Plain Truth (2 page)

The lights used for milking were powered by a generator, as were the vacuum pumps hooked up to the teats of the cows. Aaron Fisher knelt beside one of the herd, spraying the udders with iodine solution and then wiping them dry with a page ripped from an old phone book. “Samuel, Levi,” he greeted.

He did not tell them what to do, because by now they already knew. Samuel maneuvered the wheelbarrow beneath a silo and began to mix the feed. Levi shoveled out the manure behind each cow, periodically looking at Samuel and wishing he was already the senior farmhand.

The barn door opened, and Aaron's father ambled in. Elam Fisher lived in the
grossdawdi ham
, a small apartment attached to the main building. Although Elam helped out with the milking, Levi knew the unwritten rules: make sure the old man carried nothing heavy; keep him from taxing himself; and make him believe that Aaron couldn't do without him, although Aaron could have, any day of the week. “Boys,” Elam boomed, then stopped in his tracks, his nose wrinkled above his long, white beard. “Why, we've had a calf.”

Puzzled, Aaron stood. “No. I checked the pen.”

Elam shook his head. “There's the smell of it, all the same.”

“More like it's Levi, needing a bath,” Samuel joked, emptying a fresh scoop of feed in front of the first cow.

As Samuel passed him with the wheelbarrow, Levi came up swinging and slipped on a slick of manure. He landed on his bottom in the ditch built to catch the refuse and set his jaw at Samuel's burst of laughter.

“Come on now,” Aaron chided, although a grin tugged at his mouth. “Samuel, leave him be. Levi, I think Sarah left your spare clothes in the tack room.”

Levi scrambled to his feet, his cheeks burning. He walked past Aaron, past the chalkboard with the annotated statistics on the cows due to calve, and turned into the small cubby that housed the blankets and bridles used for the farm's workhorses and mules. Like the rest of the barn, it was neat as a pin. Braided leather reins crossed the wall like spiderwebs, and shelves were stacked with spare horseshoes and jars of liniment.

Levi glanced about but could see no clothing. Then he noticed something bright in the pile of horse blankets. Well, that would make sense. If Sarah Fisher had washed his things, they had probably been done with the other laundry. He lifted the heavy, striped blanket and recognized his spare trousers and jewel green shirt, rolled into a ball. Levi stepped forward, intending to shake it out, and found himself staring down into the tiny, still face of a newborn.

“Aaron!” Levi skidded to a stop, panting. “Aaron, you've got to come.” He ran toward the tack room. Aaron exchanged a glance with his father, and they both started after the boy, with Samuel trailing.

Levi stood in front of a stool piled high with horse blankets, on top of which rested a sleeping baby wrapped in a boy's shirt. “I … I don't think it's breathing.”

Aaron stepped closer. It had been a long time since he'd been around a baby this small. The soft skin of its face was cold. He knelt and tipped his head, hoping that its breath would fall into the cup of his ear. He flattened his hand against its chest.

Then he turned to Levi. “Run to the Schuylers and ask to borrow their phone,” he said. “Call the police.”

“Get out,” Lizzie Munro said to the officer in charge. “I'm not going to check an unresponsive infant. Send an ambulance.”

“They're already there. They want a detective.”

Lizzie rolled her eyes. Every year that she'd been a detective-sergeant with the East Paradise Township police, the paramedics seemed to get younger. And more stupid. “It's a medical call, Frank.”

“Well, something's out of kilter down there.” The lieutenant handed her a slip of paper with an address on it.

“Fisher?” Lizzie read, frowning at the surname and the street. “They're Amish?”

“Think so.”

Lizzie sighed and grabbed her big black purse and her badge. “You know this is a waste of time.” In the past, Lizzie had occasionally dealt with Old Order Amish teenagers, who'd gather together in some guy's barn to drink and dance and generally disturb the peace. Once or twice she'd been called to take a statement from an Amish businessman who'd been burglarized. But for the most part, the Amish had little contact with the police. Their community existed unobtrusively within the regular world, like a small air bubble impervious to the fluid around it.

“Just take their statements, and I'll make it up to you.” Frank held the door open for her as she left her office. “I'll find a nice, fat felony for you to sink your teeth into.”

“Don't do me any favors,” Lizzie said, but she was grinning as she got into her car and headed to the Fisher farm.

The Fishers' front yard was crowded with a squad car, an ambulance, and a buggy. Lizzie walked up to the house and knocked on the front door.

No one answered, but a voice behind Lizzie called out a greeting, the cadences of the woman's dialect softening her consonants. A middle-aged Amish woman wearing a lavender dress and a black apron hurried toward Lizzie. “I am Sarah Fisher. Can I help you?”

“I'm Detective-Sergeant Lizzie Munro.”

Sarah nodded solemnly and led Lizzie into the barn's tack room, where two paramedics knelt over a baby. Lizzie hunkered down beside one EMT. “What have you got?”

“Newborn, emphasis on the new. No pulse or respirations when we got here, and we haven't been able to revive him. One of the farmworkers found him wrapped up in that green shirt, underneath a horse blanket. Can't tell if it was stillborn or not, but someone was trying to hide the body all the same. I think one of your guys is around by the milking stalls, he might be able to tell you more.”

“Wait a second—someone gave birth to this baby, and then tried to conceal it?”

“Yeah. About three hours ago,” the paramedic murmured.

Suddenly the simple medical response call was more complicated than Lizzie had expected, and the most likely suspect was standing four feet away. Lizzie glanced up at Sarah Fisher, who wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “The baby … it's dead?”

“I'm afraid so, Mrs. Fisher.”

Lizzie opened her mouth to ask another question, but was distracted by the distant sound of equipment being moved about. “What's that?”

“The men, finishing up the milking.”

Lizzie's brows shot up. “The milking?”

“These things …” the woman said quietly. “They still have to be done.”

Suddenly, Lizzie felt profoundly sorry for her. Life never stopped for death; she should know that better than most. She gentled her voice and put her hand on Mrs. Fisher's shoulder, not quite certain what sort of psychological state the woman was in. “I know this must be very difficult for you, but I'm going to have to ask you some questions about your baby.”

Sarah Fisher raised her eyes to meet Lizzie's. “It's not my baby,” she said. “I have no idea where it came from.”

A half hour later, Lizzie leaned down beside the crime scene photographer. “Stick to the barn. The Amish don't like having their pictures taken.” The man nodded, shooting a roll around the tack room, with several close-ups of the infant's corpse.

At least now she understood why she'd been called down. An unidentified dead infant, an unknown mother who'd abandoned it. And all this smack in the middle of an Amish farm.

She had interviewed the neighbors, a Lutheran couple who swore that they'd never heard so much as raised voices from the Fishers, and who couldn't imagine where the baby might have come from. They had two teenage daughters, one of whom sported a nose and navel ring, who had alibis for the previous night. But they had agreed to undergo gynecological exams to rule themselves out as suspects.

Sarah Fisher, on the other hand, had not.

Lizzie considered this as she stood in the milk room, watching Aaron Fisher empty a small hand tank of milk into a larger one. He was tall and dark, his arms thick with ropes of muscle developed by farming. His beard brushed the second button of his shirt. As he finished, he set down the tank and turned to give Lizzie his full attention.

“My wife was not pregnant, Detective,” Aaron said.

“You're certain?”

“Sarah can't have more children. The doctors made it that way, after she almost died birthing our youngest.”

“Your other children, Mr. Fisher—where were they when the baby was found?”

A shadow passed over the man's face, disappearing as quickly as Lizzie had marked it. “My daughter was asleep, upstairs. My other child … is gone.”

“Gone, like down the road to her own home?”

“Dead.”

“This daughter who was asleep is how old?”

“Eighteen.”

At that, Lizzie glanced up. Neither Sarah Fisher nor the paramedics had mentioned that there was another woman of childbearing age who lived on the farm. “Is it possible that she was pregnant, Mr. Fisher?”

The man's face turned so red that Lizzie grew worried. “She isn't even married.”

“It's not a prerequisite, sir.”

Aaron Fisher stared at the detective coldly, clearly. “It is for us.”

It seemed to take forever to get through milking all forty cows, and it had nothing to do with the arrival of a second battalion of police officers. Samuel closed the pasture gate after letting out the heifers and walked toward the main house. He should go help Levi sweep out the barn one last time for the morning, but this once it would wait.

He didn't bother to knock. Just opened the door, as if the home was already his and the young woman inside at the stove also belonged to him. He stopped for a moment, watching the sun grace her profile and gild her honey hair, her movements quick and efficient as she fixed breakfast.

“Katie,” Samuel said, stepping inside.

She turned quickly, the spoon flying up in the batter bowl as she started. “Oh, Samuel. I wasn't expecting you yet.” She peered around his shoulder, as if she might see an army behind him. “Mam said I ought to make enough for everyone.”

Samuel walked forward and took the bowl, setting it on the counter. He reached for her hands. “You don't look so good.”

She grimaced. “Thanks for the compliment.”

He drew her closer. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes, when they met his, were the jewel blue of an ocean he had once seen on the cover of a travel magazine, and— he imagined—just as endlessly deep. They were what had first attracted him to Katie, across a crowded church service. They were what made him believe that, even years from now, he would do anything for this one woman.

She ducked away from him and began to flip the pancakes. “You know me,” she said breathlessly. “I get nervous around these
Englischers
.”

“Not so many. Only a handful of policemen.” Samuel frowned at her back in concern. “They may want to talk to you, though. They seem to want to talk to everyone.”

She set the spatula down and turned slowly. “What did they find out there?”

“Your mother didn't tell you?”

Katie slowly shook her head, and Samuel hesitated, torn between her trust in him to tell her the truth and the desire to keep her blissfully unaware for as long as possible. He ran his hands through his straw-colored hair, making it stand on end. “Well, they found a baby. Dead.”

He saw her eyes widen, those incredible eyes, and then she sank down onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Oh,” she whispered, stunned.

In a moment he was at her side, holding her close and whispering that he would take her away from here, and to heck with the police. He felt her soften against him, and for a moment Samuel was triumphant—after so many days of being rebuffed, to finally come back to this. But Katie stiffened and drew away. “I don't think this is the time,” she chided. She stood and turned off the stove's gas burners, then folded her arms across her middle. “Samuel, I think I
would
like you to take me somewhere.”

“Anywhere,” he promised.

“I want you to take me to see this baby.”

• • •

“It's blood,” the medical examiner confirmed, kneeling in the calving pen in front of a small, dark stain. “And placenta. Not a cow's, from the size of it. Someone had a baby recently.”

“Stillborn?”

He hesitated. “I can't say without doing the autopsy—but my hunch says no.”

“So it just … died?”

“I didn't say that, either.”

Lizzie sat back on her heels. “You're telling me someone intentionally killed this baby?”

The man shrugged. “I guess that's up to you to find out.”

Lizzie calculated quickly in her mind. Given such a small window between the baby's birth and death, chances were that the perpetrator of the crime was the infant's mother. “What are we talking? Strangulation?”

“Smothering, more likely. I should have a preliminary autopsy report by tomorrow.”

Lizzie thanked him and wandered away from the scene the patrolmen were now securing. All of a sudden this was no longer an abandonment case, but a potential homicide. There was enough probable cause to get a warrant from a district judge for blood samples, evidence that might point a finger at the woman who had done this.

She stopped walking as the barn door opened. A tall blond man—one of the farm help—stepped into the dim light with a young woman. He nodded at Lizzie. “This is Katie Fisher.”

She was lovely, in that sturdy Germanic style that always made Lizzie think of fresh cream and springtime. She wore the traditional garb of the Old Order Amish: a long-sleeved dress, covered by a black apron that fell just below her knees. Her feet were bare and callused—it had always amazed Lizzie to see these Amish youth running down gravel roads without their shoes, but that was how they spent the summer. The girl was also so nervous that Lizzie could nearly smell her fear. “I'm glad you're here, Katie,” Lizzie said gently. “I've been looking for you, so that I can ask you some questions.”