Kingdom Come (6 page)

“Can you get it please?” I asked quietly.

She got up and went into her bedroom. She came out a moment later carrying a rather clunky Sony laptop. “Here.”

I opened it on the coffee table. We waited while it booted.

“What about a cell phone?” I asked.

“She had one. Put a bright pink cover on the thing. Lost it months ago though. Told her I couldn't buy a new one, not till her birthday.” She swallowed hard. “Was she . . . hurt bad?” LeeAnn had given up on the cigarettes for the moment and now had her hands buried in the robe's pockets, trying to stop their shaking. Her face looked like a tire someone had let the air out of. I felt sorry for her.

“No,” Grady said. “She was struck from behind. She probably didn't feel much of anything.”

“Good. That's . . . that's somethin'.” She looked like she might be sick. She sank down into a chair again.

The computer had booted. There was a user prompt. I turned it toward her. “Can you log in as Jessica?”

She shook her head. “We had two accounts on there. Don't know her password, just mine.”

“Give me yours, then.” I wrote it down. “We're going to need to take the computer. If Jessica was meeting men online, we need to see if we can find out who.”

LeeAnn looked like she was going to protest for a second, then she nodded. “This guy who hurt her—he kill anyone before?”

“We don't know who killed her, Mrs. Travis, so we really can't say.”

She looked me in the eye. “Detective Harris, right? Do you think you can find out? Maybe Jess and I didn't always get along, but she was my only . . . She didn't—”

“I'll find him,” I told her, which was more of a promise than I had any right to make, but I meant it. I wasn't really promising LeeAnn Travis though.

I'd find him for Jessica's
sake.

A Lesson in Husbandry

“We should show her senior photo around,” I said as Grady drove back to the station. “Someone who didn't recognize her from the crime-scene photo might recognize Jessica from that picture. We also have a name.”

“Yeah. Good idea.”

“It'll go faster if we divide and conquer.”

“I'll put Smith and Hernandez on it.”

I hedged. “If you don't mind, I'd like to do the farmers on Grimlace Lane myself.”

Grady cocked an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I've been wanting to go back over there again. I want to take another look at those woods, get a feel for the place.”

Grady smirked. “Like in a movie? You gonna stand in the woods and get into the mind of the killer?” He used a spooky voice.

“Yeah. I have that extrasensory power. Did you miss that bit on my resume?”

Grady didn't laugh. “You still think one of them did it, doncha?”

I tried to look disinterested, though he wasn't far off the mark. “It's possible someone knows more than they're saying. Which wouldn't be hard, since they weren't exactly gushing fonts of information when we interviewed them.”

“It's nothing personal. It's just the Amish way to have minimum contact with the English—especially people like state inspectors and the police.”

“And uppity women.”

“Yes, and uppity women,” Grady admitted with a hard look. “Of which you are a prime example. But mostly police. It's that whole ‘outside authority' thing.”

“Otherwise known as obstructing justice.”

Grady frowned. “Harris—”

I did a semi–eye roll, mild enough to be polite because he was my boss, but enough to get my point across. “Not obstructing justice, just reticent, I get it. I greatly admire stoicism. You know, it was my favorite philosophy school in college.”

Grady snorted. “Bullshit.”

“Anyway, this is just showing them a photo and ascertaining if any of them have ever seen her before. I'll be sensitive. I'll be gentle as the morning dew. But I do want to go out there again. I have a feeling we're missing something in those woods. Okay with you?”

“Yeah,” Grady agreed gruffly. “My money's on Larry, the friendly neighborhood dairy man, so I'll go back over there with the new picture. I'll take a uniform with me. You owe me fifty if he does a runner and is in custody by tonight.”

I held up my fist for a bump. “You're on, my man.”

—

On my way over to Grimlace Lane, I pulled off at a wide place in the road. Ronks Road climbed a hill here and before me was laid out a view of farmland that stretched for miles. I'd stopped to look at this view several times over the summer, when the fields were green in squares of different textures—corn, soybeans, alfalfa, wheat—and in the fall when you could see Amish farmers out driving teams of horses to harvest crops. It was beautiful and soothing. It was home. Now the snowy fields, houses and barns looked like a folk art painting in the cold light of a winter afternoon.

Unlike most places in America, Lancaster County still had plenty of small farms instead of conglomerate-held thousand-acre empires. The farms here were twenty to two hundred acres, homesteads with farmhouses and barns and dairy cows happily grazing on green pastures. In the view I was looking at now, nearly every farm was Amish, noted by the lack of power poles, the presence of windmills or solar panels, and the ever-present plain-colored washing on the line.

It often surprises tourists how many Amish there are. It's not like you drive out in the country and see their farms dotted here and there. No, there are over fifty thousand Amish in Lancaster County and in many places their farms are back-to-back-to-back. It's not really surprising, considering the fact that they don't practice birth control and they have a retention rate of eight-five percent or more. To be blunt, there are a shitload of Amish.

I found this view helped me clear my head. I'd come back to Lancaster County to find peace, and I guess I had.

It was weird how things worked. When I was growing up here, all I wanted was to escape. But after ten years of being a cop in New York City, I'd longed to come home. I saw too much there, too much violence, too much cruelty and prejudice, too much ugliness. In particular, the events of my last year there were so unbearable, I kept them locked off in an area of my mind I rarely visited. You could say I turned tail and ran, as some of my friends believed. But I preferred to think of it as a choice. It wasn't that I couldn't take it anymore—I chose
not
to take it. I'd wanted to get out while I still had a few unbruised, unwithered pieces of my heart, before the hardened cynic replaced every inch of the girl I'd been, the one who optimistically wanted to help people, to make a difference. I wanted to go somewhere it was green, where there was space between all the buildings and the bodies, someplace where people knew each other, where small-town familiarity meant anonymous hate was not an option, where the darkness was pushed out far enough that I didn't have to stare it in the face every single fucking day.

I wanted a simpler life. I thought I'd gotten it, but this case was stirring currents that disturbed me. It was as if I were seeing another dimension, one below the surface, and I wasn't sure I liked what I sensed there.

—

What I hadn't told Grady was that, yeah, the woods on Grimlace Lane were calling to me, but Ezra Beiler was calling me too. I had an urge to see him again. I told myself it was because he was the only Amish person we'd spoken to who wasn't surrounded by a huge family as well as an impenetrable wall of otherness. He'd
actually looked me in the eye and spoken frankly when I'd interviewed him. And I'd been compiling a list of questions I wanted to ask a local, an Amish who would give me a straight answer.

But bullshit stinks no matter how many kernels of truth there are buried in it. I knew the draw I felt to Ezra wasn't all about the case. Since the first time I laid eyes on him, I'd wanted to know more about him. It was like when you hear a snatch of a song on the radio that you've never heard before but that you're instantly drawn to, and you can't rest until you find out the name and the artist and get a download of it on your phone. I wasn't going to label it or even think about it too hard, but I did want to see Ezra again and test if it was still there, probe around the edges of it like you do a sore tooth.

I left him for last. It was perhaps no surprise that no one at the Millers', either of the Fisher households, or the Kings' recognized Jessica Travis, either by name or by her senior photo. I watched them carefully as they looked at the picture, and if they were acting they were thespian champs. Deacon Aaron Lapp and his wife, Miriam, were out doing some “visitin'” according to their daughter Sarah, age twelve. She was babysitting the two younger children, Job, age ten, and Rebecca, age eight. They were all convincingly uninterested in either the photo or the name.

I pulled up at Ezra's farm about four
P.M.
At this time of year, there was only an hour of daylight left. I looked toward the woods and quickly made up my mind.

I found Ezra in the workshop in the barn. He was building a rocking chair made out of some synthetic material I didn't recognize. He had on those black pants that rode his hips so effortlessly, black suspenders, and a plain blue shirt rolled up at the
cuffs. He looked at me as I came in, then finished what he was doing, screwing the arm of the chair into place manually. He was as attractive as I remembered, unfortunately. I watched the healthy veins in his strong forearms and hands as he worked the screwdriver. I had to look away before I forgot my reason for being there.

After a few minutes, he put down his tools.

“Afternoon, Detective Elizabeth Harris,” he said in his broad German accent.

“You remembered.”

He considered me and rubbed his chin. “It may surprise ya, but not that many police come by here.” There was a trace of amusement in his eyes.

“Hard to believe. I'd think they'd be all over those chairs.” I motioned to several that were already done and waiting along the wall.

He took me seriously, or seemed to. He ran a hand over the chair he was working on. “Oh, ja. This is Trex. You know it?”

I shook my head.

“It's a composite. You can leave it sittin' in the rain or snow. It'll never break down, this stuff.”

It was also ugly as sin, the furniture equivalent of Crocs. I didn't say it.

“I prefer workin' with pine, but I make these for a local shop. Tourists like 'em. It's easy and it pays good.” He headed for the doorway. “Come on.”

I wasn't sure where he was taking me, but it ended up being just outside the door of the barn. I half expected him to light up a cigarette, since that's what cops normally do when they “step
outside.” He didn't. He just took a deep breath, eyes closed and face turned up to the sky, as if appreciating the opportunity to get fresh air. The sun had broken through the murk and it was about 42 degrees out. That was downright balmy for this time of year, but even in my wool coat I was still cold. The drip and squish of melting snow was everywhere, but the temperature was dropping now that it was nearly dark. The runoff would turn to ice overnight.

“So what can I do for ya . . . Detective Harris?” He looked out over the yard, not at me, but the corner of his mouth turned up a bit. It did that funny thing to my stomach.

I shook it off and pulled Jessica's senior photo, encased in a plastic sleeve, from my pocket. “We have a new photo of the girl who was found at Miller's. I'd like you to take a look.”

He took the photo and studied it for a long moment. “Still don't know her.” His face betrayed no emotion.

“Her name's Jessica Travis. Ever heard it before?”

He shook his head and, with a disquieted frown, passed the photo back to me. “Such a sorrowful thing.”

“Yes.”

“Hope she didn't suffer.” He looked away, back over the yard. His sympathy seemed genuine.

“It was fast,” I said. Then thought I probably could have kept that tidbit to myself, Ezra's alibi notwithstanding.

The sun was suddenly way too low on the horizon.

“Listen, I wanted to walk over and take another look at the creek before it gets dark. Would you walk with me? I have more questions.”

He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Lemme grab my coat.”
A moment later, he reappeared with a black barn coat and black hat, looking solemn and way more handsome than a man had any right to when putting so little effort into it. I could practically hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the metrosexuals of Manhattan. I smiled to myself at the thought as he opened the gate to his pasture.

“Somethin' funny?” he asked as I walked through it.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

It hadn't snowed for four days, and with today's warmer weather, the pasture was a slog. At least this time I'd worn wellies, so I had better traction. I kept an eye on the horse trails. The pasture was large—at least ten acres. The mules tended to use defined paths in the snow, much like we would. There were crisscrossing trails where the snow had been beaten down. The ones used most recently were muddy from the snowmelt. I looked back at the barn, where a large horse bay was open onto the pasture.

“Are your animals free to come and go in the pasture all the time, or do you shut them up at night?”

“That bay's open twenty-four hours a day. 'Cept if the weather gets too dangerous for 'em—deep snow or ice. In the spring, if we get too much rain, I have to close them in for days or they'll hurt the sod. And the spring grass can make 'em sick too if they eat too much of it.”

“Were they shut in the night the vet was here?”

“No. They ain't been shut in for a good month.”

“Do you know if they're in the habit of going down to the creek to drink in the middle of the night or early morning?”

He gave me a funny look. “Can't say what they do at night. It's a little dark out, ya know? But early morning they do. First light.”

I thought he was joking a little, despite his absolutely grave delivery.

“What about cows? Are they left free to come and go all the time? Would they typically go to the creek at first light?”

Ezra stopped walking—not because my questions had been so perplexing but because a huge mule was walking straight toward us. Most of the animals in the pasture ignored us and continued to dig through the snow—looking for grass, I assumed. I was just fine with being ignored because, honestly, the mules were damned big animals. But this one was bearing down with a jogging gait and looked like it had no intention of stopping. I just managed not to duck behind Ezra and hide.

He held up his hand. “Whoa.”

The mule stopped in front of us and nudged Ezra with its head. Now that they were next to each other, I thought I recognized the mule as the one that had been comforting Ezra the first time I saw him.

“This here is Horse,” he said, rubbing the creature's nose. “I'd tell him to get on, 'cept he won't listen, not until he's had enough of a hello.”

“You named a mule Horse?”

“Horse has the same sense of humor as me, so I thought he'd appreciate it.”

I snorted. Ezra kept walking and Horse walked along behind him, keeping his nose over Ezra's shoulder to be stroked as if that were a natural way of moving along.

“Why do you raise mules?” I asked. “Why not horses?”

“My da bought one to try it out when I was fifteen. This one, in fact. Took to him right away. Liked him so much, I decided to raise 'em. A mule has a lot more personality than a horse, right from the time it falls from its mother's womb. Horse here, for example, he's always thought he was human. And mules're healthier and steadier too. Less fearful on the roads.”