Stevie thanked her and made his way up the steps. The third door he came to said Automobile Records on it. He walked in and found an older man and a young woman ahead of him on line. There was only one clerk working. He quickly learned that automobile records didn’t just mean records of accidents. This was also the place where people came to get license plates and vehicle registration. That’s what the two people in front of him were doing.
Stevie waited while the clerk walked them through what forms they needed to fill out and answered their various questions. He decided this would be a good time to let Kelleher know he’d made it to Lynchburg and to the courthouse. He had punched two numbers when he heard the clerk’s voice. “Excuse me, sir?” she said, and pointed to a sign next to the desk that said No Cell Phone Usage in the Courthouse.
“Sorry,” Stevie said, snapping the phone shut, hoping his phone faux pas wouldn’t turn the clerk against him.
It took about fifteen minutes for the people in front of him to clear up their various problems, but it felt like an hour to Stevie. When he got to the desk, the clerk was giving him a funny look. Stevie figured she spent most of her time dealing with people who had issues with their cars, and Stevie clearly didn’t look like he had a driver’s license. He wished Susan Carol were with him, because she was so good at finessing situations like this.
“What can I help you with?” the clerk asked.
“Oh yes, thanks,” Stevie said, suddenly tongue-tied after rehearsing what he was going to say about a hundred times. “I’m looking for a police report on an accident…”
“Were you involved in an accident?” the clerk asked.
“No, no, not me,” Stevie said. “It’s an accident that happened in August of 1997, but I don’t know the exact date.”
“Can you give me any more information?” the clerk said.
Remembering what Kelleher had told him to ask for, Stevie nodded. “Yes. It was a fatal accident, two cars. The victim’s name was Analise Doyle.”
The clerk nodded. “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Fortunately, we don’t have that many fatals around here. Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll have to go back into the archives, so it will take me a few minutes,” she said.
“Thanks,” Stevie said.
Five minutes went by, then ten, then fifteen. A man came in and looked at Stevie inquisitively. “Where’s Mabel?” he asked. Stevie guessed Mabel was the clerk. “Um, she’s in the back looking for something,” Stevie said, wondering if Mabel’s search was going to be interrupted.
“Okay, I’ll come back in a while,” he said, and left, much to Stevie’s relief.
Mabel finally returned a few minutes later, carrying a file. “Sorry,” she said as Stevie stood up and walked back to the counter. “Took me a while for a couple reasons. To begin with, this wasn’t a two-car accident, it was a one-car. Second, someone had the file out already this morning, and it wasn’t put back in the right place.”
Stevie stared at her for a second, trying to digest the information she had just casually passed on to him. One-car accident? That made no sense. And who’d had the file out already today? Was another reporter onto the story?
“Do you still want the file?” Mabel said after Stevie said nothing in response to her explanation.
“Oh yes, sorry,” Stevie said.
She pushed it across the desk in his direction. “You need to sign the sheet on the inside of the folder,” she said. “You can look at it in the room right next door for as long as you want. When you’re done, just bring it back to me.”
“Can I make a copy of it?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s a legal document. Unless you have a court order or can show that you represent someone involved in the case, you can’t copy it.”
“Even though it was twelve years ago?”
“Even if it was a hundred years ago. There’s not much to it, as you’ll see. You can take notes on any information you need.”
She opened the file to the sheet she had been talking about. “Sign your name there, and I’ll keep the sheet until you return the file. And I’ll need to see some ID. I don’t imagine you have a driver’s license, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Stevie said. “But I’ve got my high school ID and a passport.”
“Either one will do.”
He reached into his wallet and handed her his ID. She took it and printed his name, the date, and the time on the sheet right below the only other name on the sheet-the person who had been there just this morning! She turned the sheet over to Stevie. “Just sign next to where I printed your name and it’s all yours,” she said.
Stevie nodded. He wrote his name slowly so he could study the name above it. The signature was scrawled and unreadable, but the printed name was clear: Donald Walsh.
“Ma’am, do you remember what Mr. Walsh looked like?” Stevie asked.
She shook her head. “There’s two of us that work in here. Janice must have pulled this for him. That’s why I didn’t know where it was.”
“Is Janice around?”
She shook her head again. “She has the early lunch today.” She looked at the wall clock. “She should be back in a while. You can ask her then.”
“Thanks.”
If Mabel had any interest in why two men would show up on the same morning looking for the file on a twelve-year-old fatal-accident case, she didn’t show it. She pointed Stevie to the door that led to the adjoining room.
“If you want coffee or a soda, there’s machines down the hall,” she said.
He thanked her again. He felt the urge to drink some coffee, but he was already amped up enough. Clearly, there was something here-and someone else was a couple of hours ahead of him on the trail. He had work to do. And he needed to do it fast.
13: BACK IN TROUBLE… AGAIN
MABEL HAD BEEN RIGHT about the fact that there wasn’t much to the file. Stevie read quickly through the basics: The accident had taken place on August 13, 1997, shortly after midnight. The first officer to respond to the scene had been James T Hatley and, Stevie gathered, he had written the report. He wrote down Hatley’s name and badge number.
According to the report, the car had been traveling east on state road 260 when the driver “apparently lost control,” Hatley had written, “and swerved into a tree on the right side of the road.” From what Stevie could glean, the car had slammed pretty much head-on into the tree.
Hatley’s description of what the car looked like when he arrived was pretty gruesome. Stevie skipped quickly over those details until he got to the part where Hatley reported on the condition of the two people in the accident: “Both parties were out of the car when I arrived. A. Doyle was clearly DOS”-Stevie knew from TV that meant dead on the scene-“and a call was put out for EMS. N. Doyle had been thrown out of car and was conscious and reported pain in his rib cage and shoulder and had cuts and bruises on his face and arms. He was interviewed briefly at the scene before EMS arrived. He reported swerving to avoid an animal and losing control of the car. He said he did not know how fast the car was going when he skidded. The posted speed limit is 35 mph.”
Hatley went on to describe the arrival of the EMS unit and their confirmation that Analise Doyle was dead. Based on what Hatley had written about the damage to the car, it was amazing that Norbert had survived at all, let alone with such minor injuries. Later in the report Hatley detailed his conversation at the hospital with Norbert Doyle:
Mr. Doyle had been sedated after his wife’s death at the scene. He suffered two broken ribs and a separated collarbone, but his other injuries were minor. He repeated his story from the scene about avoiding an animal and skidding. He asked after his children, twins, two years old, who were home with a babysitter.
An officer was dispatched to the home, and a Ms. Erin James reported that both children were asleep in bed and said her parents had come to the house to help her and that they would look after the children until N. Doyle’s release from the hospital.