Her Last Breath: A Kate Burkholder Novel

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 dealership. 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 shit 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 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