Material Witness (6 page)

Tonight was different.

Everything — from the body on the pavement to the crime-scene tape to the
Englischer
walking toward him — everything told him this was real.

“Melinda.” The
Englischer
stopped in front of them, waited for his
mamm
to say something.

“Detective Black.”

“Are the boys all right?”

“They seem to be. We waited here because Officer Taylor asked us to. This is where Aaron was when …” His mother clutched his chair more tightly, so tight he could feel it shake a bit under the pressure. “When it happened, I think. I ran out to check on him after Martha came in the shop to ask Deborah to call 9-1-1. Matt was out here with him. Then we all waited here.”

Detective Black turned and studied the scene once more, then focused on Aaron’s
mamm
again. “That’s good. That was the right thing to do.”

He stuck his hands in his back pockets and sighed heavily, like he had to give bad news. Aaron’s teacher sighed that way sometimes, and good things never followed. “Callie says the deceased is Mrs. Knepp. Did you know her?”

Aaron couldn’t see his
mamm
, but he heard her pull in her breath sharp-like. “
Ya
. ‘Course I do. When Callie’s shop was closed, we all had to go there for our quilting needs.”

“Do you know anyone who would want to harm her?”

“No. Mrs. Knepp, she’s lived in Shipshe for as long as I can remember. She was cranky, but no one took offense to it. That was simply her way.”

“All right. I’m going to need to ask the boys a few questions now.”

His
mamm
loosened her grip on the chair a bit, leaned forward, and gave them both her serious look. “Boys, this is Detective Black. Answer his questions directly. Don’t add to your answers at all to make your stories better. He needs to know exactly what you saw so he can do his job.”

Aaron nodded that he understood and noticed Matt did the same.

“
Ya
, Detective Black.” Matt stood up tall.

“All right, Detective Black.” Aaron tried to sit straighter in his chair.

“You can both call me Shane, since we’re working together on this.” The officer squatted down in front of Aaron’s chair. ‘Course Aaron had seen him around town before, but he’d never seen him this close. He didn’t wear a uniform like the other officers. He was wearing a baseball cap, which seemed funny. But it was obvious — even to Aaron, and he was only seven, nearly eight — that Shane was The Law. He was tall and thin, but you could tell he was strong too.

Strong like Aaron’s
dat
was strong.

Most
Englischers
he knew weren’t near as strong as his
dat
. His
mamm
said that was because his
dat
worked in the field all day. Detective Black didn’t work in the field, but it was still plain as could be — he was tough enough to do anything that needed doing. Probably he could build the barns and move the animals, same as Aaron’s
daed
did.

Aaron stared down at his legs, at how useless they were, and the old feelings of shame and regret bubbled up from somewhere near his stomach.

Then Detective Black — or rather Shane — started talking to Aaron’s
bruder
, and Aaron forgot about feeling bad. It was like watching the movie again, and he wanted to know what was going to happen next. He had questions too.

This officer was different from the others. He did things Aaron didn’t understand. Aaron had watched him walk over to Mrs. Knepp, but he only paused for an awfully short time, which seemed odd. Didn’t he need to study her body closer?

Then he’d talked with Miss Callie and Martha’s
mamm
longer. Why was that?

Questions swirled through Aaron’s mind as he looked into the man’s pitch-black eyes. The questions nearly made him dizzy, like when he watched his kite tossing back and forth on a windy day—’course he could only hold the spool of string while his
bruder
ran with the kite, but he still liked to stare up into the sky and watch it take flight.

And honestly Aaron didn’t mind studying Detective Black now, if it weren’t for the dead woman at the other side of the parking lot. He should feel bad though. He’d just seen someone hurt someone else. Violence was wrong. How could he be interested in what was happening with Detective Black like Matt was interested in reading the sports page of the local paper? This wasn’t something he should be thinking about right now.

He wondered if that made him a very bad person.

He wondered if he should talk to his
mamm
and
dat
about that — maybe later when they were home and he was ready to say his evening prayers.

“Matthew, did you see what happened?”

“
Nein
. I … I had left. I shouldn’t have. I lost my wallet, and I went back to find it.” Matt stared at a spot on the ground, and Aaron knew he was wondering if he could have stopped the bad man if he’d been here.

But he couldn’t have.

Aaron had seen the hatred on the man’s face. Remembering it made the candy apple he’d eaten earlier turn sour in his stomach, made him think he might need to throw up in the bushes, but he didn’t want to puke in front of everyone. His
mamm
would fuss
for sure and insist he go straight to bed. He swallowed and pushed the sour apple back down.

Matt couldn’t have stopped the man. Probably no one could have, except maybe John Wayne.

Maybe Shane.

“All right. So you wheeled Aaron here first. The two of you were here alone and —”

“No. Martha was with us. I realized I’d left my wallet somewhere, but wasn’t sure where. So we decided to go back and find it.”

“That was my idea,” Aaron piped in. “Remember? I suggested that Martha go to where you bought the slingshot and you go to where you bought the candy apple. It was my idea that you leave.”

Matt licked his lips. “I’m the oldest. I should have known better than to leave you alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. You left me with Max.”

Matt didn’t answer that. Instead he went back to staring at the spot on the ground.

“What time do you think that was?”

“Wasn’t dark yet.” Matt looked up and out across the crowd that had gathered down the street. “But the lights in the trees had already come on, so it was tending toward dark.”

“All right, we can check the timer on those.”

“I’ve got it!” Matt sat up straighter and smacked has right fist into his left palm, exactly like when he was warming up to catch a baseball. Aaron loved that sound. “It was seven o’clock exactly when we left him. I know because I heard the clock tower — the one down by the train station — strike seven times. I thought,
If I run, I can be to that booth before the seventh strike
.”

Shane waited for Aaron’s
mamm
to confirm the time.

She nodded once. “Sounds about right. It was growing dark when I first heard Max bark. I thought he’d seen a squirrel or a bird. After that, Martha came running inside telling us to call for help.”

“We were gone ten, maybe fifteen, minutes. No more than that. I heard Max barking too, and I started running back.” Matt turned and pointed to the north. “You can hear Max from a long way when he’s
bedauerlich
or
naerfich
.”

Shane glanced toward Melinda.

She mouthed the words
sad
and
nervous
to him.

“Good. Those are good details. Now this is very important.” Shane looked each person in the eye, making sure he had their attention, then he focused on Aaron. “You were waiting here alone with Max — say, from seven to seven-fifteen. Tell me what you saw first.”

Aaron felt everyone’s attention on him. He tried not to squirm in his seat. “I was staring straight ahead, and I saw someone’s shoes, then dark green cloth. I thought,
That can’t be a man, because no man would have pants that color
.”

Shane stood and backed up so he was looking toward the body from Aaron’s vantage point. “You could only see the woman’s shoes?”

“And the bottom of her dress.”

“Why was that?”

“Because she was hiding in the bushes.”

Shane stood there for a minute, staring at the same thing Aaron was staring at — which at the moment was a lot of crime techs crowded around a dead body. Then he walked in front of him again, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. “Are you sure about that?”

“
Ya
. I thought it was strange, and Max and I, we leaned out to see better. She kept disappearing, because of the light and because her dress was sort of the same color as the leaves of the bush.”

“Huh.”

Aaron realized that was the first thing any of them had said that had surprised the officer. He hadn’t expected that. And come to think of it, why
had
Mrs. Knepp been hiding?

As if he were echoing his thoughts, Shane asked, “Any idea what she was doing there, hiding in the bushes?”

Aaron began to chew on his thumbnail, though there wasn’t much of it left.

“Aaron?”

“I wouldn’t want to speak badly of anyone. And she’s dead, right? It’s not pretend, like … like in the movies?”

Beside him, he felt his
mamm
stiffen.

“No. It’s not pretend.” Shane didn’t seem surprised at all that Aaron had asked the question. “Whatever you tell me, it stays between us, Aaron. But maybe —” Shane glanced up and over to where Mrs. Knepp lay. “Maybe it will help me catch whoever did this to her. So probably she wouldn’t mind.”

“Well …” Aaron ran his hand over the top rim of one of his wheels, another thing he did sometimes to calm himself. “It looked to me like she was spying on Miss Callie’s shop. She was holding something up to her eyes, you know?”

Then he mimicked making two circles with his hands and holding them in front of his eyes.

“I know it was almost dark, but did you see any reflection coming from her direction?”

Aaron glanced at his
mamm
, unsure what Shane was asking.

“Reflection,” his
mamm
repeated. He noticed her eyes were shiny behind her glasses, and he wondered if what he had done was going to make her cry. “Reflections are like the sun shining off water.”

“Oh,
ya
. When she’d put her hands up, there would be a shiny sparkle for a minute. I suppose that’s what made me notice her to begin with. It was sort of like a game spotting her hiding there, but then … but then the big
Englisch
man came. He came up behind her and maybe pushed her. I’m not sure about that part.”

“Go on,” Shane said softly.

“Well, she sort of jumped, sort of fell then. Like when we catch a fish and
Dat
cleans it. ‘Cept once I was helping and didn’t hold the fish tight enough.
Dat
put his knife in, and the fish jumped.” Aaron stole a peek at his
bruder
, but Matt only shrugged. “Like that, I guess. She jumped sort of, then lay there, like the fish lies there after
Dat
finishes gutting it.”

Aaron felt coldness spread inside him then, and he didn’t know what it meant. All he knew was that he wanted to go home.

Maybe he shouldn’t be here.

Maybe he shouldn’t have seen all he had seen.

Maybe it was because he’d watched the movies with Justin and now he was paying for that sin.

“She never did move again. The man didn’t even seem surprised.” When no one said anything, Aaron pushed on. “Dat, he’s kind with the fish, the ones we throw back and the ones we keep. He says
gut
things to them and talks of how we need to eat and how
Gotte
provides for us. The
Englisch
man, well, he didn’t seem kind at all, and he didn’t say anything. He stood over her, then reached forward and grabbed her bag and maybe …” Pulling in a big breath that rattled against his ribs and squeezed his heart, Aaron forced himself to finish his sentence. “Maybe he did pick up something else too. It was getting toward dark then, and I couldn’t see so well. Then he walked away. Like she meant less than a fish. Like she meant nothing.”

Aaron didn’t realize he was crying until Shane patted his knee, stood up, and told him he’d done well, that he and Matt had both done well. There was a big roaring in Aaron’s ears, and then his mother was standing behind his chair, both of her hands on his shoulders.

M
ELINDA WATCHED HER SON
answer Shane Black’s questions, and the pain was nearly more than what she’d experienced birthing her boys. Hannah had been easy, barely any labor at all, but both her boys were delivered after hours of long, excruciating agony. Rebecca, the district’s midwife, had assured her the babies weren’t in danger, but she’d seen the worried looks exchanged between Rebecca and her own mother.

Nothing about those first two births had been normal.

The pain of watching Aaron’s telling was as real and as hurtful as what she’d experienced when the boys were born.

Why couldn’t she protect them?

Why couldn’t she stand between them and the world a little longer?

As a teenager her parents had sheltered her. She’d never strained against it as some of her friends had. Part of being Amish was being separate. She accepted that easier than some, she supposed.

As a parent, she’d done her best to keep her children within the safe haven of the Amish community. She protected Matt. He was her first, and it was a natural thing to do. But when Aaron was born …

A lump rose in her throat, and she fought against the fears hammering in her chest — fears that were always a mere heartbeat away.

To think her son had witnessed the death of someone, possibly a murder.

To think he was a few feet away when such a terrible thing had happened.

She wanted to grab him in her arms and run, run back to their farm. She wanted Noah by her side, and she wanted him here now.

Aaron drew in a deep breath. She thought she could hear his lungs rattling. What if the shock was too much? What if it caused him to regress?

She gripped the back of his chair more firmly with both of her hands and refused to shy away from Shane Black’s intense gaze. Forcing all the strength she could muster into her voice, she declared, “We have to go home now.”