Driven Read Online Free Page B

girls. That one was a five-year-old Mercedes, and
     it had to have been flying. The passenger, a thirty-five-year-old professional woman from Manhattan, was DOA. No seat belt.
     Driver missing. Still missing. Passenger owned the car.”
    Gavin frowned and glanced around the room. “I’m surprised the Feds aren’t here, too.”
    Rogers nodded. “They spoke to me earlier. There’s too much wrong with the picture for them. Too much alcohol at the scene
     to consider religious fanatics. At best we might have some sort of copycat, but I don’t think this guy has much of a cause.
     Personally, I think he just likes to wreck things.”
    “How do you know it was the same driver?”
    “Prints, for one. Which is how we know for certain the driver’s a male. They’re big—really big. Prints on the door, on the
     wheel, on the beer cans and bottles thrown all over. And this,” Rogers said, reaching into the side pocket of his jacket.
     He pulled out a plastic evidence bag and dangled it in front of Gavin.
    “A crab claw?” Gavin said. It looked like something that had been taken from someone’s Red Lobster dinner.
    “Lobster claw, to be exact. It was used as a roach clip. I found one just like it in the ashtray of the Mercedes. This one
     was in the truck. Have you ever seen a lobster claw used as a roach clip before?”
    Gavin’s mind was spinning, rage building at the thought that this disaster had been intentional. The pain on the faces around
     him and the memory of the dead and injured on the ground at the aquarium, some of them children, took on new meaning. The
     anguish was no longer a result of an irresponsible accident. And the one who had caused it was still on the loose. Free.
    “No,” he finally said in reply to Roger’s question. “I haven’t.”
    “Neither have I. Now I have three of them. The first one was from a Jeep that crashed into some people sleeping under the
     boardwalk. It didn’t make the news, but with two dead homeless, one dead passenger, and a missing driver I got called in.
     The passenger, who owned the vehicle, was near pickled in vodka. The lobster claw was in the ashtray and wound up having the
     same fingerprints as the one found in the Mercedes. I don’t have to tell you we just found the same prints on this one.”
    “A serial killer? You’re telling me the driver’s a serial killer who uses cars and trucks instead of a gun?”
    “Instead of a howitzer would be more like it.”
    “That’s insane.”
    “Quite possibly.”
    “I mean, he can’t care about his own life, either.”
    “Not if he’s placing all his trust in airbags and seat belts.”
    “And you have no idea how to find him because he never drives his own car and the passenger’s always dead.”
    “You’re starting to get the picture.”
    “Why would anyone give him the keys? If they know him they’ve got to know he’s nuts, and if they don’t know him, they’d be
     giving their car to a stranger. It doesn’t make sense.”
    “All the passengers were drunk. Very drunk. The Jeep passenger had .31 percent alcohol in the blood. The Mercedes woman was
     .29 and the truck guy .34.”
    “Point three-four? He must have been dead
before
the crash.”
    Rogers shook his head. “Unbelievably, no. Way too much blood at the scene to have come from someone already dead. At least
     he never felt that post go through him.” He handed Gavin a business card that read “Detective Steven Rogers, Accident Investigation
     Squad.”
    Gavin took the card and looked in the direction of the ICU. “Yeah, wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer any,” he said bitterly.
    Rogers paused, then looked with Gavin toward the ICU. “Hey, I’m real sorry about your grandfather, Pierce. We’ll get this
     guy. He likes what he does. Sooner or later he’ll turn up—probably dead as a passenger in his own car. If he has one.”
    “Right now, I’d rather have him alive,” Gavin said, clenching his fist. “I’d rather have