The Names of Our Tears (16 page)

Robertson looked to Rachel, and Rachel said, “Same here. As soon as we’ve finished with the Buicks, I’ll set up a search to match Humvee registrations in the same cities. That’s the search we can run overnight. I’ll monitor it from home. Get a couple hours’ sleep while it finishes.”

Robertson turned to leave, but Lance stood and caught his sleeve. “I’m sorry about Fannie,” she said. “I shouldn’t have left her alone.”

“Don’t worry,” Robertson said. “If she had made up her mind
to leave, she could have done it any time. No one even thought it was possible.”

“Still…”

“Get some rest, Lance. I’m going home, and you should, too. If we don’t find her tonight, we’ll figure this out in the morning.”

Sitting back down beside Rachel, Lance said, “In a bit, Sheriff. I’ll stay a little longer.”

In the hallway outside his office, Robertson met Bobby Newell, who said, “I just left a note on your desk.”

“You traced the recent calls on your office phone?”

“Yes, and I think she made two calls. The first was to Jonas Helmuth, her brother. It lasted over eight minutes.”

“That’s time enough to formulate a plan,” Robertson said. “They must have talked this over.”

“Second call was less than a minute,” Newell said. “To Howard ‘Howie’ Dent.”

“Someone she knows?”

Newell nodded. “He lives about a mile from the Helmuth farm. He’s not home, and his car isn’t there. His parents don’t know where he went.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-five. Lives at home and works the family farm with his folks. They say he’s known Fannie since they were kids. You know, friends growing up on neighboring farms. We’re looking for his car.”

“Have you tried those numbers again? Jonas and Howie?”

“Repeatedly. They’re both switched off.”

“Great, Bobby. Just great.”

“But she was less than a minute on the phone with Howie Dent, Sheriff. That’s only enough time to tell him something, or to ask for help.”

Robertson thought and scratched absently at the short bristles above his ear. “She called him to come get her?”

“Probably, but that’s just a guess. We haven’t talked with him yet.”

“Foolish,” Robertson commented.

“Maybe she thinks he can get her away from here safely.”

“Has Dan given this to his patrols?”

“I just told him. Ed is making the radio calls now.”

Robertson toed the floorboards, frustrated. “Dent’s car, the Buick, and a Humvee. You’d think we could find one of them, Bobby.”

“I figure the Buick is long gone,” Newell said. “Never coming back. Same with the Humvee. We may find them, but not around here. But the Dent car is still plausible. It’s a 2007 VW bug. Yellow. That’s the one we’ll find first. We know the plates.”

*   *   *

In the kitchen at the back of their Victorian home, Missy helped the sheriff out of his wet raincoat and hat, and while he pulled off his suit coat, she hung his wet overclothes in the alcove behind the door. Still cold and wet, the sheriff sat to strip off his Florsheims.

In house slippers, he followed his wife into the parlor and took a seat in front of the fireplace. Missy put in more wood, arranged the stack to burn hotter, and sat on the divan beside her husband.

Robertson stared for a long time at the enlivening flames, not offering any conversation. Missy sat quietly beside him. After a suitable spell, she turned to him and said, “I see you were down at Chester’s.”

“I needed to think.”

“Did he offer you a cigarette to help you think?”

“Not really.”

“Am I going to have to go back down there?”

“No, Missy. I don’t smoke anymore. You know that.”

“It doesn’t hurt to check.”

“Chester’s OK.”

“If you say so.”

More quiet time passed, and the fire burned down. Missy got up to add more firewood, and she asked, “You want some supper?”

“Is there any chicken left from last night?”

“I ate that.”

“Maybe a bowl of cereal.”

“Maybe hot oatmeal, Bruce,” Missy said, sitting beside him again.

“Did you finish your autopsy?”

“For the most part.”

“Anything new?”

“Not on the autopsy, but I tested Emma Wengerd’s letters from Ruth Zook.”

“No cocaine, I’d bet.”

“None. They were clean. Cal drove Emma home just before I closed up for the night.”

“Do you have anything we can use to identify Ruth’s killer?”

“A mangled bullet and a brass casing is all I have.”

“Fibers, prints, residues, skin cells, hairs?”

“Nothing, Bruce. The murder scene was just too compromised.”

“Wouldn’t make for a good TV show, Missy.”

“Real cases rarely do. But if you can find Fannie Helmuth, she’d be a good place to start—you know, unraveling who shot Ruth Zook.”

“You heard she’s missing?”

“Everybody in Millersburg has heard that one, Sheriff.”

“If she’s not already dead,” the sheriff said, “then I hope she’s a thousand miles away by now.”

The sheriff’s cell phone chimed, and he checked the display. “Linda Hart,” he said to Missy. “This is gonna be good.”

Answering the call, he said, “We’re looking for her, Hart. We’re looking everywhere.”

Then he alternately listened and answered.

“No, Hart. We think she got a ride.

“Howie Dent.

“Neighbor kid. We’re looking for his car.

“No. No, his phone’s switched off.

“Look, Hart, we’ll find her.

“OK. No. OK, I will.”

And he switched off.

Missy said, “Let me guess. Linda isn’t happy.”

The sheriff drew a breath. “An understatement.”

The front doorbell sounded, and the two rose together to answer it. On the front porch stood Andy Zook and his father, Alvin, each with his wet felt hat pulled down against the weather, black wool shawls draped over their shoulders.

Andy stepped forward but did not enter the house when the sheriff held the door for him. Missy pressed forward onto the porch and said, “Mr. Zook, I still cannot release her body to you. We talked about this at the morgue.”

The sheriff stepped out beside Missy. A sudden patter of rain sounded on the porch roof over their heads as a blast of wind blew water out of the overhanging trees. Then more steady rain fell, and the gloom of the night pressed in around them as a cloying mist, the dreariness enhanced in the Amish men’s faces by the pale yellow glow of the porch lights.

“You see, Doctor,” Alvin said, “tomorrow is a proper day for a funeral. We’ve already dug the grave.”

“I know, Mr. Zook, but I just can’t release the body. Not yet, anyway. Really, I can’t even tell you now when I might be able to.”

Andy Zook took a step back to stand with his father. Alvin asked, “But Doctor, is she being properly stored? Will she be OK when we get her?”

“Yes, Mr. Zook. She’s in a freezer room. And I’ll fix her forehead, like we talked about. I have the clothes you brought for her, and we’ll have her dressed for you.”

Alvin turned his eyes down. “We’ll bring plenty of ice, when you let us have her.”

“I know, Mr. Zook. And I’m sorry. But there’s more to her murder than just her death. There’s another girl who’s missing.”

“Fannie Helmuth?” Andy asked.

“Yes, Mr. Zook,” the sheriff answered. “Do you know anything about her?”

“No.”

“How about you, Alvin?”

“No.”

“If you hear something, will you tell us?”

In unison, both men answered, “Yes.”

Then for a long half minute, they stood looking at Bruce and Missy, as if they hoped more could be said to assuage their grief. As if more ought to be said to honor Ruth.

Missy cleared her throat and said, “We are so sorry for your loss, Mr. Zook. I’ll do my best to get her to you as soon as possible.”

When it was clear to them that there was little point in further conversation, the Zook men turned, walked down the porch steps into the rain, got into their buggy, and tapped the horse forward from the curb.

The sheriff stood rigid and dejected on the porch to watch the buggy disappear into the night. “I hate this, Missy,” he said. “I hate it like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I know,” Missy said at his side.

“But it’s Fannie, too. And Jodie Tapp. There’s a drug ring operating in my county, and I can’t even protect a witness.”

Missy stood silently beside her husband and let him glower into the night rain until his expression softened and he brought his eyes to hers. Then she hugged him, and they turned for the door and went inside.

As they were closing the front door, they got a call on their home phone. The sheriff answered it on the desk phone in Missy’s front study.

Pat Lance said, “Sheriff, Rachel’s search is finished, and it’s going to be just those two hits we had earlier.”

“The Buicks?” Robertson asked.

“Gray Buicks in northern Ohio, older models, with Goodrich 215s. Two hits. One over in Marion and the other up in Barberton.”

“Nearby,” Robertson commented.

“I’m going to drive to Marion tonight,” Lance started.

“Negative, Lance. Call their local police departments. Get them to do a check. In the meantime, you get some sleep. We’ll have our answers in the morning.”

“I can handle the trip, Sheriff.”

“No, Lance. We’re all tired. You, Ricky, and Stan have been at this all day, and I know Ricky and Stan are getting some rest. You need to take some downtime, too, or you’re going to start making mistakes.”

Lance hesitated and didn’t speak.

“Also,” Robertson said into the phone, “Rachel’s search for area Humvees will be available in the morning.”

“Maybe much sooner,” Lance argued.

“I don’t care, Lance. Get some sleep. That’s an order. In the meantime, half my department is out on the roads at any given time. We’ll likely have found Howie Dent’s car before the others, and I’ll need you rested when we chase after Fannie Helmuth, wherever he took her. Ricky’s going down to Florida, and that leaves you as my only detective.”

Silence came again from Lance.

“Go home, Pat,” Robertson said. “Come back fresh in the morning.”

STAN ARMBRUSTER found Howie Dent’s yellow VW bug the next morning, parked in a spot at the back of the lot for the Sugarcreek Family-Style Amish Restaurant, a quarter mile east of Sugarcreek’s large tourist hotel on Route 39. The little car was backed in next to a row of Dumpsters.

Armbruster had been out checking parking lots at hotels and motels since daybreak, and when he decided to switch to checking restaurant parking lots, too, this was the second one he had searched. He parked his truck crosswise in front of the VW and got out to try the doors. They were locked.

Through the windows, Armbruster could see nothing inside beyond the usual for a farmer’s vehicle: a battered umbrella on the backseat, a pair of muddy black rubber muck boots on the floor behind the driver’s seat, coffee cups with brown-stained lids in the cup holders, a John Deere ball cap draped over the gearshift, and a fifty-pound bag of chicken feed wedged in behind the passenger’s seat.

Inside the big restaurant, Armbruster took a circuit around the tables and booths, but Helmuth and Dent weren’t there. At the front counter, he waited in line beside a revolving display of religious books and Amish romance novels, and asked, when it
was his turn, if the cashier remembered the pair, explaining about the yellow VW parked at the back of the lot.

The young woman behind the counter was dressed in plain Mennonite attire, her hair in a bun that was rolled up under a white lace prayer covering. As she slotted money into her cash register, she answered without looking up at the corporal, “My shift started at five thirty. They might have parked here last night.”

“But why would they leave their car?” Armbruster asked.

She turned to him, smiled knowingly, and said, “Could have walked up to the hotel. Maybe didn’t want anyone to know they were there?”

“I checked there earlier,” Armbruster said. “They’re not registered.”

The cashier shrugged and glanced anxiously at the line behind Armbruster. “Sometimes they leave their cars here when they take the bus.”

She handed him a brochure for the Sugarcreek-Sarasota Bus Company and said, “Next,” to the couple behind Armbruster.

Annoyed to have been dismissed, Armbruster considered badging the girl, but he was not in uniform, and he was more interested in the bus company than anything she might tell him, so he stepped away from the counter and stood beside the cheese cooler to read the brochure.

The Sugarcreek-Sarasota Bus Company ran buses between Sugarcreek and Sarasota, Saturdays and Sundays excepted. Two drivers made the trip down, spelling each other at intervals, and two more drivers brought the buses back to Sugarcreek the next day. A bus departed Sugarcreek from the back of the restaurant parking lot at 8:00 P.M. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, while other buses made the reverse run from Sarasota to Sugarcreek on the same days. The buses each made five regular stops along their routes, one of which was a breakfast break of an hour and a half, at a restaurant in Charlotte. The last stop on the Florida runs was at 6:30 P.M. the next day, in Sarasota, at Miller’s Amish Restaurant and Clock Shoppe on
Beneva. On the Ohio runs, the buses returned to Sugarcreek in the evenings on the next days, Tuesdays through Fridays. Ticket reservations were suggested by the brochure, and a phone number was provided. Otherwise, seats were available each day on a first-come, first-served basis. The address of the bus company was a PO box number in Millersburg.

While he called the bus company’s reservations number, Armbruster left the restaurant to stand beside his truck. His call rang through to a recording, announcing that phones would be answered each weekday only between 1:00 and 4:30 P.M. Otherwise, customers could leave a message at the tone. Armbruster left a message: name, rank, badge number, phone number, urgent.

Then he double-checked the license plate on the VW and called Robertson’s number at the jail.

*   *   *

Robertson had been in his office since seven that morning. He answered Armbruster’s call, listened to the corporal’s theory about the bus, and said, “That’s good work, Stan. Run it down.”