Bad Break: A Novel

Chapter Fifty-Two

Lt. Arturo Gonzalez took in the accident scene in stunned silence.

When the first 911 calls started coming through from dispatch, he had assumed the third shift District-Twelve desk sergeant had misheard the reports of a "six-way crash" at a four-way intersection.

Gonzalez assumed the frantic callers meant that six vehicles had been involved. No doubt a pileup, he thought. The car that caused it all was probably driven by someone playing on a cell phone, maybe an elderly driver who confused the gas pedal for the brakes.

But then a radio call came in from a patrol unit that had been on a coffee break in a bodega near the intersection.

"It was like something out of Mad Max," the senior officer in the unit shouted into her radio.

All the callers had been correct.

In the middle of the intersection three sedans, two full-sized SUVs, two midsize SUVs, a station wagon, and a compact car – one of those Italian-made Alfa Romeos, were smashed together like the lines of a maze drawn crookedly.

A green late model Jeep Cherokee Sport lay on its roof about ten yards from the jumble of crumpled vehicles.

Accident reconstruction specialists from the crime scene unit informed Gonzalez that skid marks suggested the accident was caused by two of the SUVs – one facing south and one facing west. Surveillance cameras from the adjacent shopping center and the officers who had been on their coffee break confirmed that the straight-ahead traffic signals had been red North-South and East-West. When the South and East turn signals switched to green, the witnesses said, the culprits had squealed from dead stops and driven straight ahead.

The southbound SUV had rammed into a station wagon carrying four elderly women returning home from choir practice. Behind the wagon, a teenager in a canary yellow Volkswagen Beetle managed to hit his brakes in time, but he was rear-ended by an unmarked squad car driven by Gonzalez's old academy roommate and his cranky partner.

The eastbound SUV collided with the green Jeep, just as it began to roll forward, causing the vehicle to flip three times, and then slammed into two westbound cars before coming to a rest, pinned in from behind by the choir ladies' wagon.

As wild a scene as it was, Gonzalez understood the technicians' explanation. What he couldn't figure out was the third errant SUV resting precariously atop a transformer box at one intersection or why two of the vehicles involved in the collision appeared to have come from adjacent parking lots, rather than one of the north/south, east/west lanes.

Thanks to the damaged transformer box, traffic lights were out in all directions at the intersection. And Gonzalez was forced to pull two squads out of the patrol rotation to direct traffic and provide cover for tow truck drivers and utility workers who would arrive any minute to begin making repairs.

"What did you guys see," Gonzalez asked, cursing under his breath, after stubbing his toe on a stray headlight assembly.

Guttfeld and Forsythe, sitting on the rear bumper of an ambulance, glanced at one another and shrugged. Gonzalez had already checked in on the other vehicles' occupants. They'd all suffered bumps and bruises, but surprisingly none had broken anything.

"It was all pretty much a blur, lieutenant," the older man said.

Forsythe, dabbing gently at a nasty-looking cut on his forehead, nodded silently, grimacing from the movement.

"We were rolling along when everything was suddenly one loud mess – horns blowing, the crashes. It was crazy, sir!"

Gonzalez waited for more but didn't get it. "You didn't see anything, Billy?"

He rarely called his one-time police academy roommate by his nickname. Hell, he rarely called him anything or for any reason these days. Forsythe had grown a little too cavalier for Gonzalez's tastes. And it didn't pay for a department golden boy to be seen hanging out with an officer reputed to be a cowboy.

But Gonzalez knew Forsythe well enough to know he valued personal relationships. The muscle-bound jokester had wept when Gonzalez and his wife shared that they wanted him to be a godparent to their first child.

"I, uh, I think Tom covered it all, Artie," Forsythe stuttered. "It happened so fast. But you know we jumped to it as soon as the dust settled. We tried to help. I mean, Wollensky and Darius came out of the bodega and helped, but we got 'em all."

Gonzalez frowned at both men and turned to walk away.

Something wasn't right.

"Hey fellas?"

He turned back to face them. "If you got 'em all out of their cars, where's the driver of the Jeep?"

The lieutenant didn't wait for an answer, instead waving over a patrol sergeant and instructing him to have teams of three begin searching nearby lawns and driveways. They should have already done so. The driver may have been disoriented and crawled away and collapsed.