The Names of Our Tears (15 page)

“Millersburg PD is covering us there,” Wilsher said.

Subdued, Ellie said, “We don’t know that they actually came for her, Dan. It would have been foolish for them to have tried.”

Wilsher had no reply, so Ellie added, “Ricky says her buggy is still parked on the other side of the courthouse.”

As Ellie answered a dispatching call, a deputy in uniform pushed in through a wall of rain at the front door, lumbered out of his slicker, and shook it out over a floor tray under wall pegs to the left of the door. He took off his foul weather hat, drained water from the brim, and said to Wilsher, “She’s not out on the streets, Chief. We’ve been up and down every street and alley for ten blocks all around, and she’s just not out there.”

Wilsher nodded. “I’d be surprised if she just walked out of here on her own.”

“If she did,” the deputy said, “she can’t have gotten very far in this weather. So unless she’s already inside somewhere, we should have found her.”

“Did you check at the hotel?” Wilsher asked.

“First thing.”

“OK, Dave,” Wilsher said, “you dry out a little and then ride with Baker for a couple of hours. Check the lesser roads and gravel lanes between here and Charm. She lives with her brother out on TR 371. Also, try to figure out what we can do for her buggy horse.”

As the deputy headed for the squad room at the back, Wilsher eyed Ellie ruefully and said, “This is a train wreck.”

“You’ve boxed them in, Dan. Both this Buick woman and Fannie.”

“Woman’s long gone,” Wilsher argued.

“Well then, Fannie, anyway.”

“Fannie knows all the small roads. If she’s still alive, she’s run off on her own, or someone took her out of here. Either way, we’re not going to find her.”

*   *   *

Wilsher knocked on the sheriff’s door, entered, and nodded to Captain Newell, who was seated again in front of Robertson’s desk. To Robertson, Wilsher said, “Checkpoints are up and running, Bruce. I had to use Millersburg PD to put a unit on 83 south. And Wooster is helping to the north. But there’s no Amish girl fitting Fannie’s description, and no gray Buicks or Humvees out in this mess. I think we’ve lost the edge, here.”

Lightning flashed at the windows, thunder clapped and rumbled to the west, and the rain pelted harder against the glass. Robertson waved Wilsher into a seat in front of his desk.

Newell said, “We’ve rechecked the jail and all of the courthouse. She’s just not here, and Lance feels terrible. We never figured she’d walk away on her own.”

“She must have, Bobby,” Robertson said, drumming his thumbs on the top of his desk to dump anxiety. “I just can’t believe anyone got to her inside the jail.”

“Did she have a cell phone?” Wilsher asked.

“Lance says no,” Newell said. “Fannie had to use Lance’s phone to call her brother earlier today.”

Robertson asked Newell, “Could she have made a call using the phone in your office?”

Newell frowned, said, “I’ll check,” and pushed up from his chair to leave.

Robertson stood, too, and called after the captain, “Check with Niell and Ramsayer in the squad room. They’re tracking Buick owners with Goodrich aftermarket tires.”

When Robertson had sat back down at his desk, Wilsher asked, “Do we still have Stan Armbruster out at the Helmuth farm?”

Absently, Robertson answered, “Yes.”

His intercom chirped, and Ellie said, “Nancy Blain’s here, Sheriff.”

Wilsher arched an eyebrow. Blain was a photographer for the
Holmes Gazette
.

Robertson spoke into his intercom. “Send her in, Ellie,” then said to Wilsher, “I asked Marty Holcombe if we could use her as a sketch artist again.”

Blain, a short and slender woman with black hair in a pageboy cut, came into Robertson’s office wearing black jeans, work boots, and a waist-length, light-blue Marmot rain shell with a hood. She pulled the wet hood off her head and said, “Marty says you need a sketch or two.” To Wilsher she added, “Hi, Dan. Bad night out for your people.”

Wilsher stood to offer his chair, and Blain laughed and said, “I’ll just stand, OK?”

Wilsher sat back down with a mix of chauvinistic unease and embarrassment, and Blain smiled and said, “Thanks, but I’m not going to be here that long.”

“OK,” Robertson said. “I’ve got the Helmuth farm marked on this map.” He handed Blain a folded Holmes County engineer’s map and said, “Stan Armbruster is out there now. It’s the older woman in a gray Buick who we’re sketching.”

“It’s dark out there, Sheriff. I’ll be working with kerosene lamps.”

“Do the best you can,” Robertson said, and Blain pulled her hood into place over her head and left.

Robertson came out from behind his desk and stood to gauge the storm outside his west windows. Behind the hard-pouring rain, gray gloom was pushing night forward like a curtain. Without turning from the windows, Robertson said to Wilsher, “Why would she just walk out of here?”

“We’re not sure she did that.”

“She didn’t have a phone of her own, and there weren’t ten people who knew we were keeping her here. Even if this Buick woman found out Fannie was here, she’d never have risked entry to try to get to her.”

Wilsher shrugged. “What was Fannie gonna do here this evening, aside from sleeping at the jail?”

“Lance went to get her some supper, and Rachel was going to work with her on her computer, to render a sketch of the woman she gave her suitcase of drugs to. That’s the same woman in the gray Buick she and Lance saw at her brother’s farm this afternoon.”

After a pause, Wilsher asked, “What do you need me to do?”

“Manage your patrol captains, Dan. Everybody puts in overtime on this one, and double the shifts.”

Wilsher rose and said, “By the way, I think you should reposition Armbruster.”

“Oh?”

“Instead of right at the house, I’d have him park his cruiser
at the end of the long drive, so he could watch the front road better.”

“Sensible,” Robertson said, distracted.

“Anything else?” Wilsher asked at the door.

Robertson turned from the window and ran a palm over the bristles of his hair. “No, Dan. I’m gonna call Chester, to see if he can take me this late, so I’ll be down at his shop for a half hour or so.”

“You’ll be on your cell?”

“Of course. And Dan. If we haven’t found Fannie by the morning, pull everybody in. Rachel will have to solve this with her database searches, or Ricky will have to solve this down in Florida.”

Wilsher shook his head unhappily and left.

At his intercom, Robertson said, “Call Stan, Ellie, and tell him Nancy Blain is coming out to get sketches of that woman. Also, tell him to park his cruiser at the front end of the Helmuths’ drive, out by the road.”

Then he phoned Chester’s barbershop.

*   *   *

Bobby Newell found Rachel working at a computer in the duty room, and he asked her, “Do you have everything you need?”

Rachel fanned through several photos of the tire tread moldings that Armbruster had made at the Helmuth farm, and said, “It’s an older Buick fitted with Goodrich 215s, so that’s all I need, at least to start with.”

“You know that’s the right tread pattern?”

“Definitely,” Rachel smiled, tapping the screen. “I just made the match, and now I’m running a cross search for Goodrich 215s and older gray Buicks, covering all of northern Ohio.”

“What about Humvees?” Newell asked.

“Once I get a list of the Buicks, I’ll cross-check registrations for those, to see if anyone owns both.”

“And that’ll do it?”

“Can’t be sure.”

Two deputies came in through the jail’s back entrance. Dripping water from their slickers, they stood in the hall at the door to the duty room. One reported to Newell, “Nothing yet, Captain.”

“OK,” Newell said. “You two get some coffee and try to dry out a little. But get back out there in about twenty. It’s gonna be a long night.”

*   *   *

In a dark pounding rain that made the streetlights seem anemic, Robertson splashed three blocks on foot to Chester’s shop and pushed in through the old glass-fronted door. The barber’s pole over the sidewalk wasn’t turning, but the inside bell over the door chimed, and soon Chester came forward from the stairwell at the back of his barbershop, switching on ceiling lights.

There were three barber’s chairs along the left wall, but only Chester cut hair there anymore. His only customers were older men who didn’t want styles, hairdos, or specials. Chester just did simple cuts with an ancient pair of electric clippers, and he always finished his work with scissors and a straight razor. He lived in an apartment over the shop, and if Chester cut only ten heads a week it didn’t matter, because he owned the half-block, two-story building, and he derived a suitable retirement income from his renters.

Robertson pulled off his long black raincoat, draped it over one of the customers’ chairs along the opposite wall, hung his rain hat on a wall hook, and sat back wearily in Chester’s tall chair.

Chester didn’t speak at first. He knew the fifties-style flattop the sheriff wanted, and he began by waxing up the sheriff’s gray hair to take the level cut.

Eventually Robertson sighed and Chester asked, “Tough day at the jail, Sheriff?”

Robertson grunted. “I could use a smoke, Chester.”

“I’ve got some, if you really want one.”

“No,” Robertson laughed. “Missy’d take me apart if she smelled tobacco on me.”

“Suit yourself, but what’s going on up at the jail?”

Robertson took his time and started with the discovery of Ruth Zook’s body, the fish kill below the Zooks’ broken dam, and the appearance and disappearance of Fannie Helmuth. He could discern no new revelation while giving his account, but as usual he found talking to Chester cathartic.

Characteristically, Chester listened without speaking. When he had the sheriff’s hair finished, he laid the chair back and lathered Robertson’s face for a shave.

Halfway through the shave, Robertson’s cell phone rang, and he answered the call as he reclined in Chester’s chair. He listened, barked a sarcastic “Great,” asked a few quick questions, and switched off.

“More trouble?” Chester asked, and took a stroke with his razor through the white lather under the sheriff’s chin.

Robertson closed his eyes and chuckled with a mix of ire and defeat. “That was Nancy Blain. I sent her out to the Helmuths’ to get a sketch of the woman who is hunting for Fannie Helmuth.”

“There was a problem?” Chester asked.

Robertson blew out a long, frustrated lungful. “The Helmuths told her that one of the Ten Commandments forbade their making any graven image.”

“They wouldn’t give you a sketch of the woman?”

“No. Sketches, photographs, statues, drawings, paintings of people—it’s all the same to them, forbidden. Or so they told Blain.”

“So you’ve got no way to identify the woman who’s behind all of this,” Chester said.

“Right,” the sheriff said. He pushed out of Chester’s chair, the barber’s apron spilling clippings onto the floor, half the sheriff’s face still lathered.

Chester put a hand on the big sheriff’s shoulder, guided him back into the barber’s chair, and said, “At least let me finish your shave.”

As he reclined, Robertson complained, “There’s nothing I can do. All my people are working this, and we’re coming up with nothing. There’s nothing I can do, and it’s driving me nuts.”

“More nuts than you usually are, Sheriff?” Chester laughed.

Mirthlessly, Robertson said, “Chester, you have no idea.”

WHEN THE sheriff stepped out of Chester’s barbershop, it had stopped raining. The night air was cool and damp like a wet cloth on Robertson’s shaved face, and the mist and fog lifting off the wet sidewalk seemed to penetrate his coat and hat like a cold bath.

Water coursed in the gutters, carrying sticks, leaves, and street debris down to the storm drains, which rattled with the surge of runoff into their grates. On the wet pavement, the streetlights and traffic signals cast an impressionistic splash of colors, which looked surreal to the plain-talking sheriff. As surreal, the sheriff thought, as an Amish girl’s suitcase full of cocaine.

At the front counter of the jail, Ed Hollings was already working the consoles for the night shift, and Robertson asked, “Ellie’s gone home?” as he came through the front door.

“She and Ricky, both,” Hollings said. “They’re packing a bag for him, for a ten A.M. flight.”

Robertson went directly down the hall and climbed the rear stairs to the second floor, where his captains had their new offices. Dan Wilsher was in the chief’s long corner office at the far end of the hall from Newell’s south corner office, and when the sheriff appeared at the chief’s door, Wilsher typed a few finishing
strokes on his keyboard and said, “Patrols are running smoothly, Bruce. No luck.”

“Double shifts?” Robertson asked, sitting in a corner chair.

“Yes, and everybody’s been worked into the rotations. I sent Baker out to relieve Armbruster at the Helmuth farm, because Stan’s been at this the longest today. I think Pat Lance needs to take some time, too. But everybody else is six on, and four off, and we’re using empty cell beds to sleep at the jail.”

“And nothing on Fannie Helmuth?”

“No. And no gray Buicks.”

“If they took her out of here, Dan, they were past our checkpoints before we even knew she was gone.”

“I know. But I think it’s possible that she got rattled by the thought of staying here and figured a way to take off on her own.”

“Then why didn’t she take her horse and buggy?” Robertson asked.

Wilsher shrugged, unable to mask his pessimism, and Robertson frowned and left.

In the duty room on the first floor, Robertson walked up to the computer desk where Rachel and Pat Lance were working, and he asked Rachel, “This the database search?”

Rachel nodded. “It’s almost finished. Two hits so far on older Buicks with Goodrich tires.”

To Lance, Robertson said, “Can you let this run, Pat, and go get some rest?”

Lance answered, “I’d rather see it through, Sheriff. It won’t be much longer.”