by Cleo Coyle
A pristine white hanky was suddenly dangling in front of me. With surprise, I realized Buckman was offering it.
“You okay?” His voice was different, the hard edge noticeably blunted.
I nodded, taking the hanky.
“Stay put, Ms. Cosi. I’ll be back…”
As Buckman moved off the sidewalk, he waved over a highway patrolman, removed his nylon jacket and gave it over. For the first time, I realized the detective was toting enough hardware to open a small machine shop. Webbed straps crisscrossed his chest like the bandoliers of an outlaw in some spaghetti Western. Instead of bullets, these straps anchored a set of tools—a small hammer, a monkey wrench, and a bevy of devices I couldn’t identify.
Our entire side street and two full blocks of Hudson had been sealed off by sector cars parked on either end, but the roadway was not empty. Four plainclothes detectives, wearing the same type of gear as Buckman, had started prowling the pavement.
This, I assumed, was Mad Max Buckman’s “Death Race Gang”—though the label was misleading. The bespectacled quartet looked more like professors of engineering than anything else.
With somber intensity, three of the investigators moved their flashlight beams along the street. Every so often, a man would stop, drop to one knee, and mark an area of asphalt with reflective tape. The fourth man—short of stature with a baby face behind wire rims—traveled between each marker, pushing a yellow plastic box on a long handle at the end of which were two small rubber wheels. He reminded me of Joy at age five, playing with her toy lawnmower.
Buckman watched his team work and then called them together. They spoke, they nodded, they pointed. Finally, Buckman left them and headed to our sidewalk post once more.
“You!” He waved his cigar in my direction.
“Me?” I asked.
His gray eyes locked on mine. “Yeah, you… follow me.” As he began to move, he threw a comment to Langley. “The rest of the witnesses can go.”
“But Detective…” Langley protested, pointing to Esther. “The young lady here. She actually saw the vehicle.”
Esther arched an eyebrow. “Young lady?”
Buckman halted. “Listen, sonny, what Ms. Best saw was likely a Chevrolet Express Cargo, either a 1500, 2500, or 3500 version with a model year anywhere between 1996 to 2011. If that sounds helpful to you, then let me add that there are about twenty-nine thousand of these vehicles registered in the Borough of Manhattan alone. I know because half of them were sold by Billy and Ray Klein, off their lot on Northern Boulevard—and I’m not even counting the nearly identical Ford Econolines roaming the five boroughs, not to mention all the little Asian knockoffs.”
Esther put a hand on her hip. “Okay, Mr. Car Talk, so maybe I don’t know the make and model, but I can still identify this van. There was black graffiti painted on the side, bird poop on the roof, and—”
“And all of that is stated in your report,” Buckman said, cutting her off. “We thank you for that, and be assured that your eyewitness account will aid us in tracking down this vehicle. However… what you saw doesn’t begin to tell me the complete truth of what went down here.”
“So how do you expect to find that out?”
“With my ear-witness,” Buckman said, his gaze locking with mine once more. “Ms. Clare Cosi.”
SEVEN
“FOLLOW me.”
Without waiting, Buckman strode from the gloom of the sidewalk into the empty street, now an arena of dazzling brightness, thanks to the newly arrived crime-scene floodlights.
As I entered the center spotlight of this eerie play, I felt countless eyes on me. Were they the highway patrol? Buckman’s Death Race Gang? Local media? In the face of the tiny suns, I couldn’t be sure. All I could make out were vague silhouettes and a murmuring buzz, like a Broadway audience anticipating the curtain lifting.
Buckman moved to the spot on the pavement where I’d cradled Lilly Beth. Tape now marked a crude approximation of a human form. He halted abruptly and turned. I swallowed, bracing myself once more.
“Those sounds you heard interest me, Ms. Cosi.”
“So you said.”
“I want you to ponder my next question carefully.”
“I’ll try.”
He rubbed his prominent chin. “Do you think maybe you heard a car fitted with a full intake system and a highperformance exhaust package? There’s a lot of that going around. Or could you have heard a real racer, some hot dog with a small block Chevy 454 under the hood? That makes a real distinctive sound… you’d know it if you listened to it again. Or is it possible that all you heard was an exhaust popper?”
I blinked. “Sorry, Detective Buckman. I don’t speak automotive lingo, not to that extent.”
Buckman chewed on the cigar, expended a blue cloud. “Doesn’t matter… because I really doubt you heard any of those things.”
“Okay, what did I hear then?”
“My guess? A piece of crap cargo van with a missing muffler.”
“A missing muffler—” Of course. Now it seemed obvious. That guttural sound had been so powerful that it reverberated through my body like the muscle cars from my less-than-glamorous youth. That’s why I’d assumed it was a racing engine.
“I’m sure you’re right,” I told him. “So why do you need me out here?”
“Because…” Buckman touched his ear with an index finger. “I want to know exactly what you heard—”
“But you solved it. Given Esther’s eyewitness account. What I heard must have been a missing muffler—”
“Allow me to finish, honey.” A hint of a smile touched his craggy cheeks. “I want to know what you heard and the order in which you heard it. Humor me. The proper sequence is important.”
I took a breath. “Okay, I’ll do whatever I can to help—and please call me Clare.”
“Sure, Clare. You can call me Detective Buckman.”
Looking down at the pavement, he began moving in a slow circle. When he was finished, he said, “Tell me, Clare: Do you see any skid marks here? Any rubber on the road?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Yeah, me neither. Just a lot of surface oil…”
“I don’t understand—”
“Bear with me. We’re going to play a round of Highway Houdini.”
“Excuse me?”
He moved closer. “Trust me, Clare. Can you do that?”
“I’ll try.”
“Good. Now first I want you to close your eyes—”
Oh, brother, did this sound familiar. Obviously Buckman was utilizing the same interviewing technique that I’d learned from Mike. But that realization didn’t make me any more comfortable.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but can’t I do this with my eyes open?”
“You heard the perp’s vehicle, right?”
“Right.”
“You didn’t see it.”
“No.”
“So why do you need those pretty green eyes of yours in order to remember?”
Buckman’s bullhorn bark melted into something soothing and coaxing. I shifted in place, preferring the bellow.
“Clare? Do you want to close this case?”
“Yes.”
“Then close your eyes.”
I exhaled and complied. Within seconds, the buzzing murmur from the darkness seemed to recede. Was I imagining it? Or was my shadow audience falling silent so they could listen, too?
“Relax, okay? Try to empty your mind. Can you do that for me?” Buckman purred, a little too close to my ear. “Forget your worries… forget that you’re annoyed with me…” He chuckled low at that one. “Just let go of all conscious thoughts… let them slip away…”
Feeling silly, I pretended to give it a go, although I kept watch on this exasperating man through my eyelashes. He went patiently silent for a good two minutes—and eventually I felt my breathing slowing, my limbs relaxing.
“Okay, now, let’s drift back to the moments leading up to the accid
ent…”
As he spoke, my eyes shut tighter and, amazingly, my mind was able to move backward to those horrifying moments.
“Now I don’t want you to analyze or interpret… I don’t want you to think at all… I just want you to tell me what you heard. Just tell me what your ears took in. Let’s start with the very first sound you remember…”
Slowly, carefully, I repeated the details of the accident in the order I remembered them. Eyes shut tight, I recited events all the way up to Lilly gasping out what might be her final words… that she thought she deserved what happened to her.
When I finished, I felt satisfied that I’d provided accurate testimony, and with a deep breath I opened my eyes—only to discover the fact that three highway patrol officers and two crash team detectives had joined Buckman.
As soon as the men saw that I was finished, they broke out in applause. Buckman extended his arm and dipped in a theatrical bow.
“Are you people sick?!” I cried. “Is this horrible event some kind of a joke to you?!”
“On the contrary.” Buckman yanked a small digital recorder from his tool belt and played a few of my own words back to me.
“You perfectly described the accident as we pieced it together in our preliminary. You also perfectly corroborated your own statement, as given to officers Langley and Demetrios.”
He tucked the recorder back into its pocket. “By god, honey, I only wish half the people who witnessed traffic events saw as much as you managed to hear. You’re the perfect witness for us: sharp, candid, principled. Any jury would love you.”
“She’s easy on the eyes, too, Max,” said one of the detectives. The other men chuckled.
I folded my arms. “Are you being serious?”
Smoke formed a blue halo around Buckman’s flattop. “Serious as cancer.”
“I’m glad,” I said, “because I know that you and your guys are referred to as the Death Race Gang. Somehow I doubt it’s because of your killer charm.”
“Funny, Clare… your point?”
“Your people are combing this area with more single-mindedness than gold rush prospectors. What exactly are you looking for? How are you going to use it to bring the driver to justice? And what about that van? How do you plan to locate it?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a witness.”
“Well, the victim was my friend—so let’s just say I care. Some of my best customers are cops, too, so let’s also say that asking questions about police cases has become an occupational hobby.”
Buckman chewed his cigar. “All right, fine… stay close to me then. You still may be able to help us, and you might learn a thing or two.”
EIGHT
BUCKMAN didn’t waste any time. Waving over one of his guys, he took possession of that strange yellow tool—the one that reminded me of a toy lawnmower. After aligning its little rubber wheels with the reflective tape on the ground, he flicked a switch on the handle and walked off, moving at a brisk pace.
“You’re measuring distance, right?” I asked, hurrying to catch him.
“Precisely. This little number is a Rolatape. It’s like a tape measure, but more accurate.”
We stopped after twenty feet, in front of the third and fourth members of Buckman’s team. Gaunt and intense with thick owlish glasses, the standing man tinkered with a small flying-saucer-like object mounted on a tripod.
“The impact came right about here,” Owl Man said without looking up. “The victim was carried, dragged, or thrown the rest of the way. You saw where she ended up.”
Buckman chewed his cigar. “Any skid marks around?”
“The brakes were never even tapped. Maybe the laser shots and infrared will show something else, but lo dudo.”
The stogie in Buckman’s mouth wiggled again, and I couldn’t stop my mind from sketching his caricature with that cigar as a smoking piston, moving at the behest of the whirring gears in the man’s flattop head.
“There are some fresh tire marks back there,” the fourth detective offered. Kneeling on the ground, he jerked his bald head in the direction of Canal Street.
“How about the victim’s clothes?”
“Secured,” said the bald man, “and I counted three sidewalk surveillance cameras along this block. Any one of them might help us out—took down the names and addresses of their businesses.”
Owl Man finished adjusting the tripod and grunted, satisfied.
“We’re going to need those recordings and the results of this TLS, too,” the bald man noted, rising.
(TLS? More alphabet soup…) “Excuse me, but what’s a—”
“Terrestrial Laser Scanning,” Buckman replied, lifting his chin in the direction of the tripod. “We’re trying to re-create the accident using 3D scanning technology. Great for convictions. This device cuts through all the crap the slip-and-fall club dishes up in the courtroom.”
“What sort of crap are you referring to?”
“Oh, like when a drunk or criminally reckless driver claims an accident was caused by road debris, or a pothole, or poor line of sight, or a defective traffic light, or a flutter from the wings of a butterfly.”
“Yeah,” Owl Man added. “Or when they give us a song and dance about how their gas pedal stuck, or they tried to brake but the car just skidded anyway.”
Buckman nodded. “This scanner, and Bernie here, will limit that sort of bullshit defense—pardon my language.”
“Your language is the least of my concerns right now—and thanks for the explanation.”
“You’re welcome. Let’s go.”
Buckman took off again. We stopped in front of two long strips of reflective tape on the pavement. Another officer in a nylon jacket was taking pictures with a conventional camera.
“There, Clare. There’s your gunning engine and your squealing tires,” Buckman said, turning off his Rolatape and hoisting it over his shoulder. I followed his gaze and saw vague black smears on the rutted roadway.
“The sucker slammed on the gas and laid a lot of rubber before the cargo van got up enough gumption to move from this spot. Then the vehicle went from zero to whatever just as fast as the muffler-less hunk of crap could go.”
I studied the ground, trying to discern the tea leaves Buckman was using to get this story.
“Do you think this was deliberate?” I asked. “Remember what I told you when my eyes were closed? About what Lilly Beth said before she slipped away. She said she needed forgiveness… that she deserved what happened. Maybe someone else agreed…”
Buckman rubbed the back of his neck. “I understand what you heard, Clare, but I wouldn’t put much stock in what any person says at a moment like that. One time, I pulled this guy out of a burning car. All he could do was cuss out his business partner, and I mean he really cussed the guy out. All the time we waited for the ambulance, all the way to the damn burn unit. I thought they’d just had a fight, you know, something that led up to the wreck, maybe. Turned out the business partner was dead twenty years, and the vic had suffered a brain injury on top of the burns…”
“I know what you’re saying, but this was different.”
“Mentally your friend could have been back in Miss Crabtree’s third grade class, where she pinched a candy bar.”
I didn’t dispute him—not then. This was his job, and he seemed strangely good at it, despite some eccentric behavior.
“How fast was the driver going?” I asked.
“Hard to say. We’ll know better after we crunch the numbers and get a report from the hospital about the nature of the victim’s injuries. By the way, how well did you know Ms. Tanga?”
“When you talk about my friend, Detective, stick to the present tense—or you’re going to piss me off.”
For a fleeting moment, a new expression crossed Buckman’s face, something between surprise and respect. “Okay, Clare. Deal.”
“To answer your question: I’ve only known Lilly Beth for a few months, but as we started working together, w
e became pretty fast friends.”
“She’s in the coffee business, too?”
“No. She used to work as a registered nurse but switched tracks to become a dietician. I hired her for freelance consulting work, advice on cutting the fat and calories on some of my menu items, that sort of thing.”
“Does she have other clients?”
“She mentioned a spa in Hunterdon County.”
“What does she do for them?”
