Among the Wicked: A Kate Burkholder Novel (3 page)

“You’ve got visitors here at the station.”

“Visitors?” For an instant I envision my sister or brother sitting in the reception area, feeling out of place while they wait for me to show. “Who is it?”

“Agent Tomasetti, some suit from BCI, and an agent from New York.”

My memory pings. Tomasetti had mentioned a few days ago that the deputy superintendent wanted to talk to me about an investigation. But the meeting hadn’t yet been scheduled and he didn’t have any details. Odd that they would drop by after hours on a snowy afternoon without giving me a heads-up. Even more unusual that one of the men is from New York.

“Any idea what they want?” I ask.

“I don’t know, but they look kind of serious, Chief.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Like there might be something big going on.”

“Tell them I’ll be there in ten minutes.” Perplexed, trying not to be aggravated, I put the Explorer in gear and start toward the station, hoping Elam Shetler and his family make it home safely.

*   *   *

I arrive at the station to find Tomasetti’s Tahoe and an unmarked brown Crown Vic with New York plates parked next to my reserved spot. There’s already a dusting of snow on the vehicles. I park and hightail it inside. When I enter reception, I find my second-shift dispatcher, Jodie, sitting at her desk, eyes closed, drumming her palms against her desktop to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.”

Usually, her workaday antics are a source of entertainment for all of us. Since we have official visitors this afternoon, I’m not quite as amused. I’m midway to her desk when she opens her eyes. She starts at the sight of me, then quickly turns off the radio. “Hey, Chief.”

I pluck messages from my slot. “Any idea where our visitors are?”

“Agent Tomasetti’s showing them the jail in the base—”

“Right here, Chief,” comes Tomasetti’s voice from the hall.

He’s still clad in the charcoal suit and lavender tie he put on at seven this morning. He’s wearing his professional face, no smile for me, and I know this isn’t a happenstance visit. The two men coming down the hall behind him aren’t here for a tour of my single-cell basement jail.

“Hi … Agent Tomasetti.” It’s a ridiculously formal greeting considering we’ve been living together for over a year.

“Hi.” Two strides and he extends his hand. “Sorry for the last-minute notice.”

“No problem. I was on my way here anyway.”

“Heavy weather in store for New York tomorrow,” he explains. “Investigator Betancourt wants to drive back tonight, before the roads get too bad.”

“Long drive.” I turn my attention to the two men coming up beside Tomasetti. I don’t recognize either of them, but I can tell by their demeanors that they’re law enforcement. Overly direct gazes. Suits off the rack. Taking my measure with a little too much intensity. Grim expressions that relay nothing in terms of emotion or mood. That cop attitude I know so well. I catch a glimpse of a leather shoulder holster peeking out from beneath the taller man’s jacket.

Tomasetti makes introductions. “This is Deputy Superintendent Lawrence Bates with BCI.” He motions to a tall, lanky man with an angular face and skin that’s deeply lined, probably from years on the golf course. Blue eyes behind square-rimmed glasses. Hairline just beginning to recede. The slight odor of cigarettes he tried to mask with chewing gum and cologne.

I extend my hand. “Nice to meet you, Deputy Superintendent Bates.”

He brushes off the formal title with a grin that belies an otherwise serious demeanor. “Larry, please.” He has a firm grip. Dry palm. Quick release. “I patently deny whatever Tomasetti has told you about me.”

I return the grin. “I hope so.”

Tomasetti motions to the other man. I guess him to be about the same age as Bates. Conservatively dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, red tie, he looks more like a fed than a statie. He’s not much taller than me, but he’s built like a bulldog and has a face to match. Dark, heavy-lidded eyes just starting to go bloodshot. Five o’clock shadow. He’s got
long day
written all over him.

“This is Frank Betancourt, senior investigator with the BCI division of the New York State Police.”

I detect calluses on his hand when we shake, telling me he spends a good bit of his time at the gym lifting weights. His eyes are direct, and when I look at him, he holds my gaze.

“You’re a long way from home,” I tell him.

“That’s not such a bad thing this time of year.” His smile is an afterthought, his jowls dropping quickly back into a frown.

A pause ensues. An awkward moment when no one says anything. And I realize that with the niceties out of the way, they’re anxious to get down to business.

Bates rubs his hands together. “Can we have a few minutes of your time, Chief Burkholder? We’ve got a developing situation in upstate New York we’d like to discuss with you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tomasetti scowl.

“We can talk in my office.” I motion toward the door and lead the way inside. “Anyone want coffee?”

All three men decline, telling me they’re seasoned enough to know that police stations and decent coffee is an oxymoron. Tomasetti and Bates settle into the visitor chairs adjacent to my desk. Betancourt chooses to stand and claims his place near the door.

I remove my coat, hang it on the rack next to the window, and slide into my chair. “It’s not often that we have visitors from BCI or the New York State Police,” I begin.

“Tomasetti tells me you used to be Amish,” Bates says.

“I was. I was born here in Painters Mill to Amish parents, but I left when I was eighteen.”

“You speak German?”

“Yes, I’m fluent in Pennsylvania Dutch.” For the first time, a tinge of annoyance nips at me. I feel as if I’m being held in suspense; they want something but they’re being coy about tipping me off because they suspect I may refuse. I wish they’d stop beating around the bush and get to the point. “What exactly can I do for you?”

Bates looks at me over the tops of his glasses. “A couple months ago, the sheriff up in St. Lawrence County—Jim Walker—contacted the state police for help with a developing situation inside an Amish community.” He motions to Betancourt. “Frank was assigned the case and had been working with Jim. Two weeks ago, Jim suffered a heart attack. He’s on leave and everything was sort of put on a back burner. Things heated back up three days ago when an Amish girl was found frozen to death in the woods a few miles from her home.

“This Amish settlement straddles two counties, St. Lawrence and Franklin, so we contacted the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department and brought in Sheriff Dan Suggs. It didn’t take them long to realize neither agency had the resources to see this thing through.”

The state police usually have a pretty decent budget and resources galore with which to assist small-town law enforcement. In this case, however, the police lab and databases are not the kinds of investigative tools the sheriff needs. And for the first time I know what they want from me.

“We’re familiar with some of the cases you’ve worked here in Painters Mill, Chief Burkholder,” Bates tells me. “You’ve done some impressive police work.” He slants a nod at Tomasetti. “I talked to John about your particular skill set, and I thought you might be able to assist with this case.”

Bates motions to Betancourt. “Since Tomasetti and I are pretty much window dressing, I’ll turn it over to Frank.”

Betancourt comes to life. “On January twenty-first, a couple of hunters found the body of fifteen-year-old Rachel Esh in the woods a few miles from where she lived.”

His style differs greatly from Bates’s, who seems more politician than cop, preferring to ease into a conversation with a joke and small talk. Not so with the senior investigator. While Bates is laid-back, Betancourt is intense and jumps into the discussion feetfirst. I get the impression he’s not shy about ruffling feathers, either.

“What was the cause of death?” I ask.

“The autopsy showed she died of hypothermia due to exposure. There was a snowstorm. For some reason she was out in it and froze to death. ME ran a tox, which showed she had traces of OxyContin in her bloodstream at the time of her death.”

“Odd for an Amish girl that age to have drugs in her system,” I say. “Does the sheriff suspect foul play?”

“She got the drugs somewhere.” Betancourt leans closer. “But even more perplexing is the fact that she’d recently been pregnant.”

“Recently pregnant?” I look from man to man. “What do you mean?”

“During the autopsy, the ME found evidence that she’d recently lost a baby. Some fetal material had been left behind.”

“Miscarriage?” I ask.

“ME thinks she had an abortion.”

“Is parental consent required in New York?” I say.

Betancourt shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Is there a boyfriend?” Tomasetti asks. “Anyone talk to him?”

“We talked to a lot of people, including her parents, and no one knows who she’d been seeing. We couldn’t come up with a single name,” Betancourt growls. “No one had ever seen her with a guy. She never talked about him. The family she was living with claimed she didn’t have a boyfriend.”

“So she wasn’t living with
her
family?” I ask.

Betancourt shakes his head. “Evidently, she had some problems with her parents. She moved in with another family, who are also Amish. Basically, no one seemed to know shit about what might’ve been going on in this girl’s life.”

“Or else they’re not talking.” I think about that for a moment. “Had she been reported missing?”

Betancourt shakes his head. “The family she was living with figured she’d run away, gone back to live with her parents. Apparently, she’d done it before. No one checked.”

“Sometimes the Amish prefer to take care of their own problems,” I tell him. “If they can avoid involving outsiders—including law enforcement—they will, for better or for worse.”

“This time it was for worse,” Bates mutters.

“Interestingly,” Betancourt says, “this girl wasn’t dressed in Amish clothes.”

“That may or may not be relevant.” He gives me a puzzled look so I expand. “At fifteen, she may have been starting
Rumspringa
, which is a teenage ritual, so to speak, in which Amish youths don’t have to follow the rules in the years leading up to their baptism. The adults pretty much look the other way.” I consider this before continuing. “What was she doing in the woods in that kind of weather?”

“No one knows if she was there of her own accord or if someone took her there and dumped her,” Betancourt replies.

“Sheriff Suggs tells us the Amish up there aren’t very forthcoming,” Bates says. “He’s not getting much in terms of cooperation.”

“How did the ME rule on manner of death?” Tomasetti asks.

“Undetermined,” Bates replies.

Betancourt nods. “That didn’t sit well with Jim. Frankly, doesn’t sit well with me, either. I mean, we have a dead fifteen-year-old kid who’d ingested OxyContin. Gotten herself pregnant. Had an abortion. Froze to death in the woods. And no one will tell us shit.”

“What’s the age of consent in New York?” I ask.

“Seventeen,” Betancourt says. “There’s a Romeo and Juliet law, but if the guy who got her pregnant is more than four years older than our girl, we got him on statutory rape.”

“Do the parents know about the abortion?” I ask.

“Didn’t even know she was pregnant.”

Tomasetti shrugs. “You check with local clinics? Area doctors?”

Betancourt and Bates exchange a look. “ME thinks maybe the abortion wasn’t done at a clinic.”

“Home abortion?” I ask.

“Probably,” Bates replies. “No sign of infection or anything like that, but—and I’m speaking in layman’s terms here—I guess there was some internal damage. Not life-threatening, but present nonetheless.” Sighing, he motions toward his counterpart. “So we got all of this and then the sheriff gets a visit from a neighbor.”

All eyes fall on Betancourt. Expression intense, he leans closer. “A few days after the girl was found, a neighbor, who’d heard about the girl’s death, called Jim Walker at home and informed him that a few weeks before her death, Rachel told her there were ‘bad goings-on’ out at that Amish settlement.”

“What kind of goings-on?” I ask.

“According to the neighbor, the girl clammed up, wouldn’t get into details. But she thought the girl might’ve been referring to some kind of abuse and afraid to talk about it. Apparently, there are a lot of rumors flying around.”

Tomasetti shifts in his chair. “What kind of rumors?”

“The kind that’ll put a chill in your fucking spine.” Betancourt tugs a smartphone from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Sheriff Suggs knows a lot more about the situation than I do. You mind if I put him on speaker?” He doesn’t wait for anyone to respond and scrolls through his phone. “Dan wanted to drive down here with me but couldn’t get away. I got him standing by.”

“Sure.” I slide a couple of files aside to make room for his phone. He sets it on my desktop.

The sheriff answers on the fourth ring with a stern “Yeah.”

“You’re on speaker, Dan. I’m here in Painters Mill, Ohio, and I got Chief Kate Burkholder with me.” A quick nod at me and he identifies Tomasetti and Bates. “I briefed them on the situation up there in Roaring Springs. We’re wondering if you can give us the particulars.”

“All I got is rumors mostly.” A scraping sound as the sheriff shifts the phone. “Let me give you guys some background first to help fill in some of the blanks and put all this into perspective. About twelve years ago, several Amish families moved from Geauga County, Ohio to a rural area outside Roaring Springs.”

“Geauga County isn’t far from Painters Mill,” I tell him.

“We’re located in upstate New York, by the way, about twenty miles from the Canadian border, not far from Malone.” He sighs. “Anyway, over the years, these Amish families established a solid settlement and integrated into the community. They were good citizens, good neighbors, and their presence here was, frankly, good for the town. Some of the local merchants started doing business with the Amish, selling everything from eggs to quilts to furniture. Folks started coming into Roaring Springs from miles around to buy things. Tourists started showing up. Everything changed three years ago when the bishop passed away and the congregation nominated an Amish preacher by the name of Eli Schrock.”