Plain Killing (2 page)

For just an instant, in shock, Rachel released her grip on the body. The girl was dead. Her blue eyes were empty of life and beyond any earthly help. There was no question in Rachel’s mind. She looked up to see Mary Aaron, her mouth agape, staring down at her.

Mary Aaron’s face was nearly as white as the girl’s, and her pupils were dilated in fear. “Is she . . .” She didn’t say the word
dead,
maybe because speaking the worst out loud would make it real.

“My phone’s in the van,” Rachel managed, grabbing the girl’s sleeve. The girl’s prayer
kapp
began to sink and Rachel grabbed it, wrapping her fingers around the ties. “Call 9-1-1. Now. Run!”

Mary Aaron turned and pushed back into the underbrush as Lettie halted at the edge of the quarry. She took one look at the floating body and screamed, a high-pitched shriek of utter terror.

“Lettie!” Rachel called sharply. “Listen to me.” She got her arm under the woman’s armpit and looked up at her sister. The other girls were right behind Lettie now. They were crying, one nearly hysterical, but Rachel barely noticed them. Rachel kept her gaze focused on her sister, her voice steady. “Lettie, you’ll have to help me lift her over the edge. I can’t do it alone.”

Rachel was afraid to let go of the girl. The bottom was so far below. She could imagine the cold body slipping through her grasp, sinking down and down to rest on the bedrock of the quarry. This young woman, whoever she was, was someone’s daughter, possibly someone’s wife. No matter what her story was, she didn’t deserve this. No one did.

Then, it occurred to her the body wouldn’t sink. Not if she’d found it floating. But she still couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t.

“I can’t . . .” Shaking her head, Lettie backed away from the edge.

“You can do this,” Rachel insisted. “Mary Aaron has gone for help. I need you, Lettie. She can’t hurt you,” she added softly.

“She looks
dead,
” Lettie wailed. “Her skin is blue.”

She was right; the young woman’s skin was cyanotic. What was it her biology professor had said about drowning? Cold water made the skin of a victim dusky blue.

“It’s not for us to decide,” Rachel said calmly. It was what one did in emergencies. She knew the girl was dead, long dead, but it wasn’t up to her to determine that. What was up to her, at that moment, was to get this poor soul out of the water. “We can’t leave her here,” she reasoned aloud, to give herself courage as much as Lettie.

“Ya.”
Features stark, lips drawn tight, Lettie hesitated, then dropped to her knees. She followed Rachel’s instructions without faltering: lift here, pull there. Lettie helped to get the woman onto solid ground, gave Rachel a hand up out of the water, then turned away into the bushes and vomited.

Rachel’s teeth began to chatter with cold, and one of the other girls dropped a towel around her shoulders. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” Elsie murmured, staring at the body gazing sightless at the sky.

“Yes,” Rachel answered. Gently, she pulled down the young woman’s tangled shift and skirt to cover her naked legs, and placed the sodden prayer
kapp
over the fair hair.

Lettie was weeping now. Softly. She joined the other girls, who stood in a semicircle.

They all stared at the dead girl at their feet.

Rachel supposed that she should have been horrified, even disgusted by the body, but all she felt was grief and compassion. She removed the towel from around her own shoulders, thinking that she would cover the victim’s face. It wasn’t until she knelt that she realized the dead girl looked familiar. At first, the young woman’s face had seemed more like a doll’s than a human’s, but now—“Elsie . . . is this one of the Glick girls?”

Her cousin gasped. “
Ya.
It looks like . . . it’s Beth.”

Lettie returned to Rachel’s side. “It is,” she whispered. “I know her. She came to our class at school and taught us how to crochet when I was in eighth grade.”

“Beth is the one who left almost two years ago,” Elsie added. “The Glick girl who was . . .”

“Die meinding,”
Lettie whispered. “Shunned.” And then she gagged again.

Silence settled around them. Rachel pressed her lips together. Being shunned was the worst fate that could happen to a member of the Old Order Amish, a punishment reserved for extreme cases of misconduct. The thought was even more frightening than finding a dead body.

“Go back to the van,” she instructed quietly, running her hand down her sister’s arm. “All of you, go and dress. English men will be coming soon.”

“Oh.” Elsie covered her mouth with her hand. “Come, Lettie. Hurry.”

“Take Sophie, Lettie,” Rachel told her.

Lettie scooped up the little dog in her arms, then glanced back. She was eager to get away but obviously didn’t want to desert her sister. “You’ll be all right? Alone here?” she asked, hugging the dog to her.

“I’ll be fine,” Rachel assured her. “Someone should stay with her.”

Elsie, Lettie, and the others made themselves scarce, and oddly enough, once she was alone with Beth Glick, Rachel felt a calmness settle over her. She had covered the girl’s still face and staring eyes, but she couldn’t leave her side. “You’re not alone, Beth,” she murmured. Taking a slim, cold hand in hers, Rachel silently prayed for the soul of this unfortunate young woman.

Twigs snapped, and Rachel opened her eyes to see Mary Aaron hurrying toward her from the direction of the van. “They’re coming!” she called. “I called 9-1-1. They’re sending the paramedics.”

Rachel remained where she was, still holding Beth’s hand.

“Do you think you should touch her?” Mary Aaron asked as she came to stand beside her. “Will you be in trouble?”

“It’s Beth Glick.” Rachel pulled the towel away so that Mary Aaron could see the dead girl’s face.

“It is,” her cousin breathed.

Rachel placed Beth’s hand on the dead girl’s abdomen and arranged the other hand carefully so that one lay over the other. She wasn’t a large girl, and her pale hands were small and slender. “Elsie said Beth was shunned when she left the church.”

“Ya,”
Mary Aaron agreed. “She had been baptized, so they had no choice.” She nibbled at her lower lip. “Her family never speaks of her.” Mary Aaron held out Rachel’s clothes. “Best you make yourself decent before the Englishers get here.”

Rachel nodded, surprised by how calm she was. Calm, except for her trembling hands. She went back to the edge of the quarry and rinsed her hands in the water. Then she began to dress.

“What was Beth doing here? Did she come to drown herself?” Mary Aaron had taken the time to put on her own dress and apron. Now she hastily twisted and pinned up her hair. She put on her white prayer
kapp
. “Was it a suicide?”

Rachel turned back to her cousin as she pulled her shorts over her wet panties. Her gaze dropped to the still form on the ground. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Why would she? If she’d come home—if she repented of her sins before the church elders—she’d have been forgiven and welcomed back into her family.”

“
Ya,
so what was she doing here?” Mary Aaron glanced around her nervously. “No one comes here alone. How would she even get here without a car or a buggy?”

“I don’t know.” Rachel pulled off her wet T-shirt and pulled a dry one on over her wet bra. “Did you bring my cell with you?”

Mary Aaron fished in her pocket and produced the phone. “Who are you calling?”

“Evan.” Rachel hit the numeral
1
on her speed dial. “I don’t want Lettie and the others to be here any longer than they have to.”

Evan and Rachel had had supper together and watched a movie at his house the previous night. He was on day shift this week. “I think he’s working traffic,” she said, more to herself than to Mary Aaron. His phone was ringing. He kept his personal cell with him. If he wasn’t busy, he’d pick up.
Please pick up, Evan,
she willed.

She felt responsible for bringing the girls today, and it would be her fault if they got into trouble. While spending time with her in frivolous pursuits wasn’t forbidden by most of the families, it certainly wasn’t encouraged. The Amish way was to remain apart from the world, and being in the middle of the discovery of a drowning victim, especially a shunned runaway, wasn’t where parents and church members wanted their young people.

The phone clicked in her ear.

“Rachel?”

She let out a sigh of relief. “Evan. I need you to come. Right away.”

“What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“
Ya.
It isn’t me.” She quickly explained what had happened and where they were. “I need you to call Coyote Finch. I don’t think I can talk to her, or anyone just yet.” She took a breath. “I’ll forward you her cell number. Ask her if she can come right away. She can drive the Amish girls home. Maybe she can get here before things get crazy.”

“Not much chance of that. Not if you’ve already called it in.”

“Please, just call Coyote. Ask her to take Black Bear gravel road to the old lumber mill. It’s not far from here. I’ll send them through the woods. The girls can meet her there.”

“I don’t know, Rachel. If they’re witnesses, the investigating officer will want to question them.”

She turned away from Mary Aaron, who was looking anxious. “It will be all right. Mary Aaron is here with me. She’ll stay. Why would they need to talk to more than two of us? Evan, I—” She stopped and started again. “I think she’s been dead for a while. . . .” She trailed off.

“Hang in there. I’m coming.” He was calm, professional, caring. She knew she could count on him. “But if I can’t get hold of Coyote, you’re on your own with the girls.”

“She’ll pick up. Afternoons, her husband puts the baby down for a nap. She’ll be at her pottery wheel.”

“Be there as quick as I can,” he promised.

Rachel ended the call, forwarded the number to him, and glanced at Mary Aaron. “Is that all right? Will you stay?”

She offered a wan smile. “What are best friends for?”

Uncle Aaron would not be pleased, and neither would Rachel’s aunt, but they were used to Mary Aaron’s objectionable dealings with Rachel. Mary Aaron hadn’t been baptized yet, so she was still permitted some leeway in her behavior. When Evan was there, the two of them could at least shield Mary Aaron from the Englishers who would arrive in their emergency vehicles. And they could make certain no one photographed her, if the press showed up.

“It was the only thing I could think of,” Rachel said. “Asking Coyote to come for the girls.”

“
Ya
, it’s best.” Mary Aaron motioned toward the picnic site. “Elsie used to go with our brother when he bow-hunted up here. She can show them the way to the abandoned lumber mill.”

The wail of a siren came from the mountain road. “Hurry,” Rachel urged. “Tell Lettie to take Sophie for me. Get the girls into the woods before they get here. I’ll walk to the road so I can show the paramedics where Beth is.”

“It seems a shame, indecent almost—strange men taking her away.”

Rachel sighed. “I know, but it’s the way the authorities work.”

“Foolishness. Better to call the bishop and Beth’s family to carry her home. She needs prayers, not doctors.”

Rachel agreed with her, but knew she would be wasting her breath trying to justify Englisher regulations. Mary Aaron knew more than most about how the English world worked, or at least how it worked in the valley. Her family and their Amish community, however, may as well have been living in the nineteenth century. They were practical people of faith, and much of what the English did was beyond their ability to comprehend.

With a last look at Beth, Rachel followed her cousin back to where the other girls waited. As she expected, they were all eager to be away from that place. Elsie was sensible. Rachel could count on her to guide Lettie and the other three to the pickup spot. And Rachel knew that Coyote would be there to get them and see them home safely. She was a new friend, but the kind Rachel could count on.

Evan was only five minutes behind the first paramedics from Stone Mill’s volunteer fire company. Rachel watched gratefully as he pulled his patrol car into the glade and got out of the vehicle. As always, he looked bigger to her in his state police trooper’s uniform than he did as a civilian.

“You came.”

He put out his arms and she went into them. She closed her eyes as he hugged her and brushed a kiss on the crown of her head.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?” He gave her a final hug and they stepped apart. “I’m really sorry that you had to be the one to find her.” He brushed dust off the fabric of his pants. “Road construction,” he explained. “I’ve been eating dirt all afternoon.”

“Trooper!” One of the volunteers stepped out of the trees. He was a stocky redhead, a few years younger than Evan. Rachel thought she’d seen him shopping in Wagler’s Grocery. “I think you’d better see this,” he said.

“What is it?” Evan asked, suddenly all policeman.

“The 9-1-1 call was for a drowning,” the redhead said. He looked down at the ground, then up at Evan. “But it looks like a possible homicide to me.”

Rachel looked at the paramedic. “Homicide? Beth Glick was murdered?” Rachel felt light-headed. “That couldn’t—Are you sure?”

“No,” the man said. “But this isn’t my first drowning.” He returned his attention to Evan. “Something doesn’t look right. Some kind of marks on her neck.” He drew his finger across his own neck at one shoulder. “Like she’s been choked.”

“Stay here,” Evan told Rachel. “And don’t repeat that to anyone. Cause of death is up to the investigating team and the medical examiner.”

“I want to come with you.” Rachel looked up at him. “I’m the one who found Beth’s body.”

Evan frowned and shook his head. “Wait in the van. And ask Mary Aaron to stay there with you. You’ll both need to give a statement to a detective when he arrives.”