” Fairbanks asked.
“This is a coyote path,” Clewiston said. “They come up through Fryman Canyon and cross Mulholland here. It takes them to the dog park. They probably wait in heavy brush for the dogs that stray out of the park.”
“So your thinking is that our guy came around the curve and there was a coyote crossing the road.”
Clewiston nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. He jerks the wheel to avoid the animal, then overcompensates, loses control. You have a slalom followed by a braking skid. He goes over the side.”
“An accident, plain and simple.” Fairbanks shook his head disappointedly. “Why couldn’t it have been a DUI, something clear cut like that?” he asked. “Nobody’s going to believe us on this one.”
“That’s not our problem. All the facts point to it being a driving mishap. An accident.”
Fairbanks looked at the skid marks and nodded. “Then that’s it, I guess.”
“You’ll get a second opinion from the insurance company anyway,” Clewiston said. “They’ll probably pull the brakes off the car and test them. An accident means double indemnity. But if they can shift the calculations and prove he was speeding or being reckless, it softens the impact. The payout becomes negotiable. But my guess is they’ll see it the same way we do.”
“I’ll make sure forensics photographs everything. We’ll document everything six ways from Sunday and the insurance people can take their best shot. When will I get a report from you?”
“I’ll go down to Valley Traffic right now and write something up.”