Page 28 of Breaking Silence

When Kaufman doesn’t answer, I look past him and make eye contact with his wife. Liza Kaufman looks to be ten or fifteen years younger than her husband. Clad in black winter clothes, she’s a petite woman with anxious eyes and quick, nervous hands. She looks away, and I sigh.

I turn my attention back to Mark. “I got a call that there was an accident.”

“We do not need the English police,” he states.

“I need to know if anyone was hurt,” I repeat.

“No.” He bows his head. “We are fine.”

“Chief, I’ve got blood here.”

I turn at the sound of Pickles’s voice and see him kneeling in the grass next to the gravel lane. I cross to him and look down at the area he’s indicated. Sure enough, a dinner plate-size puddle of blood shimmers bright red against the yellow winter grass.

“Horse, maybe?” he asks.

I’m no expert on horses, but I spent a quite a bit of time around them as a girl. I know if the animal was scared, it was probably moving too fast to leave a puddle of blood that size. I look at Kaufman. “If someone got hurt here, they should get themselves checked out. There’s an ambulance on the way.”

“We do not need anything from you,” Kaufman says. “We are fine.”

Shaking my head, I cross to the buggy—what’s left of it. It was originally black, with four wheels and a covered top. Not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. I can see where the harness leather snapped. The right shaft is broken as well, and I imagine the panicked horse, running full out, must have fallen at some point, struggled to its feet, and then broken free.

“Looks like a total loss.” Pickles whistles. “I wonder if the horse got hurt.”

“Probably ran up to the barn. That’s what they do when they’re scared.”

Pickles picks up a good-size stick, begins poking around in the pile of smoldering wood and ash.

The crunch of tires on gravel drags my attention away from the wreckage. I turn to see a young man get out of a newish Ford Ranger pickup truck. He’s thin, with long hair, buckteeth, and toothpick legs. “Everyone okay?” he asks me.

“Are you the one who called 911?” I ask.

“Yes, ma’am.” He crosses to me and looks down at what’s left of the smoldering buggy. “Damnedest thing I ever saw in my life.”

“Did you see it happen?”

“Alls I seen was this crazy horse running down the road. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that buggy. I swear to Jesus, flames was shooting twenty feet in the air. There was a couple of Amish folks in the buggy. They was yelling their heads off, and I knew straight away they was in trouble.”

“Did you see it catch fire?”

He shakes his head. “It was already on fire and going pretty good when I saw it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ricky Shingle. I live a couple miles down the road. I was on my way to work.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“I don’t know if they was part of it, but a couple of young guys in a pickup truck just about ran me off the road.”

My cop’s radar goes on alert. “What direction were they going?”

“Same as the buggy, and they was movin’ fast. They was left of center and, I swear to Jesus, I’d be wearing their teeth in my forehead if I hadn’t driven into the ditch. Crazy shits. Probably high on whatever it is them youngins get high on these days.”

“Chief!”

I look over my shoulder and see Pickles holding up the stick. On its tip, I see something that looks like the broken mouth of a mason jar. “Molotov cocktail, anyone?” he says.

Only then does the implication strike me. Never taking my eyes from the jar, I cross to Pickles for a closer look. “You sure?” I ask.