The Ferrari had spun out, struck a tree, and flipped over. It now lay upside down, a crumpled and smoking mass. It had very nearly gone off the cliff itself. The nose of the car was hanging over the edge.
Evans and Sarah ran forward. Evans got down on his hands and knees and crawled along the cliff's edge, trying to see into the driver's compartment. It was hard to see much of anything--the front windshield was flattened, and the Ferrari lay almost flush to the pavement. Harry came over with a flashlight, and Evans used it to peer inside.
The compartment was empty. Morton's black bow tie was dangling from the doorknob, but otherwise he was gone.
"He must have been thrown."
Evans shone the light down the cliff. It was crumbling yellow rock, descending steeply for eighty feet to the ocean below. He saw no sign of Morton.
Sarah was crying softly. Harry had gone back to get a fire extinguisher from the limousine. Evans swung his light back and forth over the rock face. He did not see George's body. In fact, he did not see any sign of George at all. No disturbance, no path, no bits of clothing. Nothing.
Behind him he heard the whoosh of the fire extinguisher. He crawled away from the cliff's edge.
"Did you see him, sir?" Harry said, his face full of pain.
"No. I didn't see anything."
"Perhaps...over there." Harry pointed toward the tree. And he was right; if Morton had been thrown from the car by the initial impact, he might be twenty yards back, on the road.
Evans walked back, and shone his flashlight down the cliff again. The battery was running down, the beam was weakening. But almost immediately, he saw a glint of light off a man's patent leather slipper, wedged among the rocks at the edge of the water.
He sat down in the road and put his head in his hands. And cried.
POINT MOODY
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5
3:10 A. M.
By the time the police were finished talking with them, and a rescue team had rappelled down the cliff to recover the shoe, it was three o'clock in the morning. They found no other sign of the body, and the cops, talking among themselves, agreed that the prevailing currents would probably carry the body up the coast to Pismo Beach. "We'll find him," one said, "in about a week or so. Or at least, what's left by the great whites."
Now the wreck was being cleared away, and loaded onto a flatbed truck. Evans wanted to leave, but the highway patrolman who had taken Evans's statement kept coming back to ask for more details. He was a kid, in his early twenties. It seemed he had not filled out many of these forms before.
The first time he came back to Evans, he said, "How soon after the accident would you say you arrived on the scene?"
Evans said, "I'm not sure. The Ferrari was about half a mile ahead of us, maybe more. We were probably going forty miles an hour, so...maybe a minute later?"
The kid looked alarmed. "You were going forty in that limo? On this road?"
"Well. Don't hold me to it."
Then he came back and said, "You said you were the first on the scene. You told me you crawled around at the edge of the road?"
"That's right."
"So you would have stepped on broken glass, on the road?"
"Yes. The windshield was shattered. I had it on my hands, too, when I crouched down."
"So that explains why the glass was disturbed."
"Yes."
"Lucky you didn't cut your hands."
"Yes."
The third time he came back, he said, "In your estimation, what time did the accident occur?"
"What time?" Evans looked at his watch. "I have no idea. But let me see..." He tried to work backward. The speech must have started about eight-thirty. Morton would have left the hotel at nine. Through San Francisco, then over the bridge..."Maybe nine-forty-five, or ten at night."
"So, five hours ago? Roughly?"
"Yes."
The kid said, "Huh." As if he were surprised.
Evans looked over at the flatbed truck, which now held the crumpled remains of the Ferrari. One cop was standing on the flatbed, beside the car. Three other cops were on the street, talking with some animation. There was another man there, wearing a tuxedo. He was talking to the cops. When the man turned, Evans was surprised to see that it was John Kenner.
"What's going on?" Evans asked the kid.
"I don't know. They just asked me to check on the time of the accident."
Then the driver got into the flatbed truck, and started the engine. One of the cops yelled to the kid, "Forget it, Eddie!"
"Never mind, then," the kid said to Evans. "I guess everything's okay."
Evans looked over at Sarah, to see if she had noticed Kenner. She was leaning on the limousine, talking on the phone. Evans looked back in time to see Kenner get into a dark sedan driven by the Nepali guy, and drive off.
The cops were leaving. The flatbed turned around and headed up the road, toward the bridge.
Harry said, "Looks like it's time to go."
Evans got into the limousine. They drove back toward the lights of San Francisco.
TO LOS ANGELES
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5