Butch Atwood almost made it home. It was dark on the Wild Ammonoosuc, but the lights of Atwood’s school bus pushed back the night and reflected off the walls of snow gathered on either side of the two-lane blacktop. It had been a long day, carting kids to the ski slopes in Conway. Almost over.
Around the last curve, he spotted a car stuck in the snowbank on his side of the road, pointing back the way he’d come. It was a tight curve, nearly 90 degrees. The people who lived along this stretch were used to crashes in the night, especially in winter, when the pavement buckles with frost heaves. Butch slowed, stopped.
It was a dark Saturn. The front window was cracked, air bags blown, no flashers. Massachusetts plates. A pretty young woman with dark hair was standing outside. She looked about twenty years old. She was shivering.
“You okay?” he asked. Butch was a big fellow, 350 pounds. Rough-looking, with a stained, blond handlebar mustache.
“I’m just shook up,” she said.
“I’ll call the police for you,” said Butch.
“No,” the young woman replied. “Please don’t. I already called Triple-A. They’re sending a tow truck.”
He knew she was lying. Cell phones don’t work on the mountain, not that far up. He offered her a ride to his house, next door. She declined, so he left her beside the car and drove the last hundred feet to his cabin. He parked the bus beside his garage so he could watch the young woman from his driveway. Then he went inside, asked his wife to report the accident, and returned to his vehicle to fill out the day’s paperwork for First School, the outfit he worked for.
Seven minutes later, the police arrived. By then, the young woman had vanished.
It was 7:45 P.M., February 9, 2004.
It was the last moment of peace for Butch Atwood.