Chapter 8 007

This is what her father said to Laura when she left, and what his father said to her when the two met for the last time: "You, I love you." Why did he say this? "You, I love." She hadn't heard that expression in years. Inspector Brisebois took another cup of tea from Mrs. Curtis."It must be hard for you to deal with accidents like this every day, I'm sorry," she said. Laura's mother went so far as to apologize to police over her husband's death. —Is the wife a suspect? —Wives are always suspects. The twins were twisting their bodies to get out of the dining room.Warren had emerged from the kitchen with a package of cheese puffs in his hand, his customary look of exasperation on his face.Where is Laura?She was playing over and over in her head the last words her father said to her, "You, I love."

Brisebois had already asked Laura's father if he was on any medication, and the answer was no, not even Advil, the pain reliever.Now the officers are trying to unravel the suspiciousness of Laura's father's driving route the night before. "Ms. Curtis—may I call you Helen?—In this case, we need to keep a detailed record of what happened in the past 24 hours." He spread out a map of the city on the coffee table, "You Husband works at the railroad yard to the east, here, Blackfoot Lane, huh?" Mrs. Curtis nodded. "But the accident happened on the Ogden Highway, and from the bearings, he was going the wrong way. Do you think he forgot something and turned around and headed home?"

"Maybe, I don't know." Warren interjected, "Do you think you can't beat her enough for one night?" "Of course not," said Inspector Brisebois.He took his last sip of tea, stood up, and buttoned his jacket.Then he asked, seemingly casually, "Helen, you don't think there's any reason for your husband to feel his life is in danger, do you?" Warren snorted, "How could my dad, that's ridiculous." Mother looked at the police officer, tilted her head and thought for a while, "Why do you ask this question?" "No reason, just -- he was driving too fast. The coroner will do an autopsy. It's routine for this kind of accident. They're going to measure the alcohol in his blood, check his heart for the presence of Problem or sudden brain lesion. Maybe your husband just fell asleep. Did you say he had trouble sleeping at night before, was it insomnia?"

The mother nodded, "I often hear that he gets up at night and heats milk in the microwave to drink to promote sleep." She looked at the chair her husband often sat on, and fell into a trance again. "Maybe that's why," said Inspector Brisebois, wearing his hat, "an accident caused by a driver who was tired. It's just--there's a phenomenon we call scuff marks, which appear on the tires. If the car is suddenly forced to turn at high speed, it will fight against its own forward momentum-even if the brakes are not applied, this internal resistance will occur. You understand, the car is heading towards a driving in one direction, while the wheels are being pulled in the other direction. We found very clear scuff marks in the tire tracks left by your husband. If a person falls asleep, wakes up suddenly, and slams the steering wheel, the car will However, if that's the case, your husband should be trying to steer as hard as he can on the side of the road, and the bruise should be in the direction of the bridge. In fact, his tire prints show the opposite direction, away from the bridge , rushed to the embankment."

Brisebois tosses these details like a depth charge while carefully watching the family's reactions.The mother looks confused; the son frowns and eats puffs from the bag; the daughter is so calm that she can barely hear her breathing. "So my dad lost his bearings," Warren said irritably, licking the brown cream on his fingers. "He's steering the wrong wheel?" "We also found a second set of tire marks on the back road, some distance from where the accident occurred, and it looks like the owner stopped there." Warren approached him. "You think someone was chasing my dad and forcing him off the road?"

"It's possible." "Let me just say, my dad wouldn't drive that fast! He's always obeying the traffic laws, never speeding, look at his injuries, those are..." Warren couldn't go on. Laura turned to her brother. "Did you see Daddy? Did you see..." "Someone has to go and see, can't Mom go?" Warren glared at his sister, "Why did you take so long to come? I came from Springbank, and you are on the mountain, walking can come down." Laura had worked late the night before and put her phone on voicemail because her father liked to call her at night when he couldn't sleep.Her work needs to be done on a deadline so she never checks her email, and her father never leaves a message, just a series of clicks and clicks.She didn't press the play button on the phone until she was brushing her teeth, but she didn't expect to hear her mother's voice, "Laura, answer the phone quickly... Please!"

Her father was lying under the pale green fluorescent light at this moment. "You went?" Laura asked. "Did you see Papa?" Warren didn't answer or look at her.His eyes were fixed on the officer without blinking, choosing an expression of anger rather than admitting his grief. At that moment, the past years drifted away like feathers flying from the pillow.Among the swirling feathers, he appeared, Laura's brother, her eldest brother.Warren, Curtis stares condescendingly at the mean girls, forcing them to apologize to their sister; Warren takes Laura into a movie theater where a horror movie is showing, squeezes her arm in a tense moment, "to the other side Look, look away now."

Laura tried to meet her brother's gaze, to say "thank you" to him the way a sister-in-law said "hello" to her, but he didn't want to look at her, couldn't look at her.If he did, he'd cry, she thought, and he couldn't let that happen, and when it did, it wouldn't stop. "So that's the way it is?" Warren asked the officer. "Some idiots driving around for the thrill of driving an old man down a hill. You better find those idiots before I do." "Don't speak foul language." The mother warned her son.Her thoughts drifted back to the conversation in front of her.

Warren ignored her. "For Jesus' sake, officer, I've seen the crime scene, can you guys put the tire prints into some kind of database and find those idiots?" "Tire marks are not like fingerprints," Brisebois said. "They are constantly changing. We are dealing with a pile of rubber, which is a soft synthetic material. After a week or even a day, there are tire marks. Changes may occur. For example, the tire may hit a rock, rub off a little rubber, and form a new scar, so the tread will change. Yes, we can associate a tire print with a tire, but , it is impossible to collect all kinds of car tires for registration. Therefore, we can't just look for vehicles based on tire prints."

Laura turned her head to the large French windows and saw reflected in the living room: mother, brother, and the police officer and herself, but no father. Language can both reveal something and hide something. "You, I love." Why did he say that?