Chapter 20
Pennsylvania State Police Lieutenant Conor McCaffrey had never in his life felt more overwhelmed.
He had been on the job exactly six days.
He hadn’t even unpacked his things in his office.
His apartment was a bare bed with no sheets and a bunch of boxes because he’d used all of his off time driving around trying to familiarize himself with Somerset County.
Now, he was in charge. Dear God in heaven, he was in charge.
First order of business was to secure the scene, make sure the people at the base of the mountain were not in danger, and he dispatched four troopers to do that, as more emergency response personnel flooded into the parking lot.
The Somerset County sheriff arrived with every one of his officers and deputies, and more Pennsylvania State Police units from neighboring jurisdictions would be arriving soon.
The fire departments from four different townships, six rescue squad vehicles, carrying four men each, ambulances from the closest three local hospitals, with UPMC, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, notified, though they would not be able to dispatch med-evac units in this blizzard.
It was possible that the shooter was still out there.
Unlikely, but possible. McCaffrey was convinced the shooter was either dead—had killed himself as many mass shooters do—or he was long gone.
But as he’d raced through the storm to the scene, the lieutenant had called in SERT, the state police’s Special Emergency Response Team and the Nordic Highlands Ski Patrol, and a team of them and other officers would sweep the woods when they arrived.
McCaffrey was establishing a command post near the snowcat garage, as the EMS units set up a triage on the edge of the parking lot, when one of his troopers approached, followed by a pimply-faced teenage boy wearing coke-bottle thick glasses who was flushed and squirming.
He was a big kid, strong—but gawky, all arms and legs—and feet.
He moved in a kind of shuffling stumble, clumsy from walking on feet the size of snowshoes.
“You need to hear this sir,” the trooper said, and Lt. McCaffrey knew the trooper would not have interrupted him unless it was vitally important. The trooper turned to the boy, “Tell him what you just told me, son.”
“Well, I … I think I know where the shooter is.” The boy’s words came out in a machine-gun rush. “I mean, I don’t know where he is now, but … but I think I know where he was shooting from because I was there, and I saw?—”
McCaffrey put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Slow down and just answer my questions. Can you do that?”
“Sure, I can do that, sir. I can tell you anything you want?—”
“Just answer my questions.”
The boy looked chagrined. “Yes, sir.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jason Crawford.”
“How do you know where the shooter was?”
“Because it’s my grandparents’ house.” He gestured off into the darkness.
“My grandparents have a house, a chalet up in the woods beside the slopes. I go there a lot, and when it got so cold a few days ago, I went looking for my good snow boots—they’re fur-lined—and …
big.” The boy actually blushed scarlet. “It’s hard to find boots that fit, you know, and I thought maybe I’d left them at my grandparents’ house, so I went to check. ”
“Were your grandparents home?”
“No, sir, they’re in Florida. They go south as soon as it gets cold. My grandmother has arthritis?—”
“Stick to the point. When did you go to your grandparents’ house?”
“Tonight, just a little while ago. Zack wanted me to come with him tonight. His dad owns the flooring store and my dad’s a plumber so they were invited, but they couldn’t come so we did only we didn’t get here in time to eat, so I just handed out—” The boy caught the look on McCaffrey’s face.
“I couldn’t find Zack, Zack Pendleton, he drove. I got a classic, Ford Thunderbird, sweet ride but it’s in the shop, so finally I got tired of looking for Zack and decided to walk up to my grandparents’ chalet to see if I could find my boots. But when I got there, somebody had broken in.”
“And you know that how?”
“Because the stained-glass window in the door was broken out, and the door was just standing kind of open, and I knew somebody had broken in. And I didn’t think …
I mean, I didn’t know what all was going on here or I never would have gone inside.
But I didn’t know, so I went in to see if, you know, maybe somebody had vandalized the place.
My grandmother has a heart condition and if she gets upset?—”
“Son, focus.”
“Okay, uh, I was afraid that somebody had vandalized the place or maybe stole something, so I went inside, and there was mud smeared on the floor, and my grandparents wouldn’t have made a mess like that.
My grandmother wouldn’t let mud stay on the floor long enough to get the carpet wet.
She was a nut about that kind of thing. She—” The boy stopped himself that time.
“So, I followed the mud smears, and they went upstairs, and then I guess most of the mud had come off because they got fainter and fainter, but I saw muddy marks on the floor in the hall, and some on the stairs to the attic. And when I got to the attic, I saw the window leading out to the roof was open.”
McCaffrey was listening hard then. “So, what did you do?”
“I pulled out my phone and I dialed 911 but I couldn’t get through and I tried again and again, and I thought 911’s never busy, is it? So something must be wrong with my phone. So I came down here to call and report the burglary, and then when I got down here, I found out …”
“All right, son. I need for you to take me and show me. Take me to your grandparents’ house.”
“You can walk from here. I did, had to ’cause I couldn’t find Zack. It’s not far.”
“We’ll drive.” He motioned for Sergeant Donnelly to come along, and the three of them got into McCaffrey’s cruiser and the boy directed them to his grandparents’ chalet.
The chalet was right beside the ski slope with a clear, open line of sight from the rooftop to the ski lifts.
The boy babbled Gen Z teenage-speak nonstop the whole way to his grandparents’ house—about how people were saying there were dead bodies falling out of the lift chairs, hitting people on the head, like a scene from some James Bond movie.
“That dude’s the guy, he’s got rizz … total alpha …” And how the owner of the resort got smoked and some Amish girl who was about to get married got totally murked and even a little kid caught a bullet and an insurance salesman …
McCaffrey wasn’t paying attention. When they got to the boy’s grandparents’ house and pulled into the driveway, the sweep of the headlights across the front door revealed what the boy had described: the stained-glass window that was inset in the heavy oak door had been broken out, but the door was closed.
“Did you close the door?” he asked the boy.
“Sure. I did. I couldn’t leave it open. I mean, somebody could go in there and steal my grandparents’ stuff. They got a lot of expensive stuff, you know things like …” and he proceeded to babble more.
McCaffrey looked at Donnelly and nodded. “I’ll take the front. You go around to the back.” Then he turned to the boy. “And you stay right here. Do you hear me? You stay in this car!”
The boy nodded, and McCaffrey and Donnelly carefully exited the vehicle, weapons drawn, eyes on the dark house, the upstairs windows. Then they made a sweep of the house, clearing every room one at a time.
The house was empty, but there were spent shell casings on the roof, he could see five of them but there might have been more in the snow.
McCaffrey didn’t touch them but examined them in the light of a flashlight.
Two of them had writing on them and they lay in plain sight, almost like they’d been arranged side by side.
The first said, “PAYBACK’S A BITCH,” and the other had three letters: LOO.
McCaffrey called the barracks and told Linda to dispatch the forensics crew to this address. At some point today, they would have to search every building that had line-of-sight access to those slopes, but he was sure he’d already nailed it down.
The killer had climbed up on the roof of this chalet, which was about halfway up the slope, and picked off victims one after another. Maybe there was a second shooter, multiple shooters firing from different locations, but at least one of them had been lying on the rooftop of this chalet.
Time blurred for Lieutenant Conor McCaffrey after that. On his way back to the command post, he called the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office requesting forensic and behavioral assistance. The FBI notified ATF because a firearm had been used in the commission of the crimes.
By midnight, all the roads to the resort had been closed and the press had begun to congregate at the roadblocks, which had to be moved for the FBI convoy.
Black Suburbans and a white Evidence Response Team van rolled in through the falling snow.
McCaffrey and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Will Hansford established a Unified Command Post while the ERT set up floodlights powered by portable generators and made a grid of the slope, marking blood spatter and impact zones with fluorescent stakes as FBI photographers began evidence mapping.
ERT techs worked under heat lamps, using rakes and sieves to recover bullet fragments.
As soon as the FBI drone footage had been captured, McCaffrey ordered the scene closed until daylight and set up a guard rotation around the perimeter.
That’s when the state police and FBI hammered out a “joint command charter” to coordinate their activities.
Pennsylvania State Police retained jurisdiction and would conduct the investigation, the FBI would handle all the forensics and provide technical resources and the ATF would be in charge of tracing the weapon.
At 6 a.m., they held their first press briefing, though the events had become national news before midnight.
Lt. McCaffrey and SSA Hansford took turns in front of the microphone, both saying essentially the same thing.
Hansford used the term “targeted mass homicide,” while McCaffrey confirmed that there’d been no survivors.
Seven people had been shot, and they all were killed.
Both pointed out that they were conducting an “ongoing investigation” and could not comment further.
That didn’t stop the media from asking questions … and speculating … and chasing rumors.
It was obviously an act of eco-terrorism …
It was just some sicko, like all the other mass shootings, nobody will ever find out why …
The killer only had one target, and he shot everyone else to cover it up …
Clearly the attack was an anti-Amish hate crime …
Turns out one of them landed closer to the mark than anybody knew.