Plain Killing (15 page)

Rachel was about to get out of the car when Hannah suddenly stood up and walked back. As she opened the door, the overhead light flashed on, and Rachel saw that the girl’s cheeks were wet, as though she’d been crying, but she hadn’t made a sound.

“You okay, Hannah?”

“Ya,”
she answered softly, closing the door, drowning them in darkness again.

“Ready?” Rachel asked, her voice way too cheerful for the mood in the car. Hannah didn’t answer, so Rachel turned the key and backed out of the drive.

She continued on to Stone Mill House. Once inside, she led Hannah up the steps to the third floor. She pulled the shades and told the girl, “You’ll be safe here.”

“
Danke,
Rachel Mast,” Hannah said with quiet dignity, moving easily from English to the Deitsch dialect. “Mary Aaron told me that you were a good woman.” Her gaze fell on the German Bible lying on the nightstand beside the bed. It was a leather-bound volume that George, a dealer in rare books, had given her the first Christmas after she’d returned to Stone Mill. “Is it all right if I read your Bible? I have not had one . . . where . . . where I was. It would comfort me.”

“Of course. Feel free to use any of my things that you want.” Rachel gestured toward the bathroom. “There are towels and a robe in there. And there’s fruit, snacks, and cheese in the fridge. Please make yourself at home here.”

“I appreciate your kindness to a stranger.”

Rachel gathered up some clothing and a few personal items, dropping them into a canvas bag that had been at the end of her bed. “You’re Mary Aaron’s friend, and that makes you my friend. I’m so glad you called me, Hannah. And happy to have you back safe. We’ve been so worried about you.”

“Ya,”
the girl agreed solemnly. “Me as well.”

Rachel went to the door. “I’ll stay in one of the guest rooms. No one will bother you here. You can lock the door behind me if it makes you feel better. Sleep well.”

“I think I will.” She glanced around the spacious room with its high ceiling and pale yellow walls. “This is a peaceful place. Plain.”

“Yes, exactly. Plain.” Rachel smiled at her. “Good night.” She heard the lock click into place as she started back down the steps, and she felt a wave of compassion for Hannah and, with it, the realization that the young woman was a survivor.
At least she’s alive.
Only Lorraine, of the missing girls, was left unaccounted for. She could only hope that she had found a place for herself, as Lucy had, and that she was safe from whatever evil had ensnared Hannah.

Rachel left her things in one of the guest rooms and headed down the stairs. She was tired. There had been three cars with out-of-state plates in the yard, telling her that she would have guests to care for in the morning. She wanted to go to bed and get some sleep after the stress of the long drive, but Evan had insisted that she let him know as soon as she arrived. She hoped he wouldn’t insist on coming over tonight. She was torn between wanting to see him and wanting to avoid him so that he wouldn’t ask where Hannah was. He’d be full of questions, and she’d be hard put to answer them without telling him everything she knew. Why was it that the amateur detectives in novels never worried about keeping information secret from their partners?

She’d missed Evan. She really had. Having him with her in New Orleans, especially the night they’d snatched Hannah out of the French Quarter, would have been wonderful. She always felt safe when she was with Evan. She could depend on him, but . . .

There was always a but, and Mary Aaron had been adamant that Hannah would have no part of Evan’s questioning. He was an Englisher and a state trooper, and for whatever reason, Hannah had no intention of revealing anything to the police. Evan might not agree or like it—Rachel herself might not like it—but the truth of the matter was that Hannah had the right not to ever speak of what had happened to her in the time she was gone from Stone Mill.

On the main floor, Rachel went into her office. There was a small marble-topped Victorian table with a single drawer beside her desk where the daily mail was left until she could attend to it. She glanced at the pile and spotted several bills and what was obviously junk mail, but sticking out of the stack was a letter with distinctive handwriting. It was from George. She picked it up, noting the rubber stamp notice warning the recipient that it had been sent from a prisoner.

Curious, she opened the letter. The letter consisted of a few simple lines of script—certainly not George’s style at all. His missives usually ran to four or five pages.

She wondered what George had to say to her that was so important. She’d promised him that she’d return soon, but she hadn’t intended to go back to the prison the coming weekend. She wondered why he hadn’t just called; he had phone privileges at least once a week. Did he have something to tell her that he couldn’t say over the phone? Now her curiosity was really piqued.

Something warm and furry brushed against her bare ankle.

“Bishop.”

The cat meowed.

Rachel pushed the note back into the envelope, returned the envelope to the table, and stooped to pick up the big Siamese. “Did you miss me?” she crooned to the cat. He rewarded her with a displeased sound—half hiss and half purr. “Poor baby, left all alone.” She carried the cat with her to the kitchen and was searching for a packet of cat treats when her cell in her pocket vibrated. Evan.

“I was just going to call you,” she said into the phone. “We just got in.”

“I’ll be there in ten.”

“Could we wait until tomorrow?” she hedged. She opened the refrigerator door and peered in. A plate of Ada’s fried chicken beckoned. “I’ll be here all day. Tons of work to catch up with.”

“I wanted to talk to you before I go to talk to Hannah.”

He’d obviously made the assumption that Hannah had gone home to her parents’ house. “I know you
want
to, but I don’t think we can pressure her. I can only imagine what she’s going through, emotionally. She wouldn’t answer any of my questions, and she was adamant about not speaking to the police. Unfortunately, that includes you.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. But we’ll have to think of something. A way to convince her to talk to me. Hannah might give us the lead we need to crack this case.”

“Here’s the problem.” Rachel reached for a drumstick. “Anything you learn from Hannah, you have to take to Sergeant Haley, right?” She let the refrigerator door close. “Which means she ends up being told she has to talk to him. She could wind up being subpoenaed and required to testify.”

“You’re talking about a long way down the road. We have to find the killer, first.”

“Evan, Hannah can’t appear at a trial, which means she can’t make an official statement.” She exhaled. “Which means it would be better for her and you both if she doesn’t speak to you. At least not yet.”

“I can’t accept that, Rachel. I have to go where the case leads me, and right now, Hannah’s my best chance at finding out what happened to Beth Glick. I’m sorry if Hannah gets hurt in an effort to find Beth’s murderer. But finding him is what’s important. Who’s to say he won’t kill again? Do you want to be responsible for that?”

“I hear what you’re saying.” Suddenly, her appetite was gone. She opened a cupboard door, took down a saucer, and put the chicken on it. “But I know you know what I’m talking about.” She turned to lean against the counter. “If Hannah were forced to testify in a trial, it would not only hurt her, but the publicity would devastate the Amish community. Coming forward and making a statement could do more damage to her life than what she’s already lived through.”

He was quiet again on the other end of the phone for a minute. She knew he was thinking about what she’d said. She waited.

“I’ll come by tomorrow. I won’t go out to her parents’ place until I’ve talked to you.” There was a hesitation on the other end, and then Evan said, “Can you be sure Hannah sits tight and doesn’t take off again? Right now, she’s the only lead we have.”

“Don’t worry,” Rachel assured him. “She’s not going anywhere.”

Hannah’s mother and father were at the B&B by eight thirty the next morning, supposedly to deliver a basket of tomatoes for Ada’s kitchen. Rachel whisked them up the back staircase, down a hall, making sure to avoid any guests, and up to the third floor. Wanting to give them privacy, she excused herself quickly, but not before she heard Hannah’s cry of anguish and joy and saw her rush into her mother’s welcoming arms.

Downstairs, Rachel threw herself into her work, hoping that would take her mind off what was going on upstairs and Evan’s impending arrival. Hulda came over at nine, bringing back Sophie and giving a full report on the past three days’ reservations, cancellations, and a call from the mason, Joab Rust, about the mill house building. Hulda was curious about Rachel’s sudden departure earlier in the week, but Rachel didn’t dare share any of her secrets with her. Hulda Schenfeld was as good a friend as Rachel had, but without meaning to break her confidence, Hulda would have cheerfully spread the news about Hannah’s return all over Stone Mill before noon.

By ten thirty, Hannah’s parents had slipped quietly out of the house, and Rachel had fed her guests, checked two out, and seen the others off for a day of sightseeing. Two of Ada’s granddaughters were busy hanging out sheets on the clothesline, a niece was polishing the front entrance floors, and Rachel’s brother was mowing the front lawn with a push mower. Rachel finally felt free to turn her attention to the gift shop orders that had been waiting when she’d taken off for New Orleans.

By the time Evan arrived around noon, Rachel had gone over the three new orders, set them aside to be boxed up and mailed, and rearranged the displays. Minnie could be counted on to dust and polish so that the gift shop shone like a new penny, but her idea of organizing the merchandise was to line everything up in orderly rows by height.

“I think you’ve given me my first gray hairs,” Evan said as he walked into the gift shop and hugged her. “I was worried sick about you.”

“Shouldn’t have been,” she said. “People fly to New Orleans all the time.”

“Right.” He gave her a peck on the cheek. “And they go into questionable parts of the city in the middle of the night to rescue girls caught up in the illegal sex industry.”

She looked up at him, realizing that the full reality of that possibility hadn’t sunk in yet. It just seemed so . . . impossible. “You think that’s what it was?”

He released her. “Maybe this isn’t the best place to talk.”

“No,” she agreed. “Maybe not.” She hung the closed sign on the door and led him out of the house. She took a flagstone path past the herb garden to a bench beside the pond at the old gristmill. It was quiet there, isolated from the house by fruit trees and a hedge, the only occupants a mallard hen and her six half-grown ducklings. The sun was warm on Rachel’s face, and across the pond stretched a meadow where her goats were grazing. It didn’t seem like a spot that could be touched by an evil such as sex trafficking.

She sat on the wooden bench and motioned to Evan to join her. He was dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a yellow polo shirt. She liked him this way, this casual side of him.

She watched the ducks paddle around on the pond. “How could this have happened?” she asked. “Hannah’s one of our own, an Amish girl from a little town in the Pennsylvania mountains. How could someone like Hannah be caught up in something like that?” She closed her eyes. “Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions. Maybe Hannah just met the wrong man and—I don’t know.”

“I put in a call to the FBI yesterday morning,” he said. “They reached out to NOLA sex crimes division. NOLA PD had a good idea where Hannah might have been held. It just so happens that a crime hotline got an anonymous call late last week. The informant gave an address not far off Bourbon Street, said that undocumented girls were being held there against their will for the purpose of prostitution.”

“I know this kind of thing goes on,” Rachel said, shaking her head slowly, “but I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

“The FBI agent told me that they believe this bunch is part of a larger organization, one indicted in the kidnapping of two underage girls in Detroit last year. One of the girls ended up dead in the Detroit River; the other vanished before the case could come to trial. This is a bad bunch. They sweep up vulnerable young women, force them into drugs and prostitution, and hold them in virtual slavery.”

“The FBI knows about them and they haven’t been able to put an end to it?”

“This kind of thing isn’t as easy to stop as you might think. People who commit these types of crime are smart. They move around a lot. They choose young women who have no family ties, or whose family is far away.”

“Or who’ve run from their family,” Rachel mused.

“The agent said the group might be part of a larger, international crime ring. They suspect Russian interests, a very sophisticated operation. They open strip clubs as legitimate businesses, rake in huge amounts of untaxed dollars for a few weeks or a few months, and then pick up and move the girls to another city, where they open under another name.”

“Do you think it’s possible that Beth was caught up in the same circumstances—maybe with the same people?”

“There’s no way for us to know. A SWAT team raided the club in New Orleans in question last night.” He frowned. “Wasn’t much of a raid. Someone must have tipped them off because they’d cleared out. The place was empty.”

“Thank God Hannah called me when she did,” Rachel breathed.

“If that
is
where she was, you can see why I need to question her. Why the FBI may want to as well.”

Rachel turned on the bench to face him directly. “You want Hannah to give you information when the last girls who tried to help the police with these criminals ended up dead?”

“The FBI could protect her,” Evan said.

“Really? The way they protected the girl they found in the river?” She got up and walked a few steps, down toward the pond. “Do you see a similarity here? Where was Beth? Floating in a quarry.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. We don’t even know if Hannah was connected to this operation. And even if she was, it’s a leap to think they came after Beth Glick and ended up in a rock quarry in Nowhere, Pennsylvania.”

Rachel didn’t respond. She stared at the water in the pond, debating whether or not to kick off her flip-flops and dip her feet. The ducklings quacked and swam in circles.

“The agent I spoke to said these guys pick up girls in this country in various ways: at bus terminals, in diners, on the street. They target young women who are desperate, girls looking for money or jobs.”

Rachel turned to him. “And you think an Amish girl from Stone Mill would agree to something so immoral?”

“I don’t know. People hungry enough, scared enough, make bad choices. More likely, they don’t know what they’re getting into until it’s too late—” He stopped and started again. “Look, Amish kids who leave home can get into all sorts of trouble. You and I both know that. It’s their innocence that makes them so vulnerable. If Beth had been a part of this thing, she wouldn’t be the first conservatively raised girl who’d tossed aside her prayer
kapp
for—”

“Stop, Evan, please.” She held up her hand. “I don’t want to hear it. You’re right. We don’t know. We could make up all kinds of scenarios. But it would all be conjecture. We have to know for sure before we bring the authorities in.” She walked back toward him. “Give me a few days to gain Hannah’s confidence, to see if I—or Mary Aaron—can find out anything definite. And then, if Hannah agrees, you can question her yourself.”

“What if I don’t want to wait?”

She sighed and made a small gesture with her hands. “What happened when you tried to talk to Beth’s family? You got
nothing
. Believe me, if you try to force this with Hannah, she’ll vanish in a day. Her family will hide her, and you won’t find her. Not ever.”

A silence stretched between them.

“When did we get to be on opposite sides of this investigation?” he finally asked. He was hurt. She could read it in his eyes, but she couldn’t back down.

“We aren’t on opposite sides.” She returned to the bench and sat down beside him. She placed her hand over his. “We want the same thing. We want Beth’s killer brought to justice.”

“And what about the people who hurt Hannah? Do you want them held accountable for their crimes?”

“Only if it won’t hurt her more. Whatever sins they’ve committed, someday they’ll have to answer to a higher authority. But Hannah is here and alive, and she can still have a life.”

“And if she wants to help?”

“That’s up to her, Evan. It’s her decision to make, and neither you nor I can make that choice for her.”

He glanced toward the pond. “Is she at her parents’ now?”

Rachel felt her throat and face grow warm. This was what she’d dreaded. She couldn’t lie to Evan, but neither would she reveal where Hannah was. “No.”

“No, as in she’s not there right now, or no, as in she didn’t go home when you got back in town?”

“She’s not ready for people to know she’s back. And . . . I didn’t know if it was safe for her to go home. What if someone came looking for her? We haven’t told anyone who didn’t need to know that she’s back.”

“That’s probably smart,” he conceded. “Is she with Mary Aaron? At the Hostetlers’?”

“Please don’t ask me any more questions. Hannah and her parents asked me not to say.”

“But you know where she is?”

She nodded. “I know, but I can’t tell you. I gave Hannah my word.”

He frowned and looked out over the pond, then back at her. “I hope you don’t live to regret that decision. Because if harm comes to another girl”—he held her gaze—“you’ll always wonder if you could have prevented it.”

 

“Rachel! It’s so good to see you. You look fantastic.” George hugged her, and this time, she felt comfortable enough in the prison visiting area to return his embrace. “I’m so glad you could find the time to come up.”

She followed him back to the table where he had cans of orange soda and snack-sized bags of potato chips waiting. It looked like a typical Saturday morning in the prison’s visiting room. The place was crowded with friends and families, but George had chosen a spot in the far left corner, away from the refreshment area and the guards. She was surprised at how healthy George looked, and wondered how he’d managed to acquire a tan since the last time she’d been there. Curious, she asked him about it.

“Oh.” He smiled broadly. “I spend an hour every afternoon in the garden. We grow all kinds of vegetables. It’s considered a privilege to work there. Next year, I hope that we can try some different varieties. I’ve ordered lots of different catalogs from companies that specialize in heirlooms. Hybrids may produce more, but the heirlooms are tastier. Two of my best students go with me, and we continue the lessons there. It’s just amazing what the right sort of education can do for a man.”

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, trying to at least look relaxed. “So you’re continuing your teaching?”

“Absolutely.” George’s head bobbed up and down with enthusiasm. “I told you about the second class. Would you believe it’s full already? I don’t want to boast, but I believe I’m having a positive influence on many lives here. Maybe this is what the Lord intended for me all along.”

Rachel couldn’t help smiling back. There was so much good in George. She couldn’t forget the crime he’d committed, but she couldn’t find it in her heart to judge him either. “Ell said she was up last weekend. I’m so glad you got to spend some time with her. You won’t believe the changes she’s made at The George. She has a real knack for knowing what her customers want. She has a group of kids from the high school doing her window displays, and she’s started a story time for preschoolers one morning a week.” What she wanted to know was why George had written such an odd letter and why he’d been so insistent that she come. But common courtesy and her upbringing among the Plain people made her fight down her impatience and wait while George chatted on.

“What’s new in Stone Mill?” he asked. “Did they approve the library addition for the high school?”

She answered all his questions, shared local gossip and crop reports, carefully omitting her trip to New Orleans and Hannah Verkler’s rescue. She produced half a dozen new photographs of Sophie she’d printed from her computer that morning. And finally, when her patience had run out, she asked him directly why he’d summoned her.

George lowered his voice and leaned close. “I came upon some information that might be useful in your investigation.”

“My investigation?”

“Into Beth Glick’s murder.” This time, George’s smile was sly. “I know you too well, Rachel. You’re playing detective again.”

“I’m not playing at anything, George. A girl died in our community. I found her body. It’s hard not to take it personally, especially when Beth’s killer is still at large.”

“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out right.” He squeezed her hand.

“I’m sorry, too.” She offered him a grim smile. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that Evan has been part of the investigation, and the police have gotten nowhere. Of course, none of the Amish will talk to them. I feel like . . . I need to do what I can.”

“So the police have no leads?”

“It’s not that they’re not trying. There just aren’t any leads that have panned out,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too cryptic. She wanted to tell him about Hannah, about her suspected kidnapping and Evan’s suspicion that she might have been involved in a sex slavery ring, but she didn’t dare. Bad enough that Evan was upset with her. As much as she would have liked George’s input, she had to remember where he was and why he was there.

“But you don’t think Beth’s murder was random?” He eyed her shrewdly. “Not just a bad guy passing through Stone Mill?”