“Doesn’t look like a sister.” The detective shrugged. The victim wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “Girlfriend, maybe.”
They’d have to track down who it was.
“Someone’s not going to be very happy tonight.” Freddy Muñoz sighed.
Hauck tucked the photo back into the wallet and exhaled. “Long list, I’m afraid, Freddy.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” Muñoz shook his head. He was no longer talking about the accident. “You know my wife’s brother took in the 7:57 this morning. Got out just before it happened. My sister-in-law was going crazy. She couldn’t reach him till he got into the office. You roll over in bed for a few more minutes, get stuck at a light, miss your train…. You know how lucky he is?”
Hauck thought of the list of names back on his desk, the nervous, hopeful voices of those who had called in about them. He glanced over to Stasio’s witnesses.
“C’mon, Freddy, let’s get an ID on that car.”
Hauck took the guy in the sport jacket, Freddy the North Face fleece.
Hauck’s turned out to be a retired cop from South Jersey, name of Phil Dietz. He claimed he was up here cold-canvassing for state-of-the-art security systems—“You know, ‘smart’ homes, thumbprint, ID sensors, that sort of thing”—which he’d been handling since turning in the badge three years before. He had just pulled into the Arby’s up the street to grab a sandwich when he saw the whole thing.
“He came down the street moving pretty good,” Dietz said. He was short, stocky, graying hair a little thin on top, with a thick mustache, and he moved his stubby hands excitedly. “I heard the engine pick up. He accelerated down the street and made this turn there.” He pointed toward the intersection of West Street and the Post Road. “SOB hit that kid without even touching the brakes. I didn’t see it until it was too late.”
“Can you give me a make on the car?” Hauck asked.
Dietz nodded. “It was a white late-model SUV. A Honda or an Acura, I think, something like that. I could look at some pictures. Plates were white, too—I think blue lettering, or maybe green.” He shook his head. “Too far away. My eyes aren’t what they were when I was on the job.” He jiggled a set of reading glasses in his breast pocket. “Now all I have to do is to be able to read POs.”
Hauck smiled, then made a notation on his pad. “Not local?”
Dietz shook his head. “No. Maybe New Hampshire or Massachusetts. Sorry, I couldn’t get a solid read. The bastard stopped for a second—after. I yelled, ‘Hey, you!’ and started to run down the hill. But he just took off up the road. I tried to grab a picture with my cell phone, but it happened too fast. He was gone.”
Dietz pointed up the hill, toward the heights of Railroad Avenue. West Street went into a curve as it bent past an open lot, an office building. Once you were up there, I-95 was only a minute or two away. Hauck knew they’d have to be lucky if anyone up there saw him.
He turned back to the witness. “You said you heard the engine accelerate?”
“That’s right. I was stepping out of my car. Thought I’d kill some time before my next appointment.” Dietz pressed his interlocked hands around the back of his head. “Cold calls … Don’t ever quit.”
“I’ll try not to.” Hauck grinned, then redirected him, motioning south. “It was coming from down there? You were able to follow it before it turned?”
“Yup. It caught my eyes as it sped up.” Dietz nodded.
“The driver was male?”
“Definitely.”
“Any chance you caught a description?”
He shook his head. “After the vehicle stopped, the guy looked back for an instant through the glass. Maybe had a second thought at what he’d done. I couldn’t get a read on his face. Tinted windows. Believe me, I wish I had.”
Hauck looked back up the hill and followed what he imagined was the victim’s path. If he worked at J&D Tint and Rims, he’d have to walk across West Street, then cross the Post Road at the light to get to the diner.
“You say you used to be on the force?”
“Township of Freehold.” The witness’s eyes lit up. “South Jersey. Near Atlantic City. Twenty-three years.”
“Good for you. So what I’m going to ask you, Mr. Dietz, you may understand. Did you happen to notice if the vehicle was traveling at a consistently high rate of speed prior to making the turn? Or did it speed up as the victim stepped into the street?”
“You’re trying to decide if this was an accident or intentional?” The ex-cop cocked his head.
“I’m just trying to get a picture of what took place,” Hauck replied.
“I heard him from up there.” Dietz pointed up the block toward the Arby’s. “He shot down the hill, then spun into the turn—outta control. To me it was like he must’ve been drunk. I don’t know, I just looked up when I heard the impact. He dragged the poor kid’s body like a sack of wheat. You can still see the marks. Then he stopped. I think the kid was underneath him at that point, before he sped away.”
Dietz said he’d be happy to look at some photos of white SUVs, to try to narrow down the make and model. “You find this SOB, Lieutenant. Anything I can do, you let me know. I wanna be the hammer that drives the nail into his coffin.”
Hauck thanked him. Not as much to go on as he would have liked. Muñoz stepped over. The guy he’d been talking to saw the incident from across the street. A track coach from up in Wilton, twenty miles away. Hodges. He identified the same white vehicle and same out-of-state plates. “AD or something. Maybe eight …” He was just stepping out of the bank after using the ATM. It had happened so quickly that he, too, couldn’t get much of a read. He gave roughly the same sketchy picture Dietz had of what had taken place.
Muñoz shrugged, disappointed. “Not a whole lot to go on, is it, Lieutenant?”
Hauck pressed his lips in frustration. “No.”
He went back to his car and called in an APB. A white late-model SUV driven by a white male, “possibly Honda or Acura, possibly Massachusetts or New Hampshire plates, possibly beginning AD8. Likely front-end body damage.” They’d put it out to the state police and the auto-repair shops all over the Northeast. They’d canvass people farther up along West Street to see if anyone spotted him racing by. There might be some speed-control cameras along the highway. That was their best hope.
Unless, of course, it turned out someone had it in for Abel Raymond.
There was a guy in a Yankees cap standing nearby, huddled against the chill. Stasio brought him over. Dave Corso, the owner of the auto custom shop where AJ Raymond worked.
“He was a good kid.” Corso shook his head, visibly distressed. “He’d been working with me for about a year. He was talented. He remodeled old cars himself. He was up from Florida.”
Hauck recalled his license. “You know where?”
The body-shop owner shrugged. “I don’t know. Tallahassee, Pensacola … He always wore these T-shirts, the Florida State Seminoles. I think he took everyone out for a beer when they won that college bowl last year. I think his father was a sailor or something down there.”
“You mean like in the navy?”
“No. Tugboat or something. He had his picture tacked up on the board.