Hatley didn’t say how Erin James’s parents knew that she needed help, but Stevie guessed news of a fatal car accident traveled pretty fast in Lynchburg. Later in the report Hatley noted that Norbert Doyle was a “summer resident” who pitched for the Lynchburg Hillcats. There were, according to Hatley, no witnesses to the accident.
Stevie read and reread the report three times. There was, as Mabel had already explained to him, no second car, and also no mention of a drunk driver. He looked at his notes. There really wasn’t much to go on. Maybe, he thought, he could find James Hatley and ask him if he had any other memories of that night. There were, it seemed to Stevie, holes in the report, most notably Hatley’s acceptance of Doyle’s story that he had swerved to miss an animal. Stevie had watched enough TV to know that in a one-car accident the police would at least consider the possibility that the driver had been drinking. And yet there was no mention of a sobriety test of any kind.
He looked at the clock. It was already past noon. He needed to call Kelleher. He closed the file and walked back into the Automobile Records office. Mabel was nowhere in sight. Another woman was there talking to the man who had walked in while Stevie was waiting for Mabel to hunt down the file.
When he saw Stevie, he waved a hand at the woman and said, “Okay, Janice, see you later.” He nodded at Stevie and walked out the door.
“All done?” Janice asked.
“Yes,” Stevie said, handing her back the file. “I understand someone was in before me today looking at this.”
Janice nodded. “Uh-huh.”
If she was any more curious than Mabel, she didn’t show it.
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
Janice shrugged. “Dressed in a suit, I remember that. Probably in his thirties. He seemed to think he needed to explain to me why he wanted the file-which he didn’t. Public document, you know. Ask for it, you get it.”
“What did he say about why he wanted it?”
“He said he had a relative who was involved. We get that a fair bit.”
Stevie thanked her and turned to leave. Then he remembered something. “Any chance you know if I might find officer James Hatley over at the police station?”
“No,” Janice answered, which stymied Stevie a little. Then she added, “He retired about two years ago.”
Stevie’s heart sank. Finding Hatley would probably be impossible if he was retired. He probably didn’t even live in Lynchburg anymore.
“If you really need to find him, he’s usually home around now. He tends to fish in the mornings, then go home around lunchtime.”
All wasn’t lost. “Do you know where he lives?” Stevie asked.
“I could tell you how to get there, but I don’t know his address,” she said. “Wait a sec.”
She reached below the counter and pulled out a phone book. She opened it, ran her finger down a page, and said, “Here it is: fourteen Brill’s Lane. It’s no more than ten minutes from here if you’re driving.”
“Could a cabdriver find it?”
“Oh sure, I imagine so,” she said.
Stevie wrote the address in his notebook, thanked her again, and walked back down the steps and out the door of the courthouse. It was a crisp fall day, and Stevie couldn’t help but think it would be a comfortable night for baseball in Washington. He pulled out his phone and dialed Kelleher.
“Where have you been?” Kelleher asked when he picked up.
“Sorry, I had to turn the phone off in the courthouse.”
“Oh yeah, that figures. So, what have you got?”
Stevie filled him in on what he had learned. Kelleher didn’t interrupt him except to say “Whaa?” when Stevie told him it had been a one-car accident and “Hmm” when he brought up Donald Walsh’s beating him to the file by a couple of hours. When he had finished, Kelleher said, “Well, you’ve got a lot to do, and so do I.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first, like you said, you need to go talk to Officer Hatley. There are a lot of unanswered questions in that report.”
“You mean like no sobriety test?”
“Exactly,” Kelleher said. “Guy runs his car into a tree-even if he did swerve for an animal-how fast was he going? No mention of whether he was drinking, no mention of checking the skid marks to determine his speed.”
“I wonder,” Stevie said, “if the drunk driver who killed Norbert’s wife might have been Norbert himself.”
“Might explain why he talks about feeling guilty,” Kelleher said. “What you need to find out from Hatley is why Doyle wasn’t given a sobriety test, and why he didn’t try to find out how fast he was going. You slam your car into a tree hard enough to kill someone on the spot, you were going fast.”
Stevie felt his stomach getting queasy-perhaps because he hadn’t eaten for almost seven hours; perhaps because the story was taking a scary turn.
“I don’t think this cop is going to be too happy to hear questions like that,” Stevie said.
“You’re right,” Kelleher said. “But if he’s retired, he may be more willing to talk. You go find him while I see if anyone in baseball has heard the name Donald Walsh.”
“You think the guy is in baseball?”
“No idea, but it’s a logical place to start. The name doesn’t ring a bell as anyone I know in journalism, but I’ll check around on that too.”
“Okay. I’ll call you back after I find Hatley.”
“Good. Be careful with him. Cops sometimes have mean tempers, especially if you’re questioning the quality of their police work.”
“Great,” Stevie said. “I wish Susan Carol was here to charm him.”
“So do I,” Kelleher said. “But you’ll be fine. Act fourteen and dumb.”
“I am fourteen and dumb,” Stevie said.
“Nah, just fourteen and in new territory. You can do it.”
Stevie hung up and pulled Miles Hoy’s card out of his pocket and was about to dial his number when he realized his head was pounding and his stomach really was growling. He looked down the block and saw a McDonald’s. He put the phone back in his pocket. He knew he had to see officer James T. Hatley. But he didn’t have to do it on an empty stomach.
Miles Hoy was delighted to hear Stevie’s voice. When Stevie asked him if he knew where 14 Brill’s Lane was, Hoy laughed. “Sure I do. Jim Hatley’s place? I’ll be right over to get you.”
It was shortly after one o’clock and Stevie was still finishing his vanilla milk shake when Hoy pulled up. He knew Hoy was going to ask why he wanted to see Hatley, so he was prepared when he asked the question: “The ladies at the courthouse thought he might have known my grandfather.”
That answer seemed to satisfy Hoy, which was a relief to Stevie. Ten minutes after Hoy had picked Stevie up, he turned the cab onto a dirt road with a battered sign that said Brill’s Lane.
“Easy to find,” Hoy said. “It’s the only house on the road. There it is up there.”
He pointed to his right at what looked like an old farmhouse.
“What’s Officer Hatley like?” Stevie said, suddenly realizing he should have asked Hoy if he knew him before they were almost on top of his house.
“First, don’t call him Officer,” Hoy said. “He retired a sergeant. Beyond that, he’s like any cop-or ex-cop. He likes to hunt and fish, and he’s a no-nonsense guy. Not exactly a barrel of laughs.”
“Married?” Stevie asked.
“Was,” Hoy said. “His wife apparently left him. I think he might have had some kind of drinking problem years ago. That was before I got to town. They had kids, but they’re grown. He lives alone.”
They pulled into a dusty driveway with a pickup truck sitting in front of the garage.
“You’re in luck,” Hoy said. “He’s home. You want me to wait?”