In the Land of Milk and Honey (10 page)

This? This was murder
.

Ezra rolled his pickup truck as silently as possible into the driveway of his parents' farm and cut the engine. He sat behind the wheel feeling fear and was irritated with himself for feeling it. The very act of driving a truck onto his parents' farm felt like a slap in the face to them. He'd considered parking down the road and walking in. But it seemed ridiculous when they all knew he was driving now. He didn't want it to look like he was trying to lie, or to admit what he was doing was wrong before he even knocked on the door.

This was hard. He sat there a moment, feeling dread. But he was a man, and men got on with it.

There were no signs of his brothers and sisters. The younger ones were at school this time of day, but the older ones, the ones still living at home, should have been around. Jacob. Mary. And
Martha, of course. He suddenly wanted to see them all so badly his ribs ached with it. They used to just be around, the way the sun rose in the morning. You took them for granted until they weren't there anymore. His father would likely be in the barn. Ezra made himself relax his fists and went to find him.

Amos Beiler looked just as Ezra thought he himself would look in his older years. At fifty-five, Amos was handsome and sturdy. His hair had always been as blond as Ezra's and was now lightened further by strands of gray. His beard was long and ragged on the ends, and his straw hat, the one he wore around the farm while he was working, was stained from sweat and dirt. He didn't look at Ezra when he came into the barn, but his face went tight and unnatural.

“Jacob, go to the house,” Amos ordered in German, without looking at Ezra.

Jacob set down the tools he'd been using to help their father mend a wagon wheel and slipped out without a word. He dared a glance at Ezra as he passed though, hurt and longing in his eyes. Ezra offered him a tight smile but didn't speak. The door banged as Jacob went out, and Ezra felt that bang like a stab in the heart. Jacob was, what, thirteen now? He'd always been the goofy one. Ezra longed to see that side of him again.

“Father,” Ezra said.

Amos continued his work. There was a bad dent in two of the wheel spokes. Amos was using the flat end of a hammer to pry off the rubber rim so he could work on the spokes. It was a tough job for one person. Hating to see his father struggle, Ezra picked up
a heavy screwdriver. He could hold the rim up while his father worked around to loosen it.

“Don't.” Amos's tone was flat and absolute. It was one you didn't ignore. He stood frozen with the hammer holding up part of the rim until Ezra put the screwdriver down. Then his father began working again. Not once did he look at Ezra.

Ezra stepped back, feeling his cheeks burn and his stomach sour. “I came to warn you 'bout this sickness in the milk. Maybe you know my girlfriend, Elizabeth, works for the police. It's killed a lot of people yet. Cows eatin' some plant that poisons the milk. They don't know where all this plant is growin', so it's best to keep the family off the milk for a time.”

His father said nothing, nor did he pause in his work. He cursed under his breath as the rubber rim slipped back in place. “Ah,
klere
!”

Ezra had to clench his fists to keep from reaching out to help again. “I'm sure you heard 'bout the Kinderman family. Best not to take chances, especially not with the little ones.”

Ezra's mother had had her last baby only eight years ago—little Ameron. Ezra supposed she was too old now to have any more. But his older brother and sister had their own toddlers running around when they visited.

“Might pass the word on to Henry and Jane too,” Ezra added, now that he'd thought of them and their babes.

Ezra had no idea if his father would listen to him or not. But Ezra had come and said it in person. That was all he could do. Maybe his father would take it more seriously coming directly
from a son than from some stranger, even if that son was dead in his eyes.

“If you need me, Da, I've still got the same cell phone number I did before for work. And I wrote down my address.” Ezra took a piece of notepaper from his pocket and laid it on the worktable.

The rim slipped back into place again and Amos cursed. He put the hammer down, turned to the worktable, crumpled up the piece of paper Ezra had put down, and tossed it into an old barrel that was used for a garbage can.

Amos turned and left the barn. The door banged hard on his way out.

—

E
zra made it about a mile down the road before he had to pull over, his eyes blurry and his breathing harsh and pained. He sat on the shoulder of a country road clutching the steering wheel hard. On all sides were Amish fields. It was a warm, blue-sky day, and the April crops were lush and green in their newness, only inches from the earth but holding the promise of eternity. In the distance, an Amish man rode through the rows of his field on a horse. His small son sat behind him. The boy's bare feet bounced on the horse's flank as his little arms encircled his father's waist.

Ezra felt a pain that seemed to swarm out of the core of him, as if its wellspring were a sulfurous black hole in the center of his soul. He'd lost so much—his first wife, the baby she'd carried, his birth family, and all of this—this way of life, this community. Everything he knew was gone. How could he miss it so fiercely
and at the same time know it was irrevocably lost to him, not because of some outside agency, but because of a flaw of faith in his own heart? He reminded himself that he had a new life now, with Elizabeth.

He took out his cell phone and rubbed his thumb over the edge. He didn't like to bother her during the day when she was working. He didn't want to distract her, didn't want her to feel like he was clinging. But right now, he needed to hear her voice. Maybe he could just mention that he'd warned his family about the milk.

She sounded confused when she picked up. “Ezra? Is everything okay?”

He took a shaky breath. “Sure. Just wanted to talk a minute. You busy?”

“Well, yes, actually.” He heard her speak, muffled, to someone else. “Turn here.”

“You in the car?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“With Hernandez?” The words were out before he'd thought them through. He'd only wondered. He liked Manuel Hernandez. But it had come out all wrong, hard sounding, the words of a jealous man.

“No.” Elizabeth hesitated. “I'm with the agent from the CDC you met the other day. Glen. I mean, Dr. Turner. Look, we learned something interesting at the Hershbergers', and we're heading back into the office. Can I call you later?”

“It's not important. I'll see you tonight,” Ezra offered, hoping she'd call anyway.

“Okay. Talk to you soon.” Elizabeth sounded distracted. She hung up.

Ezra covered his eyes with his hands for a moment, telling himself it didn't mean anything. Everything was fine. His life was fine. He'd made his choices and they were good. He started his truck again and pulled away. He kept glancing at the young boy on the back of the horse in the rearview mirror until he was out of sight.

—

“
It's sabotage,” I said vehemently as I paced back and forth in Grady's office. “Someone deliberately fed a plant containing tremetol to those cows.”

“We don't know that for certain,” Glen hedged, sounding unsure of his own argument. “It could have just been a random tourist at the Hershbergers' place, like the kid said. As for the plant we found in the Fishers' barn, we need to wait for the lab reports to confirm that it actually contains tremetol.”

I supposed I
was
getting ahead of myself. But I couldn't help the passion that made me feel I was finally on the right course. Furthermore, I didn't
want
to help it. Investigations are usually dull or intractable. When you find a spark, you grab it with both hands and you ride it for as long as you can, because it's that type of energy that gets things done.

I took a breath and forced myself to sound objective. “You're right. We won't know for certain that this is real until we get that lab report.
But
let's suppose for one minute that it comes back positive, that the traces of the plant found in the cows' trough at
the Fishers' is a plant that contains tremetol. Right? Now let's further suppose that the DCNR doesn't find that plant anywhere in the Fishers' pasture. After all, they haven't found it yet, and they were out there all day.”

I looked back and forth between Grady and Glen and summoned up the most confident professional demeanor I could. “Assuming those two things are true, that means someone
put
that poisonous plant in the cows' trough. That person either had to be a member of the Fisher family—who had no reason for doing so and every reason not to—or some unidentified person. A saboteur. And that makes sense with what Mark Hershberger saw. He saw a stranger feeding their cow something green over the fence the day before the cow got sick.”

“It's interesting,” Grady said dubiously. “But . . . I dunno, Harris. Seems pretty far-fetched.”

“I agree. But you know the old line about how, when you eliminate the impossible, what's left must be true, no matter how improbable?” I ticked off points on my fingers. “The CDC hasn't found any tremetol in any of the feed or medicine that was given to the cows.” Another finger. “The DCNR hasn't found any plant containing tremetol naturally growing at any of the affected farms—or anywhere else in Pennsylvania.” Another finger. “This nonindigenous plant is supposed to have suddenly cropped up at these few farms, which aren't even close to each other, and which all happen to be Amish. I know you said birds could have carried it in their droppings, Glen, but that's some selective pooping.”

Glen smiled at my wording.

“The plant could be on non-Amish farms though, right?” Grady put in. “Hell, it could be all over the place. But because most milk is pasteurized, we'd never know it, because there wouldn't have been any problems.”

“That's not actually true,” Glen said. “Pasteurization doesn't neutralize tremetol toxin, so if other dairy farms had been affected, we'd know.”

I was unable to believe what I'd just heard. I must have been gawking stupidly at Glen. “Pasteurization doesn't neutralize the toxin?”

“No. That's why it's imperative we locate the source.”

“But—in the press conference, the implication was that it was all about raw milk! And they've only banned raw milk sales. Now you're saying it could be in
any
milk?”

Glen looked uncomfortable. “That wasn't my call, Harris. It was the state's decision. I recommended they stop all milk sales from Lancaster County farms, and this was their compromise. Raw milk is the only place the toxin has actually shown up so far. And it's a small fraction of the dairy business, so it's less devastating to the economy and to the farmers.”

“Oh my God,” I said quietly. Ezra was right. The Amish made an easy target, didn't they? Blame it on them, blame it on their lack of regulation, and give the public a scapegoat.

“All right, all right,” Grady said impatiently. “Forget about pasteurization for a minute. What else were you going to say about this possible sabotage business, Harris?”

I pulled myself together. There were only so many battles I
could fight at one time, but Glen's revelation left me with a very uneasy feeling. “Okay. We should have the test results on that plant matter tomorrow right?”

Glen nodded in confirmation. “I've rushed it. Shouldn't take more than twenty-four hours.”

“Right. So if it does come back positive for tremetol, Grady, we need to open this as a homicide investigation. If this is a deliberate act, there are leads we should be following. Why
these
farms? How did the saboteur choose them? Is there a connection between the farms? And this plant doesn't exactly grow on the side of the road. Where did the killer get it? Also, we should interview the families involved again. Maybe someone else saw someone around their cow who shouldn't have been there, but didn't realize it was important at the time.”

Grady tugged on his ear the way he did when he was making a decision. He sat up straight. “Right. Let's meet back up once you have those lab results, Dr. Turner. In the meantime, Harris, clean up anything that's urgent on your plate. You don't need to spend any more time on this until we know for certain there's something to it. But clean up what you can in case we do need to open up an official investigation. Got it?”

“Yes. Thank you,” I said, relieved that Grady seemed to be taking the possibility seriously.

“Your gut's been right before.” Grady gave me a knowing look. “I ignore it at my peril.”

“If this does become a homicide investigation, I'd like to continue to work with Detective Harris on it,” Glen put in.

“Don't you have . . . doctory, CDC stuff to be doing?” I asked. It wasn't that I minded Glen as a partner, but I was starting to wonder if his obvious interest in me was clouding his professional judgment.

“I have team members working on analysis, but right now my chief objective is to find the source of this toxin. This is the best lead we have on it right now.” He muttered, lower, “Hell, it's the
only
lead.”

“Anything we can do to help, Dr. Turner,” Grady said. “Now get out of here. And Harris? I'm not convinced about this, but if someone
is
doing this deliberately? We need to rip that son of a bitch a new one.”

“Yes, sir,” I agreed. I'd promised someone else the same thing weeks ago, and it was long past time to make good on that promise.

—

I didn't get away from work until almost nine
P.M.
As I got into my car, I thought about calling Ezra to let him know I was on my way. That's when I remembered—Ezra had called me that morning when I was in the car with Glen. I'd told him I'd call him back, but I'd forgotten.
Damn it.
Ezra wasn't prone to calling me for no good reason, even though he'd insisted we could talk later.