Whiskers of the Lion (19 page)

 • • • 

On the back porch, Branden showed Armbruster and Newell where the nail was positioned behind the hutch. Newell came forward and felt behind the hutch, and then Armbruster did the same. Branden said, “That's the nail where they kept the VW's spare keys.”

Saying this startled the professor. His eyes tracked several thoughts at once. He brushed his fingers through his hair. Astonished by new insight, he said, “It's the keys. It has always been the keys.”

Armbruster stepped forward again to feel the nail. After he had done so, he took hold of the corner of the tall hutch and pulled it out from the wall. There he saw the nail, and a carillon of bells pealed away in his mind. His thoughts raced back through the questions he had asked Fannie Helmuth just yesterday. When he saw there what the professor was talking about, he practically jumped in place. “It's the backpack,” he said, and he turned back immediately to dash into the living room and out through the front door.

When Armbruster returned, he had the red backpack that Robertson had given them at the Helmuth farm. It was the one Armbruster had found in the rain beside the yellow VW. He took it into the living room, and as Branden and Newell watched, he knelt in front of the seated Mrs. Dent to show it to her. “Mrs. Dent?” he asked. “Is this Howie's backpack? We've always assumed that it was, but I need you to look at it.”

Susan shook her head as if to deny herself any solace. She shook her head as if she deserved no sympathy for her pain. But she did look at the backpack, and then she took it into her hands. “No,” she said dismissively, handing the backpack to Armbruster. “He has his FFA badge pinned to the flap.”

Armbruster handed it gently back to her, but he retained his hold on the front flap. “Here in the flap, Mrs. Dent,” he said. “Aren't these the holes that his badge would have made?”

Susan fingered the tattered holes where long ago her son had pinned his Future Farmers of America badge, and a sheen of tears appeared in her eyes. She turned the backpack over, and she examined the straps. Small holes were evident there, too. “Howie had other pins on these straps,” she said, and she clasped the backpack violently to her breast. “Oh Howie!” she shrieked, and she began to rock on her seat.

Armbruster took her hands away from the straps, and he held them. He waited for her to realize that he was talking to her. He waited for her to stop rocking. When she looked back into his eyes, he asked, “Are you certain, Mrs. Dent? Are you certain that this is Howie's backpack?”

“He loved this bag,” Susan sobbed. “He carried everything in here.”

Armbruster stood and motioned for Branden and Newell to take charge of Mrs. Dent. Hurrying toward the front door, he said, “I need to make a call.” He dashed out onto the front porch and found Robertson coming up the porch steps. Waving his hands with excitement, Armbruster blurted, “It's the bus ticket, Sheriff!”

Robertson smiled knowingly. “And the backpack, Stan.”

As the sheriff came up to the top of the porch steps, Professor Branden emerged from the house and stood beside Armbruster. With a satisfied smile, he said to Robertson and Armbruster, “It's the keys. It's the backpack and the bus tickets, but it has always been the keys, too. We've known this all along. We just didn't realize it was important.”

Mrs. Dent appeared at the front door, and she came out ahead of Bobby Newell. “What? What can you tell me about my Howie?”

Behind her, Newell stepped out onto the porch. “Howie would have left his backpack on the bus in Charlotte,” he said. “We should have guessed that. He had only his phone. He never used any credit cards, because he left his wallet in his backpack, on the bus when they went in to breakfast. His keys and his wallet were left on the bus, in his backpack. That's why he needed the spare set of keys.”

Susan Dent smiled as though lost in a haze. She turned back to Newell and said, “Oh, I told you. Howie keeps everything in that backpack.”

Armbruster stepped forward. “Fannie told me that she had to buy their bus tickets to Memphis.”

“Right,” Robertson said. “It's all of that. Howie had to get keys to the VW from the nail behind the hutch because he left his own keys on the bus. In his backpack. On the day they fled to Memphis.”

Branden said to Robertson, “You know who killed him, don't you.”

Robertson smiled. Then he frowned. “I should have known when Stan told me that Fannie had to pay for their cab fare and for their bus tickets to Memphis. She told Stan that Howie didn't have his wallet when they ducked into that cab. That's what I figured out there in Baltic. I wondered about the keys. Why wouldn't Howie have had his own set of keys? Well, we should have seen it right from the start. He needed the spare set of keys when he came home for his VW, because he left his own keys on the bus to Sarasota last April. In his red backpack, along with his wallet. We thought we didn't have any evidence, but we always knew that he did not have his own set of keys. That was the evidence we ignored.”

Behind them, near the front corner of the house, the deep thud of an ax biting into the trunk of a tree turned all eyes to Richard Dent. With the muscles of his face bunched in rage, he screeched, “I'll kill him!”

Dent's hands jumped against the ax handle. With the fury of a madman, he wrenched the ax head free of the wood. He advanced toward the porch with the ax raised over his head.

But to his left, Pat Lance shouted, “Stop!” and when Dent looked at her, she was walking a straight line toward him in her Amish clothes, with her revolver drawn from her thigh holster.

Dent turned toward her with the ax, and he hesitated as he looked both at the gun and at the Amish woman approaching him.

Again Lance shouted, “Stop!”

Richard raised his ax to full height and glared at Lance's revolver, seeming to contemplate what speed he could manage with his blade.

The sheriff shouted, “Stop, Dent!” and Richard turned away from Lance to see Robertson coming down off the porch, pointing his gun at him, too.

With a scream of agony, Dent slowly turned himself toward the front corner of his house. His eyes closed tightly, and his ax arched around swiftly to sink its blade deep into the corner frame of the house. When he fell to his knees, Dent growled to Robertson, “I'm going with you to kill him.”

Robertson motioned for Lance to lower her weapon. He came up to Dent and took his elbow to help the man to his feet. As he put his gun back into his belt holster, the sheriff said to Dent, “You don't have to go anywhere, Richard. He's going to come to us.”

Then Robertson smiled at Lance. “Pat, I want you to order a pizza.”

Friday, August 19

3:35
P.M.

SHERIFF ROBERTSON climbed the back staircase at the jail that afternoon with his mind racing over details. He pushed open the metal door to the second-floor hallway, and as he passed Bobby Newell's office at the south end of the hall, he stuck his head in and said to his captain, “Twenty minutes, Bobby.”

Newell answered, “Twenty minutes, Sheriff,” with his hand cupped over his phone, and Robertson continued along the hallway as if he were racing the clock. Newell returned to his call.

At the north end of the second-floor hall, Robertson entered the office of Chief Deputy Dan Wilsher. Wilsher was standing at his north-facing window, gazing down onto Courthouse Square. There the August sun was shining brightly on the Civil War monument, which was starting to cast its afternoon shadow toward the sandstone courthouse. Robertson joined Wilsher at the window. For a brief moment, the sheriff contented himself with watching the comings and goings on the lawn below them. Then Robertson gave vent to harsh self-judgment. “I should have seen it sooner, Dan.”

Wilsher turned from the window to face the sheriff. “You didn't know until yesterday that Fannie had to pay for their cab ride into Charlotte. And even then you couldn't have guessed that it was because Howie left his backpack on the bus.”

“It was the keys, Dan,” Robertson answered. “We had that all along. Almost right from the start. Dent didn't have his own set of keys, and that should have told us more.” Robertson moved himself to a seat in front of Wilsher's desk. “Dan, if we had figured this out Wednesday, we might still have had a chance at him.”

Wilsher shook his head. “He has no idea that we're looking for him, Bruce.”

“Is anyone watching his house in Sugarcreek?”

“No,” Wilsher said. “There's no point in alerting him beforehand. And I don't like the idea of our trying to take him down in public. If he's still in Holmes County, we'll have our best shot at him in the St. James.”

Robertson rose and stuffed his fists into the side pockets of his sport coat. “I agree, Dan. So, for tonight, I want to be set up before seven o'clock.”

“Do you still want us to move the couple out of room four? They're exposed on the third floor.”

“Yes, Dan. Do that now. I want the only people up there to be our people. And then Earnest Troyer, if he really delivers that pizza.”

“Are we going to wand him in the lobby?”

“We aren't going to put anyone in the lobby, Dan.”

“Why not?”

“If we really want Troyer to come up after Fannie, he needs to think that we're not guarding her that closely anymore. And I want him isolated. So that no civilian mixes into the play. I want him trapped on the third floor, where he has nowhere to run.”

“What makes you think he'll show up, Bruce? If he's smart, he's a thousand miles away by now.”

Robertson shrugged. “I don't know what he'll do. We showed Lance and Branden all around today. That was always the plan. If he thinks that she really is Fannie, I don't believe he'll be able to resist coming up to her room for a look at her.”

Wilsher paused to think. “All we'll be able to do is take him in for questioning.”

“That's better than just letting him disappear, Dan. What I really want is cause for a search warrant for his house and for the bus company.”

“And if he doesn't give us cause?” Wilsher asked.

Robertson wrenched a frown into place and left Wilsher's office without giving a reply.

Down on the first floor, the sheriff waited out the rest of the twenty minutes alone in his office, wondering if Fannie had understood his letter. He was confident that he had laid it all out for her. He was certain that he had told her enough. The question was whether or not she understood what he had told her. And whether or not she had the courage to act on it.

A moment passed, and Robertson's thoughts drifted to his childhood nightmare. He struggled to shake himself loose from the memory of the lion, and he wondered where he had found the kind of courage that he now asked of Fannie. He wondered if he had asked too much of her. He wondered again why he couldn't recognize the face of the lion tamer who taunted him in his dream to put his face close to the bars, the lion tamer who tried to press him forward to feel the whiskers of the lion on his cheek.

 • • • 

When it was time for the meeting, Bobby Newell was the first to arrive. He entered without speaking and stood by Robertson's west windows to watch the traffic on Clay Street. Dan Wilsher entered next. He took a seat in front of Robertson's desk. Stan Armbruster and Mike Branden arrived at the same time. Armbruster sat beside Wilsher, and Branden took his customary place in the low leather chair at the front corner of Robertson's desk. Pat Lance arrived last. Like the professor, she was dressed in English clothes. As she entered the office, she said, “I'm glad to have gotten out of that long Amish dress.”

The professor turned toward her to make a reply, but Robertson started his meeting directly. “OK, Stan. What did you learn?”

Armbruster consulted notes in his spiral book. “Dick Bruder is one of the bus drivers. I called him when we first started looking for Fannie last April, and he remembered me today. He says that all of the lost-and-found items from the Sugarcreek-Sarasota Bus Company are sent back to Sugarcreek on the very next run. They are kept there in case anyone inquires about lost property. So that's Earnest Troyer, Sheriff, just like you suspected. He's in charge of the lost and found. And he delivers pizzas in the bus company's slow months.”

“I thought so,” Robertson said. “I interviewed him back in April. I'd bet anything that he delivers more than pizza. I'd bet a month's pay that he's been a part of this drug outfit all along. He took possession of the drugs from Teresa Molina, and he had a natural route to make deliveries when he went out on the weekends with his pizzas.”

“I interviewed him, too,” Armbruster said. “He's the one who gave me Bruder's phone number.”

Robertson shook his head with disgust, and he turned to Lance. “Pat, are you willing to wear your Fannie Helmuth outfit tonight? I expect Earnest Troyer will come looking for her.”

“I wouldn't miss it, Sheriff.”

“Mike?” Robertson asked Branden.

“Sure,” the professor said. “But I'm going to stay in room six, with Pat.”

“OK,” Robertson said to conclude his meeting. “We'll send Pat and Mike into the St. James at seven. The pizza delivery is supposed to be at eight, and I don't think old Ernie will be able to resist.”

 • • • 

After his people had left, Sheriff Robertson remained alone in his office. Time passed, but he took no note of it. Plans had been made, and he had nothing to do but wait. He thought of dinner, and he turned for the light switch beside his office door. He switched the lights off, and he was about to open the door and leave when Del Markely knocked on the door and entered. She saw that the lights were out, so she turned them on. Behind her was FBI agent William Parker. Carrying a white envelope, Parker entered the office behind Markely. He dropped the envelope onto Robertson's desk, and Markely left without speaking.

Robertson returned to his desk. He turned the envelope so that he could read it. On the outside, it was addressed to him. The envelope had been sliced open on its short edge. Gray fingerprint dust shook loose from the paper inside when Robertson pulled several pages out. It was a hand-written letter with the salutation: “Dear Sheriff Robertson.” The sheriff turned to the last of three pages and read the closing, “Gratefully, Fannie Helmuth.”

“OK,” Robertson said as he laid the pages on his desk. “What is this, Parker?”

Stiffly, Parker demanded, “What did you write to Fannie Helmuth?”

Evenly, Robertson returned, “Why do you want to know?”

“She thanks you in her letter, there, for helping her ‘see her way free of this.'”

“So, you've already read my mail,” Robertson said. “You know what's in Fannie's letter.”

“Of course,” Parker said. “Where is Fannie Helmuth?”

To suppress a smile, Robertson pressed his legs painfully against the edge of his desk, and he made a show of drumming his knuckles sharply on the desktop. “I don't know, Parker,” he intoned. “Have you lost her?”

Parker seemed to deflate. His posture surrendered some rigidity. He sank onto a chair in front of the sheriff's desk. Robertson matched him by sitting at his desk, too.

“We think she slipped out with the maids,” Parker said. “And I think she got the idea from you. I think that's what her letter means. We found it in her bedroom, laying out on a blue dress that one of the maids had given her this morning. Do you know that they all wear identical dresses?”

“Have you looked for her, Parker?”

“Of course.”

“Then my guess is that you'll never find her,” Robertson said, still working earnestly to suppress a smile.

“Look, Robertson. She could simply have said that she did not wish to testify for us against Teresa Molina.”

Robertson laughed. “Really, Parker? Would you have settled for that?”

Parker studied Robertson's broad smile for signs of deceit, and then he asked authoritatively, “Do you, Sheriff, have any evidence that Fannie committed a crime? Because, if you do, you're obliged to tell me, and we could force her to testify.”

Deliberately, Robertson said, “I know of no crime by Fannie Helmuth.”

“I didn't figure you would,” Parker said. “I wouldn't expect you to admit it, even if you did.”

“Why is that, Agent Parker?”

Parker stood and moved to the door. “Read the letter, Sheriff. Fannie says it all.”

“I will,” Robertson said. “When I'm ready.”

Parker hesitated with his hand on the doorknob. He thought, released the knob, and turned back to Robertson. “What kind of person is she, Sheriff? I mean, really.”

Robertson folded Fannie's letter and slid it back into its envelope. Gently, he laid the letter on his desk and answered Parker by saying, “She's the kind of person who was brave enough to testify, and smart enough to change her mind.”

“OK,” Parker said as he moved back toward Robertson's desk. “What did you tell her to change her mind?”

“Nothing,” Robertson said with a smile that put light in his eyes. “She made that decision on her own.”

“She says in her letter that you told her something,” Parker countered.

Robertson considered his answer for a long moment. “I told her, Parker, that I thought she'd be safe among her own people.”

“That's all?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, she obviously changed her mind about testifying,” Parker said as he turned again for the door.

“Maybe
you
told her something to change her mind,” Robertson said. “Maybe
you
changed her mind, Parker.”

“No way,” Parker said. “No way at all. We were preparing to move her to Cleveland, but we never told her that.”

“Anyway,” Robertson led.

“No, really,” Parker tried again. “What kind of person is she?”

“Evidently quite remarkable,” Robertson said with a proud smile. “She's the kind of person who has the courage to live her life honestly. She's the kind of person who could inspire her friend Howie Dent to stand by her while she hid from Teresa Molina all summer long. And last, Agent Parker, she's the plain kind of local genius who can slip sideways through the FBI's security net, and never be noticed while doing it.”

 • • • 

“I'm going to help you, Jodie,” Fannie said. “I'll get the money for you.”

“Thank you,” Jodie said. “Thank you a thousand times.”

“I still have to work out some details,” Fannie said.

“You're not with the FBI anymore?”

“No,” Fannie said. “I slipped away with the maids.”

“So, can you tell me where you are now?”

“I still need some time,” Fannie said. “It's going to take the rest of the day to track down your money.”

“I'll meet you anywhere, Fannie. Just tell me where.”

“I don't know yet. I'll call.”

“Fannie, I've only got until noon tomorrow.”

“I know.”

“I have to save enough time to get back to Akron by noon.”

“I know, Jodie. I'll call.”