The Names of Our Tears (3 page)

As he did that, Mervin Byler marched forward and offered his hand. “I’m Mervin Byler and I called about the girl,” he said in a rush and pointed into the clearing where the body lay.

Niell stood up, shook hands, and walked over with Byler to stand between the buggy rig and the glade. “Did you move the body, Mr. Byler?” he asked.

“No,” Byler said nervously. “No, I just turned her head a little.”

“So, really, you did move her.”

“I just turned her head, Deputy, to see if I could help. Other than that, she’s right where I found her.”

Niell studied the glen and judged the clearing to be thirty yards wide and forty yards deep. It sloped back to a stand of tall, barren trees, where a creek coursed over jagged rocks, showing patches of ice and snow in the shaded crevices.

To Niell’s right there was a small knoll, around which a service road curved and disappeared. Beyond the top of the knoll, he could see the round metal dome of an oil tank.

Between the creek and the road to his left was a field of tangled weeds, dead shoots, and wild grasses. Half a dozen saplings stood as a boundary between the grasses and the clearing where the girl lay. Frowning at the body, Niell pulled a new spiral notebook out of his hip pocket.

As he sketched the scene in his notebook, Niell heard voices behind him. He stepped around the rear of the buggy and looked up the rise to the crest of the hill beside the lane. There he saw a half-dozen Amish kids and half as many adults, standing out in the wind on the high pasture, watching from a height of thirty feet.

Niell shook his head, annoyed by the curiosity of the locals. Death, it seemed, was a draw for them. He shrugged, thinking it a shame that they had gathered so quickly. But it had always been like this, even in the most peaceful, quiet corners of the county.

But there was nothing he could do about it, so he turned to Byler, flipped to a new page in his spiral notebook, and asked, “Has anyone gone after the horse, or is everyone up there—you know—just
watching
us?”

Niell felt awkwardly tall beside Byler, and he quickly regretted his sharp tone. He was constitutionally even tempered, but the onlookers on the high pasture behind him had touched a sensitive nerve. It was not that long ago that a similarly annoying crowd had gathered outside the ranch home of Darba Winters to watch the investigation into the murder of an Amish neighbor
south of Fredericksburg, and then the curiosity of the crowd had bothered him equally. Not as much as it apparently had bothered the gruff Sheriff Robertson, but enough all the same. Then, with her husband dead, Darba Winters had disappeared, raising the sheriff’s ire all the more. And while it often had fallen to Niell to smooth over the ruffled feathers left in Sheriff Robertson’s powerful wake, Ricky was now a detective, and he figured that he had advanced enough in rank and seniority to let the other deputies worry about Robertson’s short-fused insistence.

So today, with the locals already gathering to watch, Niell didn’t much care to think about Robertson’s eventual appearance at the scene. Truth be told, the sheriff didn’t always help. Besides, Niell mused, we have a detective bureau, now, and the sheriff really isn’t needed here. Let Captain Newell manage the details for once, Niell thought. Let the detectives run this investigation.

The detectives in the bureau consisted so far only of Ricky Niell and Corporal Pat Lance, she with air force training in detective work, and he with only one more state certification still to earn. Bobby Newell had come out of retirement to serve as captain of detectives, and Robertson had promised to appoint another deputy to detective status. More to the point, he had promised to let the captain and his detectives take the lead on murder investigations.

Niell pulled himself away from his thoughts, reprimanded himself for the distraction, studied the little man beside him, and asked again about recovering the horse. But Byler didn’t respond. Perhaps he hadn’t heard. He was staring intently at the body of the girl, and Niell had to tap his shoulder to get his attention. “Mr. Byler, has someone gone after her horse and buggy?”

Absently, Byler answered, “I sent one of my grandsons after it.”

“Because I need to see them both,” Niell added. “I wouldn’t want the horse unhitched before I got a look.”

Byler nodded and marched back around the rear of his buggy. Niell followed. Byler called out to one of the lads standing on the
high pasture, and the boy scrambled down the slope directly. Then Byler instructed the boy using the authoritative Dietsch dialect of the region, and the boy ran down the road, heading north.

Byler nodded his satisfaction and said to Niell, “He’ll catch up. They’ll leave the horse hitched when they bring it back here.”

Niell studied his position in the deep pocket between the hills. “You can’t see anything down in here, Mr. Byler. How will they know where the horse is?”

“Oh, it’s probably just over that hill behind the creek. Horses don’t like running much on their own. The lads will track it down.”

“Will this new fellow get there in time to tell your grandson not to unhitch the horse?”

Byler shrugged and smiled weakly. “We’ll have to wait and see. They are brothers.”

Niell considered that, walked back to stand between Byler’s buggy and the glen, and asked, “Mr. Byler, do you know who she is?”

As Niell spoke, another cruiser came around the curve and rolled to a stop behind Byler’s rig. Corporal Stan Armbruster got out with a camera, and walked up to Niell and Byler. He was in a trim-fitting uniform, with a duty belt loaded heavily with gear. His black hair was military short, and his round face showed a fair complexion and a ready smile. As he came forward, he said, “I came in through Farmerstown, but I took a wrong turn. Should have gotten here first.”

“I haven’t been here very long,” Niell said. “Is Lance on her way?”

“She’s coming down from Mt. Hope. Might be a minute, yet.”

“OK,” Niell said, “I’m sketching the scene, so you walk a circuit around it, taking pictures from a distance. We’ll go in closer when Pat gets here.”

Armbruster nodded and started walking a wide circumference around the glade, taking pictures from various angles. Niell called out, “Be sure to get shots from up on that little knoll,” and Armbruster nodded.

Turning back to Byler, Niell asked, “Do you recognize her, Mr. Byler?”

Byler shrugged. “I didn’t get much of a look, since her face was so muddy. But I think she’s a Zook. I think she works at a bed-and-breakfast over on 557, just this side of Charm.”

“But are you certain?”

“No,” Byler said. “But I think she’s one of the Zooks from out that way.”

Niell called Armbruster back and said, “Stan, let me take the camera. I need you to check at a B and B on 557.”

Niell turned to question Byler, and Byler offered, “It’s the Maple Valley B and B. If she’s a Zook from over there, she lives across the road, and down about a quarter mile.”

“But we’re not sure,” Niell said to Armbruster. “So just go over and ask at the B and B. See if a Zook girl is working this morning, or if she’s supposed to be but hasn’t showed up. Call me when you get an answer, but don’t say anything about this murder.”

Armbruster nodded, climbed back into his cruiser, backed up, backed around in a wide patch of road to head out, and drove away, swinging over to the right to let Pat Lance’s cruiser pass by on his left, coming in.

Lance parked behind Byler’s rig and got out. She was a blond, Germanic woman with close-cropped hair. She had large, round blue eyes, set far apart. A strong nose and prominent chin mixed with her determined attitude about law enforcement, causing some to conclude that she was too formal, perhaps somewhat too severe. As she walked up to Niell and Byler, she asked, “Where’s Stan going?”

Niell handed the camera to her and said, “He’s gonna check at the B and B where Mervin, here, thinks this girl worked,” and then he introduced Lance to Byler.

Lance offered her hand, but Byler hesitated to take it. She held it out farther, smiling, and eventually Byler took it bashfully. Then Lance leaned in to study Niell’s notepad and said, “You’ve been sketching?”

Niell nodded. “I’ve got the clearing sketched, but we’ll need
measurements of everything, once we go in closer. I’ve also got these tracks sketched.”

Lance took the notebook, compared Niell’s sketch with the tracks on the ground, and handed the notebook back to Niell.

Niell said, “OK. We’ve got the track of one buggy wheel, going in first. Then these tire tracks overlie that, and must have covered over the track of her second buggy wheel. Then another buggy circled around over all of the other tracks.”

Byler offered, “That’ll be where I swung my rig around, to go back to the telephone.”

“The tire tracks go in, curving right,” Lance said, “and back out, curving left. Someone drove in behind her, and then came out to head back north, the way they came.”

“You recognize the tires?” Niell asked Lance.

“I saw a lot of those in the air force. It’s a Humvee.”

“That’s what I thought,” Niell said.

“Excuse me,” Byler said, “but what’s a Humvee?”

“It’s a military vehicle, Mr. Byler,” Niell said. “But probably a civilian version.”

“Like a Jeep?” Byler asked.

“Bigger,” Lance said.

Nervously, Byler asked, “What was an Amish girl doing with a soldier?”

“It might not have been a soldier,” Niell said. “They make Humvees for civilians, now, too.”

“But why would anybody want one?” Byler asked.

“They’re big,” Niell said. “And powerful. It’s a status thing.”

Byler shook his head. “I can’t stay if there are going to be soldiers.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t a soldier,” Lance said, intending reassurance.

But Byler ignored her, shifting nervously from foot to foot, disturbed very deeply by this new revelation. He studied the tragic scene in front of him and tried to reconcile himself to soldiers. He thought it so very sad that he had already reconciled himself too easily to violent death.

The dead girl still lay where he had left her, faceup with the mud swiped across her brow from when he had tried to clear her eyes. He had tried to get a look at her face. To see if she was still alive.

From the edge of the clearing, he could see the hole that he had felt in her forehead. Her dead eyes stared an accusation back at him, as if his disturbing her had been a sin. At his feet, the big, knobby tire tracks curved back out onto the gravel lane. He hadn’t noticed them before. A soldier? Military? War. It all washed through him as a nervous flush of sorrow, and he realized he had stayed too long.

Looking up, he saw his grandsons in the distance beyond the barren trees, leading the horse and buggy over the saddle between two hills. He pointed them out to Niell and said, “I can’t stay here anymore.”

Niell asked, “Where will you be, Mr. Byler?”

“Third farm around there,” Byler said, pointing back down the lane. “After you hit 166.” He paused and then said—thinking of it as a confession—“We’ve got a white shed out by the road, with a telephone in it.”

“You’ll be at the house?” Niell asked.

“In the little Daadihaus at the back.”

Sorry for the man’s distress, Niell asked, “What are you going to do, Mervin? I will need to talk with you again.”

“I’m going to sit with some chocolates,” Byler said as he climbed up to his buggy seat. “Sweets will have to do, Deputy. Because”—he hesitated sadly—“today I’m just fresh out of chips.”

FROM THE perimeter of the clearing, Niell and Lance finished taking photographs of the scene and then approached the body of the girl by circling left through the brush where Byler said he had walked. Beyond the brambles, a maple sapling stood at the edge of the clearing, and Lance took several photographs of knife marks on the trunk of the tree, where Byler had cut the reins to free the horse. Then they stepped forward, carrying Ricky’s evidence kit in a large tackle box, and studied the body more closely.

The ground around the girl was trampled extensively with hoof prints, and it was clear to them as they approached that the body had been trampled, too. She lay mostly on her back, but her right arm, obviously broken above the elbow, was twisted unnaturally behind her shoulders. Her left leg had been snapped midshin, and it lay hideously out of alignment, somewhat bent up under the opposite knee. Lance circled around the body shooting photos at every angle, not watching the placement of her feet too carefully, because it was apparent that if footprints or evidence had been left in the dirt and weeds beside the body, it had all been obliterated by the pounding of the horse’s hooves.

Wearing blue nitrile gloves, Niell used a plastic spatula to
take scrapings from the area around the girl’s forehead wound, and he bottled them up in a small evidence jar. Then he ran a swab directly across her wound and bagged that evidence, too, saying, “Byler said he wiped mud from her face, so it may be hard to tell if there was gunpowder residue on her forehead.”

Lance swung her camera strap over her shoulder and knelt beside Niell at the side of the body. She lifted the girl’s left hand using forceps to clutch the sleeve of her jacket. It was a man’s black denim jacket, and Lance pointed that out. Then she said, “Ricky, she’s missing a finger on her left hand.”

Ricky used an evidence swipe to clear mud from the stump of her ring finger, and the swipe came away bloody. “So, where’s the finger?” he asked, as he helped Lance lay the hand and arm back into position on the ground. The swipe went into another evidence bottle.

Lance asked a question of her own. “How did she lose it? The finger, I mean. It could have been cut off by the sharp edge of a horseshoe.”

She snapped her hands into a pair of nitrile gloves, moved over to the girl’s head, and felt the back of the skull with her fingertips. “Exit wound, Ricky,” she said. “A big one. A gunshot wound.”

Niell stood up. “OK, she was shot. But how did she end up under the hooves of the horse?”

Lance stood, too, and followed Niell back through the brambles and brush. “Maybe she was standing close to the horse when she was shot,” she said to Ricky’s back.