The Names of Our Tears (27 page)

As he parked on the driveway, Andy and Alvin Zook had two other men positioned at the back of a long wagon with slatted sides. Because they had traveled after dark, the wagon was rigged at its four corners with kerosene lanterns.

Andy and Alvin were up in the bed of the wagon, sliding Ruth Zook’s coffin toward the back gate, as two helpers waited behind the wagon. When one end was ready, the Zooks jumped down at the back, and together the four men slid the heavy coffin out of the wagon. Awkwardly, they turned it around beside the wagon, carried it to the front porch, and struggled up the steps. Cal held the front door open, and they took Ruth Zook inside.

Three wooden sawhorses had been placed at the back wall of the parlor, and the men carried Ruth in and set her coffin across the sawhorses. Women gathered behind the men, Zooks and neighbors, too, and Andy Zook hinged the coffin lid open so people could see Ruth. There were tears in every eye, Cal’s included, and Irma Zook cried out and stumbled forward, on legs that Cal feared would buckle, to the head of the coffin.

In her Amish clothes, Ruth lay inside, her forehead repaired
so expertly that no one could have told she had been shot if they hadn’t known before. All around Ruth was packed crushed ice. Crushed ice lay underneath her, too, but nobody would know that unless they were familiar with Amish burials.

Cal realized that people had arrived and were lining up on the front porch to come in, so he quietly asked Alvin, “Is Emma still in her bedroom?”

“Yes,” Alvin said. “I sat with her most of the afternoon.”

“Does she know you were bringing Ruth home tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Is it all right if I go up, to try to talk with her?”

“Yes, Pastor,” Alvin said softly. “I think she needs to come down to say good-bye to Ruth. We’ll have her in the ground by noon tomorrow.”

*   *   *

Cal knocked on Emma’s bedroom door and entered. He found her kneeling at the windowsill, gazing out at the night sky. She turned briefly to see him, then returned to her study of the stars. Cal sat behind her on the edge of her bed and said, “I didn’t forget about you, Stratus Flower.”

Emma pivoted toward him on her knees, and he saw that she was crying openly. Her eyelids were red and swollen, and she held a hankie at her nose. Cal knelt beside her, and she turned back to the window, sobbing.

Cal remembered how sternly she had promised him that she wouldn’t cry and she couldn’t pray, and he laid his hand on her shoulder and said, “Next you’ll tell me you’ve been praying, Emma.”

Emma nodded. “I’m not good at it,” she said through her tears. “All I do is say how much it hurts. I don’t think God hears me.”

“He hears you, Emma. He is close to you now because you can tell him how it hurts you to lose Ruth.”

“I didn’t know my heart could be so broken,” she said. “I feel like my heart has been crushed and I can’t breathe. I wanted to die and be with Ruth.”

Cal waited a moment and then said, “The sheriff told me about the truck.”

Emma nodded and seemed ashamed. “I won’t do it again.”

“You are supposed to have a life, Emma. A full life. One of your own.”

“Ruth can have mine,” Emma said. “Tell God to give my life to Ruth.”

“Then who would remember Ruth as well as you can?”

Emma shook her head. “I’m forgetting what she looked like.”

Cal weakened on his knees, but held to his place beside her. “You can come downstairs to see her, Emma. They’ve brought her home.”

Emma doubled over in front of the window and buried her face in her lap. Cal planted his forearms on the floor beside her and whispered near to her ear, “God is close to the brokenhearted, Emma.”

Releasing her tears completely, Emma cried out and sobbed on her knees, rocking with her arms folded over her belly. Cal embraced her and let her rock and cry in front of the window.

“Tears are all the prayers I have, now,” Emma sobbed. “Tears are my prayers.”

Something profound broke loose in Cal’s heart. Something newly free of burden. Something like the majesty of flight. A celebration of tears set free.

“I miss Ruth,” Emma said.

“I know,” Cal said, misunderstanding.

“No.
I miss Ruth
,” Emma repeated. “Those are the names of my tears.”

Mixing his sobs with hers, Cal began to weep at her side, holding her shoulders with one of his arms, holding his eyes under the other arm, because he feared the release of her prayers would break him apart.

RICKY DROVE up to Tampa Friday morning for an early flight, and Mike and Caroline Branden met Ray Lee for an early lunch at the New Pass Grill and Bait Shop, a weathered bayside shack with a dock where fishermen could buy bait and with picnic tables under trees at the water’s edge. They stood in line and bought sandwiches and oranges in Styrofoam boxes, then carried their lunches to the tables painted with a rainbow of pastel colors. Ray Lee chose a po’boy, and, “living local,” as Caroline put it, the Brandens each chose a BLT on untoasted white bread.

Ray Lee was taciturn and distracted by his thoughts, so halfway through her sandwich, Caroline asked, “Is Jodie OK, Ray Lee?”

He put his po’boy back in the box. “I’ve been out most of the morning. Since six, really. She slept in my guest room and didn’t want to talk last night. When I woke up, she had already finished half a pot of coffee.”

“She’s probably still in shock,” the professor said. He had finished half of his BLT and was peeling his orange.

Caroline asked, “Was she better this morning?”

“She wouldn’t talk about anything, but she got three calls that beeped in. She had her phone set to go to the message box, so she didn’t bother to pick up any of the calls.”

“Is she still there?” Caroline asked.

“As far as I know,” Orton said. “I’ve been running errands.”

Caroline held his gaze and Orton asked, nervously, “What?”

“Those old suitcases,” Caroline said. “Do you really think they were Jodie’s?”

“Who else’s?”

“I don’t know. They just seemed out of place to me.”

Branden asked, “Because she’s a modern decorator?”

“Very modern,” Caroline said, “from what you described.”

The three sat and thought as boats pulled in and out at the docks. Tables were filling up with locals who knew the grill well. Fumes from a dozen boat motors circled and settled around the grill’s wooden docks as more cars pulled into the gravel lot out front.

Ray Lee pulled his phone out and dialed a number, saying, “Jodie’s cell.” He held a hand cupped over his other ear as an outboard raced away from the bait shop.

“No answer.”

He tried the number at his home phone.

“No answer.”

He called the phone at Jodie’s trailer.

“No answer.”

“I don’t get it,” Orton said as he put away his phone.

“How long has Jodie been a waitress at Miller’s?” Caroline asked.

“Ever since I’ve known her,” Orton said. “Years.”

“And do I understand it right—that Jodie is the one who gave Fannie Helmuth the old suitcase that she used?”

“Yes,” Orton said. “At least that’s what Ricky said.”

“And Ruth Zook brought home an old suitcase, too?”

“Don’t know,” Orton said. “All Ricky said was that she brought home an
extra
suitcase.”

“But a modern bag would look out of place for an Amish girl on a bus, don’t you think?” Caroline said.

Orton paused with his eyes closed. Opened, he said, “You’re thinking that Jodie gave an old suitcase to both Fannie and Ruth.”

“I’m just wondering,” Caroline said, “why Jodie Tapp would keep any old suitcases at her trailer.”

Orton shook his head and called Jodie’s phone again.

“No answer.”

*   *   *

The Brandens pulled in behind Orton at Jodie Tapp’s trailer and followed him down the narrow pathway to her side door. He knocked, but got no answer. When he tried the knob, the door opened. He called out Jodie’s name several times, and then reached inside to switch on the lights. Jodie didn’t answer.

Ray Lee turned back to the Brandens and said, “I know her, and I believe she’s in danger. So I’m going to look around inside.”

The professor said, “I’ll come with you.”

Caroline said, “I don’t have a badge,” and she watched from the doorway.

Inside, Branden and Orton saw that furnishings, mostly small items, had been removed. Bare spots on the walls showed where pictures had been taken down. Magazines had been left on the large, hammered-copper table in front of the couch, but the smaller end tables and decorator lamps were gone.

In a front closet, there were no hanging clothes and no shoes on the floor. In the kitchen, drawers were empty and the shelves held no plates, bowls, or glasses.

Caroline called in, “Check in the bedroom,” and the two men walked back down the narrow hallway of the trailer. When they came back to the front, each was carrying an old, empty, strap-leather suitcase, and Ray Lee said, “All her clothes are gone.”

IN THE sheriff’s office, Ricky Niell made his report. Robertson listened with a spreading frown stretching the corners of his mouth.

They had not captured anyone alive.

The brass casing that Ricky had carried home
might match
the one that little John and Mahlon Byler had knifed out of the horse’s hoof at the murder scene.

There would be no way to know, lacking further arrests, who had actually shot Ruth Zook.

Other than Dewey, who was dead, none of the drug-running crew had been captured, either in Ohio or in Florida. No cutters and no baggers. No dealers and no transporters. No bosses and no pirates. No Teresa Molina and no Humvee.

And Fannie Helmuth? Ricky wouldn’t even try to guess.

Fuming behind his desk, Robertson paced back and forth, pounding one fist into his other cupped hand, and then switching when one became tender. After pacing and pounding out his frustration for several long moments, he finally lost steam and turned to face Niell across his desk.

“We lost,” he said to Niell. “On all the points that matter to me, we lost.”

“I know,” Ricky said, “but there’s more.”

Robertson sat wearily down on his swivel rocker.

Niell said, “I was dropping off the brass casing at Missy’s labs when Ray Lee called.”

Robertson said nothing, waiting with a scowl.

“And,” Ricky continued, “Jodie Tapp has pulled out. Moved. Run off, or something like that.”

“Not abducted again?” Robertson asked.

Ricky shook his head. “Ray Lee says she cleared her trailer out. And he thinks Caroline might be right. That Jodie never was abducted.”

Robertson pulled himself up to his desk and planted his elbows on his desktop, palms flat on the wood and fingers splayed. He thought, glanced up at Niell, and thought some more.

When he looked up again, he said, “She was in on it, Ricky. All along.”

BY THE time the sheriff got home, Missy had set out dinner on the kitchen table. Robertson pulled off his slicker, hung it on a wall peg, and sat down smiling. “Been out to the Zooks’,” he said. “The EPA equipment is a total loss. Completely underwater. And anything they might have found environmentally has been washed away in the flood.”

“That’ll suit your sensibilities regarding federal agencies,” Missy said.

“It does,” Robertson laughed. “What’s for dinner?”

Missy lifted the lid on her bakeware. “Meat loaf.” She served him a plate with mashed potatoes.

The sheriff stirred his fork through his mashed potatoes and said, “Nothing worked out on this one.”

“Ricky told me.”

They ate together in silence for a while, and then Bruce said, “Cal says Emma Wengerd is going to be OK.”

“Good news, there at least.”

The sheriff pushed back from his plate. “I’ve got no idea where Fannie Helmuth is.”

“She may never come home, Bruce, but does it matter?”

“She’s not safe, Missy, and this isn’t over. It won’t be over
until she can come home. Until Jodie Tapp and Teresa Molina are in jail.”

“Why would she come home?”

“I don’t know. But she’s not safe here if she does come home. She’s not safe anywhere, really.”

“How would anyone find her?”

“I traced her as far as Memphis, Missy. It wouldn’t be that hard for them to look for her. Just start checking Amish settlements to start with.”

“What, all across the country?”

“I don’t know. I just know she can’t come home. Not with Molina and Tapp still running free.”

“If her family has all moved out, why would she want to come home?”

“There’s her farm just sitting there, Missy. Who’s gonna take that?”

“I don’t see that there’s anything you can do here, Bruce.”

“I can send Ricky over there, Monday,” Robertson said. “To check on the farm.”

“OK, can’t hurt.”

Unsettled, the sheriff stood and paced in the kitchen. Missy stayed seated and waited. Eventually, the sheriff asked, “Did you compare those casings?”

Missy sighed, stood, and cleared dishes from the table. “They matched, Bruce.”

The sheriff sat at the table. “So, Dewey Molina’s gun killed Ruth Zook.”

Missy sat back down at the table. “Yes, the gun did. Can’t say
who
shot her, though.”

Robertson got up, carried his cup of coffee into the parlor, and sat on the divan.

Missy joined him and asked, “Are you going to be able to leave it like this? An unsolved murder?”

“I guess I have to,” the sheriff complained. “But this case isn’t over for me until I know Fannie Helmuth is safe. And that means arresting Teresa Molina and Jodie Tapp. In the meantime, Teresa
Molina’s entire outfit is surely going to move somewhere else, so it’s the feds’ problem, now.”

“Pirates and interstate drug running,” Missy said. “It always was the feds’ problem.”

“I suppose so.”

“You look tired, Bruce. Frazzled.”