“You’re kidding me,” Fairbanks said while looking at the screen. “The guy was barely speeding. How can that be?”

“Follow me, sergeant,” Clewiston said.

Clewiston left the computer and the rest of his equipment, except for the flashlight. He led Fairbanks back to the point in the road where he had found the slalom scuffs and the originating point of the skid marks.

“Okay,” he said. “The event started here. We have a single car accident. No alcohol known to be involved. No real speed involved. A car built for this sort of road is involved. What went wrong?”

“Exactly.”

Clewiston put the light down on the scuff marks.

“Okay, you’ve got alternating scuff marks here before he goes into the skid.”

“Okay.”

“You have the tire cords indicating he jerked the wheel right initially and then jerked it left trying to straighten it out. We call it a SAM-a slalom avoidance maneuver.”

“A SAM. Okay.”

“He turned to avoid an impact of some kind, then overcorrected. He then panicked and did what most people do. He hit the brakes.”

“Got it.”

“The wheels locked up and he went into a skid. There was nothing he could do at that point. He had no control because the instinct is to press harder on the brakes, to push that pedal through the floor.”

“And the brakes were what were taking away control.”

“Exactly. He went over the side. The question is why. Why did he jerk the wheel in the first place? What preceded the event?”

“Another car?”

Clewiston nodded. “Could be. But no one stopped. No one called it in.”

“Maybe…” Fairbanks spread his hands. He was drawing a blank.

“Take a look here,” Clewiston said.

He walked Fairbanks over to the side of the road. He put the light on the pathway into the brush, drawing the sergeant’s eyes back across Mulholland to the pathway on the opposite side. Fairbanks looked at him and then back at the path.