Her Last Breath Read online

  “Or drunk on his ass.”

  “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 passenger. 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 dealership 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 passing 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 assessing once-over. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  He’s wearing a straw hat, dark gray trousers with suspenders over a blue work shirt. 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 workmanship 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. “Damn.”

  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 dealership 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, butting together shattered strips of wood and chunks of fiberglass, 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 scrap of wood.

  “My datt made this buggy,” Luke tells us. “Probably ten or twelve years ago. Back then, we used more wood than fiberglass. 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 f
irst 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 bumper.”

  The sheriff frowns. “So we may be looking at a Ford truck with a brush guard or some type of after-market bumper.”

  My phone chooses that moment to vibrate against my hip. Turning away, I snatch 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 shift 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.

  Quickly, I recap my conversation with Lois. “Could turn out to be nothing. Some guy who plays demolition derby on the weekend.”

  “Or if you’re a glass-half-full kind of guy like me, it could be our first break.”

  Rasmussen, the eternal optimist.

  CHAPTER 7

  The abandoned grain elevator sat at the edge of the woods like a ghost ship listing on a dark sea. The massive structure was slowly being devoured by a forest determined to reclaim its rightful domain. Trees embraced the backside, vines reaching into the broken windows and wrapping their spindly arms around the wood and concrete exterior, as if trying to pull the structure more deeply into the woods to consume it.

  Jack Mott and his best friend, Leon, turned twelve last month, and they’d been coming here all summer. It was the perfect place to explore and play army. Once, Leon had brought his BB gun and they’d played cowboys and Indians. Leon had shot a bat that had been hanging from one of the rafters. It plopped down at their feet, a bloody hole in its side, dead as road kill. Jack thought it was a lucky shot, but Leon had spent the next week bragging about it to the girls at the pool where they were on the dive team. The girls had been impressed because word around town was that the old place was haunted. By whom, no one knew. Jack didn’t care; the rumors made for some good stories, even if they weren’t quite true.

  Jack wheeled his bike up the gravel track and laid it on its side twenty yards from the yawning mouth. “You bring smokes?”

  “I got two off my dad.” Leon leaned his bike against a good-size sapling and hopped off.

  “Just two?”

  “My old man catches me smoking and I’m dead meat.”

  The boys started toward the overhead door, which was rolled halfway up and off its track on one side. The afternoon air was humid, hot, and thick with end-of-summer bugs swarming in the rays of sun slanting down from the treetops. Jack ducked through the door first and stepped into the hazy shadows of the elevator. Even after coming here all summer, he couldn’t get over how big the place was—or how creepy. The office was the scariest. There were papers and bird shit all over the place. Once, they’d found blood and feathers on the floor. They hadn’t come back for almost a week. But this old place had been the most exciting part of their summer, and despite the creep-factor, neither boy had been able to stay away. They were explorers, after all, and danger was part of the allure.

  School started on Monday, so this would be their last day to explore, before football practice and all those extracurricular activities crowded their schedules. Both boys would be in seventh grade. Jack wasn’t looking forward to middle school. He liked being a sixth grader because that made him one of the oldest—and biggest—kids. He was king of the playground and no one messed with him. Seventh grade would put him back at the bottom of the totem pole and he’d have to start all over again. The good news was, once he got up the nerve, he planned to ask Lori Deardorf to go steady.

  “Come on, you dip.”

  Pulled from his daydreaming, Jack trotted up beside Leon. The murky interior smelled of dirt and mold and rotting wood. Jack liked the smells. He was going to miss this place when school started.

  They walked along the cracked concrete slab where farm trucks had once rolled in with loads of corn and soybeans. Ahead, the office with its broken windows and rusty file cabinets beckoned. There was an old chair inside. Some animal had ripped up the seat and pulled out the stuffing. Every time Jack walked in, he checked the office first because he was always afraid he’d find someone sitting on that old chair, watching them. Once when they’d come here on a windy day, they’d been in the office and the old overhead door where they entered fell down another foot. Aside from finding the blood, it was the creepiest thing that had ever happened.

  Remembering, Jack quickened his pace. “Gimme a cig.”

  Leon reached into the pocket of his hoodie. “Wish I’d brought the BB gun. We could have shot us some rats.”

  Jack looked around uneasily. He didn’t like the idea of rats. “They only come out at night.”

  “Still, it woulda been—”

  Leon’s words were cut off as he went down. One moment he was walking beside Jack, digging for his smokes. The next he was being sucked into the ground, like in the movie where the corpse grabs your ankle and yanks you into his casket. Jack looked down to see that his friend had stepped into some kind of hole and fallen in up to his waist.

  “Crap!” Leon’s hands scrabbled on the dirt as he tried to claw his way out. “Help me!”

  “Shit! Hang on!” Jack grabbed one of his arms and pulled as hard as he could.

  Within seconds, Leon was back on his feet and both boys found themselves staring into a deep, dark pit. “Holy cow!”

  “That’s a deep fuckin’ hole!” Jack exclaimed.

  “Gotta be ten feet down.”

  “More like twelve.”

  Leon brushed the dirt from his jeans. “I ain’t never seen that before. What the hell is it?”

  Jack lived on a farm a few miles down the road. Just last week, he’d gone to the grain elevator in Painters Mill with his dad. He knew what the boot pit was and had a pretty good idea how it worked. “It’s where the farmers dump corn and shit.”

  “I wonder why they didn’t cover it up.”

  “Looks like they did. Sort of.” Jack used the toe of his sneaker to uncover the edge of the steel grate. “They just didn’t cover it all the way.”

  “Some old lady could walk in here and break her leg!”

  Jack looked at Leon and they cracked up. “Old ladies don’t go i
nto grain elevators, you moron.”

  Leon felt around for the stolen cigarettes and his eyes widened. “I dropped the smokes!”

  “Hang on.” Jack had never had cause to use his new flashlight, and he was pleased he’d remembered to bring it along as he tugged it out of his back pocket. Leon watched as he dropped to his belly and shined the light into the pit. “Whoa.”

  Leon got down on his stomach beside him. “Holy shit.”

  “Man, that’s creepy.”

  “It’s cool is what it is.” Leon thrust his finger toward the bottom of the pit. “Lookit! There’s the smokes!”

  Jack shifted the beam. Sure enough, two tiny white cigarettes lay side by side atop a dust-covered two-by-six.

  “Let’s go down,” Leon said.

  “I ain’t going down there.”

  “Come on! Man, this is the best! We can climb down—”

  “We ain’t got no way down.”

  “I saw a rope in the office.” Leon jumped to his feet.

  “It’s probably rotten.” Jack rose as well. “We get stuck down there and no one will ever find us.”

  “Jack, you are such a puss! The rope’s nylon and nylon don’t rot. We’re not going to get stuck.”

  Realizing there was no way he could refuse the challenge and save face, Jack sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was start seventh grade with Leon calling him chicken. “Damn it, Leon.”

  But the other boy was already running toward the office. Jack watched him disappear inside. Dread landed like a brick in his gut when he came back with a coil of dirty yellow rope.

  “This is awesome!” Leon declared.

  Jack didn’t think so. “We’re going to have to tie it to something. Is it long enough?”

  They looked around. “That post over there,” Leon decided.

  “We should probably tie some knots in it so we can climb out.”

  “Good idea.” Leon took the rope over to a massive wood beam and tied one end around the base.

  Jack reluctantly set to work on the rope, tying knots a foot apart so they’d have something to grip when they climbed out.