The Names of Our Tears (11 page)

Interjecting, Hart said to Lance, “I want it reiterated, here, Detective, that Ms. Helmuth has agreed to speak only because the sheriff has stipulated that there will be no charges brought stemming from Fannie’s involvement in any of this, either in Florida or in Ohio, or along the bus route between the two. That includes any criminal enterprise associated with the transportation of a suitcase given to her by Jodie Tapp, or arising from Fannie’s associations with, or interactions with, either Jim or John and their associates, or with the woman to whom Fannie delivered Jodie Tapp’s suitcase, or any of her associates.”

Lance sighed. “You already have all that in writing, Linda.”

Hart smiled. “I know you’re taping these sessions, Pat. I like having it on the recordings.”

Turning to Fannie again, Lance asked, “Did they tell you what they wanted you to do?”

“No, Jodie did that later,” Fannie said, drying her eyes again. “Later that night.”

“When, exactly?”

“In the parking lot. At that little park beside the water.”

“So, you do remember getting off the boat?” Lance asked.

“Not really. I just remember that Jodie said they had let us go, and if I didn’t bring an extra suitcase home on the bus, they’d find Jodie and kill her.”

“Are you sure it was Jodie who told you that?”

“Yes. In the parking lot. She took a towel out of her trunk and knelt beside the water to wash the blood from her face.”

“How did you get home?”

“Jodie drove me.”

“Did you see Jodie the next day?”

“I didn’t go to work. But the day after that, she came to the little cottage where I was staying. She looked terrible and had to wear sunglasses. There were bruises and cuts on her face. That’s when she gave me the suitcase.”

“Did you see John and Jim again?”

“No.”

“Did you see Jodie after that?”

“No. I got on the bus that afternoon.”

“Did you ever look inside the suitcase?”

“I was too scared, and Jodie said I shouldn’t look.”

“Where’d you keep the suitcase once you got home?”

“Under my bed.”

“Do you know what happened to Jodie?”

“No,” Fannie said, eyes spilling tears again. “I should have done something, but I was just too scared. Who’s going to help her now?”

“That’s the sheriff’s job, Fannie,” Hart said. “He’s sending Detective Niell down to Pinecraft.”

Lance finished writing and closed her notebook. To stop the recording that had been running, she flipped a switch mounted under the table. She pulled a tissue out of a box for Fannie and asked, “Can you stay, Fannie? We should take a break, but can you stay here today?”

Fannie nodded and said, “I can’t go home, because that angry woman knows where I live. But I need to use the bathroom.”

“No problem,” Lance said, and rose. “You can stay with me today, and we’ll sort this all out. I need you to tell me everything you can remember about the woman who met you for that suitcase.”

Fannie nodded and said, “OK, but I’m hungry.”

Lance smiled. “Then let’s get something to eat. An early lunch at the hotel. We can walk there.”

Hart stood too, and said, “You can tell them about Florida and Ohio, Fannie. You can tell them about the woman and the suitcase. They know you never looked inside the suitcase, and you have immunity from prosecution.”

Seeming not to appreciate the importance of what her attorney had said, Fannie nodded to Hart and said to Lance, “I need to water my horse, too. I have a pail in my buggy.”

*   *   *

Pat Lance helped Fannie fill her pail at a spigot under the exterior steps of the courthouse. Fannie carried the water around to the east side where her buggy was hitched to the rail, and Lance followed her to the buggy and back. Then the two stepped back into the jail next door.

In Robertson’s office, while Fannie waited in the hall, Lance gave a summary of her interview and said, “We’re going to the hotel, to get an early lunch.”

“I saw that you were taping the session,” Robertson said. “Can you post the file?”

“Sure. I went at it three different ways, but she doesn’t remember anything useful about ‘Jim and John.’ I don’t think she knows any more than she told me. They stopped the boat, turned out all the lights, pulled Jodie into the cabin, and beat her up. Then they turned them both loose at the parking lot of that little waterside park at the end of the bridge. Fannie never saw them after that.”

“Did Jodie come in to work the next day?” Robertson asked.

“Fannie doesn’t know. She didn’t go to work herself.”

“How’d she get the suitcase?”

“The day after that, Jodie brought it to her. Then Fannie came home on the bus. That same day. The second day after the sunset.”

“So Jodie Tapp was afraid of them, too.”

“I’m sure she is,” Lance said. “Now that Ruth’s been killed, it seems like she has good reason to be.”

“The problem is,” Robertson said, “she probably doesn’t know yet that Ruth Zook has been killed.”

IN SUNLIGHT so bright that he was wearing shades, the sheriff pushed out of his Crown Vic on the Zook driveway and surveyed the orchestrated chaos of a determined federal invasion. Inclined toward animosity for federal law enforcement agents, Robertson made a quick count of strangers on the property and concluded that the Zooks had captured the intense scrutiny of at least a dozen feds, more if a significant number were hidden from view inside the house. Amplifying the sheriff’s ire, parked in front of him on the driveway were two panel vans, one lettered
EPA TOXIC WASTE ANALYSIS AND THE OTHER, EPA HAZARDOUS MATERIALS INVESTIGATIONS.

On the front porch, Alvin and Andy Zook stood in front of three federal agents in green Windbreakers and green ball caps, each sporting a prominent embroidered EPA logo. The Zooks were dressed in plain Amish attire, and in their expressions and body language, they were silently broadcasting the kind of misery that Robertson surmised could arise only from long hours of immoderate federal interrogation.

Two more EPA agents in green Windbreakers pushed out through the screen door on the front porch, each carrying an evidence box sealed with EPA tape. Around the back corner of
the house, another agent appeared, carrying a similar box forward to the vans. And on the hill behind the largest barn, Robertson saw a black SUV pulling a wheeled gasoline generator over the crest, heading into the marshland below the Zooks’ broken dam.

Robertson went up the porch steps purposefully, muttering dogged invectives against the federal intrusion. He pulled one of the EPA agents over to the corner of the porch and growled out in a stage whisper, “What do you think you’re doing here?”

The agent took a business card from his jacket pocket, handed it to Robertson, and said, “This is a federal investigation. Who are you?”

Robertson took the time to study the business card, emblazoned with the EPA insignia, before he answered.
ROBERT ANDREW WELLINGS
, it proclaimed, along with a phone number and an e-mail address, printed above the EPA Web site URL.

“Wellings,” Robertson said, “what do you think you’re doing here?”

“And you are?” Wellings asked with the assurance of authority ringing in his tone. “And why are you interfering with a federal investigation?”

Robertson drew his wallet out of his hip pocket and displayed his badge card, saying, “Sheriff Bruce Robertson. This is my county. So, why didn’t I get a heads-up on this?”

“We sent you a fax this morning,” Wellings chimed.

“That’s nothing more than a perfunctory notice. I mean why didn’t I get the real word? That you’ve launched the invasion of a private household, as if you’ve discovered some
mega waste dump
?”

“This is a routine investigation, Sheriff, and…”

“This is an industrial-scale response to a minor spill, Wellings.”

The agent squared up to Robertson’s nose and poured out heat. “This is a crime scene, now, Sheriff. We’re federal, and we have
all the authority
we need.”

Wanting to berate a bureaucrat for his arrogance, Robertson
considered an impertinent reply, thought better of it, eased back a step, and said only, “You don’t have any idea who it is that you’re investigating, Wellings. These are Amish folk. They are no more involved in drugs than you are involved in
routine
investigations. You’re gonna push too hard, here, and shut down any chance I had of learning how this all got started.”

Undeterred, Wellings said, “This is federal, now, Sheriff. You’ve been notified. Please stay out of it.”

Forcing himself into an unsatisfying calm, the sheriff said, “If you push too hard, Wellings, we’ll lose a chance to roll up the creeps in Sarasota who are responsible for this. And we’ll lose our chance to find out who killed the Zook girl. So, while you’re testing soil samples in some D.C. laboratory, we’ll be letting a murderer go free because of your lack of restraint.”

“We brought our own laboratory, Sheriff. In a trailer. And we know about Amish people. So, we brought our own electric generator.”

“You’re missing my point, Wellings.”

“I don’t think I am.”

“These aren’t drug runners, Wellings.”

“At the very least, Sheriff, there’ll be assessments of environmental damage, cleanup expenses, and fines. Also, there may be criminal charges. State and federal. So, my duties here are clear. Assess the damage to our environment, and advise the agency in Washington on laws that have been broken.”

“And the murder of an Amish girl?” Robertson asked.

“That’s not in my wheelhouse, Sheriff.”

Robertson gave an impertinent smile. “You parked a mobile lab in the bottoms, Wellings?”

“And a generator.”

“Then good luck with that,” the sheriff said. He stepped down from the porch, eyeing gray skies to the west.

*   *   *

Standing beside his sedan, Robertson called Pat Lance’s cell phone. When she answered, he asked, “Pat, are you still with Fannie?”

“Yes, we’re at the hotel. I thought we’d go back to the jail after lunch, to talk some more.”

“OK, listen. The EPA is out here at the Zooks’. They think they’ve got a major spill to investigate.”

“Don’t they?” Lance asked.

“That’s not the point. We’ve got a murder investigation to run, and maybe we have a chance to shut down a pipeline for drugs coming up from Florida.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Lance said. “Fannie’s in the bathroom, so I can talk. But if something like this happened both to Fannie Helmuth and to Ruth Zook, then maybe other girls have been coerced like they were.”

“I know,” Robertson said. “Plus, figure the bus company angle.”

“How’s that?”

“They’ve got bus companies running from Florida up to Indiana and Pennsylvania, too.”

RICKY NIELL pulled into the driveway at the Byler farm on Township 166 and waved to John and Mahlon, who were on the front lawn working intently to hitch a white pony to a cart. Dressed in identical conservative outfits of muted denim, with black cloth vests and short-waist denim jackets, the two lads wrangled a bit into the mouth of their steed. Once finished, they ran the reins back to the pony cart they had hitched to the harness, stepped back to admire their accomplishment, and then came bashfully over to Ricky’s black-and-white cruiser.

Ricky got out, punched the lock button on his key fob, and said, “Nice pony, boys.”

Standing side by side at the edge of the driveway, the boys smiled back at Niell without speaking.

Ricky knew well not to expect much talk from the lads, but he tried another question. “Yesterday, when your grandpa sent you after that girl’s horse and buggy, did you have to go far to chase it down?”

The older of the boys shook his head, but did not otherwise reply.

“Where did you find it?” Ricky asked. “I saw you go over the
saddle between those two hills, but I didn’t see you coming back.”

Mahlon looked to John to provide an answer, and John said, “It was just the next farm over. Down in the valley, beside Troyer’s shed.”

Ricky waited to hear if there would be more, but clearly there wouldn’t be. He looked around for others and said, “Is your grandpa here? I need to speak with him.”

Both lads pointed toward the little Daadihaus beyond the curve in the driveway. Niell thanked them, got no reply, and walked up the drive to Mervin’s little house. He climbed the worn wooden steps to the front porch and knocked on the door, urgently aware of the sheriff’s haste, but knowing too that a good interview with Byler was going to take some time. Some Amish kind of time.

When Mervin answered the knock, he was holding an open box of Coblentz chocolates. He pushed out through the screen door and let it slap back against the jamb. Offering the box to Niell, he said, “I eat more of this than I should.”

Ricky took a piece out of the center of the box and popped it whole into his mouth. “Coconut,” he said, and sat in one of the rockers on the porch. Mervin sat beside him and took another of the chocolates from his box. He set the box on the gray porch boards between the two rockers, bit into the candy, and said, “Take more. I buy too much as it is.”

“Is it always Coblentz chocolates that you buy?” Ricky asked. “Or are you more adventurous?”

Mervin smiled. “It’s not the chocolates. It’s the widow Stutzman.”

“So, if she made baskets?”

“Then I’d have more baskets than I do right now. The problem is, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. Chips are better. And I favor Mug root beer. I’d really be in high clover if she made one of those.”

“You said that’s where you were headed, when you found the body. To Coblentz, in Walnut Creek.”

“Yes, but I never got there. Found the body and called 911.”

“That’s what I need to talk with you about. Finding her body.”

“If I never see something like that again, it will be too soon.”

“But did you see anything that you’ve remembered since we talked yesterday?”