“Fire’s on their way, Sheriff,” Ellie Troyer said, her voice frayed with tension.
“It’s a mess, Ellie,” Robertson’s voice cracked staccato over the radio. “One buggy, maybe more. Can’t tell yet. A semi jackknifed. Cab upside down in the ditch. The trailer has taken out at least one car and it’s burning now,” followed by, “For crying out loud, Ellie, where are my squads?”
“On their way,” Ellie said, managing to sound calm.
“Schrauzer’s unit is up there right in the middle of the whole thing,” Robertson shouted into the microphone. “Can’t see him anywhere. Going closer, Ellie. Get those fire trucks down here NOW!”
The mic clicked off for a minute or so and then Robertson called in again, more subdued. “Get the coroner, too, Ellie.”
Branden pulled his buggy up sharply, set the hand brake, scrambled down onto the driveway, and took the radio off the buggy seat. He paced in a circle on the drive as he made his call. “This is Mike Branden. Over.”
Ellie’s voice came back. “Signal 39.”
“Township 412 at the Hershbergers.” As he spoke, he gathered his things from the buggy and walked quickly to his small pickup.
“It’s right there, Professor,” Ellie said. “You’re practically on top of it. 515 south of Trail.”
“Roger that,” Branden said and started his engine. “515 south of Trail. Ellie, I’ll be right there!”
He pulled the door closed, fish-tailed on the gravel lane, waved at Ben, and heard Robertson come over the radio.
“Mike, you come in from the north. South of Trail. That’ll put you on the other side. I’m farther south, the other side of the pileup, and I need someone on your side to stop traffic.”
“I’m coming up on Trail now,” Branden said, steering with his left hand, holding the handset to his ear with the right.
“Turn right at Trail, Mike,” Robertson said. “Slow. We’re down in a little valley and if you don’t come in slow, you’ll run us all over.”
Branden dropped south out of Trail on 515, came around a sharp curve and over a hill, and saw a tall plume of black smoke beyond the next rise in the road. He came up to the top of the hill, stopped abruptly, stepped out of the truck, and leaned forward on the open door, shaken by what he saw some hundred yards below.
A semitrailer rig sprawled across the road, the cab overturned in the right-hand ditch, the trailer laid across the road on its side, its rear wheels spinning slowly over the left-hand ditch. The truck driver lay twisted on the pavement beside the overturned cab.
A monstrous gasoline fire engulfed a sedan pinned under the far side of the trailer, and dense smoke drifted up and trailed west over a field of stunted corn. The flames leaped from the road to the grasses in the roadside ditches and spread rapidly into the withered crops in the fields on each side of the road. Even at this distance from the wreckage, Branden could smell the smoke and the gasoline. He heard a car approaching behind him and turned to stop it with a palm held outward. A second car pulled up, and then a third. He took up a position to block the passing lane and turned back to view the wreckage.
Just beyond the burning sedan was Phil Schrauzer’s cruiser. Something long and bulky had punched through the windshield. Further back there was a line of two pickups and a produce truck, all apparently uninvolved in the wreck. Two of the three drivers stood helplessly beside their trucks. The third had stooped to open a briefcase on the pavement. As Branden watched, the man took a cell phone out of the briefcase, stood sweating profusely while he dialed a number, and talked as he turned his head this way and that, looking with astonishment at the wreckage that lay around him. The man fixed his gaze on the house at the end of the driveway, spoke for a moment longer, switched off the cell phone, and dialed another call. He spoke for perhaps a minute, listened briefly, and tossed the phone into the briefcase on the pavement. Kneeling down, he closed the case, and stood to drop it through the open window onto the front seat of his pickup.
The sheriff’s black-and-white 4x4 was stopped in the passing lane beside the produce truck, door hanging ajar. Another sheriff’s unit was parked at the top of the next hill, turning cars back toward Walnut Creek. A cruiser from the state highway patrol came past the roadblock and pulled in behind Robertson’s 4x4.
Branden stepped over to his pickup, reached in under the seat, pulled out binoculars, and turned the dial back to a full wide-angle view. He turned momentarily to check on the line of cars and trucks that had stacked up behind him and saw that his roadblock was self-regulating, as some cars turned back to find another route.
When he first held the binoculars to his eyes, black smoke filled the eyepiece. He trained right and found the bottom of the overturned cab, its front wheels hanging awkwardly in the air, the driver motionless on the ground. He moved the binoculars up and left and found Robertson waving the state trooper closer to the fire.
Robertson pushed toward the fire with his forearm over his eyes and reached Deputy Schrauzer’s cruiser. Branden cringed as he saw the sheriff start to work at whatever had pierced the windshield, struggling to pull it back out with his left hand, while he tried to steady Schrauzer with his right hand through the driver’s-side window.
The fire in front of Robertson flared violently, and Branden, startled by the massive orange fireball, sucked in air through his teeth and stumbled backward. There was a shattering crack of glass as flames expanded out and upward. Robertson turned his back and bent low beside the cruiser, shielding himself from the flames. But after a few seconds the big sheriff lumbered up onto the hood of the cruiser, and the trooper dashed up to take charge of Schrauzer, still pinned in his seat. As writhing gasoline flames spread toward Robertson, the sheriff pulled what looked like a tight bundle of wooden poles out of the windshield. He tossed it onto the pavement beside the cruiser and climbed down from the hood. Shirt ablaze, he helped the trooper drag Schrauzer out of the cruiser and along the pavement, away from the flames. Once Schrauzer was clear of further danger, Robertson threw himself onto his back and rolled from side to side, while the trooper beat at the flames with his hat.
There was another flare-up over the burning car, and Branden heard the first squad’s sirens out on the Walnut Creek hill. The ambulance crested the hill, sped into the valley, and went directly past the trucks to where Robertson and the trooper crouched beside Schrauzer, who was laid out on his back.
Branden watched as the highway patrolman began to help Robertson out of his uniform shirt, still smoldering. Robertson bent suddenly backward and appeared to cry out in pain as the shirt stuck to the skin on his back. A paramedic hurried forward and cut the shirt loose from patches that had fused to ugly burns on the sheriff’s back. Nancy Blain, in jeans and a T-shirt, stood back from the sheriff, snapping photos for the Holmes Gazette.
A team of paramedics loaded Schrauzer into an ambulance and headed back toward Millersburg. Robertson turned and surveyed the crash scene, as a paramedic from a second squad tended burns on the sheriff’s back and arms.
Branden watched Robertson, bare-chested, directing fire department volunteers to the burning car, with pieces of his uniform shirt clinging to his back. The sheriff took a step toward the fire, and the paramedic pulled him back by the arm. Gratefully, Branden sensed that Robertson seemed content to stand back and let the squads do their