Plain Killing (22 page)

When there was silence, Rachel called into the woods, “Hello? I’m looking for Joab.”

“You found him.”

She hesitated, glancing back at her Jeep, then into the woods. “It’s Rachel . . . Rachel Mast.”

His response was another
thwack
of wood.

“There was no one up at the house,” she called into the woods

“Wife and children gone to her sister’s next door.”
Thwack.

Rachel lifted the loop of rope that held the gate closed, went through the gate, and dropped the rope over the post again. “I was wondering . . . if I could talk to you for a minute?” She took a step toward the sound. Once inside the woods line, it was immediately darker. Much darker.

“Do you . . . have a minute?” She took three more steps into the woods and finally spotted the outline of a bearded man in a white shirt, dark pants, and a straw hat. He swung an axe over his head and dropped it.

She took another step toward him. She could see him better now. “To talk?” she said, thinking that if her words sounded silly to her, what must Joab think?

“About what?”

He kicked a piece of wood with his boot. It hit another, and she flinched. She could smell the scents of freshly cut wood and forest vegetation. She heard a squirrel scurrying in a tree high overhead. “Your nephew Rupert.”

He upended a section of log that was two feet high and almost a foot in diameter. He took a steel wedge from the ground, set it into a crack in the log and then swung the axe over his shoulder. He brought the flat end down hard on the wedge, and it made a great clang as the log split. “Rupert’s gone. Been gone.”

“I know. Actually, I . . .” She didn’t know why she was nervous. She’d talked to Joab a dozen times in the last month because of the work he’d been doing for her. She’d never felt uncomfortable with him before. Maybe because she’d mostly spoken to him on her own property. Here, on his property, she was in his world. Was her uneasiness just a throwback from her days as a kid when Amish girls didn’t often speak to adult men?

She started again. “I ran into Rupert at a diner a few months ago.” Only a little fib. What had actually happened was that her Aunt Hannah had taken her to meet Rupert to talk to him. Joab’s brother Eli, Rupert’s father, had been there. But the details weren’t important. “I know he joined the Marines. Scary,” she added.

Joab split another log.
Thwack.
The sound was beginning to get on her nerves. She took a step closer. Close enough so that it wouldn’t have been safe for him to swing the axe again. “Joab, do you know who helped Rupert leave Stone Mill?”

He stared at her. A long silence stretched between them, long enough to make Rachel feel uncomfortable.

“You didn’t come to ask me about Rupert,” Joab finally said. He raised the axe, but only to rest the handle on his shoulder.

She felt a sudden sense of panic. What did she say now? Did she make something up? If so, what? Or did she just come out and tell him why she was really here?

She glanced away and then back at him. He was just standing there, looking at her, no decipherable expression on his face.

“I guess you heard about Ed Wagler being arrested?” He didn’t respond, so she went on. “That he was giving young Amish folks a ride out of Stone Mill, but . . . involving them in terrible things.” Still, he said nothing. “It was in all the papers this morning,” she added.

He took his time before saying, “Heard something like that.”

She glanced at the pile of split wood at her feet. He certainly wasn’t making this easy. “Joab . . . I’m just going to come out and say this. I know that you were close to Rupert, so I was wondering if you know who helped him leave Stone Mill?”

She waited. “Do you know who was the go-between between the girls who went missing from here and Ed Wagler?” This time, she didn’t wait for him to respond; she just barreled forward. “Because . . . no matter what the police say, I think someone else was involved.” She shook her head. “It just doesn’t make sense that girls, particularly, were walking up to Ed Wagler at his grocery store and asking him if they could meet him late at night at the schoolhouse and catch a ride out of town. I think someone else was helping them . . . one of—” She almost said
our own
. But of course she wasn’t one of them any longer. “Someone in the Amish community,” she finished.

It seemed like it was getting darker in the woods by the second.

Joab took a step toward her, the axe still on his shoulder. She took half a step back. She had a sudden urge to run, and she had no idea why.

He leaned over and picked up a chunk of wood he’d just split. “He tell you that?”

“Rupert?” she asked, confused.

“Ed.”

Rachel stared at him, thinking back. Saturday night, when she had approached Ed, he’d asked her if
Joe
had brought her.
Joe.
Had he meant—

She saw Joab move toward her, but his movement was so quick, so unexpected . . . She saw him raise the chunk of wood, and then her head exploded with pain, followed by darkness.

Rachel groaned and tried to open her eyes. Her head pounded, and something wet and sticky dripped down over her ear. She felt like she was going to throw up.

With great effort, she managed to get one eye open. Was the other swollen shut? Her head . . . Just opening the one eye made her dizzy. She had to close it for a moment before opening it again.

She stifled another groan, trying to think. Something seemed to be in her mouth. No. Around it. A cloth. A gag . . .

Was she awake, or was she dreaming? Rachel croaked out a sound.

“No need for that,” a man ordered. His voice was muffled, but she could make out the words. Deitsch. He was speaking Deitsch. Where was he? Where was
she?

It was dark, and she couldn’t see anything. Was her face pressed into the ground? No, not the ground. A floor.

She listened, trying to gain her bearings.

She heard the sound of a car engine start, and she sensed that she was moving.
They
were moving.

How did she get in a car? She tried to remember what she’d been doing last, but her thoughts were as random as leaves bobbing in the millrace during a downpour. Disjointed images flashed across her mind . . . a yellow Tupperware bowl of half-shelled lima beans . . . a barking black-and-white dog . . . an axe blade striking a section of log.

A chill flashed through Rachel, and her breath caught and rasped in her throat.

Joab. Joab Rust.

She tried to holler, but the gag in her mouth muffled the sound.

“I said no need for that,” Joab said. “No one can hear you.”

The engine whined as he shifted awkwardly into the next gear. Rachel
knew
that sound.

It was her Jeep.

She was in the back of her Jeep, with something thrown on top of her. It smelled of sweet molasses and grain. A blanket. . . the old blanket she used to protect the floor of her vehicle when she carried grain for her goats. No wonder it was hard to breathe. Fumes from the underside of the Jeep mingled with dust and the scent of blood . . .
her
blood.

The realization that Joab had struck her with something sunk in. He’d had an axe in his hand . . . but he couldn’t have hit her with that. She’d be dead, wouldn’t she?

Bile rose in her throat, and she forced it down. If she was sick, she might choke to death.

She wiggled onto her side and inched the blanket up so that she could breathe a little easier. What was wrong with her hands? Why couldn’t she move? Slowly, it began to make sense. Her hands were tied in front of her and her ankles were tied. Joab Rust had hit her in the head with something, trussed her up like a goose bound for market, gagged her, and thrown her in the back of her own vehicle.

Why? Where was he taking her? What was he going to do to her?

Everything that had happened in the last few weeks tumbled around in her head: Beth’s murder, the trip to New Orleans, Hannah’s wedding, Ed coming to the school in his van.

If Ed hadn’t killed Beth, if Ed hadn’t been the man George’s fellow inmate had been referring to, then it had to be Joab. An Amish man. Joab.

In some roundabout way, it made sense. Sort of. Joab had left the Amish as a young man. He’d probably helped his nephew leave. He’d helped all those girls, too. And when Beth came back, he’d killed her. So she wouldn’t tell what he and Ed had done to her, to other girls. He’d
murdered
Beth. The word reverberated in her head.

And now, he meant to do the same thing to her.

She strained against the ropes. They bit into her wrists and ankles. Her nausea rose again, and she tried to take deep breaths through the cloth across her mouth.

The Jeep made a turn onto a smooth road. The road had felt . . . soft before. Now it was harder and smoother.

Rachel recognized that she must have been unconscious . . . but for how long? Had it been minutes? An hour? Two? What was she going to do? Panic made her tremble. What
could
she do, tied up like this?

But she couldn’t just lie there like a broken doll and wait for Joab to finish her off.

Something was gouging into her hip. She twisted to ease the pressure; then slowly it dawned on her what it was. Her cell! She had her cell in her pocket. It never occurred to Joab to check to see if she had her cell phone in her clothing.

But how could she call for help? Joab would hear her.

Seconds ticked by . . . maybe minutes. Her brain was still processing slowly.

Joab could
hear
her, but in the dark, with the old blanket thrown over her in the back, he couldn’t
see
her.

Cautiously, she inched her phone out of the folds of her skirt. The movement was awkward and slow, with her hands tied together . . . but not impossible.

The logical thing to do was to call 9-1-1. But that involved speaking into the phone and having someone speak to her. That would never work.

The smart thing to do, then, was to
text
. She’d remembered reading about 9-1-1 text capability, but was it available in their area yet?

She didn’t know. What she
did
know was that she could text Evan.

She clutched the phone so tightly that she was afraid she’d break it.

First things first. She checked the volume to be sure the sound was off. Then she hit the button on the bottom and the screen lit up; it was eight twenty-seven. She did the math slowly . . . She’d arrived at the Rust farm just after eight. She’d walked up to the house, then driven out to the woods. Not that much time had passed. He had to have
just
thrown her into the back of the Jeep.

She slid her finger across the bottom of the phone to unlock the screen. Her hands shook. She tried to keep it close to her body, afraid Joab might, somehow, see the dim light. Her gaze fixed on the little picture of the battery at the top. Red.

“No, no, no,” she breathed. It was going to die any minute.

She touched the text bubble on the bottom of the screen.

Help me joan did it gone to kill me,
she texted, noting autocorrect had messed up the message. Evan would get it. She hit
send
.

Waited.

Joan? Who’s Joan? Where are you?
he texted back less than a minute later.

Thank God he has his phone with him
was all she could think.

Coming!
he texted.
Hold on. I’m coming. I love you.

Rachel stared at the message for a long moment before turning off the screen. She debated whether or not to power down the phone to save on the battery. But she was afraid to shut it off, to cut off all possible contact. And she wasn’t sure how much battery power was involved in turning it off and then on again.

Evan was going to find her. She knew he was going to find her. In time . . .

She closed her eyes. Her head was still pounding.
In time to save my life? In time to find my body?
There was no way Joab could let her live. He’d killed once to hide his secret. He’d do it again.

But Evan had said he was coming. He had said he loved her. He would find her.

How was he going to find her?
She
didn’t know where she was.

Time seemed to stretch. It went on and on. Joab just kept driving.

Rachel wanted to check the time on her cell, but she was afraid she’d use up the battery by illuminating the screen. How was Evan going to find her if her phone died? How was he going to find her, anyway? Maybe the police had a way of tracking her number with a GPS system?

Instead of worrying about her phone, Rachel tried to focus on where she thought Joab might be taking her. It was hard, though, because her head felt as if it was going to explode. She just wanted to close her eyes . . . her
eye
. . . and sleep. But sleep was a bad idea—for obvious reasons. Instead, she tried to pay attention to what was going on around her. First the road was flat, but eventually it changed.

Where were they going?

Out of the valley, she guessed from the way the Jeep began to turn one way and then the other. She could feel the vehicle climbing.

She wanted to text Evan again. She could tell him they were on a winding road. That would help him, wouldn’t it? But she was afraid to use up her battery. She needed to bide her time.

It seemed as if Joab kept driving and driving, but she couldn’t tell how far they had gone or how much time had passed—her head hurt so badly. She did know that he was driving slowly. She imagined he knew how to drive the stick shift because it was something like driving a tractor, but he was driving slowly.

Eventually, they turned off the smooth road onto what could only be a gravel road, and Rachel began to get scared. What if he was taking her up into the mountain to some remote place to kill her?

She needed to text Evan again.

She turned on the screen on the phone. Her fingers felt stiff. The battery light was blinking red.

“No,” she whispered. “No . . .” She went to messages. Because Evan was the last one she’d texted, all she had to do was to type into the text bar. She tried to type quickly . . . as if that would somehow save on battery.

She wanted to tell him they’d turned off the main road, but the first word came off as
Tiebreaker
.

“No. No. No.” She held down the
X
on the keyboard, erasing the word. “Turned off the paved road,” she whispered. “I’m trying to tell you that we turned off a—”

A white, spinning circle appeared in the center of the phone, and a tear slipped from the corner of her eye. It was powering down! Her phone was powering down! She touched the power button. Maybe she had another few seconds left? The screen showed the dim outline of a battery gone red and then black.

“Evan,” she whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut against stinging tears.

How was he going to find her now? GPS only worked with the phone on! Now what? Rachel knew she had to think . . . think. If Evan couldn’t come for her, she had to save herself.

The surface of the road changed again. Now they were on a dirt road. He was driving very slowly now. In first gear.

Rachel couldn’t tell if five minutes passed or fifty. She was so nauseated, so scared. She tried to come up with different scenarios with Joab. What was he going to do when they stopped? How would she respond? How
could
she respond, tied and gagged?

She thought about the axe Joab had been swinging just before he knocked her out. Had he taken her off his farm, up onto a mountain to kill her and leave her body where no one would find it? If that was his plan, what was he going to do with her red Jeep? How was he going to hide
that?

It occurred to Rachel that instead of spending what might be her last minutes on earth thinking about Joab and his intentions, maybe she should be thinking about herself. About God and the reckoning that came after death. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t think about any of that, maybe because she didn’t know, despite her upbringing, what she truly believed happened after death. She knew what she wanted to believe, but here . . . now . . .

The Jeep came to a sudden stop, and against her will, Rachel cried out in fear.

She heard Joab get out, and she began to shake.

He didn’t close his door, but she heard the back gate swing open. She clutched the phone, though why, she didn’t know. It wasn’t going to save her now. Nothing was.

When he reached for her . . . touched her . . . she cried out and tried to kick at him. Despite the fact that he wasn’t a big man, he was strong.

“Why didn’t you mind your own business?” he asked her, lifting her easily in his arms.

Her cell phone fell from her hand, onto the ground.

“Why did you have to put your nose in mine?”

“What are you doing?” she asked against the gag. “Why are you doing this?” They were in the woods. She could see the outlines of trees and smell the green of the underbrush. “Joab.” Her voice cracked with fear. “Please.”

“You cannot stop me,” he said. He dumped her in the grass. In a small clearing. It felt like they were in a small clearing.

“I don’t—”

He made a motion toward her, and she tried to pull away, thinking he was going to strike her, but instead, he just pushed down the cloth that had been around her mouth so that it hung around her neck. It looked like it was maybe a men’s big blue handkerchief. It was hard to tell in the dark.

She sucked in a breath of the fresh night air and then another.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you . . .”

She looked up at him.

“. . . why you came back, Rachel Mast.” He sounded bitter. Angry . . . at her. “You made it in the English world. So few of us can.”

He’s angry because I came back to Stone Mill?
“I wasn’t happy among the English,” she answered. She tried to look up at him, forcing her swollen eye open, to get a better look. The moon was just rising, but it seemed to be reflecting off something. It was dark, but not so dark that she couldn’t see him. “Successful maybe, but not happy.”

He shook his head, slowly. “I couldn’t make it. I tried. But I didn’t have a birth certificate to get a social security card. I had a trade, I could have worked at masonry, but . . . no one would hire me for what I was worth.”

She stared up at him, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. “That’s why you helped the kids leave? Your nephew . . . the others? You were helping them because no one helped you when you tried to leave?”