Текст книги "The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel"

Автор книги: Linda Castillo

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“Hoch!” I run to him, drop to my knees beside him. He’s lying in a supine position. I know instantly he’s dead. His left arm is over his head, his right is bent at the elbow with his hand near his shoulder. His head is twisted to one side. I force myself to look at his face. His flesh is that terrible color of blue gray. His staring eyes are sticky-looking and beginning to cloud. Still, I reach out and press my finger against his carotid artery. His skin is cold to the touch, like rubber. There’s no pulse.

“Oh … Hoch.”

A .22-caliber revolver lies on the dirt floor a few inches from his right hand. Rising, I turn away from the sight and grapple for my cell phone. Even though we use the ten code system here in Painters Mill, there are certain situations that are best handled off the radio. A lot of people in the area have police scanners. It’s never a good thing for them to find out about a death before the next of kin.

“Mona.”

“Hey, Chief.”

“I’m out here at the Yoder Apple Farm. I found Hoch Yoder. He’s DOA. Possible suicide.”

“Do you want me to send the coroner?”

“Yeah.” I look at Hoch and, in light of the murders, I’m reminded that not every scene is as it appears at first glance. “Give BCI a call, too, will you? See if we can get a CSU out here.”

“Got it.” A thoughtful pause ensues. “You sound kind of funny, Chief. Are you okay?”

I’m not sure how to respond to that. I’m not okay. I feel sucker-punched because this decent man saw death as a better alternative than life—and his only escape from the truth and the agony of his past. I can’t help but wonder if our conversation the night before was the final straw.

But this isn’t about me or the way I feel. It’s about hatred and revenge and stopping a killer.

CHAPTER 29

According to a poll I read in a magazine a while back, something like 71 percent of people hate their jobs. I’m lucky because I’m one of the minority. In fact, most days I love my job. I love being a police officer. I enjoy my duties as chief and the people I work with on a daily basis. I take pride in what I do, and I take seriously my oath to serve and protect the citizens of Painters Mill. But no job is perfect, including mine. Tonight, I hate my job with a passion.

T.J. is the first to arrive. We spend a few minutes walking the scene, and then I help him mark the perimeter with yellow caution tape. All the while the knowledge that Hannah Yoder is back at the house, frightened and wondering why a second police unit has arrived, beats at the back of my brain. I know that in a few minutes I’m going to bring her world crashing down around her.

I wait until I see the flashing lights of the ambulance coming through the gate before I trudge through the mud toward the house. Usually, when I have to notify an Amish person that their next of kin has died, I’ll pick up Bishop Troyer for counsel. This morning, I don’t have that option; I can’t keep Hannah waiting that long. And I realize with some surprise that the bishop is probably as much help to me as he is to the grieving loved ones.

I hit my lapel mike as I leave the orchard and pass through the gate. “Mona?”

“I’m here, Chief.”

“Will you have someone from the sheriff’s office pick up Bishop Troyer and bring him to the Yoder farm?”

“Will do.”

I find Hannah standing on the sidewalk a few yards from her back porch, watching the ambulance make its way toward the mill house. I take a shortcut through the side yard and traverse the distance between us. “Hannah?”

“Did you find Hoch?” she asks. “Is he all right? Why is that ambulance here?” She pelts me with rapid-fire questions as she rushes toward me, her eyes never leaving the orchard behind me, where the flashing lights of the ambulance are still visible through the trees. “Is he hurt?”

“Hannah, I’m sorry but Hoch is dead.”

“What?” She coughs out a strangled sound. “That’s not possible. He just went for a walk…”

Around us a steady rain pours down from the predawn sky, but neither of us notices the cold or wet. She keeps craning her neck to look around me, trying to see past me, past the trees, as if expecting Hoch to emerge from the orchard and tell us all of this is some big misunderstanding.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

“No.” Her eyes find mine, but I can see there’s a part of her that isn’t there. There’s a blankness on her face, as if she’s gone inside herself, where the pain of this can’t reach her. Shock, I think, and I find myself hoping the sheriff’s office gets Bishop Troyer here quickly, because I’m not sure I can handle this alone.

“But how?” Her eyes search mine. “Did that woman do something to him? Hurt him?”

From where I’m standing, I can see her entire body shaking. Her shawl is soaked and sagging against her. I reach out and touch her arm. “Let’s get out of the rain so we can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.” She shakes off my hand. “I want to see Hoch.”

“Hannah, that’s not a good idea.”

“Please. I want to see him.”

“Bishop Troyer’s on his way,” I tell her. “We need to be here to meet him.” I motion toward the door. “Let’s go inside and wait for him, okay?”

She blinks rain from her eyes, looking at me as if I’m speaking some language she doesn’t understand.

“It’s going to be all right,” I tell her.

“That’s what Hoch always says,” she whispers. “Only it’s not, is it?”

“No,” I tell her. “It’s not.”

Looping my arm around hers, I guide her to the house.

*   *   *

It’s past noon when I leave the Yoder place, and I’m so exhausted, I can barely see straight as I drive home. I park in my usual spot and drag myself to the door. Inside, I drape my mud-spattered slicker on the coatrack. My boots and slacks are caked with mud, so I take them off at the door and carry both to the laundry room. In the bedroom, I drop my holster and .38 onto the night table next to the bed. I lose the rest of my clothes on the way to the shower and spend fifteen minutes washing away the remnants of a day I’d like nothing more than to forget. I stumble to the bedroom naked and crawl between sheets that smell like Tomasetti. I curl up in the essence of him and tumble into a hard, troubled sleep.

I dream of Hoch Yoder. I’m Amish and my datt has brought Jacob and Sarah and me to Yoder’s Pick-Your-Own Apple Farm for apple butter, cider, and a bushel of McIntosh apples. I’m happy to be there, looking forward to playing hide-and-seek. The three of us run into the orchard, calling out to each other, hiding among the trees. I’ve found the perfect hiding place when the orchard goes silent and dark. I can no longer hear my siblings. Frightened, I leave my spot, but no matter how hard I search, I can’t find them. Thunder rumbles and the wind picks up, warning me of a storm. When I look up, the sun is black and the rain is red, falling onto me like blood from the sky.

“Kate. Hey. Kate.”

I wake to find Tomasetti leaning over me. One hand braced on the headboard, the other warm against my shoulder. Disoriented, unnerved by the dream still so vivid in my mind, I sit up quickly. Hazy light slants in through the windows and I realize with some surprise I don’t know if it’s morning or afternoon or somewhere in between.

“Hey.” My voice is clogged, so I clear it.

“You were thrashing around.” Tomasetti tilts his head as if to get a better look at my face. “Bad dream?”

“Yeah.” Not making eye contact with him, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and scrub my hand over my face. “What time is it?”

“After six.”

I look at him over the tops of my fingertips and smile. “A.M. or P.M.?”

He smiles back. “P.M.”

“I have to go.” I start to rise.

But he presses me back. “Whoa.”

“I didn’t intend to sleep this long.”

“That’s what you get for staying up all night.”

He’s wearing an exquisitely cut charcoal suit with a light gray shirt and the tie I bought him for Father’s Day last summer. I know he hates that tie; I have the fashion sense of a toad, especially when it comes to dressing a man. But I know he wears it because he loves me.

Lowering himself onto the bed next to me, he puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls me against him. “I tried to wake you for dinner, but you were out cold.”

“You know that’s no reflection on your cooking, right?”

He smiles. “I picked up a sandwich at Leo’s for you.”

I make an exaggerated sound of disappointment, wondering if he has any idea how comforted I am by his presence. “You know we’re putting Leo’s kids through college, don’t you?”

“You know his name isn’t really Leo, right?”

That makes me laugh.

“That’s better.”

“Where are you going?”

“Dinner with the brass.” He smoothes a strand of hair from my face. “Do you want to talk? I have a few minutes.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“I heard what happened to Hoch Yoder. It was on the news.” He leans close and presses a kiss to my forehead. “I’m sorry. I know you liked him.”

“Are they calling it a suicide?”

“Yeah.”

Talk of the case reminds me that I lost half a day and how much I have to do. I try to rise again, but he stops me.

“Wait.” Gently, he wraps his fingers around my biceps and turns me to him.

I look up at him. “Tomasetti, I have morning breath.”

“Do I look even remotely concerned about that?”

He sets his mouth against mine and I melt into him. My arms go around his neck and I pull him closer. I kiss him hard, using my tongue, wanting more. He kisses me back in kind, and in an instant I’m swept away. It’s crazy, but even as he holds me, I feel an inexplicable rise of desperation, of wanting that has nothing to do with physical needs, and I wonder how it is that my love for him can be so all-encompassing.

After a moment, he pulls away. His face is scant inches from mine. His pupils are dilated, his mouth wet. “I have to tell you something.” His voice is low and rough, his nostrils flaring, but he isn’t smiling. “Before you hear it on the news.”

Something cold skitters up my back. “What?”

“Joey Ferguson is dead.”

I hear the words as if I’m standing in some vast canyon, and they echo off rocky cliffs. I’m so shocked that it takes a moment for the words to register. “Dead? How?”

“He was shot outside a bar in Cleveland. Execution style. Passerby found his body a few hours ago.”

I stare at him, stunned, not sure what to make of it. The silence is deafening. “Did the cops get the shooter?”

“No.”

I’m suspicious by nature, and no matter how much I love him, I know him. I know what he’s capable of. And I have no choice but to ask the one question I fear most. “Did you have anything to do with it?”

He takes the question in stride, as if knowing I would ask. “No.”

A sense of relief unravels the knot of tension at the back of my neck. Still, I know there’s a possibility that he’s lying. To protect me. To protect himself.

“All right,” I hear myself say.

“I wanted you to hear it from me.”

“Who’s handling the case?”

“Cleveland PD.”

“Are they looking at you?”

“Probably. They won’t find anything.” He looks down at our clasped hands and then makes eye contact with me. “Are we all right?”

“Yes,” I say.

As he walks out the door, all I can think is that they didn’t find anything the last time the police looked at him, and Tomasetti had been guilty as sin.

CHAPTER 30

I arrive at the station a little after seven. I’m preoccupied by my conversation with Tomasetti and operating in a fog as I go through the front door. Mona greets me with her usual cheery, “Hey Chief,” as I make a beeline for the coffee station.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Jodie’s flooded in, so I told her I’d cover her shift.” She rises and crosses to me, her hand extended with a dozen or so pink slips. “I hate to hit you with this with everything else that’s going on, but I just took a 911 from Randy Trask. He says the water’s up over the Tuscarawas Bridge.”

“Of course it is,” I mutter.

The Tuscarawas Bridge is a covered bridge of historical significance and a Painters Mill icon that spans Painters Creek and part of a floodplain. “Get T.J. out there to set up flares. Notify the sheriff’s department.” I take the messages and glance through them. “I want the road blocked and a detour set up.” I pour coffee into my cup, knowing there’s always some motorist who’s in a hurry and takes a chance by driving through high water. “Give the mayor a call and put in a call to ODOT.”

“Will do.” I can tell by the way she’s fidgeting that she’s got something else on her mind. Before I can ask, she blurts, “Chief, I think I found something on Ruth Weaver.”

I set the coffeepot back on the burner and give her my full attention. “Let’s see it.”

I follow her to the dispatch station. She slides behind her computer and deftly runs her fingers over the keyboard. An instant later, a photo of an Amish woman appears on the screen. I guess her to be about twenty-five to thirty years old. Plain gray dress. Dark bonnet. Swartzentruber, I think.

“I found it on a blog site,” she tells me. “A blogger posted it eight years ago on a site called A Lid for Every Pot.”

“That’s an old Amish saying,” I murmur.

“I was just messing around and did a search for Nanty Glo, Pennsylvania, and the blog came up. I started reading, and the blogger, a lady by the name of Gwen Malcolm, had driven across Pennsylvania while on vacation and ran across this Amish woman on the roadside selling handwoven baskets. She bought a basket and started talking to the woman and somehow ended up taking the photo, which she used in her blog.”

“That’s surprising,” I say. “That dress and bonnet are Swartzentruber.”

“According to the blogger, the Amish woman’s name is Ruth Weaver.”

I lean closer to the monitor. “Can you enlarge it?”

“Yeah, but we lose resolution.” She taps a menu tab, and a larger but grainier photo augments.

I stare at the woman’s face, and a vague sense of familiarity grips me. I know it’s impossible; I’ve never met Ruth Weaver. Still, staring at the photo is like having a word on the tip of your tongue that you can’t quite conjure. “Mona, I think I’ve seen her before.”

“Here in Painters Mill? Or when you drove over to Pennsylvania?”

“I’m not sure. But her face … there’s something familiar about her.”

“Like passing-on-the-street familiar or you’ve-talked-to-her familiar?”

“I don’t know.” I shift my attention to Mona. “See if you can get in touch with the blogger and get your hands on a better photo. Or if she has others, ask her to send them.”

“I’ll do it right now.”

“E-mail it to me.”

“Will do.”

Half an hour later, I’m in my office on my second cup of coffee, staring at the grainy photo on my twenty-one-inch monitor. I hit the Print key and the printer spits out a not-so-great black-and-white reproduction. Grabbing it out of the tray, I leave my office, and head to the jail cell located in the basement.

Skid is sitting in the chair with his feet on the desk, playing with his iPad. “Oh. Hey.” His fleet slide from the desk. “Didn’t realize you were here.”

I glance at the cell, where Blue Branson lies on his cot, watching me. “Get up,” I tell him, crossing to the cell door.

The big man rolls and gets to his feet. His hair is mussed. His face pushed slightly aside. His typically crisp white shirt is wilted. Somehow he looks older than last time I saw him. He looks at me with eyes shot with red as he pulls his black jacket over his shoulders.

“I need you to look at a photo,” I tell him.

“All right.” He approaches me.

When he’s close enough, I produce the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch photo. “Do you recognize this woman?”

He fumbles for his reading glasses, shoves them onto his nose, and takes a good look at the photo. When he raises his eyes to mine, his face is white all the way down to his lips. “Where did you get this?” he asks.

“Who is she?”

“That’s Wanetta Hochstetler.”

“It can’t be.” I tap the photo with my thumb. “The photo is eight years old. The woman is too young to be Wanetta Hochstetler.”

“I reckon I ought to know, Chief Burkholder. It’s her.”

I lower the photo, not sure if he’s telling the truth or trying to muddy the water. “You had better not be yanking my chain.”

“With God as my witness, that’s Wanetta Hochstetler.”

I leave without thanking him. As I go through the door, he calls out my name, but I don’t look back.

On the way back to my office, I peek my head into the reception area. “Mona, call Pickles and tell him I want him in my office ASAP.”

*   *   *

It takes Pickles fifteen minutes to appear at my office door.

“How is it out there?” I ask, referring to the weather.

“Bad.” He shuffles to the visitor chair adjacent my desk and settles into it. “Never seen it rain like this.”

“I need an ID on this woman.” I slide the printed photograph toward him. “Do you know who she is?”

He pulls his reading glasses from his uniform pocket and tilts his head back to look at the photo through the bifocals. “Damn, Chief, she kind of looks like Wanetta Hochstetler.”

“The photo was taken eight years ago. It can’t be Wanetta. Pickles, I think it’s her daughter.”

“Daughter? I didn’t realize she had a—”

“She does.” Sighing because I didn’t intend to snap, I tell him about my trip to Pennsylvania.”

“Well, damn.” He squints at the photo again. “Photo is kind of grainy. But the features are similar. Looks like she might have blond hair beneath that bonnet.”

I turn to my computer and pull up the image. “The resolution is a little better here.”

He rises to come around my desk and look at the monitor. We stare at it, not speaking.

“Huh.” Pickles rubs his chin.

“What?”

He points at the woman’s face, his finger hovering an inch from the screen. “You put dark hair on her, and she kind of looks like Hoch Yoder’s wife.”

“I don’t see it.” I study the photo, trying to imagine Hoch’s wife with brown hair. All the while, something niggles at the back of my mind.

“So we may have an ID on the killer,” he says. “You want me to add that to the BOLO?”

I can’t stop staring at the photo. You put dark hair on her, and she kind of looks like Hoch Yoder’s wife. Tunnel vision narrows my sight until all I can see is her face. Everything around me fades away. I can feel my heart thudding against my breast, my pulse roaring in my ears. From somewhere in the backwaters of my mind, I recall my conversation with the CSU technician about a hair found at the scene of the Michaels murder. This was a long hair. Blond that was dyed brown. I remember that because it’s unusual for a woman with naturally blond hair to dye it brown.

Unless she’s trying to hide something …

A cold realization augments inside me. I almost can’t believe what I’m thinking, because the possibility makes me sick to my stomach. “Oh my God.” I stand so quickly, my chair rolls back.

“Chief?”

I jab my finger against the photo. “That’s Weaver. I thought she and her mother were living off the grid because they were Swartzentruber. But the real reason is so much more insidious. Pickles, I think Wanetta Hochstetler devoted her life to instilling her hatred into her daughter so that Ruth would come back to Painters Mill and kill the men who’d murdered her family—her children—and destroyed her life.”

His rheumy eyes sharpen on mine. “Jesus, Chief, what kind of parent does that?”

“An insane one.” I look at him, my mind reeling, still trying to put all the jagged pieces together. The picture that emerges is almost too ugly to consider. “I think Wanetta became pregnant from multiple rapes that night. I think that sent her over the edge. She had the baby, but … there was a part of her that hated her daughter. Hated her because of what she represented.”

“Son of a bitch. How do you hate a little girl?”

“Pickles, this is so twisted, I can barely get my mind around it. But you mentioned the woman in that photo looks like Hoch Yoder’s wife.” I swallow something bitter at the back of my throat. “Do you think it could be Hannah Yoder?

He stares at me, shocked by my words and the story they paint. “But that would mean … You think she married her half brother?”

“I don’t know if I’m right, but it fits.” I recall my last conversation with Hoch, and another piece of the puzzle snaps into place. “Hoch told me that a few days before the home invasion, he’d bragged about his datt keeping a lot of money at the house. That’s why he’s always blamed himself for what happened.”

Pickles thinks about that a moment. “It sounds like he wasn’t the only one who blamed himself. Maybe his mama blamed him, too.”

“I can’t fathom how her daughter would know about what happened. Or how a mother could hold her fourteen-year-old son responsible.”

He shrugs. “Maybe one of the men told her. Salt on the wound kind of thing. If you look at what they did to her. Rape is about violence and pain and degradation. What better way to destroy this woman than to tell her that her own son was the one who set everything into motion?”

“Chief!”

I look up at the sound of Mona’s voice to see her standing at the door to my office. “I just took a 911 from a driver out on Township Road 1. She drove through some standing water and her car got swept into the creek. She has a bunch of kids with her, and now they’re on the roof.”

Across from me, Pickles stirs, as if from habit he’s ready to go. “Get Skid out there,” I tell her. “Call the sheriff’s office and fire department, too.”

“Got it.”

Pickles shifts restlessly. “Damn people never learn about driving through water,” he grumbles.

“I’ve got to get out to Yoder’s place.” I start to rise.

“Chief. Wait.” He leans across the desk, and he reaches out, his eyes filled with determination. “Look, I know I’m a little past my prime, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out there by yourself.”

“The sheriff’s department—”

“With all this flooding, every agency between here and Cleveland is going to have their hands full, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“Pickles—”

“I can handle it.” He growls the word with a good bit of attitude, and for a moment I see him as the cocky young police officer he’d once been. The adrenaline-addicted cop who’d spent months working undercover and risked his life to do it.

When I hesitate, he adds, “I’m right about that, and you know it.”

I sigh and give a resolute nod. “Bring your slicker and your vest.”