Plain Truth (6 page)

“First of all, she hasn't been formally charged. Second of all, even if she were, Leda, I couldn't defend her. I know nothing about her or her way of life.”

“Do you live on the streets like the drug dealers you've defended? Or in a big Main Line mansion, like that principal you got acquitted?”

“That's different, and you know it.” It did not matter whether Leda's niece had a right to sound legal counsel. It did not matter that Ellie had defended others charged with equally unpalatable crimes. Drugs and pedophilia and armed robbery did not hit as close to home.

“But she's innocent, Ellie!”

It had been, long ago, the reason Ellie became a defense attorney—for the souls she was going to save. However, Ellie could count on one hand the number of clients she'd gotten acquitted who had truly been wrongfully accused. She now knew that most of her clients were guilty as charged—although every last one of them had an excuse they'd be shouting all the way to the grave. She might not have agreed with her clients' criminal actions, but on some level, she always understood what made them do it. However, at this moment in her life, there was nothing that could make her understand a woman who killed her own child.

Not when there were other women out there who so desperately wanted one.

“I can't take your niece's case,” Ellie said quietly. “I'd be doing her a disservice.”

“Just promise me you'll think about it.”

“I won't think about it. And I'll forget that you asked me to.” Ellie walked out of the kitchen, fighting her way free of Leda's disappointment.

Samuel's big body filled the doorway of the hospital room, reminding Katie of how she sometimes would stand beside him in an open field and still feel crowded for space. She smiled hesitantly. “Come in.”

He approached the bed, feeding the brim of his straw hat through his hands like a seam. Then he ducked his head, bright color staining his cheeks. “You all right?”

“I'm fine,” Katie answered. She bit her lip as Samuel pulled up a chair and sat down beside her.

“Where's your mother?”

“She went home. Aunt Leda called her a taxi, since Mam didn't feel right riding back in her car.”

Samuel nodded, understanding. Amish taxi services, run by local Mennonites, drove Plain folks longer distances, or on highways where buggies couldn't go. As for riding in Leda's car, well, he understood that too. Leda was under the
bann
, and he wouldn't have felt comfortable taking a ride from her, either.

“How … how are things at home?”

“Busy,” Samuel said, carefully choosing his words. “We did the third cutting of hay today.” Hesitating, he added, “The police, they're still around.” He stared at Katie's fist, small and pink against the polyester blanket. Gently he took it between his own hands, and then slowly brought it up to his jaw.

Katie curved her palm against his cheek; Samuel turned into the caress. Her eyes shining, she opened her mouth to speak again, but Samuel stopped her by putting a finger over her lips. “Sssh,” he said. “Not now.”

“But you must have heard things,” Katie whispered. “I want—”

“I don't listen to what I've heard. I'll only listen to what you have to say.”

Katie swallowed. “Samuel, I did not have a baby.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then squeezed her hand. “All right, then.”

Katie's eyes flew to his. “You believe me?”

Samuel smoothed the blanket over her legs, tucking her in like a child. He stared at the shining fall of her hair and realized that he had not seen it this way, bright and loose, since they were both small. “I have to,” he said.

The bishop in Elam Fisher's church district happened to be his own cousin. Old Ephram Stoltzfus was such a part of everyday life that even when acting as the congregational leader, he was remarkably accessible—stopping his buggy by the side of the road for a chat, or hopping off his plow in the middle of the field to make a suggestion. When Elam had met him earlier that day with the story of what had happened at the farm, he listened carefully and then said that he needed to speak to some others. Elam had assumed Ephram meant the church district's deacon, or two ministers, but the bishop had shaken his head. “The businessmen,” he'd said. “They're the ones who'll know how the English police work.”

Just after suppertime, when Sarah was clearing the table, Bishop Ephram's buggy pulled up. Elam and Aaron glanced at each other, then walked outside to meet him.

“Ephram,” Aaron greeted, shaking the man's hand after he'd tied up his horse.

“Aaron. How is Katie?”

It was slight, but Aaron stiffened visibly. “I hear she will be fine.”

“You did not go to the hospital?” Ephram asked.

Aaron looked away.
“Neh.”

The bishop tipped his head, his white beard glowing in the setting sun. “Walk with me awhile?”

The three men headed toward Sarah's vegetable garden. Elam sank down on a stone slab bench and gestured for Ephram to do the same. But the bishop shook his head and stared over the tall heads of the tomato plants and the climbing vines of beans, around which danced a spray of fireflies. They sparked and tumbled like a handful of stars that had been flung.

“I remember coming here once, years ago, and watching Jacob and Katie chase the lightning bugs,” Ephram said. “Catching 'em in a jar.” He laughed. “Jacob said he was making an Amish flashlight. You hear from Jacob these days?”

“No, which is the way I wish it to be,” Aaron said quietly.

Ephram shook his head. “He was banned from the church, Aaron. Not from your life.”

“They're the same to me.”

“That's the thing I don't understand, you know. Since forgiveness is the very first rule.”

Aaron leveled his gaze on the bishop. “Did you come here to talk about Jacob?”

“Well, no,” Ephram admitted. “After you dropped by this morning, Elam, I went to see John Zimmermann and Martin Lapp. It's their understanding that if the police were here all day, they must be thinking Katie's a suspect. It will all hinge for sure on whether the baby was born alive. If it was, she'll be blamed for its death.” He frowned at Aaron. “They suggested speaking to a lawyer, so that you won't get caught unawares.”

“My Katie doesn't need a lawyer.”

“So I hope,” the bishop said. “But if she does, the community will stand behind her.” He hesitated, then added, “She'll have to put herself back, you understand, during this time.”

Elam looked up. “Just give up communion? She wouldn't be put under the
bann?
”

“I will need to speak to Samuel, of course, and then think on it.” Ephram put his hand on Aaron's shoulder. “This isn't the first time a young couple has gotten ahead of their wedding night. It's a tragedy, to be sure, that the baby died. But heartache can cement a marriage just as much as happiness. And as for Katie being blamed for the other—well, none of us believes it.”

Aaron turned, shrugging off the bishop's hand. “Thank you. But we will not hire a lawyer for Katie, and go through the
Englischer
courts. It's not our way.”

“What makes you always draw a line, and challenge people to cross it, Aaron?” Ephram sighed.
“That's
not our way.”

“If you'll excuse me, I have work to do.” Aaron nodded at the bishop and his father and struck off toward the barn.

The two older men watched him in silence. “You've had this conversation with him once before,” Elam Fisher pointed out.

The bishop smiled sadly.
“Ja
. And I was talking to a stone wall that time, too.”

Katie dreamed she was falling. Out of the sky, like a bird with a wounded wing, the earth rushing up to meet her. Her heart lodged in her throat, holding back the scream, and she realized

46

at the very last second that she was heading toward the barn, the fields, her home. She closed her eyes and crashed, the scenery shattering like an eggshell at impact so that when she looked around, she recognized nothing at all.

Blinking into the darkness, Katie tried to sit up in the bed. Wires and plastic tubes grew from her body like roots. Her belly felt tender; her arms and legs heavy.

A comma of a moon split the sky, and a smattering of stars. Katie let her hands creep beneath the covers to rest on her stomach.
“Ich hab ken Kind kaht,”
she whispered. I did not have a baby.

Tears fell on the blanket.
“Ich hab ken Kind kaht. Ich hab ken Kind kaht,”
she murmured over and over, until the words became a stream running through her veins, an angel's lullaby.

The fax machine in Lizzie's house beeped on just after midnight, while she was running on her treadmill. Adrenaline had kept her awake, anyway, and perfectly suited for a workout that might make her tired enough to catch a few hours of sleep. She shut off the treadmill and walked to the fax, sweating as she waited for the pages to begin rolling out. At the cover page from the medical examiner's office, her heart rate jumped another notch.

Words began to reach at her, tugging at her mind.

Male, 32 weeks. 39-2 cm crown-heel; 26 cm crown-rump. Hydrostatic test … dilated alveolar ducts … mottled pink to dark red appearance … left and right lungs floated, excluding partial and irregular aeration. Air present in the middle ear. Bruising on the upper lip; cotton fibers on gums
.

“Good God,” she whispered, shivering. She had met murderers several times—the man who'd stabbed a convenience store owner for a pack of Camels; a boy who'd raped college girls and left them bleeding on the dormitory floor; once, a woman who had shot her abusive husband's face off while he lay sleeping. There was something about these people, something that had always made Lizzie feel that if you cracked them open like Russian nesting dolls, you'd find a hot, smoking coal at their center.

Something that did not fit this Amish girl at all.

Lizzie stripped out of her workout clothes, heading for the shower. Before the girl was no longer free to leave, before she was read Miranda and formally charged, Lizzie wanted to look Katie Fisher in the eye and see what was at the heart of her.

It was four in the morning by the time Lizzie entered the hospital room, but Katie was awake and alone. She turned wide blue eyes to the detective, surprised to see her. “Hello.”

Lizzie smiled and sat down beside the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Katie said quietly. “Stronger.”

Lizzie glanced down at Katie's lap, and saw the Bible she'd been reading. “Samuel brought it for me,” the girl said, confused by the frown on the other woman's face. “Isn't it allowed in here?”

“Oh, yeah, it's allowed,” Lizzie said. She felt the tower of evidence she'd been neatly stacking for twenty-four hours now start to waver:
She's Amish
. Could that one excuse, that one glaring inconsistency, knock it down? “Katie, did the doctor tell you what happened to you?”

Katie glanced up. She set her finger in the Bible, closed the book around it with a rustle of pages, and nodded.

“When I saw you yesterday, you told me you hadn't had a baby.” Lizzie took a deep breath. “I'm wondering why you said that.”

“Because I didn't have a baby.”

Lizzie shook her head in disbelief. “Why are you bleeding, then?”

A red flush worked its way up from the neckline of Katie's hospital johnny. “It's my time of the month,” she said softly. She looked away, composing herself. “I may be Plain, Detective, but I'm not stupid. Don't you think I'd know if I had a baby?”

The answer was so open, so earnest, that Lizzie mentally stepped back.
What am I doing wrong?
She'd questioned hundreds of people, hundreds of liars—yet Katie Fisher was the only one she could recall getting under her skin. She glanced out the window, at the simmering red of the horizon, and realized what the difference was: This was no act. Katie Fisher believed exactly what she was saying.

Lizzie cleared her throat, manning a different route of attack. “I'm going to ask you something awkward, Katie … Have you ever had sexual relations?”

If at all possible, Katie's cheeks glowed brighter. “No.”

“Would your blond friend tell me the same thing?”

“Go ask him,” she challenged.

“You saw that baby yesterday morning,” Lizzie said, her voice thick with frustration. “How did it get there?”

“I have no idea.”

“Right.” Lizzie rubbed her temples. “It isn't yours.”

A wide smile broke over Katie's face. “That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

“She's the only suspect,” Lizzie said, watching George stuff a forkful of hash browns into his mouth. They were meeting at a diner halfway between the county attorney's office and East Paradise, one whose sole recommendation, as far as Lizzie could tell, was that they only served items guaranteed to double your cholesterol. “You're going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep eating like that,” she said, frowning.

George waved away her concern. “At the first sign of arrhythmia I'll ask God for a continuance.”

Breaking off a small piece of her muffin, Lizzie looked down at her notes. “We've got a bloody nightgown, a footprint her size, a doctor's statement saying she was primiparous, an ME saying the baby took a breath—plus her blood matches the blood found on the baby's skin.” She popped a bite into her mouth. “I'll put five hundred bucks down saying that when the DNA test comes back, it links her to the baby, too.”

George blotted his mouth with a napkin. “That's substantial stuff, Lizzie, but I don't know if it adds up to involuntary manslaughter.”

“I didn't get to the clincher yet,” Lizzie said. “The ME found bruising on the baby's lips and fibers on the gums and in the throat.”

“Fibers from what?”

“They matched the shirt it was wrapped in. He thinks that the two, together, suggest smothering.”