Free A Checklist for Murder by Anthony Flacco Page A

bones of the skull was narrowly avoided. Although Natasha cannot remember, may never remember those first blows raining down on her in complete surprise as she lay blind to her attacker, the wide pattern of marks indicates that some part of her was conscious and functioning. Some part of her was able to continue trying to roll and thrash her head away from the blows she could not even see coming.
    Police investigators know that her feet flailed helplessly against the bottom of the dash, pulling against the rope that bound them, because there were no defensive wounds on her legs. She was never able to use them to shield any part of herself from the tire iron. Likewise investigators surmised that her cuffed hands were probably held out of the way by her attacker because her arms also lacked any defensive wounds.
    One of the first impacts tore away the flesh around her left eye, the assailant striking with the downward motion in atypical right-handed fashion. This would shut down her vision on that side, of course, as the bones of the eye cavity and the upper sinus shattered and fragmented. Shock would slow her perception of time into near-frozen motion at that point. Sounds would probably go dead. Yet the reason the investigators know that she could still move is that, incredible as it sounds, Tasha still did not give in. She began the long, slow process of turning her head again, shielding her shattered bones and her torn flesh from having to take another strike over wounds already made. Her feet were still bound and flailing in the passenger footwell, her cuffed hands still held out of the way by her attacker, but the last muscle control left to her was directed full out on the motion of tilting her head far enough, soon enough, to take the next impact on an uninjured part of her. And so as the bar struck at the top of her forehead, it ripped away flesh but it landed on bone that was still sound enough to hold up and to protect the brain from rupture.
    Even as the last of her consciousness left her, Tasha still refused to give in. Perhaps she even found command of her voice for one flickering instant, forcing a short scream of protest through her throat. Why else would a blow land squarely across her lips? It shattered those perfect teeth that had flashed through so many smiling pictures over her eighteen years.
    A pretty girl’s face is no match for steel. The last blows were directed against a head that could no longer try to swing out of the way. The last blows took possession of her in the darkness and they chewed her without mercy.
    Later, both women must have seemed dead to their attacker while the car was readied for its solo drive toward the dead-end wall. But Tasha retained the thinnest little lifeline to the world as their bodies and the interior of the car were doused with gasoline, as the gasoline-soaked wick was lit under the car near the bottom of the gas tank, as the smallfire was started in the trunk, as the accelerator linkage was pulled tightly toward the Cadillac’s front fire wall so that the gas pedal stuck flat to the floor while the car was dropped into gear.
    When the mother and daughter began their brief, highspeed journey, all indications are that Claire was already gone, even as the Cadillac’s wheels began to roll for the last time.
    The prosecution would eventually offer two possible theories of the way the car left the road and avoided the dead-end wall. One is that the crown of the road, designed to promote rain runoff, was angled just enough to slowly tilt the car to the right as it traveled, gaining speed. The slope slowly ran the car off the side of the road and into the telephone pole before it could reach the dead-end wall at the much faster impact speed that was intended.
    The second theory is that the long leather strip found later across Claire’s face had been used to tie her upright to the steering wheel, mimicking a driving position. And so even in death, Claire made one final move