“Was the buggy affixed with a slow-moving-vehicle sign?”
Reflective signage has been in the news recently, and is an ongoing point of contention between law enforcement and some of the Old Order Amish, who believe any kind of signage is ornamental and, therefore, against the rules set forth by the Ordnung.
I stop and turn to her. She takes a quick step back, as if not quite trusting me not to pop her in the mouth, and lowers the mike to a more respectful distance. “I can’t confirm that at this time,” I tell her.
She tries to ask another question, but I turn away, bumping the mike with my shoulder as I start toward the scene.
Behind me, I hear her ask the cameraman, “Did you get that?”
“Damn vultures,” comes a familiar voice.
Ahead, I see Sheriff Mike Rasmussen and a uniformed deputy striding toward me. I’ve known the sheriff for about a year now. Though I’m city and he’s county, we’ve worked together on several cases, pooling the resources of our respective departments. We’ve butted heads on a couple of occasions, but he’s a good cop and a quick study when it comes to the politicking side of his job. He’s also one of the few in the local law enforcement community who knows about my relationship with John Tomasetti.
I extend my hand and we shake. “You guys get traffic diverted?” I ask.
“Bunch of damn rubberneckers.” Rasmussen’s expression is grim. “Any news on the kid?”
“He was in surgery when I left the hospital.”
“I hate it when kids get hurt.”
I nod, trying not to think of Mattie, and turn my attention to the deputy. He’s a burly man in his midthirties with a crew cut and the direct, probing eyes of a man who likes being in the thick of things. He’s wearing a tan jacket with the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department insignia on his left breast. Beneath the jacket, his uniform shirt stretches a tad too snugly across pecs the size of small hams.
“I’m Chief Burkholder,” I say, offering a handshake.
“Frank Maloney.” He looks at me with a little too much intensity and gives my hand a slightly too-hard squeeze.
“Frank’s a certified accident reconstructionist,” Rasmussen says.
I nod, pleased he’s on scene this early in the game. “Any preliminary thoughts on what happened?”
Maloney’s chest puffs out a little. He’s proud of his certification and likes being the one in the know. “Buggy was southbound on Delisle. The hit-skip was westbound on CR14 and broadsided the buggy.” He holds up an intricate-looking Bosch Laser Distance Measurer that in the last few years has replaced measuring wheels and tapes. “This guy was hauling ass.”
“How fast?” I ask.
“I’d ballpark upwards of eighty miles per hour.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rasmussen mutters. “The buggy didn’t stand a chance.”
I glance toward the scene, trying not to imagine how that went down. The buggy hasn’t yet been moved. Someone covered the dead horse with a tarp. The coroner has removed the dead, but left tarps over the bloodstained grass. I make a mental note to get the fire department out here with a tanker to flush away the biohazard.
“County Prosecutor been out here yet?” I ask.
“Came and left,” Rasmussen replies.
“I hope he’s as pissed as I am.” I can tell by the men’s expressions we’re on the same page. They want this son of a bitch as badly as I do.
“We’ll make sure everything’s well documented,” Rasmussen assures me.
I nod. “I put out an APB for an unidentified vehicle with a damaged front end.”
“I got my boys out looking,” the sheriff adds.
“Anything useful as far as debris?” I ask.
When a cop arrives on the scene of a traffic accident, his first priority is always the preservation of life. It takes precedence over everything else, including identifying and protecting evidence. Upon my arrival here earlier, I was so intent on locating the victims and rendering aid, I didn’t get a good look at the buggy or debris. Any cop worth his salt will tell you that finding and identifying that debris—those pieces left behind by the vehicles involved—is the first step in identifying the vehicle and locating the driver.
Rasmussen sighs. “We’re going to be picking up pieces of that buggy for a while. We’re going to load everything up and take it to impound for a closer look under some light.”
“Anything from the vehicle?” I ask.
“The only piece we’ve been able to identify is a side-view mirror,” the sheriff tells me.
As if by unspoken agreement, the three of us start toward the intersection. Someone has denoted the locations where the deceased victims came to rest with fluorescent orange marking paint. From where I stand I can see the blue tarp covering the horse. We stop a few yards from the point of impact and I take a moment to establish the debris field and for the first time I get a sense of the scope of the carnage.