A Prayer for the Night (14 page)

Arnetto rubbed again at the throbbing pain in his neck, and shook his head. “It’d take at least three days to set it up, and we’d still not get all the Holmes County people.”

Robertson said, “We don’t have three days.”

“You don’t know that,” Arnetto complained.

“We can’t risk any delay,” Robertson countered.

Arnetto hoisted his eyebrows in vexation, acknowledged the problem with a wave of his hand, and said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Ellie came back through the door with her pen and steno pad, a blank expression on her face. She briefly caught Robertson’s eye.

Branden stood and said, “I should be going.”

Robertson said, “Hang back, Mike.” Turning to his dispatcher, he said, “Ellie, please set Agent Arnetto up with all of our contact information.”

Arnetto stood. “It’ll be Monday, anyway, before we have something worked out.”

“We’ll be ready, Tony,” Robertson said. “We’ll do whatever we have to do, on this end. We’ll cover Holmes County for you.”

Arnetto jerked an unhappy nod and left with Ellie.

Branden sat back down and groaned, “That’s not going to be soon enough.”

Robertson said, “We’re not going to wait.”

“What do you mean?”

“We can’t wait, Mike. Somebody has had her for nearly ten hours now, and I’m not gonna wait until Monday for those DEA pukes to put their ducks in a row.”

“You’ve got a plan?”

“I’m gonna put someone in that bar tomorrow afternoon. We need to know who we’re dealing with.”

“All we have is the videotape,” Branden observed.

“It’s going to have to be enough.”

“You can’t raid the place.”

“I had something softer in mind. Putting someone in there with a microphone clipped to his chest.”

“Who have you got who doesn’t look like a cop?”

“I figure on going in myself.”

“You’ll stand out like a sore thumb,” Branden said, laughing.

“You got a better idea?”

“Dan Wilsher. He at least parts his hair.”

“I don’t know. Maybe Bobby Newell?”

“I’d be a better choice,” Branden said.

Robertson held his eyes on the professor, measuring something, he wasn’t sure what. Either his own harsh need or the professor’s extravagant inner workings. He moved some papers around on his desk, rubbed at his scalp and said, eventually, “You do actually look scruffy enough to be a bar bum.”

“Thanks ever so much, Sheriff,” Branden drawled.

“You’d be in there a good hour, maybe more, if we do it right.”

“Wired?”

“So you could talk to us, tell us what you see. But you wouldn’t have ears.”

“So, I’d sit, walk around, what?”

“We’re going to want to know who’s there. Who typically goes there. What kind of clientele they have. What’s in the back rooms, if there are any. If Samuel White shows up, we’ll hang a tail on him.”

“This’ll be risky,” Branden said.

“If they’re holding Sara Yoder there, it’ll be worth it,” Robertson said. “It’ll be worth it even if all we get is a line on White. All we’re going to do is sit down the road a ways and listen to what you tell us. All you’re going to do is walk in, have a look around, sit a spell with a drink, and tell us what you see.”

“All right,” Branden said. “In the meantime, I’m going over to the hospital to visit Abe Yoder.”

 

AT Abe Yoder’s bedside, Branden sat in a visitor’s chair and listened to the IV motor click its medicine into the vein on the back of Yoder’s pale hand. A plump Amish lady who had introduced herself as Orpha Buckholder sat in a corner chair, with knitting in her lap. She wore a dark green dress, white bodice, gray hose, soft black shoes, and a white prayer cap.

Abe Yoder mumbled an occasional unintelligible phrase, and intermittently pleaded, “Nicht Schiezzen.” At one point, he roused and asked for a drink of water, and Orpha Buckholder got up and put a small ice cube in his mouth.

Branden said, “You’ve done this before,” remembering his own desperate ordeal in the hospital one summer, after a murderer had crushed his leg in a struggle for a gun.

Orpha said, “The ice is better for them. It just melts, and they don’t have to work a straw.”

Branden nodded grimly and got out of his chair. He stretched his arms over his head, and went out into the hall to stretch his legs. Taking the elevator to the cafeteria, he bought a can of Diet Pepsi and went back to the room. Orpha Buckholder was standing in the hall, and two nurses were working on the bed sheets in Abe Yoder’s room.

“He’s been throwing up,” Orpha said, “and he’s awake.”

Branden slipped into the room, stood at the foot of the bed, and waited for the nurses to finish cleaning up Yoder. They managed to get a clean sheet under him, and a clean blanket over him, and then they called on the intercom for housekeeping services. As they left, Branden moved to Yoder’s side and pushed gently on his shoulder. Yoder opened his eyes and quizzed the professor with his expression.

“I’m Mike Branden, Abe. I found you in the cabin.”

Yoder squeezed his eyes closed and moved his head slowly from side to side. He appeared to drift off, and he dozed for several minutes, then opened his eyes wide, as if he had clawed himself out of a hideous nightmare. Weakly he said, in a voice almost too soft to hear, “What’s another word for red, Mr. Branden?”

Unsure that he had heard correctly, Branden said, “Red?”

With effort, Yoder whispered, “What’s another English word for red?”

“Pink?” Branden asked.

Yoder moved his head very slowly to indicate no.

“Rose?”

No answer.

Branden laid his hand on Yoder’s head, and Yoder opened his eyes. “Crimson,” Branden said.

Yoder mouthed the word and then said it out loud.

Branden gave his shoulder a gentle shake, and Yoder said, “Crimson mist.”

Branden leaned in close and said, “Abe, stay with me. What is crimson mist?”

Yoder swallowed hard and said, “Big black revolver.”

“Yes.”

“Bucked like a horse.”

“Big revolver? When?”

“Crimson mist. Blew out the side of Johnny’s head.”

“What are you saying, Abe?”

“That’s what I saw when the bullet went through Johnny’s head.”

Friday, July 23
8:45 P.M.

 

 

THE tall silver maples on the front lawn at the Miller residence were filled with the raucous birdsong of starlings as Professor Branden pulled his truck to a stop on the gravel lane beside the Millers’ white picket fence. Several children who had been playing on the front lawn stood quietly and watched him walk down to the driveway and turn in. With a mixture of extreme shyness and advanced curiosity, they slowly matched his progress toward the house, and then stood in a cluster as he mounted the steps.

The youngest of the children was about two, still in diapers. There were two beautiful girls of four or five, in rose dresses of heavy fabric, bare feet poking out from under the folds. Three boys five to eight years old wore matching blue shirts with oval necks and string ties, black suspenders, and blue denim trousers. They, too, were barefoot. When Branden knocked on the screen door, the children crowded up to the porch and peered through the railing slats, the oldest boy balancing the youngest child on his hip.

The lady who came to the door was known to Branden as Isaac Miller’s wife, Annie. She knew Branden from the visits he and Caroline had made to see her mother-in-law, Gertie Miller. Gertie was mother to Isaac and seven other boys, among them Jonah Miller, aka Jon Mills, who had died one summer before Branden and Cal Troyer could figure out a way to help him. Jonah was the father of the errant Jeremiah Miller, the reason for Branden’s visit this Friday evening.

Annie nodded politely, held the screen door open, and let Branden into the two-story white frame house.

Branden said, “I won’t stay long, Annie. I just thought I’d visit a while with Gertie.”

“She’s around back,” Annie said, and motioned for Branden to pass through the house. Instead, he backed out past the screened door and said, “I’ll just go around the side.”

As he descended the porch steps, Branden playfully said, “Hi, kids,” to the children. He got a smile or two from the younger ones, and expressions of reserved amusement from the older ones. They all followed silently, stepping around to the side of the house, and down the driveway to the back.

Behind the big house, there was a small daadihaus that Isaac Miller had helped his father build the summer that Branden had worked their case. Branden remembered the concrete footers that the men had been pouring the day he had come out to confront Eli Miller, the bishop, about his son Jonah. The daadihaus had stood on those footers behind the big house since then, and served as a dwelling for Eli and Gertie Miller after Eli had retired from farming. Isaac’s older brothers had families, now, and they were farming land that had been subdivided to the boys. Isaac was now raising his own family in the big house, and the little band of curious Amish children that followed Branden now would be Isaac’s and Annie’s children, Gertie’s grandchildren. First cousins to Jeremiah.

At the back of the house, Annie Miller appeared, holding a dish-towel, and spoke a few words of Dutch. The children, obviously disappointed, filed back around to the front of the house without verbal protest.

Branden found Gertie Miller in a rocking chair on the small wooden porch of the daadihaus. The porch and the walkway to the big house were covered over with a grape arbor. Gertie saw Branden coming down the walkway and tried to get out of her chair, but Branden said, “Please, Gertie, don’t get up.”

Gertie Miller sat with her twisted fingers nestled awkwardly in her lap. On each wrist, she wore a copper bracelet for the pain of the arthritis that had crippled her. Purple and lavender yarn and two long, green knitting needles lay on the floorboards beside her rocker. She reached over the arm of her chair and slowly raised the work for Branden to see. Unable to grasp the needles properly, she had to scoop the whole yarn affair up in a bundle to display it. With an icy humor, she smiled and said, “I can’t work the needles, anymore, Professor. They’ll put an old goat like me out to graze.”

Branden smiled affectionately, gently took the work from her fingers, and said, “It’s your turn to rest, Gertie.”

She croaked out a “Ha!” and said, “Grannies like me have the rest of their lives to rest. Today, I’d settle for a bucket of potatoes to peel. Maybe some laundry to hang. Old goats have to keep busy to earn their keep.”

Branden pulled a Shaker chair up beside her and said, “I was sorry to hear that Eli died, Gertie.”

“Three months, now,” she observed. “Eli went out hard. He had pneumonia. He couldn’t breathe.”

“I’m sorry, Gertie,” Branden said. He laid the knitting in his lap.

Gertie’s eyes seemed to take an inward focus, and she sat quietly for a spell. Branden sat beside her and waited. Old sorrows played in the muscles around her eyes, as she drifted among her memories.

She was dressed in a high-necked, pleated dress of porpoise gray that flowed down to her black leather shoes. Her white hair was tied up in a bun, and topped with a black bonnet and hood. Her eyelids were red, and her nostrils were moist, as if she suffered from summer allergies. At intervals she pulled a wrinkled hankie from a pocket on her white apron and awkwardly pushed it with her osseous fingers, first to her eyes and then to her nose. When her fingers were asked to put the hankie back in the apron pocket, they replied with a measure of stiff pain. She sighed reflexively, and settled lower in her chair. “Eli was a good man,” she said. “He died hard.”

Branden said, “He was a good bishop,” and she nodded a firm concurrence.

“It almost killed him to lose Jonah, but he didn’t let anyone see that,” Gertie said.

Branden said, “I’ve seen Jeremiah from time to time.”

Gertie looked up at him. “In town?” she asked.

“He drove his buggy up to our house a couple of times, the year before last. Just seemed to want to sit and talk about life.”

“He’s not usually the talkative type,” Gertie said.

“I hear he wants to marry.”

Gertie started rocking her chair. “One of the Yoder girls,” she said. “Over to Salem church.”

“I’m trying to find him, Gertie,” Branden said.

“Don’t tell his uncle Isaac,” she said, “but he keeps a car up the way.”

“Can you tell me where to look for him?” Branden asked.

“He’s out with his buggy, Professor. Sometimes he’s gone all night. It’s Friday, so I expect he’s gone courting.”

“Do you know who his friends are, Gertie? Do they ever come around?”

“I don’t see him that much,” Gertie said. “We have our moments, every month or so. We’ll sit and talk by ourselves. He saves me for that special need. He talks about the people who kidnapped him. And especially about the day you saved him up on the lake. But then he’ll turn quiet. He draws himself inward, like a spider backing into a hole, and that’s when he wants me to talk about his father. When he’s had enough, he gets up slowly and goes. I know, then, that he won’t need me for a spell.”

“You’re probably the only one he can talk to about these things,” Branden said.

“Each time we’ve talked, I’ve had the impression I’ve saved him from something that’s chasing him. Something dreadful. He has his father’s blood to wander. He has his father’s restless mind.”

“I thought if I could find him, I might be able to help him with that.”

“Has there been some trouble?”

“Yes, Gertie. A boy has been killed.”

“Is Jeremiah involved?”

“I don’t think so, but I need to find him.”

“Has it got something to do with that Johnny Schlabaugh?”