Pray for Silence (17 page)

T.J. and I sit in my Explorer, the windows midway down, watching the somber procession. Black buggies, the sides of which are marked with chalk designating their order in the convoy, stretch as far as the eye can see. Some of the mourners come from as far away as Zanesville and Western Pennsylvania, and probably began their journey as early as two or three
A.M
.

Drizzle floats down from a glowering sky the color of charcoal. The smells of horses, wet grass and the tang of dry autumn leaves waft through the window. T.J. and I have been here since daybreak, when Bishop Troyer swung open the gate to the
graabhof,
or cemetery, and the gravediggers began their sad task.

I attended several Amish funerals growing up. The day before the ceremony, male friends and neighbors of the deceased build the unadorned, six-sided casket. Amish caskets are lined with fabric sewn by female friends and neighbors. Once the coroner releases the bodies, the dead are washed and dressed. Deceased males are usually garbed in white—pants, vest and shirt. The females are clothed in a white dress, apron and cape. Bonnie was probably dressed in the same clothes in which she was married.

“So you think the killer is going to show?”

I glance away from the procession and look at T.J. “I don’t know. If he’s Amish, he might.”

T.J. nods. “English guy would probably stand out.”

“A little.” I spent most of the night re-reading Mary Plank’s journal, and I can still feel the weight of her words pressing down on me this morning. I drank too much, but it’s not the fuzzy ache behind my eyes that bothers me. I’d hoped the diary would offer some clue as to the identity of the man she was seeing, but she didn’t name him. I looked for other details, too. His profession. Physical description. The make of his vehicle. The address of the places he took her. Was she being careful in case one of her parents found the journal? Or had he coached her, told her never to use his name even in her most private moments?

All that reading wasn’t totally in vain because I determined two important things. I’m convinced Mary Plank’s lover and the murders are related. And I know he’s not Amish. With nothing else to go on, it’s a starting point.

“You think the killer is Amish?” T.J. asks.

“No.” He gives me a so-why-are-we-here look, so I tell him about the journal. “She was in love with the guy.”

“Probably the source of the sperm, huh?”

“I think so.”

T.J. considers that for a moment. “What about motive?”

“She was pregnant and barely fifteen years old. The age of consent in the state of Ohio is sixteen.”

“So he could be facing statutory rape charges.”

“Even more charges if he was drugging her and taking sexually oriented photos.”

“Could be a pretty strong motive for murder.” T.J. mulls that over. “But why kill the whole family?”

“She told her parents about this guy. She told them about the baby.”

T.J. nods. “He murdered them to shut them up.”

“If they threatened to go to the police, he knew he would be facing a multitude of serious charges. Rape. Maybe child molestation. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Possession of a controlled substance. If he published sexually oriented photos of her, child pornography.” I shrug, disgusted by my own words. “He would have been facing years of hard time.”

“Pretty powerful motive.”

“It doesn’t explain the torture aspect, what he did to those two girls in the barn.”

“Hard to figure something like that.” He turns thoughtful. “Probably removed the, uh . . . uterus to keep the police from getting their hands on paternal DNA.”

“That makes sense in a sick sort of way. Maybe he included the sister to make the scene look like something else.” I consider the level of cruelty and shake my head. “I can see this as a crime of passion. The guy snaps, kills his girlfriend, then guns down her family. I’ve seen it happen before. But this is so . . . brutal.” My shoulder is getting damp from the drizzle, so I close my window. “We’re missing something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

T.J. looks out the window at the stream of buggies turning into the gravel lot of the cemetery. “You think he’s local?”

“If he doesn’t live in Painters Mill, I’ll bet he lives nearby.”

“Right under our noses.”

He goes on to say something else, but I’m no longer listening. My attention zeroes in on a silver Toyota parked on the shoulder fifty yards away. A dark-haired young man sporting a goatee and video camera gets out. Several buggies have stopped to make the turn into the cemetery lot. Mr. Camcorder had decided this might be a good time to get some Amish video for YouTube.

He’s wrong.

While some of the more liberal-minded Amish will allow it, the majority
do not like to be photographed. There are differing views as far as the origin of this aversion. Some believe it is the Bible’s second commandment:
Thou shalt not make unto thyself a graven image.
Some of the old order believe if you have your photo taken or even a painting rendered, you’ll die. Most Amish simply believe photographs are vain displays of pride, which goes against their basic values.

Grabbing my citation book, I shove open the door. T.J. calls out, but I barely hear him over the drum of my heart. My temper writhes beneath my skin as I start toward the tourist. I know full well anger has no place in police work. But the part of me that is Amish is outraged that some unthinking moron would try to capture such a private, heartbreaking moment for the sake of entertainment.

A second person gets out of the Toyota. A young woman with red hair and several facial piercings. Wearing cutoff shorts and a University of Michigan sweatshirt, she’s sitting on the hood, watching the scene as if it were unfolding on the big screen.

I’m fifteen feet away when the man spots me. He lowers the camcorder and gives me an unctuous smile. “Hello, Off—”

I snatch the camcorder from his hand. It takes a good bit of control not to slam it onto the ground and stomp it, but I manage.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

“Hey!” The female slides off the car, her eyes flaring. “You can’t do that.”

I swing around, stick my finger in her face. “You take one step closer to me and you’re going to jail.”

She steps quickly back, as if realizing she’s ventured too close to an animal that bites. “Fine. Whatever.”

I turn back to the man. He glares at me. In a small corner of my mind, I find myself wishing he’d take his best shot so I could deck him.

“Give me back my camcorder,” he says.

“You can pick it up when you pay your citation.” I pull out the pad and start writing.

“Citation?”
He gawks at me. “For what? Taking a photo? Ever heard of freedom of expression?”

“This is a no parking, no standing zone.” I motion toward the sign. “Ever heard of that?”

This isn’t the first time some photo-seeking tourist has stopped on this stretch of road to capture an Amish funeral on film. In light of several Amish-English skirmishes in the last few years, the town council petitioned the county to declare the shoulder within one hundred yards of the cemetery driveway a no parking or standing zone. With tourism being a large chunk of the local economy, the county obliged by putting up four signs.

“I didn’t know,” the man says. “I didn’t see the sign!”

“Now you know.” I slap the citation against his chest. “Have a nice day.”

He throws his hands up in the air. “For chrissake!”

“This is a funeral. Show some respect.” Stuffing the pad into an inside pocket, I start toward the Explorer, think better of it and turn to him. “And for your information, most Amish don’t like having their picture taken. Next time, ask their permission before you snap.”

By the time I reach the Explorer, the final buggy has pulled into the gravel driveway.

“I thought you were going to punch him,” T.J. says.

“Too many witnesses.”

He blinks.

I point at him and smile. “Gotcha.”

T.J. smiles back. “So are we just going to surveil?”

I look through the windshield at the ocean of black-clad mourners. “I thought we’d make an appearance, see who’s here.”

We disembark simultaneously and head toward the graveyard, our boots crunching on the gravel. Beyond, a hundred or more plain headstones form neat rows in a meadow that had once been a soybean field. Dozens of black buggies are parked neatly along a lesser used dirt path. Nearer the graves, I see families. Young couples. The elderly. Children. Mothers with babies. All of them standing in the cold drizzle. The community came out in force for the Plank family. But then that is the Amish way.

Bishop Troyer reads a hymn in Pennsylvania Dutch as the pallbearers lower the coffins into the graves. When he finishes, heads are bowed, and I know the
mourners are silently reciting the Lord’s Prayer. I find the words coming back to me with surprising ease.

T.J. and I stand on the perimeter, two outsiders looking in. Like the Amish themselves, the scene is solemn and hushed. I’d like to discreetly record this for later review. Knowing how most Amish feel about graven images, I won’t. Instead, I take in as many faces and details as I can. I’m not sure what I’m looking for; it’s one of those things a cop feels. An instinct that tells me when something isn’t right. A lone mourner. Someone making a scene. An argument. Unduly vigorous crying. Physical collapse. None of those things happen, but then I’ve learned not to expect the obvious.

The pallbearers are nearly finished filling the graves with dirt when I spot a slightly built young man striding toward me. I hadn’t noticed him before, which is odd because he’s the only other non-Amish person here besides T.J. and me.

“Chief Burkholder?” His gaze holds mine as he closes the distance between us, and I wonder how he knows my name. He’s a scholarly looking man in his early twenties with slicked back hair and dark, square-rimmed glasses. He’s well dressed in a charcoal custom suit with a matching tie I’m pretty sure didn’t come from JC Penney. He looks out of place here among the black-clad Amish.

“What can I do for you?” I ask.

He sticks out his hand. “I’m Aaron Plank, Bonnie and Amos’s oldest son.”

Half an hour later, I’m locked in my office with Glock and Aaron Plank. On the way to the station, I called Skid and had him run Plank through LEADS, which provides access to criminal history files. To my surprise, we got two hits. A DUI when he was eighteen years old. And an assault charge when he was twenty. Both times he pleaded no contest and paid his societal dues.

Plank sits across from me with his legs crossed. To the untrained eye, he might appear calm. But I’m a cop, and I don’t miss the constant picking at a hangnail. The wiping of damp palms on wool-blend slacks. He’s an unassuming young man. Attractive, with an earnest expression and honest eyes. But I know from experience never to make judgments based on appearances.

“I’m sorry about your family,” I begin.

“I still can’t believe they’re gone. My sisters and brothers. Little Amos.” Grimacing, he shakes his head. “Do the police have a suspect yet?”

“We’re working on a few leads.”

“I don’t understand why someone would do that. So violent . . . My God.” He looks away, the muscles in his jaws working.

“How did you find out?” I ask.

“Friend of mine heard it on the news, and called me.”

“We looked for family. The sheriff of Lancaster County looked, but came back with nothing.”

“I would have been hard to find.”

“Why is that?”

He laughs, but it’s a sad sound. “Well, as you can see I’m no longer Amish. The sheriff’s deputies probably looked for Planks living in Lancaster County. He won’t find any relatives there.”

“No aunts? Uncles?”

“
Datt
had a brother. We had three cousins.” He purses his lips. “They were killed in a buggy accident six years ago.”

“That’s a lot of tragedy to beset one family.”

“It was horrible.”

I let that settle for a moment. “When’s the last time you saw your family?”

“I haven’t seen them since the day I left for Philly over three years ago.”

“No letters? Phone calls?”

“We never had a phone, so phone calls were out. I got one letter from Mary.”

My interest surges. “What did she say in her letter?”

“Just the usual teenaged girl stuff. You know, who’s courting whom. Who’s getting married. Gossip.” He smiles. “Amish style, of course.”

“She ever mention a boyfriend?”

Aaron hesitates. “No.”

I nod, but I’m wondering about the hesitation. “How long are you going to be in town?”

“I don’t know. A few days.”

Wanting as much information as I can get, I switch gears. “How long ago did you leave the Plain life?”

“Shortly after my
rumspringa.
I decided at that point not to be baptized.”

“Any particular reason?”

His eyes flick away, then back. “That was about the time I realized I was gay.”

Surprise ripples through me and at the same time my cop’s suspicions jump. I know even before I ask that the news did not go over well with his parents. The Amish are generally tolerant. But that doesn’t mean Aaron’s being gay was met with approval. How bad had it been for Aaron?

His eyes dart to Glock and then back to me. “I’d been . . . confused about it for a long time. Since I was little, I think. I pretended I wasn’t different. I hid what I was.”

Religion pervades all aspects of Amish life. Most live their lives according to the
Ordnung.
The
Ordnung
is a sort of unwritten charter of basic Amish values that is passed down from generation to generation and varies from church district to church district. Over the passage of time, the rules evolve and, to some, they are open to interpretation. The more conservative Amish adhere strictly to the
Ordnung.
Some of the more liberal-minded live their lives a bit more loosely, going so far as to utilize electricity and drive cars. Having been born into a conservative family, I know how difficult life could be for someone in Aaron’s shoes.