The Dead Will Tell (23 page)

“I’ve not heard those names in a long time,” he says. “Such a terrible thing. So many young lives lost. It makes the heart hurt.” His gaze meets mine. “Why do you ask of them now?”

“I’m working on another case that may be related.” I pause. “Were you bishop back then?”

He shakes his head. “Eli Schweider was.”

“Is he still around?”

“Eli lives in the house next to his son’s farm out on Rockridge Road.”

“I know the one,” I tell him. “Not too far from Miller’s Pond.”

“He’s very old now, Katie. Ninety years old, I think. His
fluss
is bad and he’s frail.”
Fluss
is the Pennsylvania Dutch word for “rheumatism.”

“Danki,”
I tell him, and start toward my vehicle.

“You watch your manners with him, Katie Burkholder,” he calls out after me.

“Don’t worry, Bishop. I’ll behave myself.”

I leave him standing on the sidewalk with his walking stick in his hand, a frown on his face.

*   *   *

Minutes later, I turn onto Rockridge Road. Half a mile in, I pass by a plain metal mailbox with the name
SCHWEIDER
finger-painted in black on the side. I turn into the gravel lane and bounce over potholes as I head toward the big white farmhouse. I crest the hill only to notice the smaller cottage-style home on my left, and I realize it’s probably the original farmhouse, where the elders would live now.

I drive past the larger house and park near the cottage. Though it’s midday, the sky is low and dark and spitting rain. As I pass by a mullioned window, I see the glow of lantern light inside, telling me someone is there. I step onto the porch, knock, and wait. I’m about to knock a second time in case Eli Schweider is hard of hearing, when the door creaks open.

I find myself looking at a bent, white-haired man who’s at least a foot shorter than me. Tiny eyes peer out at me from the folded-leather creases of eyes set into a face that’s brown from the sun and mottled with age spots. Wire-rimmed glasses sit on a lumpy nose, and he tilts his head back to look at me through Coke-bottle lenses.

“Who’s there?” comes a crushed-gravel voice.

“I’m Kate Burkholder, the chief of police of Painters Mill.”

He stares at me long enough for me to notice cloudy irises that had once been blue, and a mat of drool in a beard that reaches all the way to his belt. “You’re an
Englischer
.”

“Yes.”

“I have no business with you.”

He starts to close the door, but I stop him. “Please, Bishop Schweider. Bishop Troyer sent me.” The statement is out before I can amend it. I add in Pennsylvania Dutch, “I just need a few minutes of your time.”

As always, my fluency in the language garners his attention. “Burkholder is a good, strong Amish name.”

Raindrops begin to tap on the ground behind me. When he doesn’t invite me inside, I ask, “May I come in? I promise not to stay too long.”

He shuffles back and I step into a small room with low ceilings and exposed beams. The odors of woodsmoke and toasted bread fill the air. But the room contains the slightly unpleasant smells of mildew, cedar, and old things, too. From where I’m standing, I can see into a small kitchen with stone walls and a two-burner stove. Atop a table, a mug of something hot sits next to a paper plate with a single piece of toast.

“I’ve interrupted your lunch,” I begin.

He doesn’t respond. I don’t know if it’s because he didn’t hear me or he chose not to. Turning his back to me, he shuffles toward the kitchen, sliding his feet across the wood planks a few inches at a time.

“You speak
Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch
and yet you’re an
Englischer,
” he says. “There’s something wrong with that.”

“I left the Amish when I was young.”

He tries to look at me over his shoulder, but his neck is too stiff. He continues shuffling toward the table. “Who is your father?”

“Jacob Burkholder.”

He turns and looks at me. “You must be Little Katie.”

I smile. “Not so little anymore.”

“What is it you need?”

“I’m working on a case. From a long time ago. It’s about Willis and Wanetta Hochstetler.”

A quiver goes through the old man’s body, as if he’d been hit with a brisk wind and the cold took his breath away. “They are with God,” he says. “The children, too.”

“Except for William.”

“God spared Billy.” He starts toward the table, shuffling. The soles of his shoes scrape across the floor, sounding vaguely like a saw through wood. “Are you going to catch the men responsible, Katie Burkholder?”

“I’ve taken one man into custody. The others were murdered.”

“God will make the final judgment.”

His progress is slow and uncomfortable to watch. I have to resist the urge to help him into the chair. I wait until he’s settled in before continuing. “Did the police talk to you about what happened that night?”

“The English police.” He says the words with disdain. “They don’t care about the
Amisch.
Not then. Not now.”

“I care.”

He meets my gaze, but he is unmoved. “What is it you need from me?”

“Is there anything you can tell me about the night Willis Hochstetler was killed?” I ask. “Do you know of anything unusual that happened in the days before or after? Or did you hear any rumors?”

“What happened in the house that night was
gottlos.
”
Ungodly.
He sets down the toast as if realizing it’s covered with maggots. “When we found the boy, he was … shattered. It was a painful time for all of us.”

“Did you know Wanetta and Willis?”

“I baptized them when they joined the church. I spoke to them many times. Saw them at worship.” He nods.
“Willis es en faehicher schreiner.” Willis was an able carpenter.
“Wanetta—” He shakes his head.

“What about her?”

“I talked to William after … what happened. He was a boy. Only fourteen years old and innocent. But even then, he knew things.”

“Like what?”

He raises his gaze to me. “Those men … they took Wanetta. They used her. Soiled her. Forced her to break her vows to her husband. Her sacred vow to the church.”

The words, the meaning behind them, light a fire of outrage inside me, a mix of anger and disbelief and the sense of unfair judgment levied upon the innocent. “She had no choice in the matter.”

He raises rheumy eyes to mine. “Some things are so broken, they cannot be mended. It is the way of the world.”

“I don’t agree with that.”

He gives me a sharp look. “I thought it best that she didn’t return.”

I stare at him, incredulous, and so taken aback by his narrow-minded arrogance that for a moment I’m rendered speechless. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s not for you to understand. It’s done. In God’s hands.”

Before I realize I’m going to move, I’m hovering over him. “Do you know something about what happened to her?” Despite my efforts, my voice has risen.

His eyes roll back in their sockets slightly when he looks at me. “A few years after Willis and the children were killed, I received a message from the bishop of the Swartzentruber Amish in Pennsylvania.”

The Swartzentruber clan are the most conservative Amish. The group emerged after a split of the Old Order back in 1917 over a conflict between two bishops regarding
Bann und Meidung
, or “excommunication and shunning.” Several Swartzentruber families live in Painters Mill. Generally, they’re stricter with regard to the use of technology, rejecting conveniences like milking machines and indoor plumbing. Their buggies are windowless. Even their dress is plainer, especially for the women.

“What message?” I ask.

“One of the families in Cambria County had taken in an Amish woman who’d been in an accident and had severe injuries. The woman had no memory. She didn’t know her name or where she lived. The family nursed her back to health, fed her, clothed her, and opened their home to her.” He looks down at his gnarled fingers. “Months after she arrived, the woman began to remember things. She was fluent in
Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch
. She knew she had a husband and children and wanted to come home. The Swartzentruber family began contacting Amish bishops all over Pennsylvania and, later, Ohio.”

“The woman was Wanetta Hochstetler?”

“All I can tell you is that she was not the woman who had been married to Willis Hochstetler.”

I can’t tell if he’s speaking figuratively or literally. “What happened?”

“The Swartzentruber Amish do not permit a community telephone booth, as we do here. It took several weeks, but she was finally able to contact me.”

“You spoke with her?”

“On the telephone.” He hesitates. “She didn’t know that Willis and the children had passed. When I told her, she became very distraught. She accused me of lying and used ungodly words.” He touches his left temple.
“Sie is ganz ab.” She was quite out of her mind.

“Did you go to the police?”

“Why would I? We are Amish. It was an Amish matter.”

“But they would have—”

“There were bad feelings between the Amish and the English police.” He shrugs. “I don’t know how it would have been for her, coming back, after everything that happened. There had been talk.”

“What kind of talk?”

“That she’d left her husband and children. That maybe she didn’t want to come back.”

“But she had a son,” I say. “William.”

“The boy was with an Amish family. A
good
family that had welcomed him into their lives and given him a home. This woman was …
narrish.
”
Insane.
“It was for the best. For the boy. He needed to be protected from what she had become.”

“That wasn’t your choice. It wasn’t your decision to make.”

“I left it in the hands of God.”

I look at him, this grizzled, disapproving old man, and I want to rail at him, call him a son of a bitch. I want to tell him the woman could have sustained a head injury or suffered a stroke. But I hold my tongue. “How long ago did you speak with her?”

“Many years,” he says.

“She was living in Pennsylvania at the time?”

“Yes, but many of the Swartzentruber Amish have left that area for New York. Too many disputes with the government.”

“What was the name of the family that took her in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you remember the bishop’s name?”

He shakes his head.

I sigh. “Where in Pennsylvania? What’s the name of the town?”

“Cambria County,” he tells me. “Near Nicktown.”

CHAPTER 24

My head is reeling with the bishop’s disturbing revelations as I get into the Explorer and start down the lane. It’s difficult for me to believe an Amish bishop could be so cruel. Is it possible Wanetta Hochstetler is still alive? Did she, as a damaged and broken woman, try to return home to her family, only to be shattered by news that they were dead? Or that she wasn’t welcome?

But there are other, darker questions pulsing at the back of my brain. Did Wanetta Hochstetler find her way back to Painters Mill? Did she have something to do with the murders of Dale Michaels, Jules Rutledge and Jerrold McCullough? The people who murdered her husband, caused the deaths of her children and destroyed her life? It doesn’t seem likely. She was thirty-four years old when she was kidnapped; that would put her at around seventy now. The more recent murders required a good bit of strength—too much for a woman that age. Too much for a woman of
any
age.

But I know better than to discount a female perpetrator based on strength alone. If she’s determined and armed—or insane as the bishop asserted—anything’s possible.

I pull over in the parking lot of a carryout on the west side of town and call Glock. He picks up on the first ring with his usual, “Hey, Chief.”

I summarize my conversation with Bishop Schweider.

“You think she’s got something to do with these murders?” he asks.

“I don’t know. She certainly qualifies in terms of motive, but she’d be old now. I can’t see her pulling off three murders.”

“She might’ve had help.” He pauses. “Hoch Yoder.”

I tell him about my conversation with Hoch. “Pay him a visit. Tell him you’re following up. See if you can get anything new out of him. Put some pressure on him. Rattle him a little. At this point, I think it’s best we don’t let on that she might still be alive.”

“Where are you going?”

“Nicktown, Pennsylvania. It’s about four hours away. The Swartzentruber Amish don’t use community pay phones, so I’m going to drive over there and see what I can find out.”

“Chief, are you sure you don’t want to take someone with you? Any of us are happy to tag along.”

I don’t believe “tag along” is the exact term he had in mind, but he’s being magnanimous. With three people dead, he’s worried that I won’t have backup if I need it. There’s a small part of me that agrees with him, but with my department strapped tight and the threat of flooding in the forefront of our minds, I don’t take him up on the offer. “The Swartzentruber Amish generally don’t like dealing with outsiders, especially the government. Best if I go alone.”

“Do me a favor and be careful, will you?”

“You know it.”

*   *   *

The rolling hills, farm fields, and woodlands between Painters Mill and Nicktown make for beautiful scenery, even if the weather doesn’t cooperate. But I barely notice the countryside as I head east and push the speedometer over the limit. I can’t stop thinking about Wanetta Hochstetler and what it could mean if she’s alive. I have no idea if she’s perpetrator or victim or somewhere in between, but if I can find her, she might be able to shed some light on exactly what went down that night thirty-five years ago—or the more recent murders.

But it’s been over thirty years since Bishop Schweider spoke to her; there’s a possibility I won’t find her. She may have died of natural causes or left Cambria County for Upstate New York with the other Swartzentruber Amish. If I was dealing with any other group of people, it might have been wiser for me to call ahead, try to get someone on the phone or, perhaps, speak to the local PD. But I know the Swartzentruber Amish would not speak to me by phone. While this trip and the hours I’ll sink into it may be a long shot, I have to try.