"Accident?" DC Sam Breen asked, snapping photos of a suspiciously frayed hydraulic line.
Mike spent the evening at the Snake and Tiger, sipping a flat white and listening to the local gossip. It was Mrs. Marlowe, over a plate of her famous lemon squares, who dropped the crucial thread.
The crime scene was a chaotic tableau of rubber and iron. A massive tractor-trailer sat slumped on its axles, surrounded by the debris of a midnight maintenance job gone horribly wrong. At the center of it all lay "Big Mac" MacIntyre, pinned under the very machine he spent his life perfecting.
"In Brokenwood?" Mike replied, his eyes scanning the perimeter. "The only accidents here are the ones people plan three weeks in advance."
"The only failure here," Mike said, stepping out of the Holden as the sun finally dipped below the horizon, "was thinking a Brokenwood man wouldn't notice a mismatched bolt. It’s the little things that trip you up."