The Demon Pool by Richard B. Dwyer Page A

did see another car. I think they were racing. One passed me on the
left. Very fast. Like a Porsche. I think it was red. The Corvette went to the
right. I guess he didn’t see the trailer.”
    Jim looked at the Corvette again. “I guess he
didn’t.”
    The wrecker driver approached the trailer and
examined the damage to the Corvette, half talking to the group, half talking to
himself.
    “Holy Mother of God. I guess whoever was driving
is still in there. This ain’t going to be pretty.”
    Jim spoke to the group, “Better get started. We
need to see who is in there. If it was a race and someone died we don’t have an
accident, we have a potential homicide. Be careful what you touch.”
    The wrecker driver went back to his vehicle and
backed up behind the trailer, stopping close to the rear of the Corvette.
Exiting the cab again, he walked around to the back of his rig. He extended the
tow cable and attached it to the Corvette’s rear axle. Fiberglass and metal
scraped together as he manipulated the controls and slowly extracted the car.
The noise overwhelmed the nighttime chatter coming from the underbrush next to
the highway. Pieces of fiberglass and carbon fiber panels, cracked and loosened
from both the impact of the collision and the extrication of the vehicle,
peeled off and fell to the pavement.
    The cockpit of the Corvette cleared the end of
the trailer. It was worse than Jim had expected, but surprisingly, there was
only a modest amount of blood. There were two bodies. Headless bodies. The
collision had guillotined the driver and a female passenger when the cockpit
crashed through the trailer’s under-ride guard. The hands of the driver still
gripped the steering wheel. The passenger’s left hand clenched the driver’s
right leg. Jim smelled urine.
    Jim raised a fist signaling the tow truck driver
to stop. With the cockpit exposed, the two youngest firefighters turned away
from the Corvette, covered their mouths, and trotted toward the grassy
roadside. Their vigorous retching accentuating their inexperience. The rescue
truck engineer stood across from Jim, next to the Corvette’s passenger door.
    “Not much for us to do here.”
    Raw meat sat exposed where their heads had once
been. Other than the decapitation, there looked to be little other trauma. As
Jim looked over the Corvette’s interior, something seemed familiar. He studied
the decapitated bodies. The woman had the figure of a swimsuit model. Jim
looked at her lifeless hands — perfectly manicured nails — except for two on
her left hand that had broken off. Probably not a housewife .
    The driver’s hands held onto the steering wheel
in what was literally a death grip. On his left wrist was a very expensive
watch. Jim had seen that watch before. He walked around to the rear of the
vehicle and did what he should have done sooner. Jim looked at the license
plate. It read DBL HELIX — Jefferson Briggs’ vanity license plate. That meant
the woman was most likely Briggs’ girlfriend, Kimberly. This was a first. Jim
had seen dozens of accidents and more than a few fatalities. However, none of
the dead had been someone Jim actually knew. He quickly strangled his feelings. Shit.
    He reached down, pulled his cell phone from its
holder and dialed. A sleepy voice answered.
    “Coroner.”
    “This is Corporal Demore, Highway Patrol. We have
two dead at-the-scene, just north of the Naples rest area. A Corvette underrode
a tractor-trailer. Might have been a race. We’re going to handle this as a
vehicular homicide.”
    “Alright,” the sleepy voice said. “I’ll let the
Sheriff know.”
    Jim recognized the fatigue in the Coroner’s
voice. Labor Day weekend had been tough on the Coroner’s office. Vacationers
and alcohol always led to a bonanza business. It did not look as if they would
be getting much of a post-holiday break. Jim sighed. Neither would he. He
closed his phone and put it away. He glanced at the engineer.
    “I could use a little