Kate Burkholder: Her Last Breath Part 6

"I would have picked her up and brought her."

"I know."

"And it never crossed my mind that you're old."

His mouth twitches, but he doesn't smile. That the boy is going to survive has eased the oppressive sense of doom from earlier. Still, we're mindful that we're in the midst of a monumental tragedy.

"Everything is taken care of at the house?" I ask, referring to Mattie's farm. "Someone is there to feed the livestock?"

"Of course," the Bishop replies. "We are Amish."

I'd known that would be the case, but I was compelled to ask. The Amish may not have phones in their homes, but the community has a healthy grapevine and news travels fast, especially in the face of tragedy. The instant word got out about Paul's death-probably with the help of the bishop's wife-Mattie's friends and neighbors converged with prayers and able hands.

"Katie?"

I look up to see Mattie approach. Though she's lost her husband and two of her children, the hopelessness is gone from her eyes. "Thank you," she whispers. "For what you did. For being there. Thank you for everything...."

The next thing I know her arms are around me, pulling me close and squeezing hard. Her mouth is close to my ear and I hear her sob quietly. Her body shakes against mine. As if of their own volition, my arms go around her. She smells of laundry detergent and suns.h.i.+ne and I find myself hugging her back with a fierceness that surprises me. "I'm so sorry for your loss," I say quietly.

"G.o.d called Paul and Norah and Little Sam home. It was His will and I accept that. But He decided this was not David's day to go to heaven. He answered my prayers and gave me back my boy. For that, I am thankful."

There's more to say. At some point, I'll need to tell her the accident was a hit-and-run. If she asks about Paul's final moments, I'm obliged to tell her he was alive when I arrived on the scene. But for now, she has enough on her plate.

And I have a killer to find.

CHAPTER 6.

I'm on my way to the station when my cell phone erupts. I glance down, see Sheriff Rasmussen's name on the display, and s.n.a.t.c.h it up.

"Where you at, Chief?"

"Just left the hospital."

"How's the kid?"

I give him the rundown on David. "He's going to make it."

"That's terrific news." But I know that's not the reason he called. "Look, we may have gotten a break on identifying the hit-skip vehicle. One of the deputies thinks the side-view mirror we found at the scene is from a Ford truck."

"That is a nice break." But a cynical little voice reminds me: Nothing is ever that easy. "Now all we have to do is find the truck it belongs to."

"I'm about to run it over to the Ford dealers.h.i.+p. If they can confirm it, I'll add the make to the BOLO." He pauses, gets to the point. "Impound garage didn't have room for the buggy inside, and I didn't want to leave it outside, so I had it hauled down to the volunteer fire department garage. Prosecutor wants us to reconstruct it, so that once we get a positive ID on this guy, he'll be ready to file. If this case goes to trial, we need to have all our ducks in a row. What are the odds of your pulling some of your Amish strings and getting a buggy maker out here?"

"Pretty good."

"I'm here with Maloney and we've been combing through this s.h.i.+t all morning." He lowers his voice. "We have two pieces from the vehicle. The mirror, and then this morning we found some kind of pin that's been sheared in half."

"What kind of pin?"

"Not sure just yet. Almost looks like something you'd find on a tractor. To tell you the truth, we're not even sure it came from the hit-skip."

My conversation with Glock floats uneasily through my mind. "If this guy was going as fast as Maloney says, there should have been a lot of debris, Mike, even if there was a brush guard or something."

"We thought maybe the driver stopped and picked it up."

"It's possible." Even as I say the words my gut tells me it's not probable. "But it would have taken a lot of time and effort for someone to sift through all the debris and pick up only what he needed to cover his tracks. Think about it. It was dark. Drizzling. After an impact like that, the driver would have been shaken up. Maybe even injured."

"Or drunk on his a.s.s."

"That's not to mention the emotional trauma of seeing the dead and knowing what he'd done. Even if he's some kind of sociopath, there's the fear of discovery. Who would have the wherewithal after a crash like that?"

"Maybe there was a pa.s.senger. Two of them."

"Maybe."

I hear frustration in his sigh and wonder if he got any sleep. "I ran the sheared pin down to one of the body shops here in Millersburg earlier. The manager thought maybe it was from some kind of after-market part."

"What does that mean?"

"It didn't come from the factory. It was added after the vehicle was purchased."

"That could jibe with the brush guard theory." Glancing in my rearview mirror I turn around in the parking lot of a Lutheran church and head back toward Millersburg. "I'm going to swing by the buggy maker's place now, see if I can get him to ride down there with me."

"Excellent. I should be back from the dealers.h.i.+p in half an hour. Hopefully with some news."

I've known Luke Miller since I was ten years old and we got into trouble for pa.s.sing notes in the one-room schoolhouse where I received my early education. Blond-haired, blue eyed, and armed with a thousand-watt grin, he was one of the more interesting characters to grace my childhood. I'd had huge a crush on him. He was fun to be around because he was always breaking the rules and getting into trouble-a trait we shared-and he never hesitated to argue his position with the adults, a rarity among Amish children, since most are well behaved and respectful to the extreme. Together, we were a force to be reckoned with. I think the teacher was relieved when our eighth-grade education was complete and she was rid of us.

He's one of only a few Amish who no longer farms for a living. He resides in a small frame house in Painters Mill proper. He doesn't own a horse or buggy and gets around via an old Schwinn bicycle, or when necessary, he hires a driver.

I find him in the shop behind his house fitting a wheel to the axle of a finished carriage. When he hears me enter, he looks at me through the spokes of the wheel and offers a big grin.

"Katie Burkholder." He rises to his full height, gives me an a.s.sessing once-over. "What a pleasant surprise."

He's wearing a straw hat, dark gray trousers with suspenders over a blue work s.h.i.+rt. As a kid, he'd been somewhat of a neatnik, and I notice immediately that quality has carried over into his adulthood. But then neat has always looked good on Luke.

It's odd to see an Amish man his age without a full beard. He's one of the few adults I know who never married, a feat that's almost unheard of, since family and children are touchstones of the culture.

"Nice man-cave you've got here, Luke."

"Don't tell me you've decided to come back to the old ways and you're here to buy a buggy."

"Not unless you can retrofit it with a V-8 and light kit."

"Don't forget the sound system." Laughing, he motions toward a well-worn wooden pew set against the wall. "Sitz dich anne un bleib e weil."

I look at the bench, but I don't sit. "I can't stay."

Tugging a kerchief from his back pocket, he wipes his hands and starts toward me. "How are you?" He extends his hand to mine and we shake.

"I need a favor," I tell him.

"You're the one person I could never say no to." He holds on to my gaze-and my hand-an instant too long and I find myself thinking about the time he took me behind the silo at Big Joe Bilar's farm when I was thirteen and kissed me.

"What can I help you with?" he asks.

Extracting my hand from his, I stroll over to the buggy. Even with my proletarian eye, I readily discern the exquisite workmans.h.i.+p and I know he's as good a buggy maker as his datt was.

"Paul Borntrager and two of his children were killed in a buggy accident last night," I begin.

"I heard." His face falls, a small sound of distress escaping his mouth. "d.a.m.n."

I outline some of the details of the accident. "The driver fled the scene. We're trying to identify the vehicle."

"I see." He sighs. "Paul was a good man. A good father and husband." He looks down at his work boots. "How's Mattie?"

"She's pretty broken up." I pause. "I was wondering if you could help with the reconstruction of the buggy."

He looks at me as if I didn't even need to say the words. "Of course I will."

That's it. No questions. No dawdling. No excuses. No "Let me finish what I'm doing" or "I'll get back to you" or "Will tomorrow do?" He doesn't even tell me he needs to wash his hands or change clothes first.

Because when you're Amish and one of your own is hurt or in trouble, you drop everything and you go to help them.

Half an hour later, Sheriff Rasmussen, Frank Maloney, and I are standing in a bay at the volunteer fire department, watching Luke Miller puzzle over hundreds of fragments from the buggy. Upon our arrival, Rasmussen informed me that the manager of the Ford dealers.h.i.+p didn't recognize the sheared pin, but identified the side-view mirror found at the scene as belonging to a Ford truck built between 1996 and 2001. It isn't much, but when we have so little to go on, it's a start. Rasmussen updated the BOLO to include the make and year range. If any law enforcement agency makes a stop for any reason and the vehicle meets the criteria, we'll have the opportunity to take a closer look.

The main section of the carriage sits atop a large tarp with the right side axles propped on concrete blocks. The sheer number of pieces makes the task of reconstruction a mind-boggling endeavor. Progress is agonizingly slow. Beneath the hard fluorescent light, some of the parts are still recognizable. The seat. The floorboard. Two of the wheels are still attached to the frame, though the rims and spokes are broken. The other two wheels lie on the floor close to their respective axles. The cab and undercarriage sustained the brunt of the damage, especially the right side. Luke has begun rearranging segments, b.u.t.ting together shattered strips of wood and chunks of fibergla.s.s, like the pieces of some grisly puzzle.

From my place near the door, I see dried blood on the seat. Dried spatter mars a slab of wood that looks like it might be part of the backrest. I wish someone had wiped it down before bringing it here. Luke doesn't seem to notice. Rasmussen gave him disposable gloves and shoe covers both to protect him from biohazard and to keep him from contaminating evidence. Luke walks the tarp, picking up one piece at a time and putting it where it belongs.

Maloney paces the perimeter of the tarp, asking the occasional question. I stand near the door, where the harness lies in a heap on the floor, so close I discern the smell of horse and leather and a trace of manure. Rasmussen stands next to me, looking dejected and cranky. Both of our cells have been ringing nonstop all morning, and now we're too tired to talk to each other.

"Katie."

I look up to see Luke holding a two-foot length of wood that's jagged on one end. It's painted black on one side, naked on the flip side. "I think I found something."

The Amish man brings the wood over to us. "This piece of wood is from the door on the right side of the buggy. The leading edge or forepart."

Maloney, Rasmussen, and I form a circle around him and study the sc.r.a.p of wood.

"My datt made this buggy," Luke tells us. "Probably ten or twelve years ago. Back then, we used more wood than fibergla.s.s. Oak, I think. These are his initials, burned into the wood here. See?" Smiling, he runs a calloused fingertip over small, black letters: JM. "John Miller. He liked working with the hardwoods. Walnut, too." Sobering, he indicates an irregularity in the surface. "The wood is soft enough so that if something strikes it with force, it leaves an impression."

The mark looks like someone took a hammer and struck a single hard blow against the wood. Only this was no hammer and I realize we're getting our first glimpse of something from the vehicle that killed Paul Borntrager and his children.

In tandem, Rasmussen, Maloney, and I lean forward for a closer look. I pull my mini Maglite from my belt and set the beam on the impression. Beneath the light, I discern that it's hexagonal in shape.

"That looks like a bolt head," Rasmussen says.

Maloney nods. "A big one."

I look at the two men. "On the front end of a Ford truck?"

Rasmussen shrugs. "Maybe the driver had something bolted on."

"Brush guard?" Maloney asks.

I glance at Luke. "Do you have any idea what might have made that dent?"

Luke turns the wood over in his hands, runs his fingers over the impression. "I agree that it looks like a bolt. No way to know what it attached."

Rasmussen eases the board from Luke's hands. "I'll run this out to the body shop, see if they can help us out."

"Luke," I begin, "if the buggy were still intact and standing, how high off the ground would this piece be?"

The Amish man's brows knit. "I would have to take a tape measure to it to be exact. Guessing, I would say thirty-six or thirty-eight inches."

I look at Rasmussen. "That's about the right height for a b.u.mper."

The sheriff frowns. "So we may be looking at a Ford truck with a brush guard or some type of after-market b.u.mper."

My phone chooses that moment to vibrate against my hip. Turning away, I s.n.a.t.c.h it up and answer with a brusque, "Burkholder."

"Chief, I just took a call on the hotline I thought you ought to know about."

It's Lois Monroe, my first s.h.i.+ft dispatcher, and she's talking so fast I can barely understand her. "Slow down."

"The owner of a body shop in Wooster remembers a guy bringing in a truck to have the front end reinforced. He didn't think anything about it until he heard about the hit-and-run on the news this morning."

"What kind of truck?"

Paper crinkles on the other end. "Ford F-250."

My interest surges. "Which body shop?"

"Voss Brothers." She rattles off the phone number and address. "Guy's name is Bob Voss."

I thank her and disconnect to find Rasmussen looking at me intently. "You up to a trip to Wooster?" I ask.

"Tell me you just got a break," he mutters.