“Ay,” Estelle gasped. She ducked inside, twisted the ignition key, and yanked the unmarked car into drive before the door slammed closed.
Even as she accelerated down the street toward the carnage, she palmed the mike. “PCS, three ten. Be advised of an MVA at Bustos and Twelfth involving a motorcycle. We’ll need an ambulance. And notify Chief Mitchell.”
“Three ten, PCS. Ten four.” If dispatcher Ernie Wheeler said anything else, Estelle didn’t hear him. She was watching the village patrolman as he clambered out of his car. She snapped on the grill lights of her own unit, and the officer stopped in his tracks the instant that he saw her approaching. His left hand drifted to the roof of his car as if he needed the added support to remain upright. The emergency lights in the roof rack hadn’t been on when the police car rocketed into the intersection, and they remained dark now. Like a deer caught in headlights, the village officer froze.
Estelle swung her car broadside so that its bulk protected the tangled motorcycle from eastbound traffic. Maggie Archer’s Volvo had drifted to a stop, its nose poking into the Twelfth Street intersection. The lump that had been the bike rider lay motionless, head down in the street, body awkwardly sprawled up over the curb near the base of the utility pole.
As she opened the door of 310, Estelle turned at the sound of another vehicle accelerating toward them from the east. Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Pasquale braked hard, stopping the county Expedition in the center of the westbound lanes, forming a “tee” with the back of Estelle’s unit.
The village patrolman, Perry Kenderman, remained rooted in place as if he were a bewildered tourist frozen in a photograph. Estelle ignored him and sprinted to the biker’s side. The sprawled figure was hardly larger than a child, twisted with hips up on the lip of the sidewalk and upper torso in the street’s drainage basin.
The body had that tragically limp, deflated appearance of a flung doll, without a twitch, without a moan. Dreading the answer, Estelle knelt and reached out to touch two fingers to the soft skin of the victim’s throat just below the helmet. Not a tremor stirred the large carotid artery, a vessel that should have been pounding with the excitement of the chase or racing with the trauma of broken bones.
One of the support bolts at the base of the utility pole had torn a chunk out of the side of the helmet. The wrenching impact had been violent enough to snap the cyclist’s neck as the force of the collision wrapped her body around the base of the pole. Estelle gently slipped her fingers behind the biker’s head, under the margin of the heavy helmet. She closed her eyes and felt a fracture so catastrophic that she could trace the irregularities of the shattered vertebrae.
The undersheriff sat back on her haunches and let out a long breath.
“Ambulance is on the way,” Pasquale said. He had sprinted across from his vehicle and dropped to his knees beside Estelle. He reached out toward the cyclist’s shoulders, but Estelle held up a hand sharply.
“Her neck’s broken,” she said. “Don’t touch her. The EMTs are on the way.”
“We got a clear airway?” Pasquale crouched down. The beam from his heavy flashlight reflected from the cracked plastic face shield as he bent forward to double-check for a pulse. Estelle felt her stomach churn. To pound the cyclist’s heart back into motion, they’d have to move the body, straighten it out to clear the airway, support the neck. With the brain disconnected, there was no point.
“If you can figure out how to put her spine back together so the air will do some good,” Estelle whispered.
“Well, Christ,” Pasquale said. “It is a girl, isn’t it.”
“Yes.” Estelle pushed herself to her feet and looked across at Patrolman Perry Kenderman. The officer had moved a step or two further away from his car and now stood in the middle of the street, hands locked behind his head as if he expected someone to slap handcuffs on his wrists. “Ay,” Estelle said. “This is all wrong.”
“Pardon?” Pasquale looked up at her, but she shook her head.
“Stay with her,” she said. “And call in for some help. We need to perimeter this entire intersection.” She nodded toward Maggie Archer as the deputy reached for his radio. The woman had gotten out of her car and now stood by the door, arms folded and hugging herself, not daring to move. “And make sure Mrs. Archer doesn’t drive off.” Far down the street to the east, she heard the wail of the ambulance as it pulled out of the Posadas General Hospital parking lot, less than a minute away.
Chapter Two
Patrolman Perry Kenderman’s angular face was pale, and as Estelle approached, she could see his deer-in-headlights gaze shift from the motionless form under the utility pole to the dark figure of Maggie Archer across the street, and then to the rapidly approaching ambulance. Only when Estelle reached out and touched him on the shoulder did he turn and acknowledge her presence.
“Perry, tell me what happened.” She watched his face. His heavy lips moved, but whatever it was that he wanted to say stuck in his throat. Estelle waited. Kenderman had been hired as a full-time village patrolman just months before by Chief Eddie Mitchell, but he’d served long enough as a part-timer to know the job. Perry Kenderman had proved himself steady and dependable. No particular flame drove his ambition-just what the village fathers appreciated.
Estelle glanced back over her shoulder as the ambulance pulled to a stop and the two EMTs bailed out. Deputy Pasquale had been kneeling by the fallen rider, and he rose to step out of the way as the two EMTs approached. Estelle turned once more to the patrolman.
She knew that Kenderman had seen his share of accidents. Less than a month before, he’d responded to the scene of a pickup truck rollover that had killed a two-year-old. Estelle had arrived in time to see Kenderman working frantically with the EMTs trying to save the child’s life. He hadn’t frozen in his tracks then.
But tonight, he’d been struck dumb. There was nothing anyone could do for the motorcyclist, Estelle knew, but Kenderman didn’t. From such a spill, the norm would have been broken bones, pavement burns, maybe some lacerations from the bolts at the bottom of the utility pole. Kenderman could have handled any of those injuries as a first responder. But he had not taken a step. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, Estelle could guess why the patrolman had been stunned into silence.
His patrol car, askew in the street, was effectively blocking Twelfth, and Estelle moved past him and leaned inside the vehicle. She turned on the red lights and paused before straightening up, looking at the radio.
“Perry, talk to me,” she said quietly. “I want you to tell me what happened.”
“She wouldn’t stop,” Kenderman said, finally finding his voice. This time he looked fully at Estelle, and she could see that he’d returned from whatever mental hideout he’d initially chosen.
“This started out as a routine traffic stop?” Estelle kept her tone neutral, noncommittal, hoping that the leading question would serve to prime the officer’s pump.
Kenderman’s head bobbed a bit, as if he couldn’t decide whether to nod or shake.
“Where did you first see the bike?”
“Up…up on…” and he paused. “She was comin’ down toward the bridge, there, on Twelfth Street. She run the stop sign at Highland.”
“You were parked there, or coming up behind, or what?”
“I…I was comin’ out of Highland the other way.”
Estelle turned and looked north, past the Don Juan de Onate Restaurant, toward the small silver bridge. Highland Court, a narrow lane that was actually only five or six blocks long, crossed Twelfth Street a scant two blocks before the bridge. She looked back at Kenderman. His Adam’s apple jumped as he gulped air.
“You knew who the cyclist was?”
He shook his head quickly, and Estelle saw his eyes dance away. She regarded him silently.